Letter: "Writing as an ex-member . . . " (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Writing as an ex-member . . . "

Dear Sirs.

Writing as an ex-member of your party who has recently taken out a subscription to the Standard I think I will derive very little pleasure at what I have to say, nevertheless, having lived for 62 years I am now coming to terms with "the facts of life" and endeavouring to learn to live with them.

Like "the old days" you have some very forthright and amusing writers. Steve Coleman seeming to be a leading light; and his June 1987 article about "Post Election Blues" was in the usual format, excepting for the last sentence. Predicting that June 12th would be "a bloody miserable day" (and it was!) Comrade Coleman concludes by writing — "and for none will it be more miserable than for those who know how easy it would be to change the whole rotten set-up and establish a society fit to live in".

Apart from the serious error of grammar, whether one is of the chosen few (i.e. members of the SPGB) or the abysmally ignorant majority it is a gross exaggeration to state that any change from the capitalist system to a socialist society would be easy!

May I quote the General Election figures for Islington South and Finsbury? Tory 8,482, Labour 16,511, SDP 15,706, Greens 382, Humanists 56, SPGB 81. It is a reflection of the idiocy of human beings that only 56 people voted for a party which has more sense in one of its little leaflets than in the whole Conservative and Labour manifestos, but the fact that out of a total of 41.218 Islington and Finsbury electors only 81 voted for the SPGB merely proves that what the renowned Robert Tressell wrote over 70 years ago. is as true today as it was then. I have formed the opinion that the working class are more dumb than Dumbo ever was. There is far more insanity outside than inside "mental institutions" and on the whole human beings are much more obsessed with erotica and religious myths than their well-being and happiness. "Look at them". Robert Tressell's character said, with a contemptuous laugh. "Look at them! The people you are trying to make idealists! Look at them! Some of them howling and roaring like wild beasts, or laughing like idiots, others standing with dull and stupid faces devoid of any trace of intelligence or expression, listening to the speakers whose words convey no meaning to their stultified minds, and others with their eyes gleaming with savage hatred of their fellow men, watching eagerly for an opportunity to provoke a quarrel that they may gratify their brutal natures. Can't you see that these people, whom you are trying to make understand your plan for the regeneration of the world, your doctrine of universal brotherhood and love are for the most part — intellectually — on a level with Hottentots? The only things they feel any interest in are beer, football, betting, and. of course — one other subject. Their highest ambition is to be allowed to Work. And they desire nothing better for their children. They have never had an independent thought in their lives . . .!" And so the brilliant monologue goes on. and. like a surgeon's scalpel cutting into a cancerous growth it reveals the monumental task that the changing of society involves.

I work in a small post office-cum-general stores and apart from the usual vast majority of customers who can see nothing beyond their daily dose of Murdoch's law (i.e. the Sun). 20J.P. (i.e.. coffin, or is it coughing, nails) and a bar of Cadbury's for the weekend. I was appalled at the time of the General Election by the amount of people "on the Social" who voted Tory!

When I informed one elderly gentleman that I was a Socialist and would not be voting in my constituency, he told me to "get back to Russia" On June 12th he came up to my counter to draw his pittance of a pension triumphantly wearing a cheap blue rosette and sneered. "Well. I suppose you're laughing the other side of your face now that we've beaten you!”

I conclude with Robert Tressell's immortal words which sum up my feelings towards The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Although you are light years behind the razzamatazz of the Labour and the Tory parties and you are probably right in your analysis of society (based, of course, upon Karl Marx's) "your party persists in regarding people as rational beings, and that is where you make your mistake. Labour are just learning, the Tories knew long ago the sort of people they have to deal with; they know that although their bodies are the bodies of grown men. their minds are the minds of little children. That is why it has been possible to deceive and bluff and rob them for so long." (The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, 1905)

And please do not accuse me of arrogance. Anger, contempt, scorn — I plead guilty to these, but I make no claims to be proud of the fact that I belong to a species that will burn, blind and torture innocent animals for the sake of making a profit and kill and maim fellow humans in times of war.

Reg Otter 

Shepperton, Middlesex.

Reply

Before turning to the very real and understandable reasons for our correspondent's lack of hope, let us spell out what defeatism means. It means that you come to terms with a social system which you know to be exploiting you, restricting you, impoverishing your lifestyle and, with increasing ferocity, threatening you with destruction. Not only is capitalism doing that to you, but to your friends and family — people who you care for and want to help. And to millions you have never met. capitalism is doing even worse things. As a defeatist you accept that this is the way life must be. You give up on the struggle to transform society.

Reg Otter is clearly not a complete defeatist. He still tells fellow workers that he is a socialist. He no doubt argues with workers and may well be underestimating his ability to change the way some of them think. Our fellow workers do not always tell us directly when they have found socialist ideas convincing but we would not be surprised if there are a few workers scattered about who would say, "You've got to hand it to old Reg Otter, he talks a lot of sense about the problems of society".

What our correspondent most certainly does underestimate is the intelligence of the working class. After all, these creatures who are "more dumb than Dumbo ever was" make a pretty good job of running the trains, producing all the wealth in the factories, operating on bodies in hospitals, teaching children to read, delivering letters — and the thousands of other important and intelligent tasks which we, the workers, perform. Yes. plenty of workers are laughing like idiots and seem to have dull and stupid faces and appear to have eyes gleaming with savage hatred for their fellow men. Socialists do not romanticise the working class: we are of that class and know just how degraded the system can make wage slaves. But — and Reg Otter will know this very well — the human animal is highly adaptable. In a jungle s/he will behave like a beast. Given an incentive to leave the jungle society of capitalism workers could co-operate. Just as they are doing every day when it comes to producing and distributing wealth, just as workers are always doing when it comes to voluntary efforts to help make other people's lives better. Workers are not naturally programmed for capitalism; nor are we naturally programmed to forever reject the cooperative option of socialism.

Our correspondent is right if he is saying that now, in 1987, the political minds of the workers of the world are in a frightful mess. He is right if he says that this is dispiriting. He was right to feel miserable on 12 June. He is entitled to be angry, although it will do him little good. But should he dismiss the efforts of The Socialist Party as a waste of time? We perform an enormously important task in putting to workers the only alternative to the dangerous chaos of capitalism. We succeeded in persuading Reg Otter to join us and even though he later decided to leave, because he is not arrogant he will accept that there was nothing special about him which made him able to work for socialism while other workers could not understand. Every time we win one new worker to our cause it is proof that we could win a thousand more. And. in practical terms, each new member provides us with access to several workers who know him or her.

The 81 votes for socialism in Islington South and Finsbury was disappointing. We would like to have recorded all 41.218. We ran a great campaign in the area, as many workers living in Islington (even if they do not support The Socialist Party) will testify. Unlike any other party in the election, we consistently asked voters not to vote for us unless they agreed in full with our ideas. That 81 did vote for us — in a constituency which was a key Labour marginal, and in which the Green Party were there to take away the mere protest votes — is something to get working on. If we could persuade those 81 socialist voters to join our Islington Branch we would be very happy. Similarly in Swansea, where we recently recorded 50 votes in just one ward.

Of course, we could regard 81 and 50 votes as good reasons to give up and learn to live with capitalism. Well firstly, capitalism may not allow us to live with it for that much longer, because it is set to put an end to the live-in arrangement, and secondly society will one day change from production for profit to production for need and we are not going to waste a moment's time or withhold any energy to hasten that revolution. We are not defeatists and neither, perhaps, is Reg Otter: maybe he has made the comments which he has so that we can give him the answer he is waiting for. Get into the movement for socialism and do your bit to make history

Editors.

