Go to work on an egg (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard as it is to believe, there is actually such a thing as a Code of
Advertising Practice. Although it purports to lay down guidelines as
 to the content of adverts and the way they should be presented, of
course, it is universally ignored in the great scramble for market
 share and dominance

Advertising is one of the few industries that has done well out of the recession. In 1994 British companies spent £10 billion on advertisements, compared to a figure of under £6 billion for 1987. To illustrate the extent of this expenditure, consider the fact that Beecham’s spend more on advertising and promotion for Ribena than on the blackcurrants from which it is made. And Procter & Gamble, the biggest advertisers, spent over £5 billion worldwide on marketing in 1995. Not a penny of all these vast sums serves any socially useful purpose. Rather, the thousands of ads we are all subjected to each day are designed to maintain and improve profits.

It might be argued that advertisements exist primarily to inform consumers of new products and give them worthwhile information. However, the overwhelming majority of ads are on behalf of established product lines, and are intended as a reminder to existing customers to keep on buying and not to switch brands. The companies which spend most on advertising in Britain are Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Kellogg’s and Mars, all of whom occupy leading positions in the market for food and various household items. Cornflakes, to take one example, are promoted not because there is anything new to say about them (apart from trying to persuade us to eat them at times other than breakfast), but because “brand loyalty” needs to be kept up.

One of the main aims of such high advertising expenditure on leading brands is that it makes it prohibitively expensive for competitors to enter the market with a rival product. As a consequence, many brand leaders have been around for decades, Kellogg’s Crunchie dates from 1929, and Fruit Gums from 1893—an interesting sidelight on capitalism’s supposed emphasis on innovation. It is partly because of the high advertising costs associated with product launches that over 90 percent of new products are failures. New lines, it should be said, are rarely started in order to meet unsatisfied consumer needs, but for reasons of competition, to do down another company and prevent them establishing too much command of a market:

“The multiple-brand advertisers launch products because of competition and market conditions, not because consumers ’ needs are not being satisfied. . . . Marketers in most major product sectors have their eye more firmly on what the consumers are doing ’’(Sean Brierley: The Advertising Handbook).

Many companies operate in what are known as saturated markets: for instance, it is difficult to increase the total amount of soap that people buy, so all that advertising can do to increase sales is to influence people to switch brands. Small wonder that writers on marketing speak of competition between companies in terms of warfare. The ratio of advertising to sales differs enormously from brand to brand, the highest ratios being for indigestion remedies, double glazing and toys. Advertisements aimed at children are especially traumatic for parents, who may have to try to explain why the longed-for toy is simply beyond their means.

It is a truism among advertising gurus that consumer behaviour is irrational, that people stick to buying a particular brand even if they cannot identify it in “blind” tests, or that their buying habits can change for trivial reasons. In fact, such behaviour simply reflects the fact that so many of the competing products are virtually indistinguishable, that the fabled choice created by capitalism is a myth. It is to tap such supposed irrationality and consumers’ alleged underlying motivations that so many advertisement trade on images, rather than any actual properties of what is being advertised. Think for instance, of the ads for Marlboro cigarettes: the scenes of “Marlboro country”, with its open spaces and dramatic vistas, never mention the cigarettes themselves. The Gold Blend coffee ads suggest a lifestyle for those who drink the stuff, and are successful in promoting media interest in their “plot” line, which means even more free publicity for the coffee. Current TV ads for Barclays and Toyota poke fun at the poor and elderly in a particularly cynical way. The fantasy world depicted in advertisements is a long way from the sordid realities of everyday life under capitalism.

Advertising agencies develop sophisticated techniques of influencing consumer behaviour, though they are forced to admit that it is impossible to predict just how people will react to particular campaigns, and that advertising on its own can have comparatively little effect. Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (first published in 1957) gives an informative account of motivation research, one particular approach to influencing purchasers. Things have become more complex since then, and advertisers go to a lot of trouble to ensure that an ad does not put off some customers while attracting others. Sex is of course a popular basis for adverts, especially for holiday companies (witness Club 18-30’s suggestive ads for “package holidays”), but, like all advertising motifs, it needs to be used with care.

An outstanding recent example of the nonsense of advertising and its hype is provided by the launch of a new can for Pepsi-Cola. The drink itself is unchanged, but $500 million is being spent on a campaign centred on a new colour for the can! Blue is designed to distinguish Pepsi from the brand leader, Coca-Cola, and from supermarkets’ own-brand colas, which have begun to chip away at the Pepsi/Coke duopoly. However, the aim is again to stimulate wider press coverage in addition to the paid-for advertising: in words of one Pepsi executive, “The cola wars are good for the business, they keep up interest in the product.” The biggest example of manipulation surrounding a product launch must go to Windows 95, the “new” computer operating system from Microsoft which was launched to a fanfare of media excitement and technical scorn last year.

According to the Code of Advertising Practice, ads should be “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. But a really honest ad might say something along the following lines: “This product is fifth-rate, it’ll fall apart after a month or two, it’s minimally different from a dozen other products on the market, and to get you to buy it we’ll try to convince you that people who use it are attractive, popular and successful.” Next time you are confronted with an advertisement, just think about the lies, hypocrisy and waste that lie behind it.

Paul Bennett

Blogger's Note:

Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders was reviewed in the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard.

The Bogey of the Taxes. (1950)

From the November 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the first issue* of the Socialist Standard (September, 1904) an article was published under the above title. It explained a view on taxes and rates that has been consistently held by the S.P.G.B. It showed that taxation is not a question with which the working class should concern themselves. Owing to the greater degree to which prices are now government-controlled, and owing to the general rise in the amount of taxation, it may seem on a superficial view that it is absurd in these days to say that rates and taxes are not a burden on the working class; but the S.P.G.B. view, though it shocked the reformist parties nearly half a century ago, is still the only sound one.

The Appearance of Things

At first glance it seems so obvious to workers that they suffer from high taxation and would benefit if it were to be reduced, that they do not believe that there can seriously be a contrary view. They see that they pay a high price for cigarettes because of the succeeding increases of the duty levied on them; that they pay more for articles on which there is purchase tax; and that some of them pay income tax.

What is more they know how large the amount of tax or duty is on some articles. Cigarettes in 1914 were sold at 4d. or 5d. for a packet of 20. In 1939 the price had gone up to 1/2 and is now 3/6, of which duty accounts for 2/9½, and as the cost of tobacco imported from America has increased as a result of the devaluation of the pound in September, 1949, the price may rise still more—though it should be noticed here that that will not be due to an increase of tobacco duty but to an increase of import prices.

As regards income tax, official figures show that in 1947-48 the total wages of 20 million workers amounted to £5,907 millions, and £455,400,000 of this was deducted as Income Tax (91st Report of Inland Revenue. Page 33). This means that on an average about 1/6 out of every 20/- of wages and salaries is deducted as Income Tax. Many workers pay no income tax; either because their wages are below the limit where income tax begins, or because they are exempt from tax through the reliefs allowed for wife and children. An unmarried worker earning £6 a week pays about 11/- a week tax. On the same pay a married man without children pays about 4/6d. a week, and if he has one child he pays about 6d. a week. With two children he pays no tax and he also receives 5/- a week as State allowance for the second child.

With these facts in mind it seems to be undeniable to most workers that if income tax and purchase tax and the duties on beer and cigarettes were to be reduced they would be better off.

But again we say that that is only the appearance of things. The reason for this will be explained later, but before coming to the explanation there are some further factors to be examined.

Some Additions and Subtractions

Any member of the Labour Government, asked about taxation, will reply by pointing to what he will call the other side of the picture. He will show that the government spends over £400 million a year of the money raised by taxation in subsidising various foodstuffs so that they can be sold at prices lower than if there were no subsidies. The Government also spends about £60 million a year on childrens’ allowances, and contributes £450 million to the health service, old age pensions, insurance benefits, etc., including £47 millions on public assistance. The defender of the Labour Government will argue that this is all of benefit to the workers.

