The Oppressed Sex (1972)

Book Review from the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Woman’s Estate, by Juliet Mitchell. Penguin Books 25p.

Woman’s Estate is an absorbing and. by turns, irritating and perceptive analysis of the nature of women’s oppression, and the rise and contemporary position of Women’s Lib.

The kernel of Mitchell’s book is the comparison she makes between the two implicit wings of the Women's Lib Movement, which she labels “Radical Feminist” and "Abstract Socialist”. The polemic is well argued and substantially documented and concludes with an effective rejection of the intellectual position of the "radical feminist”:

  To say that sex dualism was the first oppression and that it underlies all oppression may be true, but it is a general, non-specific truth, it is simplistic materialism, no more . . . There have always been classes, as there have always been sexes, but how do these operate within any given specific society? Without such knowledge (historical materialism) we have not the means of overcoming them. Nothing but this knowledge and the revolutionary action based upon it, determines the fate of technology — towards freedom or towards 1984.

But Mitchell also partially rejects "classical socialist theory” because of its "inadequacies”. The conceived "inadequacies” are two-fold. “The position of women in the work of Marx and Engels remains dissociated from, or subsidiary to, a discussion of the family, which is in its turn subordinated as merely a pre-condition of private property.” Yet no substantive reasons are given as to why this view is inadequate. We are told that “the framework of discussion fails noticeably to project a convincing image of the future, beyond asserting that socialism will involve the liberation of women as one of its ‘constituent movements’.” In this connection Engels’ projection that the emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale, is implicitly rejected. Later, however, it is argued that although 42 per cent of the United States labour force are women, the exclusion of these women from the work-force “at the most formative period of their lives from the point of view of the development of class-consciousness” accounts for the lack of political insight shown by women.

The resolution of this paradox requires that we take note of Mitchell’s second major perceived inadequacy associated with “classical socialist theory”, in that it ignores the findings of psychoanalysis: "To ignore Freud is like ignoring Marx.” Thus women’s lack of awareness is intimately associated with her function in the family, which in turn is "the source of the psychic creation of individuals.”

In order that we might be prepared to accept the relevance of Freud to an understanding of how women become women, Mitchell turns science on its head. The empirical validation of hypotheses is unnecessary—evidence is seemingly secondary to unsubstantiated intuition. Yet even accepting that Freud’s insights have apparent explanatory (if not scientific) power in that they suggest how a woman “comes into being”, their power is related specifically to the social situation of mankind. As Mitchell herself implies, the "bio-sexual interpretation of the anatomical-biological” is made in a social context. Freud’s ideas may account for contemporary notions as to the nature of "woman”, but these notions are related to social situations through time and space; they do not tell us what "woman” is but only what a particular woman thinks she is, or is thought to be. It is as though the argument went that to understand the behaviour of a footballer relative to a member of the opposing side, reference should be made to the nature of the opponent rather than to the game as a whole, and the context in which it is played.

To suggest that "classical socialist theory” fails to project a convincing image of the future is to require that it formulates solutions to a problem which it considers largely irrelevant. It is not the specific nature of the image which is important or the particular manifestation of oppression. What is central is the idea that the image and the oppression are characteristic of a class society: the former will be redefined, the latter eliminated, in a classless society.

Nevertheless this book deserves attention. There are some interesting comparisons with other protest movements —black power, students, hippies, etc.,— and the book is packed with specific examples of contemporary discrimination directed against women, and with rewarding clues as to its essential precondition. In documenting the pervasive power of oppression at every level the author has remedied an obvious informational deficiency.

M. D. G.

How to feed the hungry (1972)

From the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

QUEENSLAND Egg Marketing Board has suggested the Queensland poultry farmers dump more than 79,000,000 eggs into the sea because there was no profitable market for their huge surplus.

(Sunday Post, 17 February, 1972)

50 Years Ago: The Attack on Engineers’ Wages (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Finding the workers in retreat on all fronts, the masters have now decided to try a ‘big offensive’ in certain selected industries, with the deliberate intention of continuing this ‘offensive’ in every industry till the standard of the workers as a whole has been forced far below the 1914 level.

For this purpose they have chosen to attack the engineers directly, and allied industry of shipbuilders indirectly.

How can the situation be tested? There is only one way. The organised workers must take united action and hold up industry. It is not a sectional question. The whole of the workers are involved, and if they remain divided, they will be attacked and beaten, in detail by the employers.

#    #    #    #

First, the stoppage must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. If it does not effect its purpose in a short, sharp action, then it will have failed and the men must accept the inevitable for the present.

Second, it must be carried out peaceably. Any attempt at riot or destruction must be sternly repressed, as it would at once give the signal for the use of the armed forces against defenceless men. All nonsense about ‘taking possession of works, etc.,’ must be repudiated or ignored, as that way leads to disaster.

Third, the decisions to come out and go back must be in the hands of the rank and file. No power should be given to leaders—revolutionary or otherwise— to decide these points.

            
From an unsigned Editorial “The Engineers’ Lock-Out” Socialist Standard April 1922.

Review: March 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The blast waves of the Aldershot bombing continued to spread, with the police searching the homes of some members of International Socialism and causing an uproar of protest as they did so. Loudest among the protesters were the I.S. members themselves, striking poses of offended virtue that the fuzz could think them capable of involvement in such nefarious activities. The bombing itself was the occasion for a fresh flourishing of the unhealthy fantasy that in a dispute like Northern Ireland only the other side can be guilty of indiscriminate killing. In the last war a similar act of sabotage against a German Army headquarters, killing a few civilians in the process, would have been reckoned a triumph of the forces of light over those of darkness.

A similar fantasy raised its head again in the case of the naval officer who sold secrets to the Russians to get money to pay off family debts. This was a desperately tragic story, of a man caught up and crushed by the ruthless machinations of capitalism. Yet beneath the emotions roused by the case was another; the assumption that there was something particularly dirty in that officer selling the secrets of the force of which he was a member. Yet a Russian who does the same thing is not condemned as a traitor. The basic point in both cases is that capitalism is a vicious, dirty society which makes human beings act in vicious, dirty ways. And that is exactly what they do, on all sides, all the time.


Abroad

In Northern Ireland, viciousness reaches new peaks almost with each passing day. It is not so long ago, that we were worrying that if things went on as they were someone would get killed soon; now, a death hardly rates a news story. It was not so long ago, again, that some elements on the left were calling for the introduction of British troops who, they said, would act “impartially” and so be an improvement on the B Specials. Those some people are now raging about the actions of the Paratroops and are becoming deeply absorbed with establishing, in many incidents, who fired the first shot, who offered the first provocation and so on. These are tragic irrelevancies. On both sides, it is members of the working class who are dying in Northern Ireland. And, as ever, they are losing their lives in a conflict in which their interests are not in the slightest degree involved. That is the one relevant fact about the war there and it does not need a tribunal or enquiry to do anything about it, but a conscious act by the people to end this society of conflict.

