Reid’s “health tourism” ride (2004)

From the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

After all manner of xenophobic attacks on migrants, including overseas airport screening of UK-bound ‘foreigners’, removing benefit money, cutting access to legal aid, and threats to kidnap children of “failed asylum seekers” who refuse to leave Britain “voluntarily”, comes the latest Nazi-style Labour assault – withholding NHS treatment from those marked with the 6-pointed yellow star stamped “Health tourist”.

The estimate of a £200m expense for so-called “health tourism” turned out to be unsupportable, and the real cost is probably far less. Most desperately poor and sick people capable of scraping together the cost of reaching Britain would spend this trying to get well close to home. And with a NHS budget of almost £70bn, the true cost of transnational healthcare pay-avoidance must be comparatively trivial. However, responding to electorate-influencing racist tabloids, three months of “public consultation” and a need to cut back on capitalist-funded state expenditure, from April 2004 the government wants hospital staff to provide health care according to a “legitimate” entitlement and ability to pay, rather than need.

Health secretary John Reid says: “If there are bona fide tourists dropping ill in the street, of course we will do what we have to do, but we are not mugs. There is a difference between being civilised and being taken for a ride.” Which means that Labour wants anyone who doesn’t appear to be “British” to be viewed not as a potential patient, but as a potential “cheat”. Someone may have a dislocated shoulder, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica or angina, but if these or any of numerous other painful or debilitating ailments are deemed to require what Reid calls “routine treatment”, and not be “matters of life and death”, and the health police aren’t happy with your immigration status or ability to pay, then Blair, the christian, wants NHS staff to refuse them help.

Anyone who doesn’t look or speak “right” will receive pre-treatment interrogation by health cops demanding to see proof of identity or a fat wad of banknotes. This vileness conjures up a scenario as in The Great Escape film, where a would-be patient having successfully passed himself off might be wished “Good luck!” in Czech by a member of the health Gestapo, and then seized from his hospital bed when he answers “Thank you!” in the same language.

An example the government gave where unpaid-for NHS treatment would be denied, was “heavily pregnant wives” of “foreign” nationals living in the UK visiting “just to give birth”. Is this portrayal any different to the white racists who stir up fear and hatred by accusing immigrants of “breeding like rabbits”?

People from other parts of the world aren’t stealing treatment from those in this part if they don’t pay for it. They are, in fact, taking part of British capitalism’s profits. The proportion of employees’ taxes going to the NHS has to be paid to them by employers in the first place. If politicians were able to prevent all “health tourism”, the savings in taxes would mean less pressure on capitalists to raise wages, salaries and benefits for workers, pensioners and unemployed.

This government policy, like many others, requires the subordinate majority to be Reid’s “mugs”, and swallow the deceit that working class “foreigners” are different from working class “nationals”. That Britain is “ours”, not “theirs”, when in reality it is neither.

Reid doesnt know workers have no country. Presumably John Reid’s”communist” days ended before he learned that “workers have no country”

NHS managers, compelled to ensure they don’t “waste” capitalist money, will be expected to put their jobs and salaries before the health needs of those Labour see as “undeserving”. Caring doctors and nurses who might not happily do likewise will be spared such dirty work by money-driven administrators identifying those not “bona fide”.

Excluding treatment from “foreigners” is a consequence of living in a world with competing groups of capitalists, each having precedence within their bordered regions, i.e., countries. The majority of people in most countries can only afford what they need to live by directly or indirectly selling themselves to those capitalists in charge, or subsist on state handouts (if they exist).

One country’s capitalists don’t want to unprofitably expend money on the human assets of another country’s capitalists. That means a loss by the former and savings for the latter. And so politicians worldwide, hand in glove with different groups owning the means of production and distribution, spread divisive lies, categorise humankind and make rules about who is entitled to what.

Politicians are rewarded for their management of capitalism, and the media, who succeed or fail according to their profitability, generally accept all this, with some sections repeatedly fomenting anger and loathing amongst the working class majority in order to keep cashing in with their nasty antisocial “news” , views and distractive screws.