Hobson’s choice (2025)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 20 January Donald J Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States of America.

Hopefully, given the American predilection for violence, Donald Trump won’t in the interim have suffered the fate of Caesar, like a lot of other American presidents, political figures, civil rights advocates and so on. We come not to bury him and certainly not to praise him.

‘Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.’ This aphorism seems particularly pertinent given the reaction which the election of ‘47’ seems to have generated. The media, and social media especially, went into paroxysms of rage, frustration and general crazed madness. The meltdown displayed by individuals, who seemed to think that upon being sworn into office Trump was immediately going to pass an Enabling Act, was off the scale. The ire and emotion directed at Donald Trump would be more positively channelled into changing the capitalist system.

Robert Tressell in his book, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, gave an example of how those who favour the alternative are treated:

‘At the conclusion of the singing, Bert turned another picture into view. “’Ere we ’ave another election scene. At each side we see the two candidates the same as in the last pitcher. In the middle of the road we see a man lying on the ground, covered with blood, with a lot of Liberal and Tory working men kickin’ ’im, jumpin’ on ’im, and stampin’ on ’is face with their ’obnailed boots. The bloke on the ground is a Socialist, and the reason why they’re kickin’ ’is face in is because ’e said that the only difference between Slumrent and Mandriver was that they was both alike”.’

There’s nothing comic of course about the American adult population voting for the continuation of capitalism. Socialists have to live with the result of this happening time and time again, but socialists don’t throw their toys out of the pram. They just roll up their sleeves and work harder to make socialists.

It’s said if America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. One objective the incoming President has declared is the implementation of protectionist economic measures, ie, raising tariffs on foreign imports. This action is intended to have a negative impact on America’s economic rivals and competitors, but it will also damage the economies of ‘friends and allies’ (sic). Is it likely that American workers will see some material benefits in the next four years? Possibly, if only for a while. American capitalists will almost certainly see their wealth and power increase. But what about the working class in the rest of the world? Can they expect a mild dose of flu, or pneumonia? However, as demonstrated by the UK Labour Party’s recent performance, politicians will simply lie in order to gain power, so nothing they say is set in stone.

Thomas Hobson (1544–1631) owned stables in Cambridge, and is said to have told those wanting a horse, take the one in the stall nearest the door or don’t bother taking one at all. ‘Hobson’s choice’ therefore means there is no choice. For voters in the November US election, just as in all states claiming to be democracies across the world, it’s always Hobson’s choice, because whatever inducements are offered the result is always to the benefit of capitalism.

The Scottish stand-up comedian Billy Connolly said, ‘The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one. Don’t vote. It just encourages them’. In socialism we won’t need them and we won’t have them.

But this is not to say that voting and elections are useless. The World Socialist Movement aims to use political means in order to implement the change to a socialist society across the world. As we say in our pamphlet What’s Wrong With Using Parliament?:

‘Control of the state is operated by those who hold political power as a result of being elected via universal suffrage (the vote). This means they have to get the formal agreement, at election times, of the majority of the people. This is not too difficult since most people are imbued with capitalist ideas and see no alternative to present-day, capitalist society with its class ownership, production for profit, working for wages and rationing by money… there is a more positive reason for winning control of political power. The state is an instrument of coercion, but it has assumed social functions that have to exist in any society and which have nothing to do with its coercive nature: it has taken over the role of being society’s central organ of administration and co-ordination. Gaining control of the state will at the same time give control of this social organ which can be used to co-ordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism’.

Dave Coggan

Letter: " . . .a sad deluded group of romantics" (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

" . . .a sad deluded group of romantics"

Dear Editors

For a few years I have subscribed to the Socialist Standard and have come to the conclusion that you are either very cynical or a sad deluded group of romantics. It’s all very cosy sitting at your word processor telling us that we should be out there ridding ourselves of the capitalist class and that the world would be a much better place under your brand of politics. (All dictators believe this.)

It is a logical process for those people without resources to vilify people who have wealth. (Just as in Cambodia it became a corrupt thing to have learning.) Hence your tirade against those people who have the imagination and flair to accumulate for themselves some of the Earth’s riches. Capitalism is just a handy label for those who have the get-up-and-go to create wealth. Yes, they are shrewd people – yes, they will exploit others but how else are things to be done?

Get up from your word processors and take a good hard look at the world. You will observe there are varying types in this human planet. The majority is an amorphous mass of Underlings. Their main preoccupation is obtaining food, shelter and pleasure. Their imagination goes no further than these three basic needs. At the top of this heap are the Doers – the leaders – the people with the strength of purpose to get things done. They see this indeterminate mass of Underlings with their three needs so they set out to provide them.

So don’t give us all that nonsense about exploitation. The leaders are doing what is necessary. They don’t sit in offices churning out political daydreams. They get off their backsides and do. They are the Doers. They are necessary for society to function by providing food-halls, living accommodation and pleasure-domes. Do you honestly believe the Underlings would manage to do all this on their own? Listen socialists it’s a real world out there with people hungry for food, shelter and pleasure and capitalism is a means to that end. And so what if the capitalist creams off a bit extra for his efforts! Surely he deserves it!

Phil McCormac, 

by email

Reply: 

You omit one detail: are you a Doer or an Underling? We suspect the latter. In which case there is a book about people like you, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, set in a town called Mugsborough.

Mugs believe that it is capitalists, not workers by hand and by brain, who create wealth and that capitalists are doing us a favour by providing us with jobs. They believe that the world has always been divided into rich and poor, leaders and followers, rulers and ruled and that it always will be. They consider themselves and their fellow workers to be “underlings” incapable of running things ourselves.

Yet who, today, does run things from top to bottom? Who grows the food, who builds the houses, who mines the minerals, who transports them, who processes them, who fashions them into useful things, who does all the paper work for this, orders the supplies, draws up the designs – if not the people you call the “underlings”, we the majority class of wage and salary earners? The shareholding capitalist and the fat-cat company director are completely redundant as far as the actual work of wealth production is concerned – and new wealth can only be created by the application of human labour to materials that originally come from nature, not by speculating on the stock exchange or planning take-over bids. Their social role is purely parasitic: to cream off, as you put it, a part of the wealth created by the rest of us.

But don’t get us wrong. We don’t blame capitalists personally. They are just cogs in the system. If they didn’t exploit us, somebody else would. Either some other capitalist or maybe some state bureaucrat like in Cambodia or the former USSR. We blame the system. It’s based on the exploitation of the majority for profit. That’s why it must go and be replaced by a new and different system, based on common ownership democratic control and production of use, not profit.

What we are proposing is that the people who, today, run production and administration from top to bottom should get together and run things in their own interest, instead of as at present in the interest of a tiny minority. The first step towards this is to stop regarding ourselves as underlings, as eternal followers of those who regard themselves as our betters. Get up off your knees, Phil, don’t be a mug

—Editors 

Between the Lines: What are flies attracted to? (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

What are flies attracted to?

In a bid to bring to our screens even more odious real people than the invented soap-bubbleheads of EastEnders. BBC1 has collaborated with Australian TV to make what is called a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about the lives of a Sydney family. The folks of Sylvania Waters (9.30 pm, Thursdays) are a nightmarish image of capitalist family life.