No signs of such consciousness, yet, in the preliminaries of the Presidential election in America. For the Republicans, Nixon seems to have it all sewn up and to be indisputably their candidate. The Democrats have not yet recovered from Chicago 1968 and are split wide open, with the wound of George Wallace especially festered. As the results of the first primary elections came in, Wallace was seen to be collecting substantial numbers of votes—and in Florida victory, no less—which gives him an ever more powerful base within the Democrats. The other candidates, in the customary way, had to put a brave face on their defeat and to describe their beating almost as a strange sort of victory. Wallace claims to represent the opinions of the average worker in America and in the sense that he calls to mind much that is ugly, frightened, bigoted and confused he may be right. Workers feel that way, and take refuge in extreme political ideas, because capitalism is a society of fear, without security; it is a divisive system. If it ever comes to a President George Wallace, with all that implies, the responsibility for it will extend a long way beyond the bigots of the Deep South.


Politics

Roy Jenkins made a speech, which brought at first ecstatic joy, then embarrassed confusion, to his supporters. The joy because any words from the lips of elegant Jenkins are now treated with a reverence previously reserved for such white hopes of the Labour Party as Ramsay MacDonald, Stafford Cripps, Harold Wilson. The confusion because the speech was at once interpreted as a bid for the Labour leadership which, in these days of difficulty and disarray at Transport House, is reckoned in some quarters to be becoming more and more open. In fact in the present situation any speech by Jenkins must be a move in the leadership game but any aspiring Labour leader would be foolish to write off a man as cunning and ruthless as Wilson. At any rate Jenkins showed in his speech that he has all the cheek needed for a political leader, since he came out with all the corny old stuff about looking for a new style of politics, new idealism, for compassion, justice, principle. It was all as if the Labour government of 1964/70 had never been, as if Jenkins had not been a prominent member of a government which consistently fought the working class, which passed racist laws, which set out with the avowed aim of reducing workers’ living standards. If he ever makes leader he will eventually be exposed as Wilson was exposed, and as every Labour charlatan has been exposed before him. The Labour leadership carries with it a distinguished pedigree of cynicism and Jenkins has shown us that he is worthy to take his place in that sordid line of descent.

A Battle Between Labour Leaders (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the official workers' leaders there is developing a serious difference of opinion about a serious issue. The Margate Conference decided that the Government should take a hand in “the guiding process of fixing wages in different industries instead of leaving them, as in the past, to be fought out between the employers and the Unions,” so says Mr. Ian Mikardo, M.P., writing in support in Picture Post (21/6/47). In the same paper Mr. George Brown, M.P., trade union leader, puts forward the opposing point of view.

Despite the Prime Minister's proclamations, the present way in which society is organised is not undergoing any revolutionary change. It is still class-divided. Some millionaires are dying, others are being born. Profits are as lively as ever, those of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company having risen by a cool four million during the past year. Wages too are still here, buying for wage-earners the usual amount of food, clothing and shelter, mostly crude, mostly nasty. The Government is to fix all this; to fix profits; to fix wages; to fix everything good and proper. In the workers' world of insecurity and fear it is not surprising that the idea of somebody fixing something catches on.

Mr. Mikardo's economics are very simple. The problem, he maintains, is that the less essential trades are bleeding our basic industries of their man-power. The solution is a wages-policy which "remains the most effective way of getting the men where they are needed.” "Nobody,” he continues, ”envisages wage-cuts in the less essential industries; what a national wages policy means is that wages (barring a few anomalous cases) are kept steady, whilst wages in the under-manned industries are pushed up.” In countering, Mr. Brown states that he took the trouble to investigate the wages of the so-called less essential trades and discovered that nearly 200 out of 216 such wages were below £5 per week. These lucky people are going to enjoy the charm of the guiding hand which is to keep their pay-packets sweet and low. Not being in their ranks, Mr. Mikardo looks like missing all the fun.

One hazards the question as to what happens to the increased profits resulting from more efficient machinery and more production per man per hour? One thing is certain; it won’t go to the wage earners sheltering under the shadow of the Government’s guiding hand which keeps their low wages low. When the purchasing power of wages falls, when £4 will only buy what say £3 had bought previously, does the guiding, steadying hand toll on? The more Mr. Mikardo's idea is examined the more it reveals itself as the answer to the Capitalists’ prayer.

Mr. Brown makes the obvious query as to what is to decide which trade is essential and which is not, and comes to the conclusion that it is a question impossible to answer. We agree. What, for example, are miners? They’re very essential, comes the ready answer. Well as far as the working-class is concerned even thousands of miners are not very essential, because thousands of miners are to-day toiling and sweating to produce the coal to produce the steel to produce the luxury liners,’ Rolls-Royces, and other such novelties definitely not for the enjoyment of a working-class which does not include, to complete the cycle, compensated ex-mine-owners.

The fixed-wage idea is easy meat for Mr. Brown, but after the fireworks he follows with a pathetic justification for leaving workers to bargain through the Unions with employers for their wage, their slave-price. “How patriotic,” he says. "have been the negotiating machinery and the Trade Unions in avoiding a real inflationary spiral.” In other words the Trade Union leaders are doing O.K.. keeping wages steady, so why not leave well alone. Since it is Mr. Brown who points out the pittance earned by the workers in so-called luxury trades, it can only be assumed that he includes these low wages in his tragic boast. The Socialist approach to the economic problems confronting society is scientific. Unfortunately for Mr. Brown it disposes of his “inflationary spiral." An increase in wages does not, of itself, result in an increase in prices. Several factors influence the price of a commodity There is the supply of it and the demand for it. There is the productivity of labour continually increasing due to the introduction of quicker machinery. There is competition between manufacturers. In the case of food there is the climatic element, good weather producing a bumper harvest and bringing down the price, or bad weather and low crops sometimes increasing the price. As a matter of fact a study of the history of wages and prices shows that on many occasions wages have risen and prices, far from rising, have fallen considerably. After a recent flying trip to America, the editor of the News Chronicle (25/6/47) reported that prices were being trimmed whilst at the same time wages were rising.

Both the Picture Post contestants have no quarrel with the existence of such social animals as Capitalists and wage-slaves. They have no quarrel with the bitter struggle which is bound to go on so long as the two classes exist. They have no quarrel with profits. They are both concerned with what to do with these things. Opposing the party both represent, the S.P.G.B. is concerned about getting rid of the stupid things they would plan. The wages-system must end. The division of man into class compartments must end. There is to-day no relation between the people's needs and what the people are capable of producing; markets and profits stand like mountains, in the way. Markets and profits must end. In other words, Capitalism must end if humanity is to survive.

Prolly.

The Myth of May Day (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1st of May, 1947, has seen a further extension of the Myth of May Day.

It has become fashionable in Labour circles to spread the fable that, in its early days, the "Labour Movement” was bold, fiery, and "r-r-r-revolutionary”—but now that it has grown up, assumed the responsibilities of Government and started to “lay the foundations” of the “Socialist State” (vide Daily Herald) it has put aside foolish things, as behoves "practical” and "realistic" people.