The real “undeserving” are the exploitative capitalist minority who take profit from the unpaid labour of the majority, and devious politicians like Reid and Blair given votes for lying, incitement and treachery.

Max Hess

Harold Shipman (2004)

Harold Shipman

From the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

His murders are said by many to be inexplicable, while amateur psychologists have put them down to grief over his mother’s death. But what’s most likely to lie behind Harold Shipman’s assuming of medical power over “who lived and who died”? Well, what stands out from the Shipman story is the way he saw himself as superior to others, which resulted in him feeling at liberty to either treat or terminate.

He left grammar school as part of an elite within society and went on to university. He set up his own one-man surgery because he couldn’t abide working with others in a group practice. He targeted the working class poor and elderly (rather than higher-income so-called “middle class” patients) for being a miserable burden on his valuable time (relief from which he sought by stealing and self-injecting pethidine), as well as a drain on the NHS (which his professionally- and hard-earned taxes helped pay for). He looked relatives of those he murdered in the eye and gave bogus explanations without feeling any remorse. He is said to have enjoyed the role of “master of ceremonies” following a death and presented himself as “omniscient”. He constantly denied having ever done wrong, doubtless because in his own mind, he hadn’t. And finally, there was his behaviour in jail (“annoying, arrogant and difficult”), which resulted in him being locked up each evening an hour and a half earlier than other inmates, losing his prison cell TV, and having his pocket money reduced from £12.50 to £3. For a man who saw himself as better than most, this would have been intolerable.

So, what is it that makes people see themselves as better than others, and confers a hierarchical ranking in society? It’s capitalism, the word that appeared nowhere in the media following Shipman’s death, and won’t appear anywhere in “Dame” Janet Smith’s reports into his murders which numbered around 200 to 400.

Shipman can be seen as an extreme example of a working man – a “professional” – who came to develop an intense loathing of people because of capitalism and its money mechanism. Thousands of GPs have become bitter over heavy workloads, underfunded surgeries and pay, and wanting to apportion blame, have also felt resentment towards the poorest patients, as Shipman did. Such feelings are generated when doctors accept the capitalist way of living, even unenthusiastically. But most pressurised GPs usually find other ways than a lethal morphine injection to get rid of human ‘burdens’.

This anger and resentment is due to the steady decline of the NHS, which in turn is down to a desire by successive governments to cut state funding and introduce market forces and privatisation wherever possible.

That the thought processes of medical practitioners can be so perverted by capitalism that they go along with murdering ‘inferior’ people seen as burdens is by no means new. It happened to thousands under Adolf Hitler’s euthanasia programme. Over a four-year period up to 1943, mentally ill patients of all ages were selected and taken by the bus-load to “killing hospitals” to be disposed of by lethal injection or starvation “for their own good” by doctors and nurses.

Capitalism, having created the monster that was Shipman, also played a part in his own death. Modifying all prisons to remove or cover ligature points, like window bars, from which prisoners might hang themselves, has never happened because of the financial cost to capitalism.

Shipman’s suicide isn’t something that many will regret, though not having abolished the system that produced him, should be. As are the suicides of many others imprisoned – many merely poor and deprived, driven to shoplift some food or clothing they couldn’t afford, or unable to pay a bill.

Max Hess

50 Years Ago: I Go – I Come Back (2004)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many organisations and movements have clamoured for the allegiance of the workers during the twentieth century, all claiming some panacea, some new device which would, at long last, make capitalism palatable. The Jewish workers have been exposed to all the usual propaganda, but for them the basic issue of twentieth-century society – Capitalism or Socialism – has been even further confused by the Zionist Movement. This claimed that the problems of Jewry could only be solved by the establishment of one single homeland for Jews, a Jewish state. Like many other reformist movements, the Zionists have now had a chance to work out their theories in practice; Israel has been established. What evidence is there as to whether Jewish workers are any happier in capitalist Israel than they are in capitalist Britain or America? The figures of Jews going into Israel and Jews coming out of Israel afford some indication. Here is a quote from The Times (19.12.53)

  Since Israel became a State five years and a half ago, 38,263 of its citizens have emigrated. The outward flow caused little concern when immigration greatly exceeded it; but to-day more Israelis are leaving the country for good than are coming in to settle, and the number of departures is steadily increasing . . . Some 15,000 emigrants went to Europe, of whom 5,168 are said to be in France. About 850 went back to countries behind the Iron Curtain.

