Spain: The ‘Maricarmen’ Effect (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 7 October this year, an elderly woman, María del Carmen Abascal Martín (‘Maricarmen’), died in Madrid’s Gregorio Marañón Hospital. She was 87 when she died and, for a short while, unintentionally became the centre of a political firestorm that has engulfed Spain. Not just Spain but far beyond.

Indeed, her case has attracted global attention. She became a symbol of growing anger over Spain’s housing crisis. The problem isn’t just the rising cost of buying a home (last year, house prices rose at three times the rate of wages) but also the rising cost of renting.

These two aspects are interconnected. Currently, 73 per cent of Spaniards own their homes (down from 80.6 percent in 2007). Yet, paradoxically, while Spain has among the highest levels of homeownership in Europe, it is also among the worst affected by the housing crisis.

When a growing number of people can’t buy, demand for rental properties rises, and so do the rents tenants pay. Unsurprisingly, more than half of 18 – 34-year-olds in Spain now live with their parents or depend on them for living costs.

Maricarmen’s case was somewhat atypical. She had lived in the same flat in Madrid’s Retiro district for 70 years, a relatively affluent part of the city. The original tenancy agreement (a ‘renta antigua’ or rent-controlled lease) was signed by her father in 1956. After a succession of inheritances, the building in which her flat was located was eventually purchased in 2018 by a real estate investment firm called Urbagestión.

The firm then sought to raise her monthly rent from around €500 to a mind-boggling €2,650 for what is a modestly sized apartment. The figure was later adjusted to €1,650, but even that exceeded Maricarmen’s pension income of about €1,350. After she contacted the Tenants Union, the landlord made four eviction attempts beginning in the autumn of 2025. The first attempt was suspended after a large neighbourhood mobilisation. Two more attempts occurred in the summer of 2026 but also failed due to mounting public pressure, with even the United Nations calling on the evictions to be halted (El País, 8 October).

The fourth and final attempt to evict her on September 23 proved successful, despite hundreds of people spending the night outside her apartment to offer resistance in the face of a significant police presence. Maricarmen was carried out on a stretcher and taken to the hospital, where she later died.

The protests that subsequently erupted throughout Spain have been enormous. Waves of demonstrations have swept many cities, and tent encampments have sprung up in places like Madrid’s iconic Puerta del Sol square.

The despicable callousness shown towards this single frail old woman seems to epitomise so much of what is wrong about present-day society and its twisted priorities.

As one might expect, politicians on both the Left and the Right have cynically jumped into the fray to make political capital out of it. The Sánchez government, no doubt trying to leverage these developments to stem the decline in its popularity, particularly since the Ceuta crisis, hurriedly sought to introduce two bills to tackle the housing crisis. The opposition PP and the far-right Vox party voted against these measures and, with the help of the business-friendly Catalan nationalist Junts party, succeeded in having them quashed.

A clue as to the opposition’s motives for doing so is provided on the France 24 website (2 October):

‘Friday’s defeat increases pressure on Sanchez’s minority government and could intensify opposition calls for an early election. The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, said earlier Friday that “the sooner elections are held, the better”’.

If the intention was to force an election, the Right succeeded, and Sanchez subsequently decided to hold a snap election on 29 November. At this point, and despite the Right being ahead in the polls, it is difficult to say whether its political manoeuvres might not backfire, given the level of public outrage the housing crisis has generated.

Structural problem

But, in a sense, what politicians do or say matters little. The roots of the problem run much deeper than any legislative measures can reach or effectively address. The housing crisis is a structural, or systemic, problem.

According to Al Jazeera (7 Oct):

‘Spain has a deficit of about 750,000 homes, which is set to grow to more than a million by 2028, according to⁠the Bank of Spain. The average rental price of 1,176 euros ($1,315) is equivalent to about 98.7 percent of a young person’s average monthly salary in Spain, Youth Council of Spain figures show’.

The percentage of people spending more than 40 percent of their disposable income on housing costs is significantly higher in Spain (28.1 percent) than the European Union average of 19.2 percent. As Ashifa Kassam notes:

‘It was, as newspaper El País said in an editorial, a glimpse of a housing market that had become completely unmoored from the average income in Spain, as rents rose 80% in a decade, while the cost of homes had climbed by 63%. “The law was upheld, and the market worked. But it is the law of the jungle in a broken market, and it is a failure”’ (Guardian, 27 September).

However, when we talk about a ‘deficit of 750,000 homes’, we should remember we are looking at this issue from a market-based, commercial perspective. In reality, there is no deficit; in fact, the opposite is true. In a recent press release dated 30 June 2023, the National Statistics Institute (INE) revealed that ‘according to the consumption of electricity in a full year, 3,837,328 dwellings were classified as empty and 2,514,511 as occasional use’.

This data comes from the 2021 Population and Housing Census. Needless to say, there are many other vacant non-residential properties, such as offices, shops, and even warehouses, that could be converted into habitable dwellings but are not included in the statistics. So we’re talking about a market-driven shortage, not an actual shortage. There are a number of factors that might account for this.

One is geography. Drive through Spain, and you will be struck by the enormous contrast between the bustling cities along the coast (Madrid being a notable inland exception) and the near-empty interior. Population densities in some places are extremely low — as low as parts of the Sahara, in fact.

Since Franco, increasing urbanisation and industrialisation have exacerbated this contrast. Over 3,000 villages in inland Spain stand abandoned. Small farmers struggled to make a living, and changing weather patterns worsened their plight. It’s no surprise that more and more people left the countryside because of poverty and better job prospects in cities.

Another factor is tourism. Spain is the second-largest tourist destination in the world, behind France, and the growing tourism industry has significantly affected the local housing supply. Many properties have been converted into short-term rentals and Airbnbs. As elsewhere in Europe, this has given rise to protests against ‘overtourism’, particularly since 2017.

Yet, another factor is the continuing fallout from the 2008 crisis. Before that, Spain experienced a frenzied construction boom fuelled by easy credit. When the bubble burst, many developers went bust, leaving a trail of empty or half-completed projects, particularly along the Mediterranean coastline. Residential building is far more modest these days, partly because planning permission tightened up after the 2008 crash but also because the developers are more cautious. Shortages exist, particularly in areas experiencing an influx of newcomers. Despite Spain’s declining birth rate, the population continues to grow because of migration, with most immigrants heading to the big cities.

Some suggest that, to overcome this housing shortfall, more so-called public housing should be built. In Spain, only 1.2 percent of the housing stock is ‘publicly owned’, according to the OECD, far below levels in countries such as Britain, France and the Netherlands. Since the Franco era, Spanish housing policy has emphasised home ownership over public housing. The reluctance to provide more of the latter has been compounded by Spain’s highly decentralised political system, with responsibility divided among the central government, autonomous communities, and municipalities.

Corporate landlords

Regarding privately rented properties, Spain’s Ministry of Consumer Affairs published a report in April 2026 showing that landlords with multiple properties, legal entities, and public entities together held about 61 percent of the habitual rental market, while landlords with just one rental property accounted for around 39 percent.

In Maricarmen’s case, the former type of landlord was involved. The share of rental properties owned by corporate landlords such as private equity funds is increasing, but still quite low. Most private landlords are individuals who own one or more properties.

Much has been said about the role of ‘vulture funds’ in the housing crisis, but in reality their role has been mainly limited to hotspots like Madrid and Barcelona. Critics argue that such funds have bought properties cheaply and pursued evictions more aggressively than smaller landlords. Supporters counter that without corporate investment, tackling the alleged housing shortage would be harder. They say investors will be deterred from building projects if they have to contend with too much bureaucratic red tape and overly restrictive regulations.