A typical expression of it is found in the article "What May Day means to me," by the News-Chronicle Industrial correspondent, Ian Mackay, an ex-member of the Scottish I.L.P.

The sort of stuff that Mr. Mackay writes was echoed in raging accents and styles on Labour platforms all over the country.

  "May-Day then to my eager young mind was the great annual festival of freedom when the quenchless spirit of the common man was continually refreshed and rededicated to the endless quest, 'the visionary gleam' of a new life of love and friendship, liberty and peace among all the peoples of the world.  . . .
   "Beyond the banners and the shouting of the slogan fanciers I could see far off, like Christian in the Bedford tinkers tale, a shining city where all men and women would be free and happy and clean in body and soul, where all the mean and petty wickedness of hunger and greed would be shameful memories, and mankind for the first time could advance harmoniously on to the gleaming uplands of the brave new world."

We gather from Mr. Mackay's vastly amusing gossip column on other days that he has since discovered somewhat more practical sources for the “continual refreshment" of his "quenchless spirit."

What we are interested in, is Mr. Mackay's accurate portrayal of the mental outlook of most of the supporters of the Labour Party—as expressed in the above collection of sonorous nothingness.

[We warn Ian that, if he’s not careful, providing he can do that sort of stuff solemnly at meetings, with the right Crosby catch in the throat at the end, he'll find himself in the next Cabinet.]

The fact is, that, as one of Mr. Mackay’s Scottish colleagues, John Scanlon (“Pillow of Cloud") has shown, it was precisely this sort of sentimental amiability, goodwill towards men, and vague hope of "a new world" which constituted the backbone of Labour Party pre-war speeches, the popularity of a Macdonald and Labour Party "Socialism."

Professor Hearnshaw in his “Survey of Socialism" shows that the first MacDonald Labour Government called forth a book compiled and edited by a Labour Councillor, Mr. Dan Griffiths, which was regularly pushed by the "Daily Herald" and had a wide sale at Labour meetings, entitled "What is Socialism?" The definitions were by the usual "prominent personalities" which infest Labour Parties for jobs. There are 263 definitions; all different.

   "Taking the definitions in the order in which they are printed, we gather from them that socialism is a science, a religion, an attitude, a principle, a body of doctrine, a theory, a system, an organisation, a form of society, a faith, a spirit, a philosophy, a movement, a name, an expression of belief, a tendency, an aspiration, a way of living, an endeavour, a demand, a process, an ideal, a conception, an awakening, an atmosphere, and a programme. This is sufficiently perplexing, but the perplexity is increased when some of the definitions are examined in detail." "Survey of Socialism," F. J. C. Hearnshaw, p.28.

According to Mr. J. W. Bowen, former Labour M.P., "Socialism is light in the darkness of a depressed world." Mr. W. Hampson, Labour M.P., "Socialism is sunlight opposed to darkness." "Socialism is the navigation of social currents by the liberated soul of man," R. W. Sorensen, Labour M.P. (Leyton). Mr. Wilfred Wellock, ex-Labour M.P., "Socialism is mankind functioning on the spiritual plane."

"No better definition of socialism can be given in general terms than that it aims at the organisation of the material economic forces of society, and their control by human forces," J. Ramsay MacDonald. As Professor Hearnshaw remarks "if 'no better definition' of socialism than this can be given, then indeed is human intelligence in a parlous condition."

"To me, Socialism is the practical expression of Christ’s teaching," says C. G. Ammon, now Lord Ammon. "Socialism is that form of society which will permit the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth," H. C. Charlton, Labour M.P. Mr. Dan Griffiths, himself, just to clear up the other 262 Labour Leaders’ contradictory definitions of Socialism, weighs in with "Socialism implies an ever-learning, ever-improving ergatocracy.”

One Fabian lawyer, Mr. Alban Gordon, wrote "I cannot define socialism for you in some short snappy phrase, and what is more, neither can any other socialist. Even if I could, other socialists would probably repudiate my definition as heartily as I should theirs.” (‘‘The Common Sense of Socialism," 1924).

It is this, and little more than this, that "Socialism" means to-day to many an amiable curate, and many a philanthropic member of Mr. Dan Griffiths team, who define socialism as "applied Christianity,” or the practical application of the principles taught in the "Sermon on the Mount" or "the realisation of the golden rule," or "something else of the same admirable and entirely inoffensive kind,” says Hearnshaw.

This was the "Christian Socialism” of Maurice, Charles Kingsley and Ludlow, which was lifted and made the stock-in-trade of the Labour Party by Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. But if all the Labour Party ever stood for was this vague, rather mushy sentimentalism, how has it won elections? the reader may ask.

The answer is, of course, by the "practical programme," side-by-side with the Sermon-on-the-Mount stuff, which assured even the most timid voter that Labour Party "Socialism" was completely innocuous; the Labour Party, starting with its first programme, "Labour and the New Social Order” (written by Mr. Sidney Webb) sets forth its proposals of "practical steps.”

As Mr. Bernard Shaw has never tired of boasting, he and Mr. Webb give the Labour Party its practical programme. "In 1915," wrote Mr. Shaw in the Times (July 4, 1924), "Socialism saved the country when private enterprise had brought us within two inches of defeat,” and he went on to show that by socialism he meant no more than the state control of mines, railways, shipping, munition works, food supplies and so on. Lest there should be any mistake as to his meaning he added: "Imagine Westminster without socialism—no streets, no bridges, no public lighting, no police, no schools, no water supply, no courts, no post and telegraphs and telephones, no army, no navy, no returning officer, no election no 'Big Ben' and no parliament.” (The Observer, March 16th, 1924).

These writings are the direct ancestors of "Let us Face the Future," the 1945 Election Manifesto, with its proposals of Nationalisation.

Professor Hearnhaw does one very good service by decisively debunking the main fallacy of most Labour Party supporters in regard to so-called “private enterprise."

  "But the enlargement of the sphere of the state—the extension of the activities of the central and municipal authorities—does not, by itself, even tend to eliminate capitalism, extinguish private enterprise, or eradicate competition, three of the things which genuine socialism invariably does.
   "Take Mr. Shaw’s list of what he calls "socialistic " institutions. Do publicly made and controlled streets and bridges tend to hamper capitalism, hinder private enterprise, lessen competition? They are the very means by which all these things increase indefinitely. Is the government’s postal, telegraphic and telephone service an obstacle to capitalistic 'development, a barrier to private enterprise, a foe to competition? Only in so far as it is inefficient. In so far as it is efficient it is the most valuable possible aid to individualistic activity, and it was established precisely in order that it might be such." P.78.