So conditions in Israel are not even attractive enough to keep eight hundred and fifty of its emigrants from returning to the countries of Stalinist dictatorship!

Zionism hasn’t established a workers’ paradise any more than Stalinism has. The sole fruit of the decades of struggle and strife which Zionism has know has been – the establishment of yet another capitalist state. Which is an achievement the workers of the world, Jewish and Gentile, white and black, could well have done without.

(From “The Passing Show” by “Joshua”, Socialist Standard, February 1954)

Students as paying customers (2004)

Editorial from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blair’s position is clear. He and his government want market forces to be allowed even freer rein to ravage universities and marginalise yet further what used to be seen as their original aspiration to be centres of learning and independent research. They want universities in England to function openly as businesses selling “education” to fee-paying customers known as students; in accordance with normal market forces, those with a higher quality product to sell will be able to charge a higher price. The government would act as a middleman paying the university-businesses up front and recovering a part of it, with interest, from the customer-students after they have graduated.

A far cry from the free education at all levels that used to be a key plank in Labour’s programme and a sign of how far Labour has gone in accepting, not just capitalism, but its whole logic and ethos. But this is nothing new. Labour in power has always ended up, like all governments, dancing to capitalism’s tune since that’s what government’s are there for: to run the affairs of the capitalist class of the country concerned.

Labour has dishonoured its pledges here, as on other matters, not because its leaders are dishonest or nasty or weak-kneed or sell-outs (though some of them may be), but because if you agree to govern capitalism you have to accept doing so on its terms, allowing profits to be made, prosecuting wars, standing up to strikers, since capitalism can only work as a profit-making system under which profits must come first.

Every Labour government has ended up doing this since the first one under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. The Blair government’s introduction of business principles into university funding is just par for the course. In fact, the whole history of the Labour Party has been that of a gradual slide into compromise with capitalism, ending up with the present Blair government which is indistinguishable from a Tory government.

Of course universities have never conformed to the image they used to project of themselves as places where study and research go on in tranquil isolation from business and money-making. Universities originated as centres of obscurantism in the Middle Ages where priests and seminarists discussed how many angels could dance on a pin-head. In fact until 1870 only those who declared that they accepted the 39 Articles of the Church of England were admitted to Oxford and Cambridge, which in the 19th century became centres for training members of the ruling class to run the Empire.

The Non-Conformist capitalists of the Midlands and the North responded by using some of their profits to set up their own universities – the redbricks – to train their children and some from humbler backgrounds to be the engineers and chemists needed to run and develop modern industry. A hundred years later it was decided to rename the polytechnic colleges – the polys – universities, thereby further strengthening the vocational training aspect of universities.

That in fact is what all universities have tended to become over the years: places turning out workers with a higher quality of labour-power to work in government and industry. True, they do carry out research but the content of this research is no longer decided purely on scientific grounds. This, too, has become increasingly commercial and business-oriented.

Not only has government funding become skewed towards such activities, but universities have to compete with each other and with universities abroad for contracts to do research for industry and business. Thus, it is now common-place to hear some university head stating that, faced with international competition, universities need more money from students so as to be able to train and retain high-quality graduates to carry out the research contracts they hope to win.

But this is what you would expect to happen in capitalist society where “commercial values”, “enterprise culture” and “business ethics” reflect the economic need to make profits above everything else since this is what drives the capitalist economy. In fact, it is utopian to imagine that universities could escape contamination by the marketplace. It is just ironic, but illustrative of the futility of reformism, that the latest move to subordinate universities to the market should have been thought up and implemented by the government of a party which once set out to try to gradually reduce capitalist influence on society.