In Sylvania Waters the chief topic of conversation (this being a euphemism for the screamed abuse and hostile grunts which constitute most of their attempts at communication) is money. Noeline, the mother, has loads of it. And she likes telling us how much she has and how much she likes having it. Her partner in this world of styleless and avaricious possession is Laurie, a quite detestable factory-owner who has his own boat and a racing car and personal sewer in this mouth from which come relentless insults against Noeline’s “useless, lazy and work-shy" kids—not to mention the rest of the working class who exhibit the same faults, according to this small-time capitalist bigot.

One of Noeline’s sons lives with a girl in a condition of poverty which is caused, according to Noeline and Laurie, by insufficient attention to the god of money. On her younger son's birthday, plans for the party omit all humane talk of jollity and parental love and celebration and instead consist of endless negotiations about the cost of hiring a bouncer (for a boys sixteenth birthday party?) and parts of Noeline's property which the forty-plus guests must be banned from. (In the end the party was cancelled after yet another angry exchange between Laurie and the lad he regards as being good for nothing.)

Life in Sylvania Waters is so devoid of mutuality and so permeated by monetary priorities and division that this family seems to be the ideal microcosm of what this system does to human relationships. Certainly, the theme of alienation jumps out of the sociology textbooks and hits us between the eyes as we observe these people who do not talk to each other, understand each other or want to be with each other. There was a deeply poignant moment in the programme on 1 July when Noeline's son (or is it Laurie’s son—who knows or cares?) walks into his living room, sits on a settee and then, observing that the TV is switched off, turns to his wife and says “Why’s this switched off? Is there something wrong? It’s like a bloody morgue in here”. What has life come to when you have to ask not why the TV is on but why its off, when no TV babble means that something must be wrong and home has become a mortuary. Perhaps we ought to refer to the room with the idiot box in the corner as the dying room rather than the living room. It is the room where alienated people let others live for them.

Sylvania Waters is a useful reminder that the rich might have money, but they sure don’t have any monopoly on brains. The standard of language between these affluent non-entities is charmless, to say the least. Their idea of luxury is reminiscent of that brilliant description of the capitalists at home written by Noonan in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. (Remember the Brigand’s Cave: “This was Mr. Grinder’s first visit at the house, and he expressed his admiration of the manner in which the ceiling and the walls were decorated, remarking that he had always liked this 'ere Japanese style. Mr. Bosher. with his mouth full of biscuit, mumbled that it was sweetly pretty— charming—beautifully done—must have cost a lot of money.") Indeed, Sylvania Waters must be the first ever fly-on-the-wall documentary in which even the flies exhibit higher tastes than the humans.

The news between the ads

In 1990 the ITV companies entered into a sordid franchise war in order to carve up the commercial network amongst the highest bidders. Out of the auction has emerged some pretty cheap and lousy TV. notably Carlton TV which now covers London. Carlton’s nightly London Tonight (like its radio counterpart, LBC now owned by Thatcherite tycoon Lady Shirley Porter, ex-Westminster council leader and dealer in very cheap graveyards) epitomizes the worst in tabloid TV. But then, like the Sun. this mindless drivel attracts investment—in the form of advertisements. So, serious news analysis is abandoned for the sake of market forces.

Last month’s announcement by the ITV network that they want to move News At Ten from its long-standing peak-time position, because it fails to pull in a high enough audience to please the advertisers, is further evidence of the market on the rampage. It is all very well for political figures such as the unlamented ex-Minister of National Heritage, David Mellor, and the Prime Minister, Major, making speeches of condemnation against the ITV assault upon tradition. What do they expect? When they encourage TV companies to throw themselves fully into the market while seeking to retain certain standards of higher journalistic responsibility it is like inviting burglars into your home and insisting that they leave everything as they found it. Perhaps the advertisers would cheer up if ITN employed Noleen and Laurie to read the news, with deep analytical observations from them both on each item, followed by The Saint and Greavsie discussing international affairs—-such as the World Cup and the Test Match.

Steve Coleman

Words, words, words . . . (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article is reprinted from the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard.

"I am told that people say I bawl. Well, I allow it, I do bawl and I will bawl." So said a famous tub-thumper of two hundred years ago, and in various tones, for various causes, they—we—have been bawling ever since.

Rhetoric under the sky is the oldest, most powerful form of persuasion. It was done in the agora, the market place that was the centre of social and political life in a Greek city. Petronius heckled an orator in Nero's Rome—"by a set of dribbling witticisms you found you could make audiences titter"—on his way to the bawdyhouse. In mediæval England John Ball stood on hillsides demanding freedom and justice for the poor. In Shakespeare's day news, scandal and sedition were put into ballads and sung in the markets, and old Saint Paul's was "the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes"; Mark Antony—and his audience—had their prototypes. Through the centuries that followed, in the squares and open spaces they cried salvation and the rights of man—the revivalists, the Chartists and the rest.

The Socialist Party was founded when open-air meetings had never been more copious, when the sects and parties vied with one another in the streets for the attention of the working class. Different conditions engender different approaches. There was more rhetoric in those days—to the modern mind more "ham" perhaps, but it was necessary. The slick, confidence-making political speech belonged to the wireless-telegraph future. Aspiring speakers, practising declamation, tried "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Men of England" and "The Bells" on one another.

Politically conscious people were more theory-conscious that they are to-day. Marx and Engels were not long dead, Kautsky, Luxemburg and Plechanov in their prime; Bernstein's revisionism and the Fabian Essays were argued fiercely. Socialist speakers had to know their theory and know it well. Many of them learned by heart what were considered key passages of important works: sections of The Communist Manifesto, the statement of historical materialism from The Critique of Political Economy, pages of Capital, of Darwin, Spencer and No Compromise, and bits of Shakespeare too. It was a fine thing to support the analysis of capitalism with

" . . . You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live."

If the politicos were more learned, the others made up for it. A speaker too vigorous in attacking the prejudices of a prejudiced audience was asking to be thrown in a horse-trough, and not uncommonly he was. Robert Tressell describes the reception of a "Clarion" van by the ragged-trousered philanthropists of Hastings:

  "The man on the platform was still trying to make himself heard, but without success. The strangers who had come with the van and the little group of local socialists, who had forced their way close to the platform in front of the would-be speaker, only increased the din by their shouts of appealing to the crowd to 'give the man a fair chance.' This little bodyguard closed round the van as it began to move slowly downhill, but it was completely outnumbered . . . 'We'll give the swines Socialism!' shouted Crass, who was literally foaming at the mouth." 

On most platforms, feeling carried the day. The Liberals and Tories could raise cheers with reference to the Empire and the Flag; the worst accusation against a policy was "it will ruin the country". Emotion was not altogether disfavoured by Socialists. Words like "traitor" carried a great deal; labour leaders were invariably called "Labour bleeders" or "fakirs", and there was even a Party song called "The World for the Workers".

The platform manner changed after the first war, at the same time as urban growth and road traffic began to eliminate meeting-places. The radio and the pictures arrived, and speakers had to compete with them. Some of the smaller parties were swallowed by the Labour and Communist Parties, so that theoretical argument gave place to "practical policies" and calls for "action now." In the thirties a new sort of political meeting appeared, with the speaker surrounded by microphones and no questions allowed. The rhetorical tradition of Parliament, too, suffered a blow when Labour came to power with Cabinet Ministers who were without oral grace; Gladstone, Balfour and their contemporaries could often be taken down verbatim to read as excellent prose.