The Labour Party has no comprehensive theory to explain what determines the amount of wages the workers receive though at present the view propagated by the Labour leaders is that higher wages can only come through harder work and increased production. Their argument about subsidies and taxes goes on the following lines. They say that if we assume wages to remain at about the present level then subsidies are good because they permit the workers to get more for the money they spend; and if income tax were to be reduced the workers would also have more of their wages to take home and could spend more. We do not accept the Labour Party view about wages but let us assume merely for the sake of argument that their view is correct. As soon as we do so we notice that there is a snag in it even from their standpoint.

If we are asked to believe that the workers are better off because the government spends £400 millions a year on subsidies to keep food prices down then we must set against it the fact that the government is now collecting through the increase of duties on beef £200 million a year more than was raised in that way before the war; while the increased duties on tobacco and cigarettes produce for the government £520 millions a year more than before the war. A large part of this is collected on the beer and cigarettes bought by the workers.

If the workers receive as childrens’ allowances £60 million a year and the government contributes £450 million to the social services there has to be set against this the £455 million income tax deducted from wages and salaries. (The workers also pay national insurance contributions, but taking one year with another these are returned as benefits).

On the face of it we see that the payments to the workers and the deductions from wages as income tax, and the duties paid on beer and cigarettes, etc., more or less cancel each other out.

It might be thought from this that the government is going to a lot of trouble just for no purpose at all but there is more in it than meets the eye.

The deductions in the form of income tax and the duties on beer and tobacco mainly hit the unmarried workers who pay more income tax than do married men and are likely to be able to afford more beer and cigarettes. On the other hand it is only the married men with families who are affected by childrens’ allowances and it is they who are mostly affected by the food subsidies. What, therefore, the whole so-called “Welfare State ” achieves is a certain redistribution of wages among the workers themselves. Or to put it another way the discontent of the married men that would otherwise add weight to the demand for higher wages is to some extent lessened, thus making it easier for the government and the employers to gain acceptance for the policy of no wage increases.

We now come to the general question of wages and prices and to the socialist contention that taxation is not a working class question.

Wages and the Cost of living

The Marxist explanation of wages is that they are the price the workers receive for something they sell, that something being their power to labour, their physical and mental energies. It is sold by the hour, day, week or month and like other commodities sold under capitalism its value is determined by the amount of labour required to produce it; which means the cost of the food, clothing, shelter, etc., required to maintain the workers and their families.

Wage levels differ from one occupation to another largely because the cost of acquiring different kinds of knowledge training and skill differs. Wage levels are not necessarily at some bare physical minimum of subsistence. This is because custom plays a part. If, over a period of time, backed by trade union struggle, the workers become accustomed to additions to their standard of living (e.g. when workers become accustomed to spending on beer, cigarettes, cinemas; wireless sets and so on) they will make great efforts to resist being reduced again to a lower standard.

At times when unemployment is widespread the ability of the workers to struggle for higher wages or to resist a reduction of wages is much. lessened. At times when unemployment is small the ability of the workers to enforce wage demands is greater but, as recent experience has shown, government propaganda against wage increases has some effect in dissuading workers from using the opportunity.

Wages and the wage struggle are much influenced by changes of the prices of the articles that enter into the workers' cost of living. If the cost of living rises the workers must struggle for a corresponding rise of wages or else suffer a lowering of their standard of living.

Owing to this struggle, although wages and prices do not necessarily keep in line, experience shows that they do not usually get much out of line. The Labour Government supporters who say that workers are much better off because wages are higher than before the war, and the Tories who say the workers are much worse off because prices before the war were much lower, are both wrong. An estimate made by the Oxford Institute of Statistics (“Bulletin” July-August, 1950. Pages 244 and 245) showed that in the 10 years to May, 1949. wage rates had risen since before the war by 80 per cent. and working class cost of living by 79 per cent. Although it would not be claimed that precise estimates are possible it may be taken that these figures are at least approximately correct. During the past three years wages have risen less than the cost of living. The Ministry of Labour figures show wages as having risen since June, 1947, by 10 per cent. and the cost of living by 13 per cent.

Taxation and the Workers

Now we may ask what part taxes play in this struggle. First let us view it from the standpoint of wages. The short answer is that workers think in terms of the money they actually take home and can spend. Workers who resent having considerable amounts deducted as income tax are to that extent spurred on to demand higher wages as compensation, and under conditions that are favourable (e.g., comparatively little unemployment) past experience shows that a struggle on those lines may be more or less successful. An estimate covering the period 1939 to October, 1947 ("British Labour under Labour Government." published by the United States Department of Labour) showed that wage rates had increased just about enough to compensate for the increased cost of living, after allowing for the deduction of income tax from wages.

If we now look at the problem from the standpoint of prices we see that if prices rise because of purchase tax or duties on beer, cigarettes, etc., that is just like any other factor causing a rise of prices. The chief reason why the cost of living is about three times what it was 50 years ago is not because of purchase tax or duties. It is because the pound has been fixed at a relationship to gold which is about one-third what it was in 1900. The latest change in that direction was the devaluation of the pound in September, 1949. It has already had considerable effect in raising wholesale prices and we can expect that before long it will increase retail prices in the shops unless the Government decides to increase the amount of subsidies paid and thus manages to keep prices down.

By comparison with the enormous devaluation of the pound since 1900 the effect of purchase tax and the duties on beer and cigarettes are minor factors in causing the cost of living as a whole to rise.

But whatever may be the cause of a rise of the workers' cost of living they must struggle to secure at least compensating wage increases if they are to save themselves from becoming worse off.

We may now put the question would a reduction of taxes make the working class better off ? The answer is that the working class always have to struggle if they want to improve or even to maintain their standard of living.

If a reduction of purchase tax and duties was followed by a fall of the cost of living workers would be faced with intensified efforts from the employers to force down wages. The cost of living did fall heavily in the early nineteen-twenties and workers in most industries suffered wage reductions as great or nearly as great as the fall of the cost of living. A comparison with the years 1900—1914 really answers the question. At that time prices and taxes were very much lower than now but nobody seriously claims that the working class were better off because of that. Prices were lower and so were wages.

Rents and Rates

Just as some people isolate income tax or purchase tax or the beer and tobacco duties and argue that if only these were reduced the workers would be better off, so others isolate rent and rates and argue that if only these items were reduced it would raise the workers standard of living. As has already been pointed out all of the workers’ items of expenditure are part of his cost of living and no matter whether one item or all items are reduced in price the workers still have to struggle to prevent wages from falling with the fall of the cost of living. Two examples will illustrate the truth of this.

Rent restriction was introduced because, owing to the shortage of houses during the first world war, landlords were able to demand greatly increased rents. Rents were therefore controlled because otherwise there would have been what a government committee of inquiry called “grave unrest,” meaning that the workers would have come out on strike for higher wages. It will be noticed here that the rents did not go up mainly because of any increase of rates but simply because the demand for houses exceeded the supply. The advocates of rent control argued that control of rents improves the position of the workers because with low rents they have more money to spend on other things. Rent control has continued and the average proportion of wages spent on rent has fallen. Are the workers better off? Do they as a result of rent control feel that they have more money to spend on other things and need no longer worry about the cost of living? On the contrary the cost of living issue in relation to wages is as acute now as it always was. When the gas maintenance men came out on strike in September one of their representatives declared:—“Strikes are about to break out all over the country—quite rightly—because of the cost of living.” (Daily Mail, 4/10/50). The feelings of the gas workers on the cost of living are shared by workers generally.

Authenticated and more precise examples were reported on by the International Labour Office in a report published in 1925. (“The Workers Standard of Life in Countries with Depreciated Currencies.”) The report showed that in Vienna the proportion of wages spent on rent had been reduced through rent control from 20 per cent, in 1914 to barely 1 per cent, in 1923. But were they better off? The conclusion of the I.L.O. was as follows:—“Most of the workers were in the same position as in Germany; they had practically no liabilities under the heading of rent, but the corresponding amount was not included in their wages. The actual gain was thus nil.”

The people who gained were the employers (through wages being kept low) and the people who lost were the landlords. The Report continues: —“ Industry on the other hand, benefited, as in Germany, by the reduction in the cost of most labour by the full amount which rent represented in wages before the war.”