Indeed, this was one pretext for why various right-wing parties decided to vote down the two housing bills the Sanchez government put forward. The bills aimed to ensure rental contracts automatically renew when they expire as well as restrict the eviction of vulnerable tenants.

The Junts party, for instance, argued that it was unreasonable to lump small landlords who depend on rental income together with large real-estate companies. They suggested this could have ‘negative and irreversible’ effects. Some properties could be withdrawn from the rental market or converted to holiday rentals, to the detriment of tenants.

The bills also targeted corporate investors seeking higher returns. As Kassam notes:

‘The head of one of the country’s biggest labour unions called for investment funds to be “kicked out” of the housing market. “Homes are for living in, not for large corporations to do business,” said Unai Sordo of the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO) as he called for a tax system that would make “the business of hoarding homes unprofitable”’.

Who could possibly object to the idea that ‘Homes are for living in, not for large corporations to do business’? The problem, however, is that we live in a capitalist society, with all the moral hazards and dilemmas it creates.

Ultimately, it’s nearly impossible to isolate one part of the system from another. Everything is connected. Directly or indirectly, the repercussions of a capitalist cost-benefit calculus will filter through to affect our lives and the homes we live in.

It’s a bit like water finding its own level. Like the mould that returns every winter, we cannot insulate ourselves from the consequences of living in a society where most things, including our homes, are commodified. We may think of our home as our castle, but even castles can be repossessed by the bank if push comes to shove.

As Friedrich Engels put it in 1873:

‘The housing shortage from which the workers and part of the petty bourgeoisie suffer in our modern big cities is one of the numerous smaller, secondary evils which result from the present-day capitalist mode of production’ (The Housing Question).

Such an observation remains as relevant today as it was back then, 150-plus years ago.

Robin Cox

How much do strikes achieve? (1972)

From the November 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The view is held by some trade unionists and by so-called militant organisations that militancy is the key that opens all doors for the working class. The argument is deceptively simple: as strikes can gain wage increases more and larger strikes will gain more increases, seemingly without limit. How far is this true? There is plenty of past and current evidence though, as will be seen, some of it is open to misinterpretation. When Marx wrote about this more than a century ago he did not share the “militant” view about the extent to which trade-union pressure could raise wages. In his Value, Price and Profit for example (Chapters IV and XIV) and in Wage-Labour and Capital (p. 35 in the Whitehead edition) he took a somewhat pessimistic line based on his understanding of how capitalism works. While urging resistance to the efforts of employers to depress wages he thought it was largely a defensive struggle, with only occasional opportunities for the workers to secure “temporary improvement”. His view was that the times when the workers can hope to gain an improvement were when the capitalists were doing well, expanding production and accumulating capital. In the reverse phase of the “trade cycle”, with sales and profits falling and unemployment rising, he thought the workers could do little.

“The relations between the supply and demand of labour-power undergo perpetual change, and with them the market price of labour-power. If the supply overshoots the demand wages sink, although it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or any other method.”

(To bring this into harmony with the present period of fast-rising prices it has to be remembered that though money wages do not now sink, a pay increase which does not keep up with the cost of living represents a fall of “real” wages, i.e. purchasing power.)

Nothing Gained

It will be noticed that Marx talked of “testing” the situation when trade is bad. The militants reject this. They think that if enough workers strike they can make big gains in spite of adverse conditions. As regards past experience the evidence is all against the militants’ case. Apart from 1921 and 1926, the record number of days lost through strikes in any year was in 1893, when the total was over 30 million. This included Lancashire cotton workers who were out for five months, and 400,000 miners. Both strikes failed and wages generally did not rise.

Another outstanding example was the ten years 1921-1930. Unemployment was high, trade was bad and prices were falling—in all by 30 per cent. In those years, which included the General Strike of 1926, the number of days lost by strikes and lockouts averaged 31 million a year, but the strikes completely failed to prevent wages also falling by about 30 per cent.

Discontent & Resistance

The question arises to what extent recent experience differs from the past. Various changes have taken place. There are many more trade unionists, though still only a minority of the workers, and workers on strike instead of depending entirely on their own resources and trade-union and benefit-society funds can now get Social Security payments for their families. British capitalism in the past six years has been in depression with unemployment at one point topping the million mark. And strikes have been building up, from 2,400,000 days lost in 1966 to 13,600,000 days in 1971 and a likely total of 20 or 21 million in 1972. The fact that strikes have become more numerous and last longer is not simply a reflection of workers’ discontent but is also a reflection of stronger and better-organised resistance by employers. It is a truism that the most successful strike is the one that never happens because when trade is brisk employers may yield to the mere threat of a strike interrupting production.

In recent years, with sales falling off, employers have taken a tougher line because they stand to lose less when trade is slack than when they have full order-books and are hard pressed to meet delivery dates. Also, as in engineering and the building industry where the recent strikes were not general, employers with strikes on their hands received financial help from the other employers.

Keeping Pace

What then has been the outcome of the big increase in strikes? On the basis of the rise of the cost of living and the estimated increase of wage rates (not including overtime and bonuses etc.) and of average earnings (including overtime and bonuses) it would seem that real wages have been rising at about 2 per cent a year since 1966; but some complications have to be taken into account. The first is that what matters is not gross pay but “take-home pay” after deduction of tax, and owing to the way this operates take-home pay increases by a smaller percentage than gross pay. If for example a single man on pay of about £25 obtained an increase of £5 a week (20 per cent) his increase of take-home pay would be just under 19 per cent (£4.10).

And owing to the rules governing family income supplements and free school meals it can happen that some workers can be worse off through a pay increase. For a married man with two children a pay increase of £2 from £28 to £30 a week would leave him 95p. a week worse off. (The Times, 8 September 1972).

It is obvious that the past six years, in spite of more strikes, has left the mass of workers in Britain doing little more than keep pace with prices.

Some Do Not

An enquiry by the Economic Research Council (Financial Times, 18 August 1972) indicated that between 1962 and 1970 average take-home pay did not even keep up with the cost of living, though some improvement may have been made since 1970. Another factor that should be borne in mind is that the past few years have seen a widespread tightening-up of jobs through labour-displacing productivity schemes linked with pay increases. Take-home pay in terms of purchasing power has certainly not fully reflected increased output.

Some confirmation of Marx’s general argument is given by a comparison of Germany and some other continental countries with Britain. While British capitalism has been in depression, production has been expanding fast in Germany—the condition in which Marx expected the workers to be able to increase wages. Though strikes in Germany have been much fewer than in Britain, in recent years real wages have risen much more in Germany. Indeed, according to a document submitted to the TUC (The Times, 5 October 1972): “In recent years Britain’s wage increases have been the lowest in Europe.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Hoping against hope (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Hope is a bad thing,’ said Henry Miller, ’It means that you entertain illusions.’

That hope is illusory is an eternal concept. In the ancient Greek myth of Pandora, her box was filled with all the evils that beset humanity and right at the very bottom was, hope.

Fast forward a few thousand years to a Labour Party conference and there is the leader, and Prime Minister, having rummaged around in Pandora’s Box, standing before the assembled delegates brandishing Hope for their inspiration. Andy Burnham declared that by dint of his honesty, hope will emerge to unite the British people behind him and his schemes to rejuvenate the nation. ‘My plan for Britain is our chance to believe again.’ ‘Britain can hope again’ was his headline for the brief summary of his proposals published to rouse support. ‘My plan for Britain starts today. I’m asking you to stand with me.’ The plan does indeed have attractive features, especially for the multitudes struggling to cope with ever increasing bills and decreasing real incomes.