Today audiences are more tolerant (and more knowledgeable too) and speakers, on the whole, more urbane and more discursive. Perhaps there are more wisecracks and fewer long quotations, because our age prefers the former as a condiment to learning. One tradition which the Party has always maintained is that of giving the platform to opposition. Other parties don't do it; the Socialist Party, which has everything to gain and nothing to fear from open discussion, never refuses, and many a truculent opponent has deflated himself trying to present a case against Socialism under the Socialist Party's own auspices.

The industriousness of Party speakers has always been remarkable. Before the first war, two dozen of them held something like a hundred and thirty open-air meetings a month in London alone. The numbers were similar in 1939, and today the meetings still are a vital part of the Party's propaganda. Debates, too: Liberals, Labour, Tories, Communists, pacifists, fascists, parsons, anarchists—all of them have had their petty panaceas atomized by Socialist speakers. Several debates were published as pamphlets, and they are remarkable examples of the Party's case in action.

Fifty years' speaking for Socialism—fifty years of writing for it, as well. The Socialist Standard is unique. It has never known a paid journalist; its writers and editors have been bricklayers, clerks, housewives, busmen—all sorts and conditions of working people in their spare time. The first page of the first issue said:

  "In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles."

The Standard was too hard-hitting to have such refinement, and there was little room for fine phrases in Fitzgerald's relentless logic or the rumbustious onslaughts of Jacomb. Euphemism was scorned, and the contributors said just what they meant. When the Manchester Guardian slighted the Party, a Standard headline called it the "Liberal skunk press"; Lloyd George was a liar. Asquith an assassin, and their confreres hypocrites, frauds and political prostitutes. It seems that surprising that the Party was sued for libel only once.

The style of the Standard then, as now, owed to two principal sources: the sociological textbooks of the time, and popular journalism. From the latter it drew a peculiar Joe Miller waggishness that was part of the stock-in-trade of successful newspaper columnists, easier to exemplify than describe. Thus, the Editorial Committee apologizing for a writer who had not made himself clear to a correspondent: "He developed what he calls his style by studying a burr-walnut piano case in foggy weather". A debate with a suffragette was irresistible, and its report was resplendent with quips about "ye gallant knight Anderson" and "the poor girl". Perhaps the acme of this sort of wit was with a highly dramatic poem which had the refrain:

"Go! reckon your dead by your forges red,
  And in factories where we spin;
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
  By Christ! we have paid in full".

The poem was called "Gawd Struth We Have."

The writers on economics, socialist theory and political issues put forth their subject-matter lucidly and without frills or ambiguities; style which came naturally through close acquaintance with Engels, Kautsky, Plechanov and the other classical exponents of Marxism. The popularization of academic and technical subjects influenced later writers, and is still doing so—"science for the citizen" has made its mark. Just as on the platform, the people addressed are more widely informed and less concerned with theoretical questions. That does not mean, however, that the modern writer—or speaker—may neglect theory; it means that he must apply it more widely in a world with wider horizons.

And so it goes on; the business of persuading people to think straight, because that is what the Socialist wants. Words are our weapons. Words, words, words . . .

Robert Barltrop

An Economist Misses Her Marx (1944)

Book Review from the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An Essay on Marxian Economics," Joan Robinson (McMillan, 7s. 6d)

Those who have read Robert Tressell’s sketch of working-class existence, "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists," will remember the chapter entitled “The Oblong,” in which Owen, the house painter, tried to explain to his mates the division of wealth among the classes in modern society. Although nicknamed "the Professor,” Owen would hardly have passed first-class in an examination in Marxian economics. None the less, he expressed the gist of the matter fairly clearly in the remark, "As the money they get in wages is not equal in value to the things they produce, they find that they are only able to buy back a very-small part.” (P. 177.)

It is noteworthy that he used the idea of value. Though his two dozen fellow-workers made no pretence of culture, they were not so simple as to imagine that they were reconditioning and re-decorating that most desirable residence, "The Cave,” for the accommodation of any working-class family. So many ceilings sloshed with whitewash, so many walls stripped of old paper, so many rotten floorboards replaced by new ones, new fire-grates for old—all these things had to be brought into relation to the items of subsistence of those who could hardly aspire to a council house in the days of which Tressell wrote. In spite of their obvious differences push-bikes have something in common with Rolls-Royces. Shoddy is akin to broadcloth and black-puddings can be expressed in the same terms as the best grills at the Savoy, i.e., coin of the realm; for all have value. All have occupied a certain portion of the labour-time of society. In this respect they differ only in the quantity of value, in the amount of time which is necessary to produce them. The workers spend more time in producing for their masters than they spend in producing for themselves. This simple fact is hidden by wage-contracts. Like Owen's mates, the majority of the workers think that they are paid for their labour. The "great money trick,” as Owen called it, has to be analysed before the fallacy of their ideas can be grasped.

Any student of Marx knows that he based his analysis of Capitalism upon his analysis of value. Incredible though it may seem, an economist has "discovered" that “none of the important ideas which he [Marx] expresses in terms of the concept of value cannot be better expressed without it.” “An Essay on Marxian Economics," Joan Robinson (McMillan, 7s. 6d.; page 24). 'Again, "No point of substance in Marx's argument depends upon the labour theory of value” (p. 27). Once more, "The concept of value has no more application in the economics of Socialism than it has in the economics of the capitalist system” (p. 33). Readers of Marx may well wonder why such an insult is offered to them, .loan Robinson offers the following explanation: "The chief difficulty in learning from him [Marx] arises from the peculiar language and the crabbed method of argument which he used, and my purpose is to explain what I understand Marx to have been saying in language intelligible to the academic economist” (pp. v and vi), "Foreword.” The result is that, in spite of 114 references to "Capital” (Vols. I, II and III). "as a gauge of good faith” (p. vii), she manages to falsify Marx's meaning on his most fundamental points. Marx, of course, did not write specifically for academic economists. He merely presupposed "a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself” (p. xvi. Author's Preface, "Capital,” Vol. I, Sonnenschein Edition). He had therefore no use for the slick professional jargon current among the above-mentioned gentry, but preferred to express his meaning in terms which he was careful to define. Joan Robinson is equally careful not to define the terms which she coolly substitutes for those of Marx. One can only infer the sense in which she uses a term from the conclusions at which she arrives. Thus she persists in using the term "capital” to refer to what Marx defines as "constant capital," i.e., the money invested in the factors of production (other than human labour-power); such as machinery, raw material, etc.; and has the cool impudence to put forward the following travesty of Marx’s views: "Land and capital produce no value, for value is the product of labour-time” (p. 20). Marx sub-entitled his first volume "A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production.” The second chapter of volume II is entitled "The Rotation of Productive Capital.” Lastly, in volume I (p. 383), he wrote: ”Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to the product that it serves to beget.”

Marx went to considerable pains to make it clear that before the worker can indulge in labour-time he must sell his labour-power to the capitalist; whereupon it becomes just as much a part of productive capital as the machinery, raw materials, etc. Under Capitalism, therefore, production, that is, the labour-process, is a function of capital. It is capital's means of self-expansion.