Taxes and Prices

The case has been argued on the assumption that purchase tax and duties may cause a corresponding increase of prices. Under post-war conditions, with government controls and price fixing and shortages of supply of many articles, this has usually happened. Under pre-war conditions when supplies were plentiful and competition between sellers was keen it sometimes did not happen. Sometimes when duties were increased the sellers, in their anxiety to capture a larger share of a restricted demand, either did not increase their prices or increased them by less than the increase of duties. Even now, as supplies of some articles have increased and stocks have piled up, sellers of some articles have sold at less than the maximum controlled price either as a continuous policy or periodically through sales at cut prices.

But again it is emphasised that whichever way it goes the workers are forced to struggle to keep wages in line with the cost of living and cannot hope automatically to improve their standard of living by any device for reducing prices, rates, taxes or duties.

On Whom do Taxes Fall?

The S.P.G.B. holds then that the question of high or low prices or taxes is not a working class question because what the working class live by is wages and they have to struggle to maintain wage levels whether prices and taxes are high or low and the principal factors in the struggle are, on the one side, the workers' cost of living, and on the other side the factors such as good or bad trade, much or little unemployment which help or hinder the trade unions in pressing wage claims.

If then taxation (and this includes rates as well) is not a working class problem whose problem is it? Taxation is the problem of the capitalist class. All of the wealth that the workers produce is the property of the employing class. When the employers have succeeded in selling the goods produced by the workers they employ, and after they have paid wages and met all other expenses of production, they still have to meet the demands of the local and central government for rates and taxes of various kinds. All of the employing class have an interest—as they continually show—in trying to reduce the cost of government. As far as is politically practicable and militarily safe they try to reduce the amount the government raises as taxation and spends on civil service, military service, prisons, police, etc., etc. If they succeed in getting taxation reduced it is in the hope of benefiting themselves; certainly not with the intention of passing on the benefit to the workers.

But beyond this the capitalists are much concerned with trying to place some of the burden of taxation on the shoulders of other sections of their own class. When the brewing interests try to get beer duties reduced (because they hope thereby to increase sales and profits) they do not at all mind if the government meets the situation by putting a corresponding increase of taxation on the capitalists in some other industry— the cinemas for example. But however the struggle between sections of the capitalists over taxation may turn out that is their problem and it involves no interest affecting the working class.

It is emphasised that the whole of the problem discussed here is viewed from the standpoint of the working class as a whole. It is not questioned that changes in taxation and price levels, etc., may affect individuals or groups in different ways. When prices fall some strongly placed groups of workers may, at least for a time, succeed in holding on to their former wage rates; and when prices rise some groups may be quite unable to secure corresponding wage increases. But these cases do not affect the general argument as it relates to the position of the working class under capitalism.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article Is to show that under capitalism the working class have got to persist in their endless struggle to maintain and improve their standard of living. There are no ways of escape inside capitalism from the position the working class occupy as an exploited class. Does this mean that there is no way out at all? By no means. There is a way out and the only way. As a wage-earning class under capitalism there is no future for the working class except a repetition of the struggles they have carried on throughout capitalism. The only way out is for the working class to cease to be a wage-earning class. They must abolish the wages system, abolish capitalism and establish Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

Despite it not being November, this article got a bump 'cos it's mentioned in the Editorial Committee's reply to this letter which appeared in the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard.

One point of correction, though. Jack Fitzgerald' article, 'The Bogey of the Taxes', which Edgar Hardcastle mentions in the opening paragraph of this article, actually appeared in the second issue of the Socialist Standard, not the first issue.

Tobacco smoking: the end of the road? (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tobacco has been known to us for quite a long time, cigarettes not nearly so long, but long enough for the smoking habit to be very well established by the time the Royal College of Physicians issued their report on lung cancer earlier this year. Although it is probably true to say that medicos have never been really happy about the effect of smoking on health, it is only in recent years that they have felt able to pin some of the blame on it at least for stomach irritation, chronic bronchitis, heart attacks, coronary thrombosis, and last but not least—lung cancer.

The Royal College’s report Smoking and Health, published last March launches a swinging attack on the smoking habit—cigarettes mainly—but it is not the first of its kind. In 1950, Professor Hill and Dr. Doll published results of their first investigation into the incidence of lung cancer in relation to men’s smoking habits. Then at the beginning of 1952 the American Cancer Society began a survey of nearly two hundred thousand men between the ages of fifty and seventy. Its grim findings were announced to the American Medical Association convention in 1954.

Tobacco shares fell at the news, but Alistair Cooke, writing in The Manchester Guardian at the time, was a little hasty when he assumed that it would “. . . induce profound melancholia or even penury in the American cigarette manufacturers.” Sales of tobacco have continued to rise since then, with cigarettes reaching an all time high in 1961. In that year also, there were 22,000 deaths from lung cancer in Great Britain alone.

In the twelve years since the Hill and Doll report there have been similar independent surveys conducted in at least eight countries. All have reached the same broad conclusions, so that the R.C.P. report this year only set the seal really on the impressive weight of evidence which has been building up in the meantime. It is difficult to say at this stage how seriously this latest report will be taken; there is still a very strong social habit to be taken into account. But that is not the whole story. It is really only the fag end.

The tobacco firms are rich and very well established. Some idea can be gained of the persistent money spinner that tobacco is, when it is realised that in this country alone last year £825 million went to the Government in revenue from this source. Almost exactly the cost of the National Health Service, as one noble Lord put it. Which gives us a glimpse of the dilemma facing our rulers—powerful tobacco interests and a huge tax income on the one hand and a rising lung cancer rate on the other.

Maybe they can take some solace from the fact that others before them have had to tread a similar path. Over the centuries since its discovery and the beginning of its use in England, tobacco has been violently attacked and just as stoutly defended, but its consumption has increased and with it the tax yield. Even James I, who campaigned vigorously against the weed in such works as A Counterblast to Tobacco (1604) was not slow to slap on an import duty of 6s. 8d. a pound the following year. Some say that James’ antagonism toward tobacco was really an expression of his hatred of Sir Walter Raleigh. Be that as it may, and whatever his original motives for imposing the tax, he was cute enough to realise its possibilities. By 1613, he had rescinded his earlier tax and in 1624 made tobacco a Royal Monopoly.

Nicotiana Tabacum — common tobacco — native of Central and South America, is now grown the world over and accounts for about three-quarters of all that is smoked. It was introduced into Europe about 1530. There is still some dispute over which of the colonists in the time of Hawkins and Drake brought the plant to England. What we can say is that smoking slowly took hold here between 1565 and 1590. Ironic that today it should come under such heavy medical fire, when in those days it was thought to have great curative powers and in many places took root because of this belief.

The first cigarettes known to be manufactured in England were by Robert Gloag in 1856. He opened a factory in Walworth, London. This form of smoking gained rapid popularity (probably because of its comparative cheapness) and the various cigarette firms, familiar to us all, were well established by the turn of the century. Seventeen of them combined in 1902 to form The Imperial Tobacco Company Ltd., as a counter to the threat of American competition. They were strong enough to win the “tobacco war” with the American manufacturer James Buchanan Duke, and secured his withdrawal from the English market.

As the market for tobacco, and particularly cigarettes, expanded, so did the government’s interest in it as a course of taxation. This applied even more in times of war. During the first world war, for example, the duty was raised enormously and eventually reached 8s. 2d. a lb., where it remained until 1927 when there was another jump to 8s. 10d. Again, the second world war gave a tremendous fillip to taxation and at the end of it, the duty had reached 35s. 6d. per Ib. Successive governments have continued the practice since then.

Which is just about where we came in. All governments have to levy taxes to finance their administration of capitalism’s economy, and they are not particularly worried about where they get them from. Tobacco has been a sure source of income up to now and cigarettes take the brunt of this because they form at least 4/5ths of the tobacco consumed in Britain today. So although strong medical suspicions have been voiced for over ten years, cigarette consumption has continued to rise and the government has continued to cream off some of the profits.