 "It may be asked, Does not the extension of the sphere of public enterprise inevitably entail the diminution of the sphere of private enterprise; if, for example, you nationalise the railways, do you not take away from private enterprise one large region wherein it now rules supreme? The answer is that the extension of the sphere of public enterprise undoubtedly modifies the sphere of private enterprise; but that it does not necessarily reduce it. The question seems to assume that there is a certain fixed quantity of 'enterprise’ divided into two sections—viz., public and private—and that any increase in the one section involves a decrease in the other. That is not the case. Enterprise is capable of indefinite expansion. If the community, by means of its central and local authorities, takes over the tasks of making roads and bridges, of putting up street lamps and public clocks, of organising postal and telegraphic services, although it unquestionably obviates the possibility (or rather the necessity) of the tasks being undertaken by private persons, it nevertheless, in doing so, releases their energies for countless more fruitful enterprises, and provides them with means by which their individualistic and competitors' activities may be immeasurably more productive than they would otherwise be." P.80.

Professor Hearnshaw, the fanatical anti-Marxian, will be surprised to learn that he has stated a perfectly sound Marxian case against Capitalism. It is one which will not get votes for Tories either. As one Tory questioner stated, at a recent Socialist Party open-air meeting (after it had been explained how Labour Government Nationalisation and Public Ownership is really a strengthening of private enterprise): "So far I’ve voted Tory because I’m all for private enterprise. Now I shall vote Labour—because it's best for private enterprise."

The writer of the "Survey of Socialism" might have suspected something was amiss when he quoted the Socialist Standard for September, 1924.

  “Indignant Marxians rightly exclaim against the stupidity or hypocrisy with which, as they say, ‘literary parasites of the capitalist class [a very unkind allusion to the Fabians] are flooding the press with essays labelled “socialism," in which everything is called "socialism" from a profit-sharing bakery to the government printing office’; and they quite justly maintain that 'government ownership is not socialism,' and that 'the transfer of industries from private firms to state ownership is simply a policy dictated by capitalist needs and for capitalist advantage,' adding that 'the most open enemies of socialism have nationalised railways and other businesses without in any way benefitting the working class.’ " P.82.

Those lines were written by our old pioneer comrade, Adolph Kohn. Whether the last two years have confirmed them, or not, we leave the reader to judge.

The Labour Party was never Socialist and never revolutionary. Mr. Mackay’s rosy dream of "shining cities" in "brave new worlds" were merely the "ants in the pants" of many active young people.

The Labour Party, in its early days, peddled a lushy mess of sentimental idealism admixed with large doses of Liberal State Capitalism. This is the reason it has ousted the now defunct Liberal Party—and incidentally, why ex-"r-r-r-evolutionary’’(?) I.L.P. "Socialists" like Mr. Mackay can spread the Myth of the Labour Party’s early May Days in the Liberal’s daily newspaper.

Horatio

Of Memories and Managing Directors (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent edition of the house magazine, the managing director of a multiple store stated, "The memory of those who gave their lives for their country will abide with us.” We are familiar with these earnest promises to keep faith with those workers who died in senseless wars waged against the workers of other lands. Stone manifestations of these utterances stand in every village and town up and down the country, surmounted by the symbol of a rather elastically interpreted religion.

The dead present little or no problem in our modern capitalist society. Their dependants are doled out with a pittance, their names are mentioned with less and less frequency; and so they die their second death. It is the survivors who constitute the problem to the capitalists, who are, one presumes, sufficiently grateful to take back their ex-warrior employees for the period the reinstatement right covers (it is true there are cunningly concealed loopholes available to these employers which they use whenever urgently necessary).

But more and more of our stalwart men are finding that, far from a situation arising where they can say, "Well, we’ve done our bit, the war’s won, now we can settle down to make progress in our chosen careers,” business concerns have no use for men who inadvertently wasted six or seven years at a time when they would have been increasing their knowledge and experience. Too old to be trained anew, out they go. On applying to other firms for employment, they get the same answer—too old; too old in their late 20’e or early 30’s! Becoming bitter, they blame the individual firms, the Labour Government, anyone, in fact but the only cause of their troubles—CAPITALISM.  It is capitalism which dictates that a worker should only be employed in a job and at a wage which leaves a surplus value for the employer.

Workers! Whilst you accept capitalism as the system of economic life you will always be too old or too young for the job. You will at intervals be rushed off to serve “your” country by destroying your comrades of other nations who are being urged with identical slogans to destroy you. You will always return to find that the fine promises were tongue-in-cheek ones which your bosses do not intend to implement.

The breathing-space between the rounds in the fight for world markets grows shorter. Stir yourselves now, or soon you too will be “abiding” in the memory of some managing director.

G.

Editorial: Two Worlds and What Divides Them (1947)

Editorial from the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is only too easy to contrast the warm and lofty phrases of the United Nations' Charter with the hostile acts and vituperative speeches of the present period, only two years after the end of the war. "We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save successive generations from the scourge of war . . .”, already face the division of Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific lands into rival Russian and American-British spheres of influence. Two years of meetings of the foreign ministers of the war-time Allies have resulted in Western Europe being enticed into the American camp by offers of aid while Russia, more crudely, orders its satellite States of Eastern Europe to stay away. The backslapping and handshakes are forgotten and now we have Mr. Bevin warning Russia in terms reminiscent of those directed against Nazi Germany. Speaking in London at an American Independence Day dinner on July 4th Mr. Bevin addressed these remarks to hie Russian ally:—

   "They seem to think that our obsession for peace is a thing which entitles them to go on to provocation . . . They must not be surprised . . .  that you can carry provocation too far. People will say one day 'We are tired of this.' There comes a moment when we say, 'We have had enough.' I say to my friends who take a different view from ours, 'Don't provoke that situation.' " (Daily Telegraph, 5/7/47).

And lest anyone should think that it will remain a war only of words the United Powers, which solemnly pledged themselves "to settle their international disputes by peaceful means," are at this moment maintaining 19,000,000 men under arms and spending on armaments £2,500 million a year more than in 1938. (News Chronicle, 13/5/47). Like the ill-fated League of Nations the U.N. already has its test case in the Balkans. A U.N. Commission having found that Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania have been helping Greek guerillas against the Greek Government, and the Russian group having declined to approve action to stop it, the British delegate on the Security Council, Sir Alexander Cadogan, declares:—

   "If we cannot apply proposals such as those submitted by the Commission we had better tear up the Charter and pack up.” (Manchester Guardian, 4/7/47).

Everyone sees the drift towards another cataclysmic war. Everyone—except a certain "lunatic fringe” in all countries—deplores it; but very few understand why it is taking place, the Government spokesmen among them. These gentlemen have their neat face-saving explanations. They each see the cause in the inexplicably stupid behaviour of their opposite numbers. "I love the Russian people,” says Bevin. "The ordinary man and woman of the world wants peace. They want to be left alone. They want the amenities that civilisation can give them. Why split the world on some ideology, on such things as material determinism or Christian religion?” These are Bevin's words but they could be Truman's or Stalin's; the favourite theme of Russian Government spokesmen is the way the peace-loving masses of Britain and U.S.A., friendly to Russia, are being duped into supporting the hostile acts of their respective governments. The theme is plausible but is the most arrant nonsense no matter which side puts it forward. The world is not going to war because of ideological differences, though if war comes between the groups as at present divided—and let it not be forgotten that this grouping is no more inevitable and permanent than any past grouping—the Bevins and Molotovs, Attlees, Stalins and Trumans will find it a convenient banner under which to try to rally mass support.