Money makes money only because labour-power, fraught and sold for money, creates a value greater than its own. It does this by transforming the raw materials, by means of the machinery provided, into articles of consumption; thus preserving their value and adding further value to them at the same time. The process does not end with the bare re-production of their wages by the workers. It goes on in order that they may produce profit. Hence, the struggle between the workers (who are not interested in the production of profit) and their masters (who are) arises from the conditions of production under Capitalism.

Joan Robinson misconceives capital as a material thing. On p. 22 she attempts to distinguish between "capital” and “ownership of capital”; but: what is capital if not a particular form of ownership?

Machinery is not, in itself, capital, any more than is labour-power. Both productive factors have to be purchased by the capitalist and set in motion with a view to the production of profit. We may readily agree that "capital is necessary to make labour productive ” (p. 21) beyond a certain point; but only in the sense that the whip is necessary in order to make the chattel-slave produce. When the means of production have been converted into the common property of society they will have lost their capitalistic character. They will be used for the common good instead of being instruments of exploitation.

A glaring example of Joan Robinson's failure to present Marx's views correctly occurs on p. 27. Quoting two sentences from Vol. III, p. 221, she omits a most important bracket and thus manages to make Marx appear to suggest that "the exchange, or sale, of commodities” will continue under Socialism in spite of the fact that the plain meaning of the first sentence is contrary to any such assumption. When society establishes "a direct relation between the quantity of social labour-time employed in the production of definite articles and the quantity of demand of society for them," it will by that very act abolish the production and exchange of commodities, i.e., of articles of sale. Exchange is manifestly an indirect way of regulating the relationship between the labour-time spent and social demand.

.
On this flimsy basis our. authoress proceeds to juggle with alleged "problems of Socialism." These have been neatly exposed by Mr. T. A. Jackson in his criticism of her work (see “Plebs," May, 1943),, though it is to be regretted that even he lapses, however momentarily,' into her jargon when he refers to " increases in capital" in a socialist community,

To the present writer it appears that Joan Robinson's crowning audacity consists of her assertion on p. 42 that “Marx can only demonstrate a falling tendency in profits" (she means rate of profit) “by abandoning his argument that real wages tend to be constant."

This is on the strength of Marx's “assumption" of a constant rate of exploitation in his illustration on p. 247 of vol. III. An examination of this page shows clearly that Marx's purpose here is simply to demonstrate that a given rate of surplus value will express itself in different rates of profit according to the different volumes of constant capital.

As one goes through the chapter one finds that Marx gives illustrations which completely refute Joan Robinson's contention. On p. 253 Marx devotes half the page to showing that a higher rate of exploitation is consistent with a lower rate of profit. Instead of analysing Marx's figures and showing wherein they are wrong, our academic guide trots out some hotch-potch of her own from which her bugbear, the concept of value, has been completely eliminated. This prevents her from showing even what the rate of profit actually is, but she is not to be deterred by mere trifles like that. She proceeds to assert that if (as a result of an increase in productivity) a 10 per cent. increase in constant capital leads to an equal increase in the mass of profit (in terms of “product" as distinct from value) then "the rate of profit on capital would be constant" (p. 44).

A consideration of the following figures should show the falsity of this remark. It will be observed that a principle which applies to a 10 per cent. increase applies equally to an increase of 200 per cent. in capital and profit in terms of “ product," to avoid awkward fractions.

1. Constant Capital £100. Variable Capital £50. Surplus value £50.
2. Constant Capital £300. Variable Capital £25.  Surplus value £75.

In (1) the rate of exploitation is 100 per cent., that of profit 33-1/3 per cent.
In (2) the rate of exploitation is 300 per cent., that of profit 23-1/13 per cent.

In (2) productivity is assumed to have doubled, while real wages (in terms of "product") have remained constant, falling in value by half. The capitalist's share (whether expressed in terms of "product" or value) is now three times us large as that of the worker's, just as the constant capital is three times as large as in the first instance. None the less the rate of profit (as distinct from its mass) has fallen by 10 per cent.

This illustration is not intended to do anything more than to show the unreliability of "the more precise and refined methods of modern analysis " (Joan Robinson's “ Foreword." p. vi), and to point the suggestion that even academic economists might do worse than to read Marx for themselves.

This brief review does not profess to have dealt exhaustively with Joan Robinson's misconceptions. It may be noted, however, that her unreliability is not confined to purely theoretical points. On p. 38 she says, “Marx's argument requires modification if it is to be brought into line with the rise in real wages which has actually occurred in modern times." Here is a magnificent opportunity for her to produce some practical evidence in support of a statement. One looks for it in vain, as we are merely referred to certain unnamed "conservative trade-anion leaders, who look back to their own ragged and barefoot childhood and count up the blessings which Capitalism has brought to the workers." (Footnote to p. 39.)

In his small volume, “The Worker's Share” (Allen A Unwin), Mr. A. W. Humphrey showed in 1930 that, " accepting the estimate of Dr. Bowley and Sir Josiah Stamp, we may say that a problematical 5 per cent. was the only improvement in the average income of working-class households between 1914 and 1929 " (p. 80). Has Joan Robinson forgotten the posters on the hoardings in the winter of 1928-9: " A million of your fellow countrymen are in need of food and clothing"? This referred, moreover, only to the miners, at one time among the highest-paid workers. The fact that some of the lower-paid workers have risen towards the average level in living memory by no means offsets the lot which has overtaken others who were above the average; particularly noticeable being those in the export trades (such as the textiles), shipbuilding, etc. Increases in wage-rates by no means guarantees employment at those rates.

In spite of her academic outlook it must be conceded that Joan Robinson admits the exploitation of the workers, and here and there hints at expropriation of the capitalists as the remedy. She even credits Marx with penetrating insight. Her attempts to criticise his theories, however, fail just as effectively as those of her predecessors.

Eric Boden

The Whole Loaf (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It's no good dealing with the symptoms. It's the whole system that’s got to be torn up by the roots.”
"Band together to take it back from them. Let’s band together not to bargain but to own."
“We’re not fighting for the crumbs between ourselves. You've got to go for the whole loaf.”
If we enter their House of Parliament on the backs of the Unions, they’ll just buy us off. We’ve got to hold out for the works — not the crumbs. Even if we force capitalism to eliminate poverty completely, the cancer will still be in the air. We’ve got to tear it out by the roots and build a new world.”
There are still erudite professors lecturing in colleges to-day who don't understand now in 1978. what Tressell the housepainter saw so clearly in 1911.

From “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” by Steve Lowe, after the book by Robert Tressell, produced recently by the Joint Stock Theatre Group at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith.

The Fat of the Land (1975)

From the January 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even a newspaper like The Sun should be asked to explain itself at times. On 22nd November its editorial said: “Britain’s future is bleak, sombre and perilous . . . the British are fat, lazy, complacent — and deeply in debt”.

Who are “Britain” and “the British” in this statement? Clearly, The Sun does not mean everyone. Harold Wilson and Edward Heath are both fat, but they are not deeply in debt with bleak futures. Denis Healey is fat. So is Reginald Maudling. The Houses of Parliament are full of fat people, and they are only outweighed by the Institute of Directors. Nobody supposes, however, that these are the target of The Sun's unkind words and its sombre warning.

What it means is the working class, and it’s a funny thing how the idea of a working man being fat is equated with national disaster. In the late nineteen-fifties a report that 5 per cent, of working-class children were obese was greeted in much the same way as Noah received the forecast of rain. The proper, acceptable proletarian physique is thin as a whippet, with only muscular development in the working parts. Anything above that is degeneracy, and doom to the rate of surplus-value. Haven't you ever wondered why they put weighing-machines in public places everywhere ?