The very next day after Burnham’s address to his party, and hence the nation, a 6am news broadcast carried a headline item about energy price rises coming January 2027 in the teens of percent, with the prospect of more later next year. This announcement of not such a happy new year in prospect followed hard on the heels of Burnham’s first economic pronouncement in his summary. ‘We’re going to start with the essentials in life. Housing, water and energy will be brought back under more public control so we can make them affordable again.’

Quite apposite it might appear. Yet this statement not so much begs as pleads a number of questions. How will the public, the many millions, actually exert their control? There is no direct way they can decisively influence what will inevitably be a state body set up as a substitute for the boards of directors. Even if this state body could be more beneficent, is it going to be in place by January of next year, just a couple of months away? Also, is it going to have access to sources of energy free of the international travails presently forcing up prices?

No energy will be available unless it is profitable. The whole worldwide economic system is presently capitalist, meaning production is driven by profit and will remain so even if the state becomes the de facto capitalist.

Then there’s the question of compensation. It may be that those on, or to, the left of the Labour Party will resurrect their venerable slogan, ‘nationalisation without compensation’. Sounds good, even plausible, until it gets into the courtroom. Not only does the state serve the interests of capitalism, so does the legal system. It would undoubtedly be found illegal to simply take companies away from present owners. Even if some way of doing this was found there would, most likely, be years of litigious wrangling resulting in huge legal costs consumers would ultimately pay.

The same principle applies to Burnham’s other two essentials, housing and water.

No matter the deficiencies identified in the housing market, it is an error to suppose those deficiencies will drive house building. Houses are not built primarily to provide people with somewhere to live; that is their purpose, their use value. However, the spur to building is the exchange value of the house, essentially the price it can be sold for and thus realise a profit.

Profit is the driver of house building not the need for homes, which is why it’s known as a housing market. This is why there has been a tendency for house construction firms to build 4 and 5 bedroom detached ‘executive’ houses.

A four-bedroom house does not cost twice as much to build as a two-bed, making the smaller house relatively more expensive to build and, therefore, buy. Government can intervene and require builders to erect smaller houses, but they will not be sold at cost. They will still have to yield a significant profit. If land is identified as suitable for building, construction companies will buy it then not build on it unless and until any subsequent housing is deemed profitable. It doesn’t matter if there is a huge need for housing in the area.

Government, national or local, could initiate the building of council/social housing for rent. While this would obviate the need for buying, with its requirements for large deposits and mortgages, rents would have to repay the initial financing, indirectly paying interest on money borrowed for the purpose as well as the original capital. And rent is not a fixed term like a mortgage, but must be paid over the lifetime of the tenant or tenants. Rents may or may not be lower than mortgage repayments. It could be that those identified as having special or exceptional needs will be exempted from, or pay reduced, rents. This would not remove the value of those rents from the financial equation, but might have to be spread over actual rent payers, council tax, or both. Such provision would be very limited, otherwise the cost would become unsustainable.

There is absolutely no hope of freely meeting everyone’s housing need while capitalism’s financial market and the construction industry continue to be driven, as they must be, by the overriding imperative to realise profit.

The same applies to Burnham’s third essential, water. Rain may fall for free, but by the time it flows from a tap it has been collected, stored and treated in various ways. Then, when it has been used it has to be drained away and treated again. Each one of these processes adds a cost, as does the expense of maintaining and replacing supply and drainage systems. Why would companies bother to do all this in the first place unless there was a prospect of profit?

Railways provide an exemplar of what happens when sufficient profits are not accrued. The companies surrender their franchises for the government to take back responsibility for loss-making. Then the state must find ways of providing the services. If that means those services continue loss-making then they will have to be subsidised. As governments correctly claim, they don’t automatically have money, they have to raise it through taxation or borrow it on financial markets. Either way it’s a drain on the national economy.

Then, along with all other government expenditure, if that drain becomes too large financial markets raise their borrowing rates which adversely affects all sectors of the economy, with rising inflation and unemployment; the threat of recession, a way capitalism can discipline government.

Nationalisation or public/private partnerships are often cited as being socialistic (that is, a little bit socialist). In this way they are sold to the electorate as hope-filled alternatives to capitalism. The reality is they are not, and cannot, be anything of the sort, being as subject to capitalism’s strictures as any wholly private enterprise.

The Prime Minister can preach the gospel of hope and perhaps even convince himself. After all he could not stand up at the Labour Party conference and declare they would build a totally new, worldwide society no longer driven by the profit motive, but centred on freely satisfying everyone’s needs.

He correctly identified three essentials (though failed to mention all the others people require), but however well-intentioned he was being it is not in his power to do more than tinker a little in the hope of some limited short-term improvement. As well as putting crosses on ballot papers come an election voters can cross their fingers and hope. Both will be equally (in)effective in ameliorating the deprivations caused by capitalism.

Better to realise that it is time to move beyond capitalism and actively pursue the socialist alternative, rather than just hope for the best.

D.A.

France: what was it all about? (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a little too early to make any definitive appreciations of the recent demonstrations and riots which spread across metropolitan France in October. Doubtless, readers of the Socialist Standard will have seen the images of massive gangs of young people looting and setting fire to shops and attacking police dressed in riot gear. As is only to be expected, it’s the most violent scenes which have found their way onto the mainstream news; the fire which destroyed the Town Hall of Limoges being a case in point. On the other hand, the media also showed images of the enormous and well-ordered demonstrations by students who were more often than not accompanied by teachers and parents. There were demonstrations in small towns right across France which recalled in many ways the monster manifestations in defence of retirement pensions of a few years ago.

Mysterious wreckers

Demonstrations are, of course, part and parcel of everyday life in France, there being something of a deeply rooted culture of defiance common to the left and right. What was notable in this case was the massive presence of hooded and masked casseurs – vandals – uniformly dressed in black who were clearly operating in organised and one suspects disciplined mobs. These agents provocateurs incited the more disorganised groups of casual looters who are now found in all mass disorders breaking out across the globe.

Strangely enough these violent groups, sometimes known as the black bloc, are rarely picked up by the police and arrested. Nobody knows who they are. They seem to be used to keep ordinary citizens at a cautious distance from their rights to free expression. Amazingly those conventional politicians who managed to find their way across the Parisian battlefield into the safe havens of the TV studios seem to be convinced that their membership consists of highly organised members of the ‘ultra-gauche’. (Earlier references to the black bloc seem to have been edited out of the official narrative). The designated culprit it would seem is what they call the ‘antifa’ (anti-fascist); heretofore a fantastical organisation which has miraculously put down solid roots in the USA. There they have – according to the official narrative – violently interrupted the work of Trump’s anti-immigrant agency and rendered the (strictly anti-constitutional) operations of the ICE goons problematic. One may ask, aren’t we supposed to be anti-fascist in a democracy?

Political ineptitude

For the point, of course, is that we are talking about a movement initiated and organised by kids; high-school students to be precise. Consequently, the maintenance of public order and the protection of protestors should run together. However, parents would do well to realize that the government at times seems to be applying the selfsame tactics cynically deployed against the gilets jaunes of a few years ago. This was a movement which was quite violently repressed in every sense of the term.

In the case of the students, however, a certain circumspection was in evidence in the days preceding the events of Saturday 17 October, even though some youngsters were roughed up, injured and arrested. It’s quite possible that something changed in the clumsy official response on that day. TV coverage insisted heavily upon the destruction of shops and public buildings, to the exclusion of the peaceful marches undertaken by school students and sympathisers. Up to a point, the authorities seem to have attempted to calm down the situation, although if anything Macron’s typically leaden televised address to the nation on the Sunday made clear his crass insensitivity to the demands of the students – mentioned in passing – and to his incredible political ineptitude.

