The Questions They Ask (1978)

From the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Questioner: Mr. Speaker, would you please explain ‘Surplus Value’?

Speaker: Surplus Value is unpaid labour. It is work the worker NEVER gets paid for. How can that be? Quite simply. Workers today produce much more value than is required to maintain themselves and family. Let’s say a person works 40 hours a week, 5 days — 8 hours a day. Right. Now, 4 of those hours are the value of their wages, 4 of them go straight to the capitalist, as the sole source of profit. This has all been worked out in typical, rather long-winded German professorial fashion by Marx ("Capital” page 216; Kerr edition), using actual figures of the accounts of the cotton mill managed by his friend Engels. (And he should have known, being a successful mill manager on a salary and 10% of the profits), Marx therefore divided the day into “Necessary” and ‘Surplus” Labour. Necessary — for the worker, “Surplus” — for the Company.

Some people think that Surplus Value is the same as Profit, including some ignorant Trade Union leaders. It is NOT — Surplus Value is the ration of unpaid to paid labour — 4 to 4, or 5 to 3 hours, etc. Profit is what the firm has left, after paying everything: wages, rent, raw materials, taxes, and so on. So what with the investment of £100, Surplus Value could be 100%, i.e. 50 to 50, but profit only 10% — 90 to 10.

Next question . . .

Horatio

The Questions They Ask . . . (1978)

From the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Speaker: Your party has an Executive Committee—right? And yet you say you are opposed to following leaders! Aren’t the EC the leaders of your party then?

Answer: No! The EC of the Socialist Party are not leaders. They could not lead the members if they wanted to (which they don’t) because Socialists do not need somebody to tell them what they should do.

Implicit in membership of the SPGB is an understanding of Socialist principles. In fact, membership is conditional upon this. Therefore the members have the knowledge which enables them to make their own minds up for themselves. It is a fact that the rules of the party are so framed as to guarantee that the members control the EC. First, the EC is elected annually by individual ballot. Each candidate is nominated by a Branch of the party.

Then, the EC is bound by rule to carry out the decisions of Annual Conference. In addition, any six Branches can demand a party poll on any question they deem to be of sufficient importance. Or, if they prefer, they can demand the calling of a general members’ meeting. And perhaps most important of all, every meeting of every committee of the party is open to all members—and indeed to all members of the public. Our door is always open for those who wish to know what’s going on. This, is the guarantee that no group or caucus can seize control of the party.

Contrast this with the intrigues, backstairs frame-ups and underhand double-dealing which are the stock-in-trade of all the other parties. The sort of carve-ups revealed in the Crossman Diaries, the manoeuvring for jobs in the Labour and Communist Parties, for example. All this can only flourish with an ignorant membership. The membership of the SPGB is small—because so far there are not many socialists.

The Questions They Ask . . . (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Mr. Speaker: What is the difference between capitalist economics and socialist economics?”

Speaker: (Thinks! What a smashing question!)

Answer: - The difference is the Labour Theory of Value. This law of capitalism, discovered by Marx, explains the operation of capitalist production and the exploitation of the worker.

The Labour Theory of Value states that the value of commodities is fixed by the amount of labour they contain. But not any old labour. “Socially necessary” labour, the labour required by society to produce an article. The determination of Value by the labour in an article was well known to the famous classical economists before Marx: William Petty, David Ricardo, Adam Smith and Ben Franklin the American; whom Marx quotes approvingly in Volume I of Capital (page 59, Kerr edition). "The value of all things . . . is most justly measured by labour"

The difficulty they found themselves in was this

1. Value is determined by labour.
2. What then determines the value of the labour?

They then went round in circles until Karl Marx cut the Gordian Knot by proving that Labour Power, as a commodity, is also subject to the Labour Theory of Value—that is, the amount of labour to produce and maintain a Labourer. Since those days capitalist "economics” have become a joke; starting with Marshall’s absurd "Marginal Utility” and finishing with J. M. Keynes’ disastrous inflation theories. Meantime the colleges teem with pompous wise-acres solemnly expatiating on "status” and "honours”, "power and conflict”, “blue-collar and white-collar workers” “the reward hierarchy” and associated trivialities.

Once you reject the Labour Theory of Value, you become an apologist—for capitalism.

The Labour Theory of Value also explains why, after 50 years of reformist legislation, Labour Parties have had no effect whatever. While they are trying to tart up capitalism with a few spraying jobs, an endless stream of profits pours into the laps of the capitalists, behind their backs.

A clear grasp of the Labour Theory of Value is a MUST for a scientific Socialist.

It is Socialist Economics!

Next question.

Horatio.

The Questions They Ask . . . (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Speaker: I don't like "Common Ownership". I want to drive my own car, where I like; I want to live in my own house, and decorate it as I like; I want to dig my own garden and not somebody else's. Won't Socialism stop me doing this?

Answer: No! It will not. Socialism is the common ownership of the means of production; this means the vast modern production complexes, which have to be worked co-operatively, established in fact by capitalism.

Does our questioner want to operate his own North Sea oil rig, or steel mill, or chemical plant. railway or airport? He cannot do this NOW, under capitalism, neither he in socialism. Neither can he drive his own car "where he likes', but only according to the Highway Code which is what society likes. If he ignores red lights, or goes to France and drives on the left, he will get killed or arrested.

Exactly what form transport or housing takes will be decided by socialist society, but we seen no reason, so far, why anybody wishing to design, construct and enjoy his own articles of consumption should not do so.

Socialism is not common ownership of consumption, which is individual—but production, which is social. Next question.

Horatio