What then is the cause of international rivalry in the modern world? To find it the worker in each country needs to look not abroad but at home; not at the relationships between the governments but at the relationship between the social classes; not at Foreign Ministers' protestations of good will, but at the thrusting, aggressive export drives of the Ministers of Trade, the ceaseless effort to find foreign markets and sources of cheap raw materials.

Oil offers a convenient illustration of the problem. Britain and France have little or no home petrol supplies and Russia and America, exporters in the past, are increasingly in need of imported oil products. The new and growing source is the Middle East, so the Middle East becomes a scene of violent rivalry between all the Powers, veiled, of course, under a propaganda smoke-screen, with charge and counter-charge of interference, imperialism, ideological war, foreign violation of sovereignty, etc., etc.

Because British capitalism needs cheap oil it seems perfectly reasonable to Mr. Bevin that the British Government should not abandon its position in the oil-producing Middle East. The American Government feels the same about its aid in money and arms to Middle East countries not yet fallen into the Russian orbit. But Russia’s rulers equally protest the reasonableness of their demand to control North-Persian oil, and to have, in all the countries on Russia's western borders, governments amenable to Russian influence.

The next obvious question is why cannot the peace-loving peoples of the world amicably share world resources to their mutual benefit? Why are they all represented by governments which preach peace and goodwill but foster war-producing trade rivalries? Here let us return to another part of the United Nations' Charter (Article 55) in which the governments pledged themselves to promote "higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development.” Who are the men who, as members of governments, are supposed to be carrying out this pledge? All of them are high salaried individuals, often with private fortunes, who look at the world through the eyes of the wealthy, privileged minority. All of them are committed to the task of making the capitalist system of society function. For whose benefit is the pledge supposed to have been made? For the benefit of the working masses, the exploited wage earners of the capitalist world. In spite of superficial appearances to the contrary class-divided capitalism is still the form of society in all of the countries of the world, and the ruling group, their protestations notwithstanding, are all of them forced to promote foreign policies dictated by the needs of capitalism in their respective countries. Capitalist competition for the world's resources and markets is just as much the determining factor in the world of to-day as it was in 1939 before World War II and in 1914 before World War I. All of the governments of the world are primarily concerned with making surplus value by the exploitation of the working class and with realising that surplus value by the profitable sale of the products in competition with the exporters of other countries. Let us put the matter to a simple test All the governments are committed to promoting “higher standards of living” for the workers, and many of them, including the British Labour Party and the Russian Bolsheviks, have in the past formally proclaimed their intention of abolishing the vast inequalities between the privileged minority and the exploited majority. Where then is there a government that is carrying out its pledge given in the Charter? All the governments are preaching austerity to the poor and resisting the demands of the workers for “higher standards of living." The Russian government lengthens the working day. The British government seeks to increase shift-working and night work and the use of systems of payments by results. The U.S.A. government introduces savage anti-trade union legislation. All the governments defend their actions by pleas of shortages, while at the same time defending a system which gives the privileged minority ease and luxury at the expense of the wealth producing class. In the “work harder" drives the rich are everywhere excluded from the hard and odious jobs deemed so essential.

The conclusion is simple. The United Nations' Charter is not faulty because of anything wrong about its appeal for peace between the governments but because of its implicit acceptance of the capitalist system that gives rise to class struggle at home and international struggle abroad. The United Nations’ Charter is a charter of capitalist governments, trimmed with pious and meaningless phrases pledging the representatives of an exploiting system to alleviate the worst hardships of those they exploit A working class charter would put different aims and put them in the proper order. Not a pledge to avoid war, with a tacit acceptance of capitalism, but' first and foremost a pledge to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism— from which all else would flow.

An American Professor Looks at Marx (1947)

Book Review from the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

A book which has gone the rounds is Professor Schumpeter’s “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.” Discursively spread over 375 pages its criticism of Marx is superficial indeed, at times, almost trivial. Professorially patronising he blue-pencils and underscores Marx after the manner of a tutor ploughing an exercise.

On p.11 Marx loses heavily on his percentages for not calling the Materialist Conception of History the economic interpretation of history, the Professor’s correction being that it is no more materialistic than Hegel’s views, and is compatible with any religious or metaphysical interpretation of the world.

Various forms of an economic interpretation have been advanced by thinkers such as Adam Smith, Sismondi, Thorold Rogers, etc. Unlike Marx, however, they did not regard man’s economic activity as the outcome of certain indispensable social productive relationships into which men are born but as the result of the behaviour of an abstract economic man. Thus the economic factor assumed by some thinkers to be the self-regulating principle of social life, is itself nothing more than a mere manifestation of eternal human attributes. In this way the real concrete productive conditions of social life are dissolved and reconstituted into the mere appearance of an underlying mental process. History is thus treated on an ideological level and the economic interpretation of it is but a species of social idealism. This presumably is Schumpeter's version of Historical Materialism.

Marx, rejecting ideas as the primary factor in social evolution (while showing the part they played in modifying the main trends of economic development), did not, as had his predecessors, the mechanical materialists, make man the victim of economic fatalism or the passive instrument of external Nature. For Marx, a dynamic relationship existed between them. Man by his social labour is integrated into Nature and in transforming it to meet his needs transforms himself. This progressive adaptation by man of the natural force to meet his needs under a given social and economic organisation, constitutes the primary role in social evolution. Man’s social labour since the passing of communal society has assumed different forms of class ownership resulting in inevitable class struggles.

Marx's method is then a materialistic, scientific one, which views social origin and development as a material process in a world of material processes. For the Marxist there can be no a priori ideas or eternal concepts, only laws, theories, etc., which are approximated to a concrete historical situation.

Says Schumpeter (p.19) there are more plausible social classifications than Marx’s division of capitalism into two classes, i.e., capitalist class and working class. Schumpeter, however, fails to produce even one, plausible or otherwise. Now, for Marx history has shown the emergence of different class systems, each phase of the historical process being characterised by a transformation of the productive forces operated by a new productive class, whose interests were bound up in these economic changes. As a result an opposition grows up between these new expanding productive forces and the old social organisation based on and adapted to an earlier mode of production. A new set of social relations becomes necessary if these new economic needs are to be adequately fulfilled. Class antagonism is rooted then in the relationship in which different classes stand to each other and constitutes the basic motive-force for effecting the transformation of different stages of historical development.