For the point is that once the tear-gas has wafted away, it will become evident that the students had drawn up an extremely intelligent and reasonable list of demands, demands which would give some substance to the egalitarianism established by the republican constitution and proclaimed above the façade of every single lycée in France.

Neglected issues

To give effect to these aspirations, the students were asking for the urgent building of schools and for the renovation of ill-adapted and run-down premises. The recent and stifling heatwaves which hit France over the summer saw school pupils attempting to tackle the baccalaureate exams in buildings lacking window blinds and adequate ventilation, as teachers and administrators ran around with water bottles to quench the thirst of distressed youngsters. In the winter many classrooms are freezing, ceilings are leaky and sanitary facilities are filthy. Many schools lack facilities to deal with students experiencing psychological problems often resulting from learning disabilities.

Other demands include one for a massive recruitment drive to deal with the shortage of trained teachers. The typically French drama of classes without teachers at the beginning of the school term is high on the list of preoccupations.  But teacher recruitment is difficult given stagnant wages and disaffection. Note that the hapless Minister of Education hurriedly pulled hundreds of trained teachers out of a standby status when the demonstrations started to tilt public opinion to the side of the youngsters.

Other demands made by the students were nothing if not legitimate. Better student grants, subsidies to help with student accommodation, more places to be made available in the (increasingly run-down) universities, more student representation in schools and at long last, measures to reform the ludicrous and exhaustingly overloaded school curriculum. More time to eat in the midday break and so on and so on. In short, these are measures which aim at the re-establishment of an equilibrium centred on student well-being; welfare measures and so on. In short, the kind of bread-and-butter issues neglected during the long and uncaring duration of Macron’s atrocious term in office.

Malcolm Mansfield,

Paris

Blogger's Note:

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the Socialism or Your Money Back blog on the 22nd October.

The Cadbury flavour. (1915)

From the September 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

In last month’s issue of the Socialist Standard was published, side by side, two extracts front leading articles by the “Daily News and Leader” ; the one declaring that the cause of the extensive strikes among the workers was the enormous increase in the cost of living, the other stating that the “working classes were receiving money in a measure without parallel.” Attention was drawn to these contradictory statements and it was suggested that the “Daily News” could only reconcile these statements by proving: either in the intervening three months between the publication of them wages had risen enormously, or prices in the same period had been correspondingly reduced.

Since the appearance of the second statement—on the supposed affluence of working class—the same journal, quoting from the Board of Trade “Labour Gazette,” has voluntarily furnished us with the actual figures, both as to the increased cost of living and the rise in wages.

But the figures do not help them, for we learn that the cost of living, for the year ending July 1915, has risen by 34 per cent., while wages, have risen for some 2½ million workers by about, three shillings per week, £400,000 being paid weekly as war bonus to that number of workers.

Next, as though they were serenely unconscious of their statement of June 14th, that the “working classes are receiving money in a measure without parallel;” on August 17th they say:

“Unhappily it is on the poor that the rise falls, heaviest, and that both absolutely and relatively. It is the commodities that for them form the staples of life that have advanced most rapidly. Bread, for example, is up by 40 per cent., fish by 60, tea by 30, sugar by nearly 70, and the cheaper cuts of imported beef by 60. In few families would it be true to say that the sovereign has dropped in value to thirteen shillings, for obviously only a proportion, and in the case of the well-to-do a very small proportion, of the family income is spent on food. But for the very poor, whose particular staples have advanced by the proportions indicated above, and who of necessity spend a high proportion of their wages on food, the statement almost holds good. The comparative absence of actual poverty in the poor law sense cannot obscure the existence of much hardship and penury, for the most part cheerfully borne as part of the-inevitable cost of war."

The “Daily News” apparently quotes these figures for the purpose of comparison with German and Austrian food prices, which are said to have risen by 65 and over 100 per cent. respectively. We are expected to derive satisfaction from the comparison, and to remember with gratitude “the ceaseless debt of the nation to the royal navy.” This is the lesson from the capitalist point of view. But the lesson we Socialists urge is that in every case it is the worker that suffers as a result of rising prices. That in the “piping times of peace,” according to the late Sir H. Campbell Bannerman, thirteen millions of people in this country live on or below the poverty line ; that according to capitalist authorities the average wage of the working class is less than twenty-four shillings per week.

If it could be said that this poverty were due to the failure of the working class to produce sufficient wealth to satisfy their needs there could only be one remedy : to increase efficiency and discover new and easier methods of producing wealth. But there is not one defender of the capitalist system who would dare to impute the poverty of the working class either to the lack of wealth or to their inability to satisfy all their needs by means of the existing instruments and methods of production. Neither is there a capitalist statesman or defender who dares to tell us why the working class is poor in the midst of plenty. Nor yet can they tell us how the poverty “problem” may be solved.

The conditions the capitalists and their hacks champion are grounded in anarchy. Such conditions cannot be honestly defended. If we are honest we must expose and condemn the capitalist system, which permits an idle class to dominate society in its own interest, imposing slavery on the mass of the people while they, the dominators, live in security and the wildest luxury. An intelligent working class cannot accept their ideas nor their view-point. The workers’ philosophy must take shape around the material facts of their existence. Antagonism will naturally develop, but the working class cannot expect to reach their emancipation unless they first challenge the class that enslaves them.

F. Foan

Anti-Fa Farce France (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

The Anti-Fa Farce France: what was it all about?

It’s a little too early to make any definitive appreciations of the recent demonstrations and riots which have have spread across metropolitan France during the last five or weeks. during the last five or so weeks. Doubtless, readers of the Socialist Standard blog will have seen the images of massive gangs of young people looting and setting fire to shops and attacking police dressed in riot gear. As is only to be expected, it’s the most violent scenes which have found their way onto the mainstream news; the fire which destroyed the Town Hall of Limoges being a case in point. On the other hand, the media also showed images of the enormous and well-ordered demonstrations by students who were more often than not accompanied by teachers and parents. There were demonstrations in small towns right across France which recalled in many ways the monster manifestations in defence of retirement pension of a few years ago.

Mysterious wreckers

Demonstrations are, of course, part and parcel of everyday life in France there being something of a deeply rooted culture of defiance common to the left and right. What was notable in this case was the massive presence of hooded and masked casseurs – vandals – uniformly dressed in black who were clearly operating in organised and one suspects disciplined mobs. These agents provocateurs incited the more disorganised groups of casual looters who are now found in all mass disorders breaking out across the globe.

Strangely enough these violent groups, sometimes known as the black bloc are rarely picked up by the police and arrested. Nobody knows who they are. They are used to maintain ordinary citizens at a cautious distance from their rights to free expression. Amazingly those conventional politicians who managed to find their way across the Parisian battlefield into the safe havens of the TV studios seem to be convinced that their membership consists of highly organised members of the ‘ultra-gauche’. (Earlier references to the black bloc seem to have been edited out of the official narrative).The designated culprit it would seem are what they call the ‘anti-fa’ (anti-fascist); heretofore a fantastical organisation which has miraculously put down solid roots in the USA. Here There they have – according to the official narrative – violently interrupted the work of Trump’s anti-immigrant agency and rendered the (strictly anti-constitutional) operations of the ICE goons problematic. One may ask, aren’t we supposed to be anti-fascist in a democracy?

What’s Going On? Political ineptitude

For the point, of course, is that we are talking about a movement initiated and organised by kids ; high-school students to be precise. Consequently the maintaining of public order and the protection of protestors should run together. However, parents would do well to realize that the government at times seems to be applying the selfsame tactics cynically deployed against the gilets jaunes of a few years ago. This was a movement which was quite violently repressed in every sense of the term.