It must be a bit perplexing for our politicians to have to set about discouraging a widespread habit which they have themselves helped to foster in the past. Remember the huge quantities of “fags” distributed free to the forces during the last war, and how they were considered vital in boosting morale? But 22,000 deaths in one year and the rate still rising cannot be ignored. Let the tobacco companies gripe if they like. The more astute capitalist politician will have his eye on the threat to production if the incidence continues to rise. And remember that it is not uncommon in the younger age groups now, the ones who matter so much in the productive scheme of things. That is why the anti-smoking propaganda has been directed so conspicuously at school children, and not old age pensioners.

Just how successful the government’s campaign will be is anybody’s guess. The smoking habit is certainly well established, but if it threatens the overall interests of the capitalist class they will try to do something about it. What will happen to the tobacco firms then? Some may go broke, but there will be other fields of profitable investment. Labour will be transferred elsewhere, and the government will start looking in other directions for its taxes.

But by then we shall probably have other problems to worry us anyway. Poor health, after all, is not something for which smoking is solely to blame. Inferior diet, poor working conditions and the sheer strain of modern living are constantly wearing workers down. Add only three of the factors which are to that the fact that medical research itself is never very high on the priority list of expenditure, and you have an idea of the magnitude of this problem. To say that it is social is to stress the obvious, and despite the best intentions of the medical profession the task of tackling it can hardly begin until capitalism is well on the way out.

Eddie Critchfield

Notes by the Way: A Spot of Bother for the Dean of Canterbury (1949)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Spot of Bother for the Dean of Canterbury

In that wrongly named book “The Socialist Sixth of the World” the Dean of Canterbury endeavoured to show that all is for the best in state capitalist Russia. On page 212 of the 1944 issue (Gollancz edition) the Dean had something to say about the leaping production of “Socialist” tobacco and cigarettes.

“Tobacco is in demand in Russia as in other lands. The supply was short so long as tobacco was imported. Today the Soviet Union produces its own tobacco, the collective farms of Abkazia grow leaf equal to the finest Turkish brands, and Soviet cigars, an innovation, rapidly find favour. Variety of brands is large and increases. Professor Hanson remarked, as we stood in a tobacco shop in the Crimea, whereas two years previously he had counted a dozen varieties, today he observed a dozen times as many in that one shop alone. In 1937 the Soviet factories turned out 89,000 million cigarettes. The Soviet Union stands second in the world amongst tobacco-producing lands.”

Now read this from the News-Chronicle (24/6/49):

“The capitalist habit of smoking must be shunned by young Russians, says Dr. A. Kuznetsov in a Soviet youth magazine.

“Russian youths, he complains, tend to ‘use nicotine’ more, though they have the brightest of futures—unlike the children of capitalist countries ‘who are led to smoke by hunger, need and despair.’

” ‘In capitalist countries where the entire pattern of life drives a man to narcotics the urge for smoking can be understood,’ says Dr. Kuznetsov. But Russians do not need it. Youth must be instructed in the harmfulness of tobacco.”

Of course we do not know what is the explanation of the Doctor’s attack on smoking by Russians. Maybe the Russian Government merely wants to cut down smoking at home in order to export the tobacco; or perhaps Kuznetsov is only giving his own view and may shortly “confess” that he is a fascist-capitalist propagandist. Until the matter is straightened out the Dean will be wondering whether he ought to go on singing the praises of Russian tobacco or whether he should just cut the passage out of his next edition.

* * *

How much Unemployment is necessary to Capitalism?

An argument is going on about the amount of unemployment necessary to compel the workers to work harder. The Labour Government’s view was and presumably still is that the present condition with relatively little unemployment gives maximum production. Nevertheless all the Ministers keep on making speeches about the necessity of getting more production.

The Economist representing the tough capitalist viewpoint has long argued that unless there is a considerable amount of unemployment the workers won’t put their backs into it. In the issue for 4th June, 1949, the Economist repeated this: “As the Economist has said more than once in the past, full employment will not work without a million unemployed.”

The Economist returned to the subject in the issue of 9th July, 1949. The Economist urged the Labour Government to recognise and act on the overriding necessity of cheaper production, and said that if the Labour Government was alive to the urgency of the problem “it would insist on payment by results in every industry where a scheme could possibly be introduced. And if there were no other way of persuading the unions and their members to give value for money, it would welcome the therapeutic effect of a moderate degree of unemployment.”

The same article disclosed another interesting aspect of the capitalist attitude to the Labour Government— they think the Labour Party can put the screw on with less trouble than could a Conservative government:

“One must hope that the Labour Party will screw up its courage to undertake something of this order—for if anybody else has to do it, there is risk of serious civil commotion.”

* * *

The Capitalist Cycle : War—Trade War—War.

“Washington, Thursday.—Mr. Willard Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State, said today: ‘ Rivalries and conflicts are again beginning to appear in the world trade picture.

” ‘Some nations and interests are seeking to take over particular markets and exclude competitors.

” ‘The post-war honeymoon in international economic relations is drawing to a close.

” ‘The U.S. has made efforts to put Germany and Japan on their feet again. But those efforts conflict with the hopes of people who wish to prevent the return of those countries into the foreign trade field.’:—Express News Service.” (Daily Express, 26/6/49.)

* * *

The Workers and Nationalisation.

When the advocates of Railway Nationalisation first started their organised propaganda the chief emphasis was laid on the argument that Nationalisation would eliminate waste and overlapping, lead to economies and reduced staffs and thus provide efficient and cheaper transport. As this was not much of an inducement to railway workers propaganda turned more towards the alleged benefits nationalisation would bring to the workers.

Now that the railways are nationalised and are running at a loss the demand has gone forth for economies so that the losses can be wiped out and a profit realised. One of the Labour M.P’s, who supports railway nationalisation, Mr. Ernest Davies (Enfield), wrote to the Times (8/7/49) agreeing with another correspondent who had said that “the most hopeful source of substantial and lasting economies in the working of British Railways lies in a reduction of the total wage and salaries bill,” and that if the average wage rate is to be maintained, man-power must be reduced.

Where Mr. Davies differs from the other correspondent. Dr. Gilbert Walker, is that he does not think it possible to cut labour costs now, it must wait until the Transport Commission has complete control of the whole of the rail and road transport system of the country.

We can leave those two disputants to argue about the best way of running capitalism but the railwaymen may well ask what they have got or will get out of nationalisation.

As a footnote we may add the following:

“Tokio, Tuesday.—The Japanese State Railways today began distributing dismissal notices to another 63,000 railway workers.” (Daily Mail,13/7/49.)

* * *

Cripps on the Standard of Living.

“The Chancellor declared that for the greatest proportion of the population we had today a better standard of living than ever before. It was fantastic to say that they were worse off.” (Daily Herald, 19/5/49, report of Cripps’ speech in House of Commons.)

* * *

Drastic Strike Powers used by Australian Labour Government.

The Australian Labour Party, administering capitalism in Australia, has got into the same kind of mess as its companion party in Britain. The coal miners having made claims for shorter hours and higher pay to the Arbitration Tribunal decided to go on strike without waiting for the award. This the Government holds to be illegal and amidst a familiar denunciation of Communist agitators it took legal proceedings to freeze the funds of the Miners’ Federation.

The following is from the Times (15/7/49):

“From our correspondent, Sydney, July 14th.— Four hundred police, including more than 200 from Sydney, are tonight spread out over the coalfields as a protective force for tomorrow, when an attempt is likely to be made to move large stocks of coal standing in trucks on the coalfields to help maintain Sydney’s lean electricity and gas ration.

“There are now six union leaders in prison, including William Parkinson, acting general president of the Miners’ Federation, and Morris Michael Fitzgibbon, secretary-treasurer of the southern miners’ district, who were both sentenced today by-Judge Foster to 12 months’ imprisonment with light labour for contempt of court by failing to produce £A4,200 withdrawn from the bank and intended to aid the strikers. Parkinson had been acting president for only a day having been chosen when the president, Idris Williams, was sent to prison.”

One Feature of the Australian Strike Deserves Notice. 