It only remains to be seen whether it will be a Labour or a Tory government which will allow universities to change their email address from “ac.uk” to “co.uk” and add PLC after their name.

Fields of gold – for some (2004)

From the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

At last year’s Labour Conference in September the Chancellor of Exchequer, Gordon Brown, impressed the faithful with his grasp of all things financial. He excited the delegates when he turned his attention to Europe’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and informed them that he was going to “tackle the waste of the CAP”. Labour Conferences love all this rhetoric that seems to be doing something when in fact it is all quite meaningless.

How meaningless was shown last month when the European Commission proposed to end big payouts to landowners by capping them at £187,500 per farmer. What was the Labour government’s response? They threw the proposed scheme out, thus ensuring that some of the richest men in Britain continued to receive gigantic cash subsidies.

Here are just a few of the examples. The Duke of Westminster (estimated wealth £4.9 billion) will receive a CAP cereal subsidy of £366,000 per annum, the Duke of Marlborough £568,620, Lord de Ramsey £382,000 and the Duke of Bedford £390,000.

According to the Oxfam report Spotlight on Subsidies, farmers owning 2 per cent of Britain’s arable land collected a fifth of the £1 billion paid in support for cereal crops last year while 15,000 smallholders accounting for 30 per cent of land received 5 per cent of the total subsidy.

An example of the effects that this Labour supported scheme can have on small farmers is illustrated in the Western Mail (22 January):

  “Pembrokeshire farmer Gordon Blackburn, aged 62, and his wife Christine, both have to go out to work to make ends meet on their 116 acre farm near Tegryn. They used to milk a herd of 70 cows but decided to switch to livestock farming in 2000 because of the falling price of milk made it unprofitable.”

A far cry from our noble Lords experience down on the farm. Another example of the madness of the market system that is capitalism is highlighted by the Oxfam report. A daily farmer in Wales might receive 15p-a-litre for the milk he produces but dried milk is bought up by the EC and dumped in other parts of the world for a cut-price 8p a litre. This in turn means that a poor farmer in Senegal or Jamaica with only a few cows, loses his livelihood and becomes destitute.

Perhaps at this year’s conference some Labour minister could get a round of applause by promising “to do something” about world hunger. We could understand a standing ovation from wealthy landowners, but a working class response to such remarks should be one of hollow laughter and downright derision.

Richard Donnelly

Obituaries: Alec Hart and Alf Crisp (2004)

Obituaries from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alec Hart (1924-2004)

Alec Hart died in his 80th year in South Africa where he had lived for almost 50 years. Alec came across the Socialist Party when he heard a young speaker, Doug Verity, at a meeting in Finsbury Park, North London. He was so impressed with the case for Socialism that he arranged for Doug to

address the youth club he attended, and politically, Alec never looked back.

He joined the Party in 1944 and influenced some of his siblings, two of whom (including the writer at the age of 16) also joined. Alec was a member of the old Islington branch and was sometime branch treasurer. He much valued the Education Classes held in the 1940’s at the Rugby Chambers Head Office, especially the Economics Classes. He always challenged non- or anti-socialist comments and arguments and often crossed political swords with Father and other members of the family. In 1956 he followed and later married a girlfriend when she went to live in South Africa, and although they eventually parted, he couldn’t face returning to the English climate and the problems of resettling there.

Throughout the repressive regime of apartheid he remained staunchly socialist, even though the South African Special Branch paid attention to him, by visiting him and also examining his mail, and at one time the Socialist Standard and Party pamphlets were gazetted in South Africa as prohibited literature. However, at Alec’s insistence, and with little concern about the risk this posed for him, the Socialist Standard was sent to him regularly as well as Party pamphlets etc. as they were published. He wrote and often had published, letters to the South African press giving the socialist view on current topics and replying to other correspondents in the press.

He was very knowledgeable about classical music and built up a large collection of records. A keen cyclist, he took many holidays touring by bike in the UK and in South Africa. Ill-health in his last few years took him into residential care where he shared a room with a very deaf old Trotskyite, and political arguments between them usually ended with Alec’s opponent removing his deaf-aid when he’d “had enough”. Alec though never gave up.