In the case of the students, however, a certain circumspection was in evidence in the days preceding the events of last Saturday even though some youngsters were roughed up, injured and arrested. It’s quite possible that something changed in the clumsy official response on Saturday 17 October. TV coverage insisted heavily upon the destruction of shops and public buildings, to the exclusion of the peaceful marches undertaken by school students and sympathisers. Up to a point, the authorities seem to have attempted to calm down the situation, although if anything Macron’s typically leaden televised address to the nation on Sunday made clear his crass insensitivity to the demands of the students – mentioned in passing – and to his incredible political ineptitude.

For the point is that once the tear-gas has wafted away, it will become evident that the students had drawn up an extremely intelligent and reasonable list of demands, demands which would give some substance to the egalitarianism established by the republican constitution and proclaimed above the façade of every single school lycée in France.

Neglected issues

To give effect to these aspirations, the students were asking for the urgent building of schools and for the renovation of ill-adapted and run-down premises. The recent and stifling heat waves which hit France over the summer saw school pupils attempting to tackle the baccalaureate exams in building lacking window blinds and adequate ventilation, as teachers and administrators ran around with water bottles to quench the thirst of distressed youngsters. In the winter many classrooms are freezing, ceilings are leaky and sanitary facilities are filthy. Many schools lack facilities to deal with students experiencing psychological problems often resulting from learning disabilities.

Other demands include a demand for a massive recruitment drive to deal with the shortage of trained teachers. The typically French drama of classes without teachers at the beginning of the school term is high on the list of preoccupations. But teacher recruitment is difficult given stagnant wages and disaffection. Note that the hapless Minister of Education hurriedly pulled hundreds of trained teachers out of a standby status when the demonstrations started to tilt public opinion onto the side of the youngsters.

Other demands made by the students were nothing if not legitimate. Better student grants, subsidies to help with student accommodation, more places to be made available in the (increasingly run-down) universities, more student representation in schools and at long last, measures to reform the ludicrous and exhaustingly over-loaded school curriculum. More time to eat in the midday pause and so on and on. In short, these are measures which aim at the re-establishment of an equilibrium centred on student well-being; welfare measures and so on. In short, the kind of bread and butter issues neglected during the long and uncaring duration of Macron’s atrocious term in office.

Malcolm Mansfield, 

Paris

SPGB Snippets: Poverty in families (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

September 9, 2026

A recent study showed that nearly half of parents are struggling financially after having a baby.

In some cases this has even led to them watering down baby formula milk in order to save money. This can be really serious for an infant, as it may result in growth problems and developmental delays. Baby banks supply clothes, nappies and baby wipes to parents, but get few donations of baby milk.

This is what life can be like for some of the poorest workers under capitalism: essential items such as baby formula can barely be afforded. A society that results in this level of poverty needs to be replaced by one where meeting human need is the priority.

Editorial: Labour “fiddles” with the Cost of Living (1947)

Editorial from the September 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we insist that the abolition of capitalism and introduction of Socialism is the only way out for the working-class, members of the Labour Party usually give the answer that Socialism is something for the future and what is needed is a practical policy for the present, a policy to deal with everyday things like prices and wages and rents and fares. Let us then take a look round and see just what the Labour Government has done about these things.

Between the wars the Labour Party denounced the official Cost of Living Index on the ground that it had long ceased to be reliable. Since 1939 the Index has moved further and further away from reality. Government policy, both in the war-time Coalition and since Labour came to power, was to juggle with the Index in order to prevent it from rising beyond the point it reached in 1942. Thus the pretence was kept up that the cost of living had increased since 1939 by only 31 per cent., or about 4d. in the 1s. This juggling was done by using subsidies to keep down the prices of certain articles that were included in the Index and ignoring the much bigger increases of prices not included. Of course almost everybody (except the Government) admits that the increase is much more than 31 per cent. As long ago as April, 1946, the Manchester Guardian concluded, on the basis of other official figures, that “the cost of living has increased by 55 per cent.” (Manchester Guardian, 15/4/46), and recently Mr. Bernard Harris, City Editor of the Sunday Express, summed the matter up with the remark, “That Index has apparently become incapable of movement, and no one pays any attention to it any more.” (Sunday Express, 1/6/47).

Now the Labour Government has thought up a new deception, A more accurate index is to replace the old one, but, and here is the snag, it is to relate only to future movements of the cost of living and will not indicate how large an increase has taken place already; and although the cost of living has been rising sharply during the past year the workers are now told by Mr. Attlee not to ask for wage increases. ”I appeal to all of you not to press at this time for increased wages.” (Daily Herald, 7/8/47).

So prices have risen and wages are not to rise, which is just the opposite of Labour promises. They promised to support higher wages, and what they said about prices was, “everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled.” (Labour Party Programme at the General Election, 1945, “Let us Face the Future.”).

True the Labour Party kept that promise to continue rent control and indeed extended it by setting up Rent Tribunals for furnished rooms ; but here again there are several niggers in the woodpile. While net rents are controlled, actual rents are rising because of the increase of rates, landlords being able to pass it on owing to the acute shortage of accommodation; and everyone knows that the Tribunals have only touched the fringe of the problem for the unfortunate tenants of furnished rooms, many of whom are afraid to lodge a complaint for fear of being turned out a few months later.

Here are a few news items on the increase of rents. 

“Rents of many houses and flats are jumping because of stiff increases in rates. Uncontrolled flat and house prices are soaring.” (Sunday Express, 1/6/47).

“Six hundred homeless families applying for council houses at Maltby, South Yorkshire, have to answer a wages quiz to make sure they can pay the rents. Rents of pre-war council houses range from 9s. to 11s.; new houses between 14s. and 16s. a week.” (Daily Express, 25/6/47).

“The rents for council houses being built here [Tunbridge Wells] . . . are claimed by Labour Councillor John Hutchings to be so high that two-thirds of the 1,238 families on the Royal Borough’s waiting list will be unable to afford to live in them . . . The rents for two types of houses have been confirmed at 26s. 6d. and 27s. 6d., inclusive of rates. The rents for the 14 largest houses, worked out on the same basis, will be 32s. 9d. a week.” (News-Chronicle, 5/6/47).

Another item of expenditure is fares. In 1942 Mr. Bevin, at that time Minister of Labour and now Foreign Secretary, had something to say about the workers’ inability to afford both the rents and the fares, then being charged.

“It would be essential for the cost of habitation to be reduced. Rent and transport took too big a slice out of the wage income of our people.” (In a speech to the National Chamber of Trade News-Chronicle, 16/7/42).

That was the promise, now for the performance. After several war-time increases of fares by London Transport and the main line railways the Minister of Transport announced in Parliament on August 5th, “all railway charges will be raised to 55 per cent. above pre-war with effect from October 1st next.”

The moral of all this is that Labourism does not solve the workers’ problems. Socialism is the only hope.

Cooking the Books: Economic leverage (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Workers face worst squeeze on real pay since 2022’ was the headline of an article in the Times (20 May) by its Economics Editor Mehreen Khan. In the first three months of this year, average weekly earnings increased by 3.4 percent, which was more or less the same as the rise in the Consumer Prices Index. ‘However’, Khan writes,

‘while real incomes are on course to flatline this year, the jump in global oil prices is expected to push annual inflation close to 4 per cent in the coming months’.

If average earnings go up by 3.4 percent and consumer prices go up by 4 percent, that’s a reduction in real pay for workers. So why don’t they simply go on strike and push up wages to keep up?