The Sun was in fact commenting on, and supporting, a report on “Britain’s plight” by the Hudson Institute of America: experts say poverty is on the way. On the same page, pronouncements to the same effect by James Callaghan, the Labour Foreign Secretary, were reported :

Britain is teetering on the edge of a plunge into poverty . . . Mr. Callaghan said: “I hope we are touching bottom. I hope we don’t go further down—but the indications are not good.”

On 5th December similar forecasts and warnings were given in a review by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. According to this, in 1975 prices will rise still higher and unemployment will grow. Both teams of “experts” had plans to urge. The National Institute thought import controls would prove necessary; the Hudson Institute would remedy things by “a new national six-year economic policy” run by “Britain’s best economists and administrators”.

The latter scheme is presumably to ensure that, whatever happens, the fat and the thin remain distinguishable. How little use it would be otherwise is shown by one of The Sun's remarks:

Leadership—or lack of it—is one element, of course. We are all of us unfortunate to live in an age of political pygmies.
But perhaps we are already beyond the stage where we could be rescued by inspired leadership.

Which is saying that things have come to a crisis under unimpressive dolts, but would be no better under geniuses.

The fallacy of all this is treating the impending crisis as an abnormality. Words like “doomsday”, “peril”, “saving Britain” and “the Dunkirk spirit” imply it to be a millennial catastrophe; but that is only a way of calling for more sacrifices from the workers. The reality is that the crisis is a normal phenomenon of capitalism.

It has nothing specially to do with Britain, with policies adopted by governments in this country or the attitudes of trade unions. It is in fact world-wide. Other countries have trade crises and large-scale unemployment (how does the Hudson Institute, which attributed Britain’s problems to the “lazy, complacent” population, explain the depression in America ?).

What is most normal of all is working-class poverty. Callaghan’s talk of a “plunge” into poverty is, for the majority of the population, like warning someone standing on a cigarette paper that he’ll fall. What kind of “plunge” for the homeless? or the pensioners, the unemployed, the low'-paid who cannot afford to buy newspapers? It recalls the Liberal speaker in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists frightening his hearers — “men wearing broken boots” and “toil-worn women” — about the “Black Ruin” of Socialism, and the author’s comment:

It never occurred to any of these poor people that they were in a condition of Ruin, Black Ruin already.

Because of the perennial cry that “we” must wake up and (vide The Sun) “fight to make it all right”, it is useful to bear in mind that British industry was highly prosperous when that episode was written.

The 1975 outlook for the working class is bleak and sombre; not for the reasons given by the “experts” (whose predictions are only guesses), but as the perpetual situation under capitalism. It is worth pointing out that in the post-war years Socialists have been told repeatedly that capitalism has changed or is under control, and a major slump could not happen again. Will you believe us now, please ?

One other statement made by The Sun needs explaining. It said:

For too long we have deluded ourselves into thinking that "redistribution” of wealth—i.e. soaking the rich— was the answer to our problems.

The “delusion” has been spread by the reformists of the Labour Party, which The Sun supports. The “plain fact” that insufficient wealth is produced is the consequence of capitalism, which Labour and The Sun support. Socialists have for over seventy years exposed these phoney remedies and pointed to the only solution to the problems.

The plain fact is that there simply isn’t enough wealth to redistribute.

Robert Barltrop

Our cover illustration is of the successful Socialist Party meeting held in Trafalgar Square in September. With acknowledgements Suomen Kuvalehti, Helsinki.

Cooking the Books: The Nutty Philosopher (2006)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Tax breathing, not chocolate cake” ran the headline in the Times (30 May) of an article by a certain Jamie White, who was billed as “a philosopher”. It didn’t say of what but he seems to be a philosopher of taxation.

In any event, he advanced the view that the best things to tax are things people are prepared to pay for irrespective of the price. When the price of cakes reaches a certain level people will stop buying them, but whatever level a hypothetical price of air would reach people would still buy it.

“Privatising the air is the ideal solution”, wrote the philosopher. “Alas, it is difficult to arrange”.

Alas, be buggered. Fortunately, it is impossible to arrange. Not that some enterprising capitalist wouldn’t seek to own and sell air if they could, as in the nightmare situation envisaged by Owen in Robert Tressell’s classic novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists:

  They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying from want of other necessaries of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it (chapter 15).

While only a nutty professor would argue that the private ownership of air was an “ideal solution”, most people today accept that the private ownership of the productive resources needed for life – land, water, minerals and the instruments needed to fashion them into useful things – is reasonable. Actually, from the of view of meeting human needs, it is a quite unreasonable solution.

Why should the land, water and the other things that are just as essential to life as air be privately owned any more than the air we breathe? Why should a section of society be in a position to hold the rest of us to ransom and say “unless you work for us (for less than you produce) you can’t have access to what you need to live?”

Of course they shouldn’t. All the means and instruments of production should belong in common to the whole community as the only basis on which they can be used to satisfy the needs of every member of society.

The good news is that White will be regarded as a fruit cake by most supporters of capitalism too. Even Madame Thatcher baulked at the free buying and selling of body parts, inconsistent with her own nutty philosophy as this was.

The abolition of money (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

At first it is hard to envisage a world without money. It requires a considerable jump of the political imagination to think of life without banks, wallets, coins, bills, cheque books or financial worries. From birth to the grave, workers’ lives are conditioned by money. Without it we starve; because of it we are poor; to get it we are forced into wage slavery; if we steal it we can be locked away; people grow old before their time because of it.

In Robert Tressell's classic socialist novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, the socialist, Owen, explained to his workmates the nature of money:

“Let us begin at the beginning”, continued Owen . . .“First of all, what do you mean by Poverty?”
“Why, if you’ve got no money, of course,” said Crass impatiently.
The others laughed disdainfully. It seemed to them such a foolish question.
“Well, that’s true enough as far as it goes,” returned Owen, “that is, as things are arranged in the world at the present. But money itself is not wealth: it’s of no use whatever.”
At this there was another outburst of jeering laughter.
“Supposing for example that you and Harlow were shipwrecked on a desolate island, and you saved nothing from the wreck but a bag containing a thousand sovereigns, and he had a tin of biscuits and a bottle of water.” “Make it beer,” cried Harlow appealingly.
"Who would be the richer man, you or Harlow?” (p. 29)

In short, it is not money as such which can satisfy needs, but money as a medium of exchange. According to Owen, "Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour” (p. 209). The significant point is that Tressell (or Robert Noonan, as he was really called) was not considered strange for making his socialist character advocate the abolition of the monetary system. At the turn of the century, when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed, socialists were frequently heard advocating a moneyless society. After all, how could one logically speak about a system of common ownership without referring to its logical consequences?