Phyllis Hart

Alf Crisp (1908-2003)

We are sad to announce the death in November of Alf Crisp at the age of 95. Alf was a Londoner who for most of his life lived in Forest Gate. He joined West Ham Branch in August 1930, and remained in that Branch, though the name changed, until moving to Cambridgeshire in 1991 to be near his son Malcolm. Thereafter in Central Branch he maintained his close interest in Socialism and friendship with members. His wife died in 1967 so Alf had 36 years on his own.

Until the age of 75 he worked as a printer, for many years in his own business, but subsequently for other printers - colleagues. Printing was more than a job, his attitude was that of a craftsman, but he never made a fortune at it. He undertook printing for the party which included membership cards and posters for meetings. In most cases no charge was made.

Alf was a conscientious objector during WW2, as was his brother. West Ham Branch made the most of the post-war environment, and Alf joined in with the activities. In later years his contribution would be in the form of regular support for Branch meetings. He is remembered as a pleasant and thoughtful comrade who would on occasion express his opinion in a forthright manner. He would make his political views known whenever an opportunity was presented. Malcolm tells of an incident not many years ago when his father was virtually ejected from the afternoon tea session at the Day Centre in Over; he had made loud protestations when the National Anthem was sung there to mark some royal event.

He made new friends in Cambridgeshire and was able to pursue his hobbies, notably woodwork and music. Alf was a skilled pianist and had a lifelong interest in musical instruments, making a hammered dulcimer in his eighties. We extend sympathy to Malcolm and his family.

Pat Deutz

Tell Me Lies (2004)

Book Review from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Miller ed: Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq. Pluto Press £12.99

This volume contains 32 contributions from a wide variety of writers, which naturally means few arguments are developed at length and there is some overlap. A number of the pieces have appeared before, such as John Pilger's articles in the New Statesman.

It is probably not a surprise to learn that the physical attack on Iraq was preceded, accompanied and followed by a massive propaganda war. There were the notorious claims about Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), claims which the mainstream media signally failed to expose as falsehoods. The view that Iraq constituted a threat to the rest of the world, largely by dint of having WMDs, was built up from at least 1997, despite the lack of real evidence for it. Even the CIA was pressured into producing reports that gave more support to the case for war.

Once the invasion had started, the propaganda machine went into overdrive, though under the more acceptable labels of “public diplomacy”' or “information support”. Both state and private media played their part; the BBC's Andrew Marr, for instance, reported that Baghdad had been captured “without a bloodbath”, despite the loss of thousands of civilian lives. The invasion force went to great lengths to ensure that only their perspective on the fighting was given proper airtime. Many reporters were stationed at the US Central Command in Qatar, where they could do little but listen to, and pass on, the official line as delivered in press conferences at which hostile or even sceptical questions were firmly discouraged.

A major development in this war was the use of “embedded” reporters, who travelled with invading forces, supposedly sharing the same dangers and so identifying with the soldiers they were accompanying. This inevitably meant that they toed the official line, often presenting a sanitised view of war, in which Iraqi casualties were minimised and all emphasis was put on the prospects for a successful (from the US-UK standpoint) outcome. In contrast were the so-called “unilateral” journalists, who were more independent, in some cases reporting from Baghdad while it was under attack. The US stressed the protection that they could offer to the “embeds”, while the unilaterals could enjoy no such advantages. In fact, two embedded American media workers were killed during the war, as were at least fifteen other journalists. In some cases, media centres and hotels housing reporters were bombed by US forces - probably intentionally, given that their positions and status were too well-known for all these incidents to be accidents.

Of course, there are other forms of government and ruling class influence on the media than naked physical threat. Many media bosses are themselves extremely wealthy capitalists (think of Rupert Murdoch), so their companies naturally present a pro-corporate power position. In the US, owners of radio stations supported the war as a thank you to the government for its deregulation of the radio industry, from which they'd benefited. The US media adopted a jingoistic attitude during the war, but the UK media were not quite that bad (and it is only fair to record that Channel 4 News was the most critical in its reporting).