The answer is that workers don’t have the power to put up the price of what they have for sale — their labour power — just because they want to, even to cover a rise in the cost of what they need to produce what they are selling. They, like all other sellers, can only charge ‘what the market will bear’. And, as Khan and the economists she quotes note, the current state of the labour market will not allow an increase:

‘Rising prices, combined with a weakening job market — where unemployment has risen to 5 per cent — means workers are losing their bargaining power to demand pay rises, economists said.’

One of the economists, Josie Anderson of the financial services group Namura, used the term ‘soft labour market’. This doesn’t mean what you might expect — surely, the current labour market is a ‘hard’ one as far as workers are concerned? — until you realise she was writing from the employers’ point of view as buyers of labour power. An AI definition of the term (cobbled together from other definitions) makes this clear:

‘A soft labor market (also called a “cooling” or “loose” labour market) is an economic environment where the supply of available workers outpaces the demand for labour. In this climate, hiring slows down, job seekers face stiffer competition, and employers regain negotiating leverage.’

Whether or by how much real pay goes up or down is a question of the respective bargaining strength of employers and workers, which in turn depends on the state of the labour market, but that is not something we are usually told by the media. Normally the story is of greedy workers causing inflation by forcing employers to agree to excessive wage demands.

Sometimes workers are in a favourable bargaining position and can maintain or push up real pay: when business is booming, finding a job is easy, and employers are making good profits; this ‘hard’ labour market for employers gives workers some ‘negotiating leverage’. That is the time to strike or threaten to strike. But the reverse of this is a ‘soft’ labour market for employers; it is they who are then in a stronger bargaining position, as at present and, according to one of the economists, for the fourth time ‘in less than two decades’.

We are talking here just about changes in bargaining leverage over the shortish-time price of labour power. Ultimately, over wages, the capitalist class have the upper hand as they monopolise productive resources. This gives them leverage to force workers to sell their labour-power for a wage in the first place. There is no bargaining about this; it’s just a fact of capitalist life that is imposed on workers. The way out for them is political not economic: to take political action to make the means of life commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole community. Then there will be no labour market and no wages system.

Letter: Workers and wages (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers and wages

In the January issue of the Socialist Standard appeared an advertisement for a meeting at the Roebuck pub on "Marx and the Abolition of the Wages System”. When I saw it I was eager to go along and hear what was to be said. But instantly I was deterred. Not because as is the usual case where visitors are sneered upon and used as chopping blocks, but just simply the title of that meeting.

The title is a 100 per cent. give-away. What one should be concerned is what does one do now, once they have a Marxist understanding of economics. If we say to ourselves:—I am a worker. I’ve been told by the SPGB that the wages system denies me the full fruits of my labour (sorry! labour-power!). So what shall I do? Pack up my job, rob banks, start up a stall in Portobello market, go burgling, start militant trade union activity. What? What?

The most vital point and question is “What do I do with my Socialist understanding of economics in relation to my economic struggle now? How can I use such knowledge? But will actions following from the same make a gap between me and my fellow Socialists?" These sort of aspects could be described for the want of a better word as psychological (Marx and Engels made use of the word).

While on the question of the wages system, what is the attitude of Socialists to the wage-price mechanism, where if the cost of living goes up 10 per cent then instantly wages go up 10 per cent, either above the trade union rate or the non-trade union rate, without cutting down the numbers of the work force? If the employer (capitalist) decides or has to put his price of goods up, surely he will think twice as he would immediately have to increase the rate of wages; this he wants to avoid. Surely this would greatly narrow the gap between price of consumer goods and rate of wages? Remember one must deal with things comparatively as well as relatively and fundamentally.

D. Brooks

London W9.

Reply:

A pity you did not attend that meeting. Apart from discovering that visitors are not “sneered upon and used as chopping blocks” (we want to make members, not drive them away), you would have heard your first question answered.

It does happen that workers half-grasp that they are exploited and react in the ways you mention: “dropping out”, attempting crime, engaging in futile militancy. As individuals there is nothing workers can do to escape from the wages system and exploitation. If there were, the working-class problem would obviously not exist. But full understanding of it opens the way to the only effective activity, participation in the conscious movement to get rid of capitalism. There is then no gap between you and others of like mind—on the contrary, a strong bond is found; and from the psychological viewpoint you mention there is great personal satisfaction in working for the only worthwhile cause.

Your second question, if we have understood it correctly, is on the following lines. Capitalist A raises his prices, causing the workers employed by capitalists B, C and D to apply for wage increases which contribute to higher costs for their employers’ products, hence higher prices; and capitalist A’s workers in turn making wage demands . . . surely, you ask, it would be better if a kept his prices down to start with?

This might have some validity if capitalists thought in such a comprehensive fashion. They do not because they cannot—each has to pursue his, or his company’s interests and let the others look after their own. Moreover, each proprietor of the means of production and distribution wants the others’ workers to have money. They are his customers; it is only his own workers whose wages he wants to keep down. Marx remarked on the idea of thrift in this light:

Incidentally . . . each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own, because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world of workers, for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all ‘pious’ speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter etc.

(Grundrisse, p. 287)

By the way, you are mistaken in saying that a ten per cent. rise in the cost of living is instantly followed by 10 per cent. wage increases. At the present time, prices are rising at 15-20 per cent a year while wages are restricted to about half that figure.

Editors.

Finance & Industry: If only prices would come down! (1961)

The Finance and Industry Column from the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

If only prices would come down! 

A woman reader of the Evening News (28/11/60) wrote referring to the old saying that what goes up must come down, and asked if this applies to the cost of living; “if so I haven’t noticed it”.

About 99 per cent. of the population would say, if asked, that they “want prices to come down”. They don’t really mean this. What they mean is that it would be very nice if the prices of the things they buy went down and the price of the thing they sell went up. The worker would like to sell his mental and physical energies to his employer at a higher price (a higher wage) and at the same time get more for each pound he spends, through lower prices in the shop. And manufacturers who sell industrial products would like to see those prices go up and all other prices (including wages) go down.

One exception to this general attitude is the common practice of trade unions of associating themselves with their employers in approving higher prices. Thus the railway unions approve higher fares and the coal miners higher prices for coal.

But coming back to the question in the Evening News, would workers be better off if prices were lower? France a few months ago and Russia this month gave one kind of answer to the question, the answer being that it did not make any difference. What happened was that France cut the face value of her currency by 100, and the Russians cut their rouble by 10. At the same time all prices, wages, fares, etc., were cut in the same proportion, so everyone was in just the same position as before.

But on some occasions prices have not been reduced by this kind of government action but have fallen under the influence of trading conditions. Did the workers gain then?

It happened in 1920-1922. Between November 1920 and December 1922 prices fell on average of 35 per cent.; like being able to buy for 13/- some article which had cost 20/-.

But in the same period wage rates fell on average by the same percentage (or perhaps a little more). So the worker who could buy articles at lower prices had fewer shillings in his wage packet to buy the articles with.

It was a time when unemployment was heavy and conditions were particularly unfavourable for trade union resistance to wage cuts.

New Russian Rouble

The declaration of the Russian government that as from 1 January 1961 the official rate of exchange of the rouble will be 2.52 to the £ which will make it of higher value than the dollar and equal to about 8/-, will not mean much in practice since (unlike the dollar) it is not tied to gold and is not freely convertible into pounds or dollars. Commentators in the newspapers mostly take the line that the aim of the Russian government is prestige, the satisfaction of having at least a nominal exchange rate greater than that of the dollar. In addition however there is already the long term purpose of making the rouble eventually a gold backed world currency acceptable in inter-national trade as the pound and dollar have been.