Now Capitalism is a class system—the last in a stage of historical procession which divorces the labourer from his productive instruments and converts his working energies into a commodity, labour-power. Marx sought in these class relationships the key to the understanding of the laws of capitalist society. He was thus able to penetrate beyond the superficial analysis of exchange relations in a "free market” with its belief in profit as being something derived from a creative attribute of capital itself and was able to show the real source of this category of capitalist class income, an income derived from the class monopoly of the means of production which enabled the capitalist to appropriate the difference between the value of the workers’ labour-power (his wages) and the total value of the product he produces. This mutually antagonistic character of class incomes, i.e., profits and wages, reveals conflicting class.interests. The capitalist class thus has an interest in perpetuating the institutions of a class society which maintains the working class in a dependent position. Likewise the workers have a corresponding interest in abolishing a system based upon such property rights. This makes nonsense of Schumpeter's assertion (p.19) that the normal relationship between the classes is one of co-operation and even harmony. One, of course, is at liberty to divide society into all kinds of social groups, but the principle of class division as enunciated by Marx is the only one which effectively lays bare the social mechanism whereby profits are extracted, wages regulated, the accumulation of capital extended and the conditions for a new social order determined.

Schumpeter seems no better informed on Marx’s Labour Theory of Value. On p.25 we are told that by eliminating natural agents from his Labour Theory Marx deprived them of their proper place in the process of production and distribution. This betrays utter confusion of thought in respect of Marx’s views. A theory of value which included natural agents as determinants of value would not be a labour theory of value, whatever else it might be. Now for Marx, labour was the crucial productive force of human society, be it slave-labour, serf-labour or wage-labour. As such it is man’s productive energy (as distinct from these natural agents) which is the prime cause for originating all increases and changes in forms of wealth production that have occurred at various historical stages. The form of wealth assumed by capitalism is not typical of all societies but the outcome of certain historical circumstances. Value then is a social relationship in contrast to natural processes and is therefore a quality of human activity. If the value of an article of wealth is to be expressed as a definite objective quantity and as such capable of entering into relationship with others of its kind, i.e., have exchange value, then clearly value must be directly related to the output of this human activity in terms of the expenditure of human brain, muscle and nerve under given socially organised conditions of production. Value, then, is the subject matter of economics, just as the properties of natural agents—in so far as they are useful and necessary for productive purposes—are a matter for investigation by the natural sciences, e.g., physics, chemistry, etc. The using up of human energies in a productively organised fashion and its division by Marx into units of socially necessary labour hours, i.e., an hour of average working intensity normal to the requirements and technique of industry, constitute the cause and unit of value to which varying price movements can be referred.

Marx was thus able to show that profit arises not from selling an article above its value—but at its value—the cost of the social labour contained in it. The value of the worker’s labour-power represents only part of the total labour expended by him in production. The other part, appropriated by the capitalist, is unpaid labour. In selling the article at its value the latter is able to pocket the difference in the shape of surplus value. As Marx says, in “Value Price and Profit," if you cannot explain profits on the supposition that commodities are sold at their value, then you cannot explain profits at all.

Schumpeter dismisses the Theory of Surplus Value on the ground that you cannot produce workmanlike machines according to national cost calculations (p.27). He admits (p.29) that capitalism is in a state of constant technical revolution. He fails, however, to see the connection between this and the purpose it fulfils of securing a supply of labour-power adequate for the requirements of progressive capitalist accumulation. To achieve this the workers must produce more surplus value by becoming more productive; hence the introduction of new inventions, labour-saving machinery, etc. This means that a greater part of capital will be devoted to purchasing these means and henceforth a given unit of capital will offer less employment to wage workers. The workers who are displaced by this constant process of capitalist production thus form a surplus working population surplus that is, to the requirements of capitalism. Should, however, an acceleration in production be such as to warrant additional supplies of labour-power then this surplus population becomes a source of recruitment for the capitalist. With the decline in profit-anticipation a productive slackening takes place. Accumulation of capital is curtailed and the industrial reserve army consequently grows greater. Thus the expansion and contraction of employment is but a corollary and consequence of the expansion and contraction of the productive forces of capitalism. Schumpeter talks vaguely of surplus-value being produced in an un-Marxian way (p.24) but fails to show how this is done.

Schumpeter's contention (p.21) is that expanding capitalist production in the Marxian sense would lead to such increases in the demand for labour-power, and hence the price of labour-power, that profits would be swallowed up. Actually any increase in the price of labour-power beyond a certain point in a particular industry would further increase the capitalist tendency towards labour-saving devices and at the same time the threat to profit-anticipation would lead to a decline in capital investment in that industry. This would lead to increased redundancy of workers and so restore a condition of the labour market favourable to the capitalist. By this double process capitalism regulates wages according to the requirements of a profit-making economy.

Schumpeter says Marx based his theory of value on the assumption of a capitalism in perfect equilibrium (p.24). What Marx actually did in volume I of "Capital" was to make a number of simplifying assumptions in order to present a clear picture of the essential relationship existing between capitalist and worker in a process of simple commodity production, in order to demonstrate that the law of value was the guiding principle underlying a class system based on production for profit. Apart from purely theoretical considerations, but as a matter of practical judgment upon which all theories, hypotheses, and first approximations must be finally judged, Marx's theory alone provides an accurate and dynamic picture of the nature of capitalist development, viz., concentration and centralisation of capital, poverty, unemployment, crises and wars. Moreover, productive time-charts and speed-up processes for reducing the labour-time spent on commodities and thus reducing their value confirm in the real world of capitalist production the practical validity of Marx's Labour Theory of Value.

Schumpeter's own remedy for the evils of capitalism is more capitalism—he calls it Socialism. The workers not controlling the productive forces will, of course, be a dependent class and continue to produce surplus-value. Indeed he tells us that democracy is likely to turn out to be more of a sham under Socialism than it was under Capitalism (p.302). Pathetically he tries to assure us that wages and profits will not, under his scheme, be really wages and profits. The result Is ludicrous. In short, Schumpeter's scheme is only a highly rationalised anti-democratic capitalism which he dubs “Socialism" but which is merely his own term for describing Fascism.

Ted Wilmott

What Price Racialism? (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following instructive news item appeared in the Evening News (July 5th, 1947).

  "Mr. Winston Churchill has joined the 'rebels.' He is the first Englishman to be elected a member of the Society of the Cincinnati organisation of descendants of American Revolutionary Army Officers. He qualifies through his maternal great-great-grandfather."

Thus a direct descendant of the aristocratic and unimpeachable House of Marlborough has descended, on his mother’s side, from a family that fought strenuously against Britain, finally helping to cut the connection and establish a new and opposing “nation” which may one day be engaged in a life and death struggle with Britain. What other nation, totalitarian or democratic, has also absorbed blood into it from the same source we do not know, nor do we know the blood mixture that has joined the original stream from outside sources in the course of time. Further than that we do not know the derivation of the great-great-grandfather on the maternal side; the same, of course, applies to the great-grandfather and the grandfather; all is swathed in mystery.

Even in this one instance how complicated the question has become? Now apply the same reasoning to the whole of the English aristocracy who boast of their lineage, and who are noted for their generosity in bestowing titles upon wealthy wives of lowly origin, and it will be appreciated what nonsense racialism really is.