Here the Government and the Press denounce strikes because they are “unofficial.” The Australian strike is officially conducted by the Union—but it is condemned just the same.

* * *

Food Production—What Could be Done.

The following news item from Rome is taken from a Report submitted to member governments by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation:

“World food production could be almost doubled in ‘a relatively short time’ by the use of modern technology.

“This estimate is made in a report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation issued here today.

“Unexplored stretches of sea await the application of modern fishery methods to unlock new food resources, it said.

“World livestock could be stepped up by at least 25 per cent, in ten years through the general application of modern breeding methods.” (News Chronicle, 13/7/49.)

Edgar Hardcastle 

Portrait of a Monopoly: The British Match Industry (1953)

From the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The arrangements we have described above form a complete and integrated monopoly . . . and the system as a whole operates, and is likely to operate, against the public interest as respects the supply both of matches and of match-making machinery.”

In these forthright terms the Monopolies Commission sums up its report on the British match industry, the sixth and latest of its investigations into restrictive practices in the United Kingdom.

The information now made public by the Commission throws revealing light on the way monopolies develop and operate, and on how they are maintained. It shows also what profitable ventures they can be for those capitalists able to form them and keep them going successfully. Drawing on the Commission's report, and using it to illustrate the practices common to all monopolies, let us examine the monopoly that has grown up inside the British match industry.

The Foundations of Monopoly

The first objective of any company seeking to carve out a monopoly must be to obtain control over the production and distribution of the particular commodity it is interested in. It must make itself, for all practical purposes, the only firm in the industry. In the British match industry, one company has succeeded in doing this.

This company is the British Match Corporation, otherwise known as B.M.C. Formed in 1927 as a holding company from the amalgamation of Bryant and May (and its subsidiaries) with Masters. Ltd., it is today responsible for almost the whole of the British home output of matches—about two-thirds of total consumption.

Linked with B.M.C. is another monopoly—the Swedish Match Company. Older readers may remember it in connection with the activities of Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish millionaire—speculator. It is this combine, with ramifications throughout the world, that provides the. remainder of the matches required in the U.K. These imports, it should be noted, are in turn controlled and distributed in this country by B.M.C. Taking home production and imports together, it is therefore obvious that B.M.C. is in almost complete control of the British market; for the mathematically-minded, the exact proportion is 92 per cent. These figures show clearly that the essential foundation of a monopoly—a stranglehold on output and distribution—has been most successfully obtained by B.M.C.

Also to be noted is the fact that Swedish Match, with 30 per cent. of the Ordinary shares in is actually its largest single shareholder. With this voting power behind it, it can of course wield considerable influence should the need ever arise.

Preserving a Monopoly

It is difficult enough to succeed in establishing a monopoly: it is even more difficult to maintain it and keep it thriving.

First and foremost, there must always be a careful watch for possible rivals. These must be rooted out quickly and dealt with ruthlessly. The record shows B.M.C. and Swedish Match to have been adept at this and it is most interesting to see how both partners have played their part in dealing with the threats of competition that have arisen from time to time.

On the home front, B.M.C. has made use of two methods, both very simple and both very effective. The first has been to undersell its competitors by offering cheaper brands of imported matches at reduced prices in selected areas whilst keeping the general level of its prices unchanged. In this way it has succeeded in keeping down competition at very little cost to itself. The second and perhaps even better method has been to charge its competitors high prices for essential raw materials, of which it again happens to be the sole controller. On this particular point the Commission found that B.M.C. was charging its competitors 77 per cent. more for certain chemicals than its own subsidiaries.

The part played by Swedish Match has been just as effective, by virtue of the fact that in its turn it has a monopoly over the machinery used in match-making. This has been more than enough to keep potential large-scale competition in check, as the following will show.

In its report the Commission mentions that two attempts have been made by other firms to start manufacturing matches on a large scale. The first of these was the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which in 1932 thought of setting up its own factory. In the subsequent negotiations in which Bryant and May became involved, the Society was actually offered some shares and Debenture stock in B.M.C. This offer was not taken up, and in 1936 the Society came to a definite decision to begin the manufacture of matches on its own account. Its efforts in this direction were completely unsuccessful as it found itself unable to obtain the necessary machinery. In 1938 it approached Bryant and May for permission to use certain machinery the rights in which, it understood, were held by that firm. The reply, which can hardly have been unexpected, was: “we hardly think you can expect us to assist you to obtain machinery which is destined to replace some, at least, of the goods we have hitherto supplied to the Societies.” Instead they proposed a deal between the Society and one of their subsidiaries, whereby profits would be divided between the two. This proposal was rejected by the Society, and it made a further attempt to get the necessary machinery. It was again unsuccessful.

Yet another concern tried for five years prior to 1934 to start manufacture on a commercial scale, again without success. In this year a most remarkable letter was sent to B.M.C. from the President of the Diamond Match Company of America (he was also a director of B.M.C. and of Bryant and May) reporting that he had arranged for some “friends” to employ an American technical expert who happened to be already under contract to this concern. The agreement reached with this expert included an understanding that he would “tactfully and earnestly work to discourage” the concern. His “consideration” for this agreement was $600 per month, to which Diamond had agreed to contribute one third, and the letter asked B.M.C. to make a contribution. This letter is so revealing of what goes on behind the scenes where monopolies are concerned that it is worth reproducing in full:—

"I have arranged to have friends employ Mr. . . . . on some experimental work that has nothing: whatever to do with the British Match Industry and will not affect to the slightest degree any of the operations abroad in which you are interested. My friends have had to reach a definite understanding and make a confidential agreement with [Mr. . . .]. which under no condition must be given publicity either here or in Britain. They have obligated themselves to pay him S600.00 per month. It is understood that [Mr.  . . .] may be called from the United States to work for . . . Ltd. [an English company]), and if he is called to go to England to do work for these people with whom he has a prior contract, he will not be paid by my friends. It has also been agreed, however, that he will tactfully and earnestly work to discourage . . . Ltd., that he will do nothing to get out of his contract with [. . . Ltd.] which would encourage them to hire some other expert or have machines made for them elsewhere. If he succeeds in discouraging [. . . Ltd.] and in getting out of his obligation to these people, then he will work exclusively for my friends for a period of three years and during this period of time will not do any outside work for any other interest whatsoever. [Mr.  . . .] has told my friends that he personally is tired of the English company, who have been continuously deceiving him, putting him off, and have been unable to date to get responsible people on your side to go forward with matters as promised and outlined. [Mr.  . . .] thinks that in the near future that he will be able to drop all connections with [. . . Ltd.] and that [ . . . Ltd.] will cease to exist as a living match producing possibility.

“In confidence, permit me to say that of this S600.00 my Company will contribute one-third of this monthly amount just so long as [Mr. . . . ] does no work whatsoever for [ . . . Ltd.] or any company interested in match making in Britain or Canada. Do you care to make any contribution in this matter?"—Report, page 120.

The result of this appeal was that B.M.C. also agreed to make a contribution of one-third. It continued making regular monthly payments until May, 1943, by which time, presumably, no further trouble was to be expected from the concern in question.

The Rewards of Monopoly

Finally we come to consider the rewards of monopoly. They are indeed substantial and worth all the effort put in to obtain them. On the manufacturing side, for example, Bryant and May's profit before the war averaged 35 per cent. annually, and that of its main subsidiary (Moreland) 45 per cent. The average profit of Masters was about 26 per cent. In 1950, according to the Commission's calculations, Bryant and May's profit was 16 per cent., Moreland's 34 per cent., and Masters' 30 per cent., the lower figures reflecting the operation of Government price control. On the import side, where distribution only is involved, pre-war profits averaged 10 per cent. dropping to 4½ per cent, in 1950.

The Commission’s strictures on B.M.C's costs and profits were most severe:

"The profit on sales of all three B.M.C. manufactures whose costs were examined was very high before the introduction of statutory price control, and the profit of the two lower cost manufacturers was still very high, having regard to the relative slight trading risk. B.M.C. has told us that it is its policy to make as much profit as it can, and that in its view competition insures that the prices charged are fair. Since it is clear that B.M.C. has taken all possible steps to eliminate competition, with marked success, and there is, in our opinion, virtually no competition in this trade, this safeguard is illusory, and it is not surprising that profits have been high.