The Daily Worker (17/11/60) anticipates that “the new exchange rates and the change in the gold content of the rouble herald the opening up of peaceful competition between the rouble and the dollar”, and “It may not be long before the rouble begins to challenge the dollar for primacy in world trade”.

There was a time when even the Daily Worker would have recognised that the trade war between capitalist states is anything but “peaceful competition “.

Rouble Millionaires

The Daily Telegraph (6/12/60) tells of a Russian woman who got into the ranks of the rouble millionaires by a piece of private enterprise that landed her in jail for three years. She ran an organisation, complete with a lawyer as secretary, a “scientific consultant”, an accountant, and a network of agents selling cure-all herbs at 45/- a packet. When arrested she had 700,000 roubles (worth about £60,000 at the old rate of exchange) and had just bought a country house for 300,000 roubles. “Her daily earnings would sometimes amount to 5,000 roubles, or eight times a worker’s monthly wage”.

The Economic Horizon

A year ago most of the political and economic forecasters were happy about the boom time ahead and still confident that if anything went wrong the government could fairly easily take the steps that would put the economy back on expansion. Now they are not so sure. The fact that they are all asking the question is itself a pointer to growing uneasiness, made greater by the foreseeable but generally not foreseen collapse of motor exports.

Now it is accepted that America and Canada are likely to have unemployment greater than in any year since the end of the war and there is the natural fear that British export trade may fall further and the jobless increase in number.

Gone is the post-war optimism based on the belief that they could always dip into the Keynesian remedies and keep everything under control. One of the current activities is the setting up of export councils to boost the sale of British goods in overseas markets, including the Export Council for Europe set up by the Federation of British Industries and manned by “some of the most prominent men in British industry and commerce ” (Financial Times, 11/11/60).

But before anyone accepts that the export problems of British capitalism can readily be solved by pushing into other markets (and thereby crowding out some other would-be sellers) it has to be remembered that other sections of the capitalist class would have had the same idea. Canada has appointed a “super salesman” to head its export drive, in the person of a new Minister of Trade and Commerce, and the American government is trying to boost their exports. Sweden, too, is aiming to solve its problems by more exports, and their eyes are fixed on the market for their goods in Britain. And to add to the troubles of all of them Russian exports are finding their way into many of the world’s competitive markets.

Paul Bareau, the new economic editor of the Daily Mail (25/11/60) argues that the present troubles in this country are due to “the excessive optimism and rashness of the years 1958 and 1959. Restrictions on hire purchase should never have been completely removed. This freedom was abused and we are now paying the price”.

So you take your choice between those who say that there is no need to worry because the government can always take action to put things right, and those who say, like Mr. Bareau, that the government did take steps but they were the wrong ones and had the effect of making things worse.

However, Mr. Bareau is cautiously hopeful. “The coming year will provide plenty of problems; but they will not be the problems of a great slump”.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Passing Show: A sad, sad story (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sad, sad story

A week or two ago a four-page leaflet fell out of a laundry parcel. I read it later the same day in snatches, between mouthfuls of food at lunch time. It was a lament — in black, white and brown printing—by a group of launderers and dry cleaners, over the new taxes and other hardships they are having to bear under the present government. Did you know, for example, that the Selective Employment Tax will add another £7 million a year to the launderers' labour costs?

But the amusing note is struck in a paragraph on the prices “standstill”. The launderers have found a loophole (one of many) which allows them ‘‘some latitude" because their costs are affected by government action. "So you can see," they wail, ‘‘that our dilemma lies in balancing co-operation against financial suicide." A neat turn of phrase, coined to sugar the pill, because the local laundry has now slapped on a surcharge of a penny in the shilling.

Can you imagine yourself approaching your employer right now for a wage increase, and using the same sort of talk? Try moaning to him about balancing this against that, and see how far you get. He'll probably look at you as if you’ve gone mad, murmur something about the pay freeze, and bring the interview very effectively to a close. No good telling him you’re going to make a surcharge. He just won’t pay it to you. and that’s that. Your position is radically different from that of the launderers or any other capitalists. You have only your labour power to sell, and the government is determined that you are not going to get a pay rise for at least six months, but as far as price control in general is concerned the whole thing is just a very bad joke.

We have dealt with this situation elsewhere, so perhaps just one last thought is all that is necessary here. Were you one of those simple folk who believed what this and other governments have told you about being much better off if only you’d curb your wage demands? By that logic, then, you should be a lot better off by next spring. Perhaps you don’t believe it any more? No, and neither does the government.

Korea—some of the story

General MacArthur was sacked from his command because, among other things, he was pressing for the Korean war to be carried into China and for atom bombs to be used there. There was a sigh of relief from left-wingers when he went, and perhaps a murmur or two of applause for President Truman’s action.

Not long after that, Eisenhower became U.S. President and from his recent television talk (September 18) it seems that pressures to extend the “police action” did not all originate from MacArthur. In fact Eisenhower wielded the atom bomb as a strong diplomatic weapon in his armistice talks with the North Koreans and let them and the Chinese know that America was ready to use it if negotiations were protracted much longer.

It is only now, when the truth begins to trickle out in very small quantities, that people can begin to guess how perilously close to the brink of another big shooting war the capitalist world was drifting in the early .1950s. War is not fought to Queensbury rules; practically anything goes if one side or the other thinks it can get away with it. And nuclear weapons must have been a sore temptation to the U.S. authorities, whatever President Truman may have thought. 

The television interview was in the first of a series of programmes called The Struggle For Peace—surely a gigantic misnomer. Accordingly Eisenhower, the American forces alone sustained 135,000 casualties. Some “police action”; some “peace”.

The naked truth

You can be alternately bored and amused for an hour or two if you go and see one of the rather corny nudist films on in London's West End just now. 1 saw one called World Without Shame, and its plot, if such it can be called, is heavily laden with the delightfully naive message that if only we’d all take our clothes off, spend most of the day sunning ourselves and generally “get back to nature,” the problems of the world would be solved.

The story starts with a young man winning about £26,000 on the pools. He and his wife chuck up their jobs in London and go to live with a few chosen friends on a quiet Mediterranean island. “We’ll get away for good from the rat race. We’ll be completely self-supporting,” enthuses our young man, fingering the pools cheque in his pocket. So off they go. There is even the political hint in another of his reasons when he talks of “some maniac pressing the H Bomb button and blowing us all to hell.” Someone ought to have reminded the producers that the Mediterranean would hardly go unscathed in such an event.

Never mind. They settle on the island in their birthday suits, dividing their time between sleeping, eating, some work and a great deal of sunbathing. The sun always shines—someone seems to have forgotten that the weather can often be cold and wet even in those parts—and presumably we are to believe they all live happily ever after. The scenery is .beautiful, the direction and acting embarrassingly poor (you often find yourself laughing in the wrong places), and the pathetic naivete of the whole proposition glaringly apparent.

We have never thought much of the idea that you can buy yourself out of the rat race, although a few thousand pounds can of course make things a lot easier for you. But the effects of the scramble are all around you, and the notion of an oasis of self-sufficiency in a desert of capitalism is a non-starter. Even the film has to concede this in part when one of the characters, a painter, runs out of canvas, and gets fresh supplies by sailing to the mainland and selling some of his pictures.

Gaspers

“The new strategy demands a great increase in fertilizer production, which can only be achieved if foreign capital can be induced to invest heavily and quickly." (The Times correspondent on Indian food production, 19.9.66).

Dr. Seretse Khama, who was exiled from his homeland by the last Labour government after his marriage to a white woman, was yesterday created a Knight Commander of the British Empire.” (Guardian, 21.9.66).