The Iraq invasion was a media war in that many of the prominent public images of it were mere media stunts. Remembering the toppling of Saddam's statue? Well, it was American troops who pulled the statue down, and a few handpicked Iraqis were depicted rejoicing. In other cases, the reporting was noticeable for what was not said. Much attention was given to Iraqis looting museums and hospitals after the fall of Baghdad, but there was hardly any reference to the fact that US troops made sure that the Oil Ministry building, with its important records of oil exploration and so on, was made secure.

One good thing which emerges from the book is the way that ordinary people are becoming less and less prepared to swallow the lies emanating from governments and their propaganda machines.

Paul Bennett

Marx's Wage Labour and Capital (2004)

From the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party can be described as a Marxist party, in that it recognises the immense contribution made by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the 19th century in developing a scientific understanding of capitalism as a distinct and transient society, one which was historically progressive in its time, but which is now outdated and needing to be replaced.

This is not to say that we think Marx and Engels were correct on every subject then, still less now. The whole point of a scientific approach to politics and economics is that it is based on facts, evidence and objective testing and reassessment. Marxism itself has been defined as the distillation of all the lessons and understandings gained from working class struggles against capitalism, expressed in a scientific manner.

Nonetheless, there is enormous value to be gained from studying the classical works of Marx and Engels. Writing during the earlier phases of capitalism’s development and working to get a handle on the whole phenomenon, their writings provide a clarity and a perspective on capitalism and the need for workers to replace it by socialism, rarely achieved since. In fact, some hold that the development of capitalism has accorded even more closely with their basic analysis than was perhaps the case at the time.

Their works may not be particularly easy reading - but newcomers may be pleasantly surprised how easy they can get into them - but they were written by people who were active participants - as well as commentators - in 19th century working class struggle and who were passionate and eloquent in their commitment and analysis. Their power to slice through the fog of mystique, confusion and distortion which passes for contemporary news and commentary can be both astonishing and inspiring.

Wage Labour and Capital is one excellent example of just such a classic. Written by Marx towards the end of 1847, it was aimed to be a popular exposition of the basics of how capitalism functioned and the subjugation of wage labour. Engels re-issued it in 1891 but with certain changes to take into account Marx’s advances in economic theory after 1847, in particular the distinction between “labour” and “labour-power” which was not made in the original version. Engels, however, did not point out - and change - the different sense in which Marx employed the term “cost of production” in 1847 compared with later. In Capital Marx used the term to mean what it costs the capitalist to produce a commodity, i.e. what they have to pay for raw materials, labour-power, energy, wear and tear, etc. In other words, not including profit. In Wage-Labour and Capital Marx uses it to mean cost in terms of the total amount of labour required to produce it, including the part the capitalist did not need to pay for, i.e. including profit. It was thus the same as he later meant by value.

Marx starts by making a few things clear. Workers sell the capitalist their labour power for an amount of money. That money could have been used to buy a certain amount of commodities. So labour power is as much a commodity as (say) sugar. The workers’ labour power has been exchanged for an amount of commodities measured by money. The exchange value of labour power as measured by money is its price. Wages are just a special name “for the price of this peculiar commodity which has no other repository than human flesh and blood.”

But why does the worker sell labour power to the capitalist? In order to live of course! Marx then exposes the reality of work under capitalism in a way which has great resonance today:

“The exercise of labour [should be] the worker’s own life activity, manifestation of their own life. But they have to sell it to another person to obtain means of subsistence. Life activity is just a means to enable existence. They work in order to live. Labour is not even reckoned as part of normal life, it is rather a sacrifice of their life. Work has no meaning other than as earnings.
“What he produces for himself is not the silk he weaves, not the gold he draws from the mine, not the palace he builds. What he produces for himself is wages, and silk, gold, palace resolve themselves for him into a definite quantity of means of subsistence, perhaps a cotton jacket, some copper coins and a lodging in a cellar.”