To cap this modern mixture of blood kindred let us reflect upon the effect of the idea contained in the well-known proverb, “It is a wise child that knows its own father,” as well as the influence of the progeny of the past favours of royalty, and we add complication to complication. The blood of what murky ancestry may roll full billowed through the veins of aristocracy? What applies to them applies to all of us; which shows how farcical is the basis of all claims to racial purity.

Gilmac

Notes by the Way: Blood and Coal (1947)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood and Coal
The Centralia Coal Company, charged with wilful neglect in connexion with the death of 111 miners by reason of an explosion in one of its mines on March 25 last, was fined $1,000 to-day in the county court at Nashville, Illinois. The penalty was the maximum provided by law. (Times, 9/7/47). .
(1,000 dollars is about £250).


Frederick Engels and Manchester

  “It is an excellent suggestion which was made in the Manchester City Council yesterday, that the city's new block of flats in Hulme should bear the name of Engels House. Of all the eminent people who have made Manchester their home it could well be argued that Engels had most influenced the course of history, both by his own writing and by his alliance with Karl Marx.” (From an editorial in the Manchester Guardian, 3/7/47).

What Manchester thought of Engels when he was alive and what Engels would now think of the City Council, is another story.


The Independence of Small Nations after the War to Make Them Safe
The Manchester Guardian makes the following comment on the position of East European countries “persuaded” by Russia not to attend the Paris Conference of the West European States.

  “There is no pretence that pressure has not been applied, and in the cases of Czechoslovakia and Finland it has been ostentatious; their Governments have suffered a public humiliation. The West will have only sympathy with the plight of these countries and regret that they have 'slipped into the position of subordinate countries deprived of their independence.' Their hopes of rebirth as free democracies have been disappointed and they now bitterly realise that they have exchanged a German overlordship for a Russian." (Manchester Guardian, 12/7/47).

"Payment by Results"
Many trade unions have fought for years against the introduction of systems of payment by results. It has remained for a trade union Minister of Labour in a Labour Government to encourage such systems. Mr. George Isaacs, Minister of Labour, declared in the House of Commons on July 8th, 1947: “We are asking industry to examine methods of payment by results and to adopt them wherever possible." (Manchester Guardian, 9/7/47).

When it is possible for the employers to lengthen hours of work that is normally the method used by them to extract more work from the workers. With restrictions of hours under the Factory Acts the same purpose was served by going over to systems of payment by results. At the present time the Government is encouraging the introduction of double day-shifts and if, as is proposed, the two shifts are restricted to the period between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., the hours on each shift will be eight a day less half-an-hour for meals and it will normally be confined to five days a week according to the recommendation of the Committee on the Double Day Shift System. Hence the renewed demand for systems of payment by results. Another factor at the present time is the relatively small amount of unemployment. When unemployment is heavy the threat of the sack is the principle goad to keep the workers working at full pressure. Now that that pressure is for the time being weakened another has to be found and the Labour Government finds it.

And if that is not sufficient Lord Hyndley, in the newly nationalised coal industry, threatens another. Speaking of unofficial strikes at the Conference of the National Union of Mineworkens he said:—

   “It is our intention . . .  to deal rigorously with all flagrant cases . . . To re-introduce prosecution under the law would be a most unpalatable decision to the Board, but failing a real alternative there will be no other course open to us." (Times, 10/7/47).

The Profits “Fallacy"
Speaking at a dinner of the Federation of Property Owners on February 5th Sir John Anderson "gave warnings against the fallacy which led to the ‘ widespread belief ’ that there were large resources still to be tapped for the benefits of labour." (Daily Telegraph, 6/2/47).

On April 27th, in the Observer, the City Editor wrote at length to explain away the increase of profits of Imperial Chemical Industries from £4,770,062 in 1945, to £7,171,109 in 1946. He explained that £1,700,000 of the increase was due to unnecessarily large provision having been made for taxation in previous years, and he showed that while I.C.I.’s expenditure on wages and salaries in 1946 was £30,500,000 its net profit (excluding the £1,700,000) was only £5,900,000.

Perhaps he would now like to try his hand with the Monsanto Chemical Co. Their prospectus (Daily Telegraph, 12/5/47) when raising new capital showed that their 1946 profits before charging Income Tax were £426,000 and the number of workers employed is 1,500. This shows a profit of £284 a year per worker employed —about £5 10s. 0d. a week. The company's 5s. shares now stand at over £3.


Nationalisation of Railways In Southern Rhodesia
Southern Rhodesia has an anti-Labour Party government, the United Party being in power with 23 seats against the seven seats held by the Labour Party In opposition. Its railway system is privately owned, the British South Africa Company having a controlling interest.

The Southern Rhodesian government has just raised £32,000,000 in London for the purpose of acquiring the share capital of the railway company.

Yet there are still Labour supporters who imagine that nationalisation was invented by their party and is something designed to benefit the workers. The capitalists were nationalising, when they deemed it to be in their interest as a class, before the Labour Party had been born.


Our Country
The following, under the heading "Village for Sale," appeared in the Daily Herald (1/7/47).

  "Another English village is likely, I hear, to be offered for sale complete. It is Woolstone, one of the loveliest little villages of Berkshire, tucked into an elm-planted fold in the downs below the White Horse . . .
   "Woolstone belongs to the Misses Butler, who live there. They seek a purchaser who will keep the village intact and unspoiled,"

Edgar Hardcastle

The Review Column: Petrol Price War (1967)

The Review Column from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Petrol Price War

Esso started the latest battle in the petrol price war because they were afraid of the competition they were meeting from the cut-price companies like Jet, Curfew and Heron.

At the moment these firms have about ten per cent of the British market; they are growing fast and one forecast sees them holding almost thirty per cent by 1970.

It was clearly time for quick action; Esso took it after a detailed review of the market Their decision was a close secret; a BP Shell executive confessed that the first his firm heard of it was when they read their newspapers.

The all round price reduction which has followed was inevitable. Esso's big rivals could not be left out and the cut price firms were bound to try to keep their advantage

It was also inevitable that this should be greeted as an example of the benefits of competition, as if the results of a commercial war are always lower prices and as if these give any permanent advantages to the working class.

In fact the petrol firms are the last examples which supporters of capitalism should give as proof of the benefits of competition

In terms of human effort and social welfare, is it efficient to have two stations opposite each other, both selling basically the same commodity but vying with each other in the colour and shape of their pumps, in the glamour of their forecourt attendants, in the colour and number of the stamps they give away, and in the sheer stupidity of their sales gimmicks?

What advantage did anyone, apart from Esso shareholders. get from the Tiger In Your Tank campaign? Does society progress a little each time a Regent station adorns a rear windscreen with those plastic bullet-holes?

In many ways, the oil industry shows how ingenious man can be. It also shows how capitalism restricts him, and how it wastes so much of what he achieves.


Wasted Wealth

Everyone knows what they did to the coffee in Brazil; someone even wrote a funny song about it.