“We conclude that there is scope for the reduction of both costs and profits of B.M.C. and that it is unlikely that either would have remained as high as they have if there had been any effective competition.”

The Commission’s Remedy

The remedy put forward by the Commission is, not unexpectedly, a dose of State intervention. Some of its members, however, disagree on the strength of the dose to be administered. Three of them, who state their views in a minority report, are all for a more “drastic” remedy than that prescribed by the other members of the Commission. This, they suggest, should take the form of a Government buying agency, armed with exclusive powers to buy all matches, whether home-produced or imported. In effect, they seek to oppose a monopoly seller with a monopoly buyer.

The majority of the Commission, however, are not impressed by this “drastic remedy.” In their opinion, it would lead to still greater rigidity in the trade and might not result in cheaper matches anyway. This latter Observation is certainly borne out by the results of State interference so far, and should be particularly noted by Labourites who so airily assume that State-control reduces prices. The majority’s preference is for a more thorough system of price-control on the part of the Government. This, they themselves admit, is only a partial remedy, and they agree that it would leave the present market-sharing arrangements between B.M.C. and Swedish match untouched.

Nobody can be very impressed with either of these remedies, not even the most ardent supporter of capitalism judging all issues by the direct and immediate effect they have on his pocket.

The Real Remedy

The Commission’s report is now with the Government, and it will be interesting to see what the Tory defenders of private enterprise and free competition finally decide to do with it. As for the Labour Party, hard up for policy and feeling rather out of things, they will probably do their best to blow it up to be something of much greater importance than it actually is.

For our part, we would make just one point. Monopoly is nothing new to capitalism; indeed it is inseparable from it. It is the logical outcome of the drive for profit, and experience has shown all over the capitalist world that as fast as one monopoly has been suppressed, another springs up elsewhere. The history of “trust-busting” in the United States is a perfect example of this. The remedy of bringing in the State does not put an end to monopoly; all it does is to replace private monopoly by the monopoly of the State. Whatever the advantages a State monopoly may have for the capitalist class, it is nothing for the working-class to get excited about. They should have had enough experience of the workings of State control by now to realise this.

Monopolies will disappear only when capitalism disappears. It is not monopoly, but capitalism, that is the issue. Socialism, the real remedy, will do away with both. When, as seems likely before long, the Labour and Conservative Parties create yet another storm in a teacup over what is to be done with the British match industry, workers should remember this.

Stan Hampson

Editorial: Tobacco workers' dilemma (1953)

Editorial from the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the annual conference of the Tobacco Workers' Union, held in London in June, the delegates were discussing unemployment which has recently increased in the industry. The president of the Union, Mr. D. G. Bowry, drew attention to a problem affecting tobacco workers.

“In a number of our factories we have had to endure short time. We have seen the elimination of certain smaller manufacturers with certain dismissals of staff. Yet we are told that if we are to survive we must produce more. It seems to me that we in our industry are tossing up with a double-headed penny. If we produce more we are faced with redundancy, and if we produce less we are faced with the same medicine.”—(Manchester Guardian, 12th June, 1953.)

The point was neatly put; but Mr. Bowry did not state the problem fully and did not offer a solution.

Stating the problem fully he would have included all industries everywhere, not merely the tobacco industry in this country. He would not have called the factories “ours,” for in no country do the factories belong to the workers or to the community as a whole; in all countries all industries, including those run on nationalised capitalist lines, are run for profit not solely for use.

Consequently it is all workers, in all countries, who are tossing up with the double-headed penny. If they produce too little they get the sack; if they produce too much they work some of their number out of their jobs. And if they follow a happy mean their fate is just the same whenever an industry (or all industries) suffers from one of capitalism's chaotic phases of “overproduction” in relation to the market as did textiles last year. Nowhere at all are the workers free from poverty and safe against insecurity.

This is not what the workers are told. All governments and employers, and many labour leaders, tell the workers that if they produce more they will be better off and will be safeguarding themselves against unemployment.

As it happened, a day or two after the Tobacco Workers’ conference the Sunday Express (14 June) published an article by Dr. Ludwig Erhard, Minister for Economic Affairs in the West German government. In it Dr. Erhard offered to Britain and the British workers the advice he offers to the workers in Germany. Recently, “travelling in his fast Mercedes car he went round the Ruhr urging more steel production," and he would tell the British workers:—

“ It is no use for a working man to say, ‘I’m safe whether I work hard or not.’ It is no use saying: 'I won’t go without food even if I’m not worth a job ’ . . . But I would also add this: If you work hard you should eat well. If you eat well, you will work.”

Dr. Erhard thinks that British industry has nothing to fear from German competition as “there is room in the world for both British and German exports." He notes just one difference between Britain and Germany: “ our men work harder and faster.”

But one thing Dr. Erhard forgot to mention is that in West Germany there were at the end of March 1,392,870 registered unemployed!

So far what we have said could only strengthen Mr. Bowry in his conviction that we live in a hard, cruel world, for we have not yet attended to the remark he made at the end of his speech, that he would be “quite happy to hear the solution to this dilemma."

We are quite happy to supply the solution though surprised that among those tobacco workers there was nobody able to do so on the spot.

The dilemma glimpsed by Mr. Bowry is just an aspect, an inevitable one, of capitalism. And the only cure for capitalism is Socialism.

If, as so often happens, the tobacco workers hear the solution and then dismiss it from their minds on the ground that Socialism calls for a radical change of thought and action and is therefore difficult to grasp and endorse, they should remember that that difficulty will be as nothing compared with the miseries of poverty, unemployment and war they will undoubtedly suffer if they go on hoping that social reforms and Labour Governments and nationalised capitalism will get them out of the mess they are in.

These Foolish Things: The system dictates (1996)

The Scavenger column from the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The system dictates

[PilkingtonJ is one of the few UK companies to have accepted that works councils, the elected consultative bodies beloved of the European Union, aree a good way to build consensus on key strategic issues. When it comes to sacking people, however, Pilkington found that the rules governing the release of price-sensitive information to the stock exchange, meant that the first that Pilkington’s workforce knew of this particular strategic decision [to axe 1,900 jobs] was on the radio rather than through any consultative mechanism. Guardian, 28 March.

Are jobs bad for prosperity?

Another healthy rise in American jobs yesterday sent the Treasury bond market into a bout of heavy selling again and appeared to rule out any further cuts in the US interest rates in the short term. The economy created 140,000 jobs in the non-farm sector in March, many more than Wall Street economists had been expecting, this followed a rise of 624,000 jobs in February', revised from last month’s initial estimate of 705,000, which had sent the Dow Jones industrial average into a 171-point plunge and wiped three full points off bond prices. Times, 6 April.

Smoking, poverty and profits

BAT unveiled record pre-tax profits of $2.4 billion for 1994, fuelled by the sales of 670 billion cigarettes worldwide . . . Among the countries where BAT cigarette sales have started to increase are: Poland, Romania, Russia, Uzbekistan, Hungary and Vietnam. Guardian, 7 March.

Capitalism’s iron fist

The International Monetary Fund, the Treasurers of world capitalism, has prescribed even more grinding poverty for the world’s working class. Its recently published World Economic Outlook stated that there would need to be further cuts in spending on health and pension benefits by the governments of industrialised nations in order to reduce the high interest rates which damage the profitability of capital. Tax increases, the report said, would not solve the problem because that would hit capitalists.

Telling figures

Car-makers spent a record £515 million on advertising last year. With 1,945,366 sold in Britain, that made the average spend per new car £265 . . . More than half [the cars] went to fleets, say industry sources, so the cost for every private sale was an incredible £1,800-plus. Financial Mail on Sunday. 14 April.