Marx points out labour was not always a commodity and that under capitalism labour takes the form of wage labour, or “free” labour. That is workers are free to sell their labour-power to any capitalist who wishes to buy it and the capitalist is free to get rid of the worker as soon as there is no profit to be made. But there is a limit to such “freedom”:

“The worker whose sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour power cannot leave the whole class of purchasers (the capitalist class) without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class.”

Marx then carefully explores how prices of commodities are determined. Slicing through the metaphysics of supply and demand and free competition, Marx identifies that the benchmark is the labour cost of production. This is also the centre of gravity for a price, around which prices will fluctuate. If a particular branch of industry is profitable, capital is put in to that industry until the price of that product falls below the labour cost of production, and vice versa.

“We see how capital continually migrates in and out, out of one domain of industry into another. High prices bring too great an immigration and low prices too great an emigration. The fluctuations of supply and demand continually bring the price of a commodity back to the cost of production.”

The corollary is that “the current price of a commodity is always either below or above its cost of production.”

One of Marx’s specific contributions to political economy was to regard these continual fluctuations in prices not as chance but as fundamental to how the capitalist economy ensures that prices are determined by the cost of production. That is: “These fluctuations which bring with them the most fearful devastations and like earthquakes shake bourgeois society to tremble at its foundations - this industrial anarchy” is fundamental and basic to capitalism, rather than something which can be smoothed or ironed out.

The same general laws determine the price of labour power, or wages. Whilst wages do fluctuate through supply and demand, in essence:

“The cost of production of labour power is the cost required for maintaining the worker as a worker and developing him into a worker. The price of his labour is therefore determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence.”

Just as the cost of replacing machines needs to be factored into prices:

“The cost of reproduction must also be included, whereby the race of workers is enabled to multiply and replace worn out workers by new ones. Wages, the cost of production of labour power for the working class as a whole - as opposed to individual workers - amounts to the costs of existence and reproduction of the whole working class.”

Marx then dissects the reality and truth of capital. Yes, capital consists of “raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence which are utilised to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour and new means of subsistence”. They are also nothing more than:

“Creations of labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour which serves as a means of new production is capital.”

These products of labour are however no longer owned by the working class. They have been appropriated by the capitalist class. The existence of the capitalist class and its wealth is based on robbery. But capital is a product and part of capitalism. As well as being all these different components of production, “all the products of which it consists are commodities, sums of exchange values, as well as material products.”

But how do certain sets of commodities become capital? The following evocative description tells us:

“By maintaining and multiplying itself as an independent social power, that is, as the power of a portion of society, by means of its exchange for direct, living labour power. “

This is the reality of the god worshipped by modern society. Entirely made by labour. Old, past, historic, parasitical, but because we accept the rules of capitalism, we allow this god to subvert and rule modern society in its own peculiar and reactionary interests. Living labour subordinate to dead labour. The reality of the exchange between wage worker and capitalist is that:

“The worker receives means of subsistence, but the capitalist receives the productive activity of the worker, the creative power which not only replaces that which is consumed (through wages) but gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The worker surrenders to the capitalist this noble reproductive power in return for subsistence which is consumed for ever.”

The relationship and dependency is that:

“Capital presupposes wage labour; wage labour presupposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other.”

So wage labour and capital have a common interest? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that capital only thrives by exchanging itself for wage labour. The more capital increases, so does wage labour. No, in that the increase and profitability of capital is simply to increase the power of the master over the slave, the increased domination of the capitalist class over the working class.

The most tolerable situation for workers under capitalism may well be for the fastest growth in productive forces, of capital. But the respective gains for the capitalist class and the working class are hardly equal. The capitalist class already has power over the working class. The strengthening of capital increases further the power of the capitalist class to appropriate an even greater relative share of wealth than before. Whilst money or even real wages may grow in times of prosperity of capital, the stupendous growth in the wealth appropriated by capital may mean that in society as a whole, the position of wage labour is relatively worse off than before.

And why should the capitalist class be entitled to any of the wealth created by the working class? All the wealth is created by workers using means of production which were created by previous workers. The capitalist class adds precisely nothing to the process. Any wealth appropriated by the capitalists is at the direct expense of the working class. Profit and wages are shares in the same product of the worker. One gains, one loses.