These days, those who pose as socialists, but in fact have no other purpose than to reform the capitalist system, are never heard to refer to the abolition of money. Benn, the SWP, the Communist Party and Co. are all united in their dismissal of the possibility of a moneyless society. The celebrated Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution states its aim as “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The illogicality of such an objective betrays the Labour Party’s profound confusion about the nature of socialism: if resources are commonly owned, who is going to need money to buy anything and who will be selling it? The abolition of all property and the introduction of common ownership necessarily does away with the anachronistic social relationships of buying and selling. The confusion of the Communist Party of Great Britain is clearly demonstrated in its pamphlet. Time to Change Course; in the section headed “Where Will The Money Come From?” (p. 81), we are told about financing socialism:

Under socialism, with all the main industries, land, resources and financial houses publicly owned, it is from these sources that the main forms of revenue will be derived. Personal taxation will be simple and not too arduous for the majority of people. Indirect taxation would be kept to a minimum. The present rating system would go. Local authorities would rely on other steps to raise local revenue.

Clearly, the Communist Party has failed to liberate itself from the ideological assumptions of the money system. Its members would do well to read Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in which he states that Communists (or socialists) stand for “the abolition of buying and selling”. This revolutionary objective is a hallmark of any principled socialist. Anyone claiming to stand for socialism who rejects the need for a society without money (or the possibility of attaining it) is not a socialist and should be treated as an opponent.

Great ideas are of social origin and never the product of just one brain. In the months before Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published in English (in November 1850), a number of workers in Britain were discussing the idea of abolishing money. The correspondence on the subject, which appeared in the Chartist journal, The Red Republican, has never before been seriously examined by historians. Presumably, most of them have dismissed the correspondence as an insignificant exchange of views between harmless economic eccentrics; in fact, it is a highly significant discussion, showing that there were workers discussing the case for a moneyless society before the Socialist Party of Great Britain began to advocate it.

The first letter, from George Smith of Salford, was published in The Red Republican on 27 July 1850, under the heading “ABOLITION OF MONEY”. He argues that

. . . in order . . . to prepare the way for the absolute supremacy of the working classes, preparatory to the abolition of the system of classes, what should be done? Evidently something more than getting possession of political rights, or even destroying those twin monsters, rent and usury; for had we possession of the one and had successfully destroyed the other, there would yet remain in existence a monster which would reproduce its kind to torment humanity; and that monster is money! Sir, in my opinion, so long as mankind will agree to have a circulating medium — will allow everything in life to be measured by money — so long will they suffer the evil consequences springing therefrom . . .

By 10 August, Smith’s letter had provoked a response. The writer, who signed himself “A Wage Slave”, opposes the need to abolish money, stating that “What society wants is just social institutions”. He argued that capitalism survives because workers are not paid the full value of their labour power and that the real need is for an equitable distribution of money. (The modern Left, one hundred and thirty years later, has not advanced beyond such theoretical fallacies.)

The Red Republican of 24 August contains two letters on the money question, taking up three columns. The first is from RPP, who states that the abolition of money “is the most important subject for discussion at the present time”. He goes on to agree that money should be abolished:

I would root out and abolish a system that compels man to give the sweat of his heart’s blood to the great money-mongers, wasting his own time, strength and happiness, as wealth may command. It is the slavery of the many for the sake of the few. Such a state of things must no longer exist, for man was made to enjoy all things equally with his fellow-man.

But — just as the reader is thinking that the correspondent has hit the nail very close to its head — RPP proceeds to argue that “the working classes must return to barter”. The second letter is from George Smith, who initiated the correspondence, and contains some excellent answers to the arguments of “Wage Slave”:

Strange, that in the 19th century, any wage slave should be found to advocate the continuance, in any shape, of that which, whilst it shall last, must perpetuate his vassalage, to its “fortunate possessors”. Does not my friend see both the craft and the hellishness of money? Who produces everything which sustains life, and feeds our desires for luxuries? The workers! Through the instrumentality of their labour, and by no other means can these things be produced. Then by what chicanery do those who “work not, neither do they spin” obtain all they want to superfluity, whilst those who produce are kept almost without? Why, by the crafty invention and use of money, with which they, like true “philanthropists”, come to the producer, and assure him that the food he is taking home is not “the stuff of life” but that which they will give him in return for his food is the real sustainer of existence, and thus he is cheated out of his produce for a shadow.

Smith rather confuses cause and effect — it is not money which produces class division, but the other way round — but nevertheless he is clearly moving in the direction of the ideas later to be elaborated by Marx. Responding to “Wage Slave’s” advocacy of a “just commercial system”, Smith rightly states that:

For a man to dispose (or sell) of his labour at the “public mart” presupposes a buyer of that labour, and, according to our friend’s just commercial system, I am afraid that no buyers would purchase unless they could live out of such purchases. To live by buying and selling is to live nefariously.

“Wage Slave” replies on 7 September, stating that he can now see the importance of Smith’s idea, but doubts whether everyone else will be intelligent enough to live in a moneyless society. (A familiar argument from modern Leftists.) “Why propose to do that which is impossible at the present time?” asks “Wage Slave”. This question was asked of the SPGB when it was formed in 1904 and it was for this reason that our members were labelled “the impossibilists”. If those who took this view in 1850 and 1904 had spent less time running away from the need to convince people of a good idea, and telling its advocates that they were wasting their time, we would have achieved the seemingly impossible long ago.

On 14 September Alexander Bill contributed a letter to the correspondence, in which he argued (rather confusedly) that he was opposed to “the total and unconditional abolition of money”, although he did agree with Smith “when he says that our present monetary system is the basis of all those social evils under which we labour”. His answer was to introduce a “prohibition of private trading” and “the establishment of public marts”. Effectively, this was an argument for state capitalism.

The final letter on the subject was published on 28 September and came from George Smith. To “Wage Slave’s” claim that workers could not arrive at the point of intelligence which would make a moneyless society possible, Smith responds:

Intelligence! What is it? Walker says intelligence is “perception, understanding”. Now, will my friend say that it is impossible for the intelligent to excite the perception of the, at present, ignorant, and give them understanding?

No further letter appeared on the subject. Smith’s question remained unanswered. But since 1850, the post-Chartist Left has responded to the question in the negative. While claiming to be fully committed Marxists, they refuse to advocate the case for the abolition of money because they consider the working class too stupified by capitalist conservatism ever to accept or understand it. Instead, they argue in favour of state capitalism. It is because of this that socialists are fundamentally hostile to the left-wing parties and groups.

Genuine socialists stand for a society in which all factories, farms, offices, docks, mines — indeed, the entire means of producing and distributing wealth — will be owned by the entire world community. The resources of the earth will belong to everyone. No laws will exist to preserve the right of one section of society to use things and another section to be denied the use of them. World socialism will be a social order based on free access for all people to all the goods of the earth. In such a society money would by an out-dated relic. Nobody will buy anything or sell anything or pay for anything. Those who cannot easily imagine such an arrangement should remember that people in pre-capitalist societies would have found our present social order equally difficult to comprehend. Those who have made the mental leap from the prison of the money system to the freedom of world socialism are urged to join us now in our struggle to create the society of tomorrow. The objective is urgent; we have waited for too long.

Steve Coleman

Books

From the pamphlet, A Socialist Life, by Heather Ball

I grew up during the Second World War when paper was in short supply for such trivial items as books. Paper had to go towards the war effort. What books were available my parents could not afford to buy so they joined the public library as did each of their children as they came of age. My mother would sit furiously knitting, a book balanced on the arm of a chair, listening at the same time to the afternoon play on the wireless. I once asked her how she managed this trick and she answered, smartly, that the brain was designed to receive and process information on several different levels. Maybe, but the knitting suffered and so did I. I eventually wore the cardigans with the dropped stitches.