“This is our socialism: assertion of social responsibility for our economic welfare and for the welfare of the individual family." (Harold Wilson Purpose in Power, quoted in Nova magazine interview, Sept., 1966).

“The Prime Minister, I understand, has no intention of involving himself in doctrinal arguments about the true meaning of socialism which he believes has done enough harm to the party already. (Nora Beloff in The Observer, 2.10.66).

“Sir Isaac Wolfson reports that because of the freeze, dividends which could have been 36½ per cent will be held at 32½ per cent, the same as last year.” (Daily Express, 11.10.66).

There is nothing in Mr. Wilson’s present policy which a Tory Prime Minister, faced by a comparable crisis, would necessarily reject. (Peregrine Worsthorne—Conservatism Today).

Eddie Critchfield

The Class Struggle in Poland (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of June, following the announcement of huge increases in food prices, strikes and riots broke out in many Polish towns. The government subsequently altered its proposals. At the end of 1970 strikes and riots were started by the dockers and shipyard workers of Gdansk (Danzig), in which the police shot down and killed at least six workers. The 1970 strikes led to a change in the leadership of the “Communist” Party with Gierek, the present Party leader, replacing Gomulka (who had himself come to power following strikes and riots in Poznan in 1956 in which 38 workers were murdered by the police).

The Polish working class like workers the world over, has had to resist attempts by their capitalist rulers to reduce their living standards. If the protest has taken the form of rioting and looting, as well as going on strike, it is partly because there are no independent trade unions in Poland: though no doubt there are political axe-grinders urging workers that this is what they should do. The organizations calling themselves “trade unions” are merely government agencies for disciplining workers and getting them to work harder.

The strikes in Poland show clearly that, even in state-capitalist countries ruled by a dictatorial “Communist” party, the class struggle of the working class against their exploiters cannot be suppressed. It is a myth that the exploitation of the working class has been abolished and Socialism established in Poland, as claimed by the government. The workers of Poland are exploited by the privileged minority who, through their dictatorial control of the State machine, monopolize the use of the means of production just as much as the private capitalists of the West.

An increase in food prices without a compensating increase in wages means of course a cut in living standards; it was to object to the size of the cut that the Polish workers went on strike. For the present the government has postponed its plans, but it has no choice in this matter because the world crisis has led to Poland developing a serious trade deficit. Exports have fallen and import prices risen, so squeezing the profits of the country’s state-capitalist enterprises, the source of income both for capital accumulation and the privileged consumption of the Polish ruling class. As The Times (26th June) put it:

The increases had become an economic necessity. Since 1970, real wages have risen by about 7 per cent a year while food prices have been artificially frozen. At the same time, world inflation has been pressing in on Poland. Government subsidies for protecting the consumer have reached enormous proportions and became a particularly heavy burden because Poland needs desperately to pay off its heavy foreign debts.

So working-class living standards are to be reduced in order to pay off the debts of the Polish state capitalist ruling class! A familiar story and a proof that the establishment of state capitalism with a State monopoly of foreign trade, in place of private capitalism does nothing to free a country from the pressures of capitalism on the working class. A further proof that there is no national solution to working-class problems.

Our message to the workers of Poland is to urge them to recognize this and, while doing what they can and must to maintain their living standards, to join with their fellow workers in other countries with a view to replacing world capitalism, in both its private and State forms, by world socialism. 

Adam Buick

Prices in the news (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the principle that only the rare and unexpected happening is “news”, and as prices have been going up for about twenty years it is at first sight surprising that newspapers still give so much space to reports of higher prices. Maybe the editors and reporters constantly hear politicians promises that there will be no more rising prices, and each time a promise is broken they are so shocked that they feel impelled to tell their readers about it. But this, if true, would only show how unobservant newspaper men are, because broken promises are even more common and less noteworthy than jumps of prices. But the latter are common enough.

The International Labour Office publishes each month in the International Labour Review a record of price movements in about ninety places in different part of the world and the.overwhelming majority of them show prices moving upwards.

In this country the average retail price level is nearly a fifth higher than it was six years ago and in the group covering rent, rates, house repairs, etc. the increase is over 40 per cent.

Among the recent price increases have been the jump in the prices of meat and potatoes, both attributed to temporary shortages. Meat prices were reported to have gone up by 10% to 20%, while potatoes now cost more than twice as much as a year ago.

Naturally the indignation reached Westminster and came into the fight at by-elections. At West Lothian the Communist candidate Mr. G. McLennan spoke about it.

If the boss cuts your wages by several shillings a week you would immediately reach for your jackets, but the Tories have brought about a real cut in wages through price increases. (D. Worker 7.6.62.)

According to the Daily Worker reporter who listened to this speech, “Gordon McLennan had a good reception when he criticised the steep raise in the prices of potatoes, other vegetables, meat and butter No-one can object to the logic of the statement that when prices go up, and until the workers can win a compensating wage increase, their wage will buy less, just as it would if the wage itself were reduced.

But the same logic seems to have escaped the Daily Worker in its editorial comment on the 30 per cent increase of meat prices in Russia and 25 per cent increase for butter. Instead of sympathising with the Russian workers and denouncing the Russian Government for copying the Tories the editor (2 June. 1962) found himself sympathising with the Russian Government for having to make the “difficult” decision to put up prices rather than spend less on armaments. The editor called it a “temporary" sacrifice on the part of the town workers and described it as being “a redistribution of income among the working people, by which those in the countryside will benefit while those in the towns will temporarily make sacrifices".

This would sound reasonable if Russia were a country in which equality of income prevailed with everyone on approximately the same standard; but that is not a fact, only the promise made and broken by Lenin, and conveniently forgotten by his successors.

On the contrary, Russia is a country of extreme inequality and, unless the situation has changed in recent years, among the comparatively rich are collective farmers and traders, who stand to benefit from the higher prices.

In any event the increase of meat anJ butter prices in the towns means a very different thing for the Moscow men and women street sweepers on a wage of about £12 a month, and the Russian “space and atomic scientists . . . bringing home wage packets of more than £20,000 a year” (John Mossman, D. Mail Moscow corespondent, 5 June, 1962.)

If you want to know whether there is any hope that prices, after climbing up for 20 years will climb down again, the answer is that it could happen, but for the workers it will not produce any benefit. Prices were falling for about 15 years from 1920 to 1935 and the workers were just as badly off as now and curiously the economists and businessmen and politicians were then hoping and praying that world prices would rise again particularly for foodstuffs, so that the world’s farming populations would be able to buy more British factory products and make industry busy again.

The world is still full of economists and politicians who say that a price system is a necessity as well as a convenience of twentieth century society, but who in practice are always complaining about the way the price system works; demanding that it be interfered with, either by government action to hold prices down or by government subsidies to increase the price paid to the manufacturer or farmer.

Unlike the non-socialist parties, all of which have their particular proposals for interfering with the way the price system works, we as socialists have no proposals to make except that the price system should be abolished along with capitalism for which it is a necessity.

The theory behind movements of prices is that if left to find their own level in the market a shortage of supply will send up the price and encourage the production of additional supplies to make good the shortage. Conversely an over-supply by depressing the price, will drive some suppliers out of business and make the price a profitable one again.

Socialism, with production carried on solely for use, without sale or price or wage or profit, will have no need for mechanism to adjust production to consumption in a reasonable fashion through the market. Meeting need will be the measure to which the volume of production will be directed, not with the idea of constantly adjusting supplies up and down to market demands (as happens under capitalism) but aiming always to have a sufficient margin of surplus and capacity to meet changes of consumption.

Edgar Hardcastle