In the final section, Marx sets out the basic futility and effect of the competition between the capitalists. Capitalists try and drive each other out of business by raising the productivity of labour and cheapening their products. But all that happens is that other capitalists adopt the same mechanisms and processes, resulting in the prices in the once profitable line falling below the labour cost of production. They are all in exactly the same position as before.

“The same game begins again. More division of labour, more machinery, enlarged scale of exploitation of machinery and division of labour. And again competition brings the same counteraction against this result. This is the law which again and again throws bourgeois production out of its old course and which compels capital to intensify the productive forces of labour, the law which gives capital no rest and continually whispers in its ear: ‘Go on! Go on!’ Whatever the power of the means of production employed, competition seeks to rob capital of the golden fruits of this power by bringing the price of commodities back to the cost of production.
If we now picture to ourselves this feverish simultaneous agitation on the whole world market, it will be comprehensible how the growth, accumulation and concentration of capital results in an uninterrupted division of labour, and in the application of new and the perfecting of old machinery precipitately and on an ever greater scale.
Finally, as the capitalists are compelled to exploit the already gigantic means of production on a larger scale, there is a corresponding increase in industrial earthquakes, in which the trading world can only maintain itself by sacrificing a part of wealth, or products and even of productive forces to the gods of the nether world - in a word, crises increase. The world market becomes more and more contracted, fewer and fewer new markets remain available for exploitation, since every preceding crisis has subjected to world trade a market hitherto unconquered or only superficially exploited.”

This is still the crazy system we live and work in. Destructive of wealth, people and the planet we occupy. Is it not time for the producers of wealth - the world working class - to cast aside the capitalist class and their crippling, destructive, distorting system, and replace it by a more sensible and satisfying approach whereby we produce wealth to meet people’s needs and we work because we enjoy it and want to contribute to the good and well-being of world humanity?

Andrew Northall

Why Read Marx Today? (2004)

Book Review from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Read Marx Today? By Jonathan Wolff, Oxford University Press paperback, 2003.

There are many introductory books of this type, although this is much better than most. It accurately summarizes Marx's thought for university students. But why read Marx today, other than for academic interest? Wolff does a good job of locating Marx's thought in the context of the nineteenth century, but is less successful when dealing with Marx's relevance to the twenty-first century. For example, Wolff's assessment - and dismissal - of Marx's theory of history relies heavily on GA Cohen's functionalist interpretation in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). If, instead of Cohen's determinist interpretation, Wolff had located the class struggle as the motor of history, he might have reached a different assessment.

Was the Russian revolution of November 1917 in any sense Marxist? Wolff doubts it and refers to us: "Certainly this was the view of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who now boast that they condemned the Russian revolution as 'non-Marxist' within its first 24 hours."

Wolff provides no evidence for this allegation. Perhaps he is thinking of the jibe by the SWPer David Widgery in his 1976 book The Left in Britain 1956-1968 which makes a similarly daft claim about the Socialist Party. For the record, the Socialist Party did not reject the Russian revolution "within its first 24 hours". Our initial reaction was supportive of the Bolshevik decision to withdraw from the futile carnage of World War One. Our first analysis of the November 1917 revolution appeared in the Socialist Standard in August 1918. Hardly a rush to judgement. Nevertheless, the conclusion was unambiguous: "What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists". (See our archives).

On a more general point, it should be noted that over the past few decades it has become increasingly common to find books on Marx and Marxism which take our side of the argument, unless they have a Leninist axe to grind. Here is the example of another "What Marx really meant" book which discusses Marx's concept of socialism in ways which could easily have come from the pages of the Socialist Standard, only the author does it purely on the basis of what Marx actually said. Of course time has moved on and the Socialist Party has stated its own differences with Marx and developed his thought further, and made its own contributions to socialist theory. Yet we can agree with Wolff that "we can safely conclude that the world has not (yet?) seen a Marxist revolution."

Lew Higgins