Both couples remain friends

Carlo Giambrone was “gobsmacked” [at being on the same divorce list as the Yorks). The unemployed mechanic arrived at court No. 1 in Somerset House yesterday in a bomber jacket and jeans to tell the judge he could not afford to pay the costs awarded him after his divorce . . . “I have my kids every' weekend. I shall carry on giving my wife what support I can, though at the moment I’m only getting £74 benefit every two weeks . . ." Few observers believe that the £2 million settlement, £500,000 of which has been set aside for the Duchess, will be sufficient to keep her in the lavish lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Guardian, 18 April.

The Scavenger

Mr Bryan and the Trusts. (1906)

From the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

When, at. the end of August, Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States, returned from his tour of the world, he made a remarkable speech that should have been commented on in these columns before. He stated that “Landlordism was the curse of Europe, but it was an innocent institution compared with the trust system carried to its logical conclusion. . . . He hoped the trusts would be exterminated root and branch. . . He declared that the time was ripe for the overthrow of plutocracy, which, he asserted, was already sapping the strength of the nation, vulgarising social life, and making a mockery of morals.” But the most remarkable aspect of the matter is what is described by the Tribune as a “remarkably effective method of dealing with the monopolist trust.” The method as explained in the same organ is “that where a trust has achieved an internal monopoly in production the tariff wall should be broken down so as to admit of foreign competition. Free trade in trust articles is an adroit, a politic, and a just proposal. A capitalistic society is tolerable only when free competition protects the public interests. . . . When once the trust system has been formed, State ownership is indeed the only tolerable alternative to competition. Mr. Bryan’s scheme is ingenious and economically sound. Its failure would mean, we imagine, the growth of some third party, with a definitely socialistic aim.”

The third party has already grown in anticipation of the failure of any scheme of the nature of Mr. Bryan’s. I wonder if the writer of the above quoted article has forgotten the Tobacco War, or whether he learned the lesson that had to teach ? The entry into British markets of the products of the American Tobacco Trust had its first effect in bringing British tobacco manufacturers together into the Imperial Tobacco Company. The two trusts did not compete long—they combined; and today the Imperial Tobacco Company and the American Tobacco Trust are a united body. May we not expect the same thing to happen in America. The only foreign competition the trust could feel would be that of an organisation sufficiently strong to bear the disadvantages of the extra cost of transit involved. It would have to be a case of the American trust v. a Foreign trust. Such a battle of the giants would not last long and would most certainly result in the achievement of the next step in economic progress after the National trust, viz. the International trust. The “only tolerable alternative” to which will be State ownership—when the State has been democratised. We seem indeed to be approaching the beginning of the end.

Dick Kent

Warning — this system is dangerous (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Simple, the columnist who plugs a consistently comfortable, almost invulnerable, reactionary line in the Daily Telegraph, has often turned his acid pen against the people who sought to prove with their statistics and experiments and surveys that cigarette smoking is a factor in causing death by lung cancer. It was not simply a matter of an individual’s right to puff his way into an early grave if he wanted; to Simple, smoking was part of the slow, feudalistic way of life which he imagines (and it is only imagination) was once lived by the people of this country.

So any fan of the column must have turned to it with trembling hands, after the most recent anti-smoking report from the Royal College of Physicians. Sure enough, there was a passage on the report. But at the end of an unusually mild attack, Peter Simple had to confess himself baffled by it all; why did they attack smoking? Why? Why? It was all rather disappointing, especially as it showed that the columnist had not read even the press reports of the document, some of which quoted the vital reason for it all: 

Government and Parliament must decide between an easy source of revenue and the preservation of the lives, health and productive capacity of the people they serve. 

Now what this quotation from the report indicates is that we have here a case just like many which have gone before. “Productive capacity” is vital to industry, to employers; since it depends upon the lives and health of the producers then any employer who keeps the most casual eye on his profits must start to worry if he has reason to think that the lives and health of his employees are being threatened.

The only chance of a large, official campaign against smoking was that there would be enough evidence that it was damaging the profits of the employers. The evidence about the possible effects of it on health has been there for a long time; the crucial point is when it is likely that there are also effects on productive capacity, or profits, or some other aspect of the worker/employee relationship. It was the same with the Clean Air Acts and with the measures aimed against noise, pollution and the like. It is the same, still, with the countless combined eyesores and threats to safety such as the coal tips in South Wales, where the “economic” case for removal is not officially considered to have been made out four years after Aberfan.

We can approach this point from another direction, by looking at one of the report’s ideas to persuade people to stop smoking. This was to print on all packets a warning of the possible effect of smoking. This has already been put into practice and nobody can now draw out a cigarette without being confronted with the awful words "Warning — smoking can damage your health”. This may or may not be an effective idea; there is a case that the words of warning might only go to make the smoke more enjoyable, spicing it with thrills of guilt and danger.

But the main point is that it is surprising that this technique should be confined to cigarettes. An average of something like twenty people are killed on the roads every day, but nobody has yet suggested daubing the doors of all road vehicles with the words “Caution — this machine is potentially lethal.” And while we are on the subject of death, what are they doing, allowing all those advertisements for the armed forces and none of them with a warning that the forces’ job is to train killers to protect the interests of their master class?

And what about the other, innumerable, ways in which capitalism, in the name of profit and the rights of a privileged society, simply murders people? We are thinking here not so much of the quick, easily identifiable death like the road accident and the battle but the slow erosion of life — the coal miner with his lungs gradually filling up with dust; the asbestos worker with a horrible death in prospect; and all of us, whoever we are and wherever we live or work, who are subject to the atmosphere which is foully polluted because at present capitalism thinks it is cheaper to pump its muck into the air than to find other ways of dealing with it.

Every factory, then, every mine, every aircraft, almost everything which capitalism uses in the march of its profit-based activity, should have some sort of warning on it, shouting out the damage which it does to us — and the reason it happens. Food which is devitalised and adulterated to make it more easily marketable should carry a label telling us what has happened to it and what is likely to happen to us if we consume it. The homes we live in should have a notice on their door, telling us that they are inferior buildings which are uncomfortable and cramped and are full of dangers to health and life (the home is at present the biggest killer of all — it is all done, they say, by “accident”.)

Then there are the health hazards which are even less identifiable, which are insidious but none the less deadly. These are often matters of pressure upon us, matters of the sheer struggle to live, to survive, to get to and from work, to keep out of debt, to raise children, to hold a job. Sometimes it is even a matter of finding somewhere to live. Not so long ago, there was a case in the Appeal Court in which nine homeless families who were squatting in some houses owned by the Southwark Borough Council were ordered to move out. There was no doubt about the desperate plight of these people; the council’s man in court said their conditions were “heart rending”. But the judges did their job; one of them summed it up with the words:

It must be in the interests of law and order to protect the title of property such as these.

Yet at the same time the judges were also saying how sorry they were for the squatters. They were using words like “deepest sympathy” and “deep depression and oppression”. Unusual perhaps for words like that to come down from the bench; but if that was how the judges felt, how did the situation affect the squatters? How much of their health, their life, was simply worn away by a desperate plight which had to stay like that to protect the title of property?

But of course such situations can only be known to a certain social type. The inferior standards of living, the life without privilege, without security, without comfort, is the life of the worker. He is the person who has to struggle and who is never far from the razor edge, if not actually balanced on it or indeed toppled off it. He is the person whose health and life suffer because he is simply not permitted, by his social station, to live free. He must be suppressed and degraded; he must accept second, third, fourth best. And it makes no difference, that he is in the majority and that he makes up all the socially useful people in society.

What it amounts to is that capitalism should wear one great big label, warning everyone of what it is doing to them. It should tell them that it is a system in which only a few have the opportunity to live like human beings and they do this on the backs of the many. It should tell them that it is a society where everything we need is made so that a minority can profit by it, which means that all our welfares and lives are under continual assault and in constant danger. It should tell us that all the health hazards and all the tensions can be ascribed to the basic inhumanity and craziness of capitalism.

All members of the working class should have these labels, and they should have them from the day they are born because it is from then that the assault of capitalism upon them begins in earnest. And it carries on until they are in their graves.