I have this memory of my father reading among other things Karl Marx, Freud and Jung. My brother read the P.G. Wodehouse 'Jeeves' stories. I thought them boring but I came across a Biggles Omnibus and Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore and enjoyed those. At the same time I found a Pear's Encyclopedia for nineteen forty-seven and dipped into that. Best of all I loved the William Brown books by Richmal Compton. To the consternation of my mother I began emulating William's bizarre behaviour. My mother reminded me that I was, after all, a girl, but suspecting a flaw in this argument I ignored it. Later I read the Bronte books and Jane Austen. I thought Jane Austen clever and amusing but thrilled with something akin to rapture at the antics of those tortured souls Cathy and Heathcliff in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

At that time Dad was doing his stint as a dustman and would occasionally return from work bearing books he had salvaged from dustbins (These days I put my fascination for rubbish dumps and skips down to the 'dustbin' era.) This way I got a schoolgirl annual full of stories about female pupils at boarding school who had midnight feasts in the dorm and whose vocabulary included ejaculations like 'Jolly spiffing'. For a time I longed to go to boarding school away from what I sometimes thought of as my 'weird' family. Dad said the children of dustmen didn't go to boarding school. But all this was before the advent of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.


A new chapter of my life began at that stage. The book appeared in the house when I was fourteen and I was not at first inspired to read it. It was a very dense-looking tome and a cursory glance through its pages told me that Mugsborough was a terrible place and I wasn't in the least bit interested in building workers. The male members of the family discussed it enthusiastically as a masterpiece. But my time was yet to come and when it did it was to steer the course of my life and my thinking.

On Friday afternoons at school the kids were permitted to bring their own books to read thereby providing the teacher with a quiet hour or two to sit at her desk marking exercise books. It also gave me an opportunity to take The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to school with me to show off my 'grown up' reading. The teacher demanded to know what I was reading and told me 'This kind of reading matter is not for you'.

This kind of reading was for me. It came at a time when I badly needed to make some sense of the world. My class had been given a project - to paste pictures of the Royal Family into scrapbooks. This turned out to be a very popular and competitive project with pupils vying with each other to get the best pictures. I took no part in it. For one thing the Daily Worker had no photographs of the Royal Family within its pages and for another I thought it odd, to say the least, that children who sprang from parents who were forced to sell their labour and yet struggled to scrape together enough to possess anything other than the barest necessities should worship people who were rich, privileged and idle. Whilst I was reading Owen's response to the arguments of his workmates this concept lacked any logical train of thought. Feeling a sense of outrage I said as much to my teacher whose reply was that I should try to have a little more humility. I thought 'Fuck humility'.

My father gave me a book list - George Orwell, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, William Morris, and others and I read them all, but it was The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists that first raised my class-consciousness.

Heather Ball

Other short stories by Heather Ball can be found at the following links:

Cleaning Houses

Joining The Party

Misplaced Admiration

Uncles

Mr Brown

Ageism

Passing The Time

Ordinary People

A couple of pieces relating to the aforementioned Robert Tressell

Robert Tressell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

The Great Money Trick

The Great Money Trick

Taken from classic working class novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, which was originally published in Britain in 1914. The text was found via the website of the Manchester Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

"Money is the real cause of poverty," said Owen.

"Prove it," repeated Crass.

"Money is the cause of poverty because it is the device by which those who are too lazy to work are enabled to rob the workers of the fruits of their labour."

"Prove it," said Crass.

Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it in his pocket.

"All right," he replied. "I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked."

Owen opened his dinner basket and took from it two slices of bread, but as these where not sufficient, he requested that anyone who had some bread left should give it to him. They gave him several pieces, which he placed in a heap on a clean piece of paper, and, having borrowed the pocket knives of Easton, Harlow and Philpot, he addressed them, as follows:

"These pieces of bread represent the raw materials which exist naturally in and on the earth for the use of mankind; they were not made by any human being, but were created for the benefit and sustenance of all, the same as were the air and the light of the sun."

"Now," continued Owen, "I am a capitalist; or rather I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me. It does not matter for our present arguement how I obtained possession of them, the only thing that matters now is the admitted fact that all the raw materials which are necessary for the production of the necessaries of life are now the property of the landlord and capitalist class. I am that class; all these raw materials belong to me."

"Now you three represent the working class. You have nothing, and, for my part, although I have these raw materials, they are of no use to me. What I need is the things that can be made out of these raw materials by work; but I am too lazy to work for me. But first I must explain that I possess something else beside the raw materials. These three knives represent all the machinery of production; the factories, tools, railways, and so forth, without which the necessaries of life cannot be produced in abundance. And these three coins" - taking three half pennies from his pocket - "represent my money, capital."

"But before we go any further," said Owen, interrupting himself, "it is important to remember that I am not supposed to be merely a capitalist. I represent the whole capitalist class. You are not supposed to be just three workers, you represent the whole working class."

Owen proceeded to cut up one of the slices of bread into a number of little square blocks.

"These represent the things which are produced by labour, aided by machinery, from the raw materials. We will suppose that three of these blocks represent a week's work. We will suppose that a week's work is worth one pound."

Owen now addressed himself to the working class as represented by Philpot, Harlow and Easton.

"You say that you are all in need of employment, and as I am the kind-hearted capitalist class I am going to invest all my money in various industries, so as to give you plenty of work. I shall pay each of you one pound per week, and a week's work is that you must each produce three of these square blocks. For doing this work you will each recieve your wages; the money will be your own, to do as you like with, and the things you produce will of course be mine to do as I like with. You will each take one of these machines and as soon as you have done a week's work, you shall have your money."

The working classes accordingly set to work, and the capitalist class sat down and watched them. As soon as they had finished, they passed the nine little blocks to Owen, who placed them on a piece of paper by his side and paid the workers their wages.

"These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can't live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is one pound each."

As the working classes were in need of the necessaries of life and as they could not eat, drink or wear the useless money, they were compelled to agree to the capitalist's terms. They each bought back, and at once consumed, one-third of the produce of their labour. The capitalist class also devoured two of the square blocks, and so the net result of the week's work was that the kind capitalist had consumed two pounds worth of things produced by the labour of others, and reckoning the squares at their market value of one pound each, he had more than doubled his capital, for he still possessed the three pounds in money and in addition four pounds worth of goods. As for the working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the pound's worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they were again in precisely the same condition as when they had started work - they had nothing.

This process was repeated several times; for each weeks work the producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as any one of them and his pool of wealth continually increased. In a little while, reckoning the little squares at their market value of one pound each, he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were still tearing into their work as if their lives depended on it.

After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their meriment increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a pound's worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took their tools, the machinery of production, the knives, away from them, and informed them that as owing to over production all his store-houses were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down the works.

"Well, and wot the bloody 'ell are we to do now ?" demanded Philpot.

"That's not my business," replied the kind-hearted capitalist. "I've paid your wages, and provided you with plenty of work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at the present. Come round again in a few months time and I'll see what I can do."

"But what about the necessaries of life?" Demanded Harlow. "We must have something to eat."

"Of course you must," replied the capitalist, affably; "and I shall be very pleased to sell you some."

"But we ain't got no bloody money!"

"Well, you can't expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn't work for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!"

The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even threated to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast.

Further Reading and Viewing:

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard -

Robert Tressell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Andy Vine's graphic illustration of the Great Money Trick that originally appeared in issue 3 of the political comic, Warning This Is Propaganda.