Ivan

Voice From The Back: Same old story (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same old story

The announcement that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, the makers of Camel cigarettes, is to cut 2,600 jobs – close to half its workforce – has come as a great shock to the town of Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Between 1,600 and 1,700 of the jobs are in the town. Bad news for the shareholders? Well, no, not really. “The company shocked Wall Street yesterday morning as it unveiled the plan to cut 40 percent of its workforce, although traders welcomed the prospect of cost-cutting and marked the shares 12 per cent higher to $38.24 by midday” (Times 18 September).

The rich get richer

One of the myths expounded by apologists for capitalism is that there are no longer classes in society and that poverty is gradually disappearing. According to the BBC News Online (25 September) the exact opposite seems to be occurring in the USA. “The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top one percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3 m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest one percent has gone up threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent.”

Spare parts for sale

Everything inside capitalism takes the form of a commodity, so it should come as no surprise to learn that there is a brisk trade in desperately poor people selling their kidneys. The going price paid to young people in eastern Europe for one kidney is $2,500 to $3,000 and patients receiving the kidneys have paid between $100,000 and $200,000 for a transplant. “John Dark, a transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, said it was difficult to draw a moral difference between the physical harm inflicted on someone paid for a kidney or paid to work in a Third World sweat shop . . . An impoverished man trying to support his family by selling his kidney is no different to putting in shifts down a diamond mine. Society has moved on from where paying for harm was unthinkable. We do it every day when we buy a pair of trainers” (Independent, 30 September).

Compassionate Tories

The Conservative Party at present are going through a crisis as they try to cobble together a series of reforms that might prove popular at the next election. They are making noises about being a caring, compassionate party, so it is interesting to see what one of the delegates to last month’s Tory conference had to say. “Mr Metcalfe, who has ambitions of becoming a Tory MP at the next election, received a rousing ovation when he insisted the way to combat crime was to make it not worth the price. He told the conference: “make prison a genuine punishment. Bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges.” And there was more, “Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging” (Herald, 8 October). Phew, some caring – some compassion.

War aims

Mr Bush was very clear what the US war aims were in Iraq – topple the wicked dictator – build a prosperous democracy – and 100 percent foreign ownership of many of the state’s resources. Wait a minute, you don’t remember the third aim? Neither do we, but it seems that third aim is going to be realised long before the second one. “Controversial plans to privatise all of Iraq’s non-oil assets have been attacked by Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz . . . The laws approved by the Coalition Provisional chief Paul Bremer, allow 100 percent foreign ownership of all state assets apart from natural resources. Trade tariffs and taxes have also been slashed, and the Central Bank of Iraq has been made operationally independent. `This is an extreme version of Republican ideology,` said Stiglitz. ‘Of course it is nothing we would do at home (US), because we’re actually quite protectionist`” (Observer, 12 October).

Pathfinders: Capitalism by gaslight (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1944 film Gaslight, a young couple (Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman) move back into the house of her aunt, murdered years before. The wife is an ordinary and intelligent woman, however she is subtly undermined by her husband’s constant references to her forgetfulness, silly anxieties and overactive imagination. He says these things so often, she thinks they must be true. When she starts to hear strange noises in the ceiling, he clucks soothingly, tells her she’s tired and advises her to get better rest. When the lights keep going down on the gas lamps, he expresses heartfelt concern that she’s becoming overwrought, and needs medication. He makes her doubt the evidence of her senses. He makes her think she’s going mad. In fact, he is doing it all on purpose. The plan is to have her committed to a mental institution so he can steal her inheritance from the aunt he murdered. He is foiled in the end, of course, but she is left a traumatised wreck.

The term gaslighting has come to describe a ‘form of psychological manipulation in which a person . . .  covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual… making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them… low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilise the victim and delegitimise the victim’s beliefs’ (Wikipedia).

The Wikipedia entry describes how sociopaths and narcissists use gaslighting as a tactic in mental abuse, and how victims develop anxiety, depression, self-hatred and ‘a sense of learned helplessness’. Feminists have highlighted this as a feature of some abusive male behaviour within the context of power-relationships and domestic violence, however it does not seem to be especially gendered and it is also a feature of some parent-child relationships.

The psychological damage caused by this behaviour ranges from self-doubt to suicide. The reasons for the behaviour lie in various personality disorders involved in deflecting blame and controlling others.

A recent BBC article shows how entire industries can emulate the behaviour of such a personality disorder in order to deflect criticism (‘How the oil industry made us doubt climate change’, BBC Online, 20 September – bbc.in/3iMRTUL). A climate academic and former Exxon employee describes how Exxon denied the evidence of their own world-class research: ‘What they did was immoral. They spread doubt about the dangers of climate change when their own researchers were confirming how serious a threat it was.’ In internal emails, Exxon told employees to ‘emphasise the uncertainty’ in the scientific consensus, and ‘urge a balanced scientific approach’. What they meant was deflect, misdirect, contradict, misinform, and gaslight the public.

It wasn’t just Exxon, the whole fossil fuel industry was at it, aiming to ‘reposition global warming as theory (not fact)’, much as creationists have tried to do with evolution. The Mad Men of Marketing identified their target audiences. One was ‘older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers.’ The other was ‘younger, low-income women, who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.’ The aim wasn’t to refute the facts with lies, because lies would be exposed. Instead, they sought to drown the facts in noise, in order to baffle and confuse the public.

In short, they followed the classic ‘tobacco playbook’ and mounted a ‘whitecoat project’, in which they hired or induced supposedly independent scientific consultants to press the argument that the science was uncertain and that the need for action was exaggerated. Bribes weren’t always necessary. Though it would be nice to think scientists generally rely on evidence-based thinking in their political attitudes, right-wing bigots do exist, and are willing to subvert science in pursuit of political agendas. A former vice president of the right-wing Cato Institute, in a belated mea culpa, admitted to gaslighting for the oil industry: ‘For 25 years, climate sceptics like me made it a core matter of ideological identity that if you believe in climate change, then you are by definition a socialist. That is what climate sceptics have done.’

Surprisingly, or maybe not, it turned out that some of these politically motivated scientists – and non-experts in the field in question, were the same people who had spoken out years before on behalf of the tobacco industry and against the anti-smoking lobby. This, it became clear, was a very old and well-rehearsed strategy. As a tobacco firm put it, back in the 1950s, ‘Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.’

Apart from trivial references to some American political shenanigans from the likes of Clinton and latterly Trump, and a nod to other presidents like Putin, the Wikipedia article currently does not expand on the large-scale use of gaslighting by industries like oil and gas, or tobacco, or those of pesticides, sugar, plastics and many others. But there are limits to what any single article can cover. This psychological manipulation is part of the fabric of capitalist ideology itself.

Think about how often you, as an intelligent human being and wage slave in capitalism, have been induced to doubt your own knowledge and judgment, how often you’ve been persuaded that you don’t know enough and should leave important matters to politicians. Think how often you’ve wrestled with the baffling complexities of complicated public debates until you’ve simply given up. Think how bad you’ve felt about your own failings, your own silly anxieties, your own inadequacies at work, at home, in school, in relationships, in your emotions and in your social life. Think how often you’ve felt dismissed, disregarded, put down, ignored, condescended to, lied to and patronised. Think how you’ve been made to think it’s just you, that nobody else has a problem or can even be trusted to understand, that maybe you need help or treatment or drugs or counselling because you just can’t cope. Think about how often you blame yourself, you should have tried harder, you should have believed in yourself more, you shouldn’t have been so weak, you shouldn’t have let yourself or others down.

All of this is what it feels like to be gaslighted. Your problem isn’t that you’re inadequate, it’s that you’re being ruthlessly and expertly manipulated by a rich and powerful regime which aims to stay rich and powerful, even if the world burns, by keeping you in a state of learned helplessness, where you do what you’re told and vote for leaders to think for you.

Socialists want a revolution to abolish capitalism before the world burns, but we also get something out of being socialists right now. Specifically, we get the opposite of gaslighting. We thrive in a community of mutual respect and support, where we each have a voice, where nobody is the boss, and where we can relax in the company of people who understand exactly how we think and feel, because they are workers too. If you’re sick of the gaslit world out there, try some daylight with us.

Paddy Shannon