We are all accustomed by now to hearing about all sorts of food being destroyed because it could not fetch what is called an “economic" price on the market.

In pursuit of the all-important economic price they have burnt coffee. They have ploughed in vegetables, tipped milk down pit shafts, stored wheat in unemployed ships.

This sort of waste is not confined to foodstuffs. Industry will often stockpile its products, or simply stop making them, if the market is not right.

The contortions which capitalism goes through to satisfy its economic priorities can seem amusing, especially when the pens of reporters or song writers get busy on them.

Last February, for example, the Italian police started burning 57 million postage stamps, some of them rare and valuable. Keen philatelists might beat their foreheads in frustration at this news, so engagingly reported as another example of Italian whimsy.

But the reason for the stamps being burnt was that the Italian government was afraid that to release them would have devastated the world philatelic market.

A more complicated example is the case of the Drinks Down the Sink. British European Airways have issued a stern reminder to their cabin staff that all partly finished bottles of drink served on their aircraft must be poured away at the end of each trip.

Not that there is anything wrong with the stuff. It is just that to bring back part-bottles breaks Customs regulations, which have been painstakingly built up over the years to stop something so sensible as the free movement of the world’s wealth.

Some day the working class will stop laughing at capitalism’s contortions and realise at whose expense the joke is being made.

Labour Pains

It is by no means impossible that Harold Wilson’s famous castigation of his critics in the Labour Party as “dogs” was another piece of Wilsonian tactics.

The phrase itself, carefully leaked, with all the accompanying comments about licenses, was bound to be seized on by news-thirsty journalists and to be worked to death in all its canine variations.

This gave Wilson the headlines again, for day after day as the M.P.s under his whip answered back in the same doggy simile.

But this is no time for clever speeches and articles. The Labour Party is facing another of its many crises and. as the recent by-elections have shown, its support is falling away. Said The Guardian of March 6:

  The high promise on which it was elected in 1964 and re-elected in 1966 is not being fulfilled.

This may cause some disappointment in the Labour Party, especially in its so-called Left Wing, and among less committed circles such as The Guardian, which have supported Labour for some years, in fact since the Macmillan government started going downhill.

Yet surprise is the last thing anyone should feel. We have had plenty of experience of Labour government and we should know by now that each time its “high promise” is unfulfilled. The only surprise is that anyone, anywhere, still believes in it.

It was this knowledge, and not prophetic insight, which caused the Socialist Standard of November 1964 to greet the new Labour government with these words: 

  They say that they intend to give “strong” government and to carry out their full programme. They are confident now. Let them remember this when the time comes for apologies and excuses.

That time is now. This is not the first occasion Labour Party supporters have writhed in frustration. Now let them remember.

Vietnam: A Tragedy? (1967)

From the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word tragedy is firmly linked to the name of Vietnam, so that it is almost impossible to hear one without the other. Everyone seems agreed that the war there is regrettable and unnecessary but nobody seems able to stop it.

Harold Wilson mournfully tells us that the only thing needed for the success of his recent joint peace move with Kosygin was a gesture of trust from one side or the other. U Thant, when he was talking last year about resigning the Secretaryship of UNO, bemoaned ". . . the tragic error of relying on force and military means in a deceptive pursuit of peace,” and the United States Ambassador to UNO, Arthur Goldberg, readily agreed — “We . . . do not believe that force and military means are good arbiters of international dispute.” Which was all very well, were it not for the fact that the USA was busily using just those means at the time.

The anti-war lobby in the United States take heart from the many prominent politicians who are critics of America's policy, and especially from Senator Robert Kennedy, who keeps popping up with schemes to end the bombing of the North and to start peace talks with Hanoi. Some American observers think this is all part of a Kennedy campaign for the Presidency in 1972 and perhaps they are right; way back when he was Attorney General in the government which was running the Vietnam war he took a different attitude: “We are going to win in Vietnam. We will remain until we do.”

Vietnam has been suffering for a long time. An article in the Manchester Guardian (20.4.54) opened with the words, “The prolonged tragedy now being played out in lndo-China is neither simple nor morally clear cut.” At that time, of course, it was the French who were fighting to keep their hold on the place, with the same sense of hopelessness as the Americans now experience. In the introduction to Jules Roy’s The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Neil Sheehan compares the two situations:

  Nine years alter the disaster at Dienbienphu had ended more than eighty years of French rule in lndo-China. much remained unchanged. The French generals and diplomats had departed . . . But they had been followed by American generals and diplomats who suffered, or were about to suffer, the same fate for similar reasons.

Vietnam is not unique in being regaided as an accident, a tragic mistake. But if it is, why is this apparent only to journalists, to protesters and to ambitious, out of office politicians? Why is it that the men in government, whoever they are, make so many such mistakes, so consistently? Why is the world apparently so accident-prone? To answer, these questions we can do worse than consider Vietnam, and why it has added its name to capitalism's long list of “tragedies”.

The French first appeared in any force on the lndo-China scene in 1771, when their soldiers helped Gia Long, heir to the King of Cochin China, put down the Tay Son Rebellion. This was followed in 1787 by a treaty between Gia Long and Louis XVI, the negotiations for which were helped along by the Almighty in the person of the Bishop of Adran, Pigneau de Behaine.

Cochin China was taken into French protectorate in 1867 and Tonking and Annam (the coastal province) in 1884. The Annamese gave the French a certain amount of trouble. In 1873 Paris had to send a military force when the merchant Jean Dupuis ran into opposition to his efforts to open the Red River to commerce and in 1882 another expedition, and later a war, was employed to break Annam's political links with China.

By the twentieth century the dust had settled and lndo-China was firmly under French control. The French military and civil authorities ran the same sort of paternal repression which later came under the spotlight in Algeria. lndo-China was an outlet for investment; trade and commerce was mainly in the hands of the Europeans — especially, of course, the French — and the Chinese. In 1922, between 250* and 300* million francs were invested in private French industries there. The French parliament granted the privilege of issuing currency notes to the Bank of lndo-China, which was itself a profitable source of investment for French capital.

lndo-China had some valuable raw materials. About a million tons of anthracite came each year from the mines at Hongay and Dongtrien, supplying the industry which was developing in the Red River delta. There were about 62,500 acres of rubber plantations, as well as some zinc and phosphates.

The colony was also a market for French industry. There was a reciprocal duty-free arrangement with France but this worked to the advantage of the French. Indo-China’s main export was rice, whereas France sent it manufactured goods. In 1925, for example, 53 per cent of lndo-China's imports came from France; in money terms this came to 760* million francs, while trade in the opposite direction amounted to 612 million francs. (*All currency amounts in these two paragraphs are at 1925 values.)

lndo-China, then, made a cosy picture of colonialism, typical of its time. But inevitably there grew up a nationalist movement, preaching that there was little hope of the country shaking off its agricultural economy and developing its industries under French rule, and arguing that the resources and the workers of lndo-China should be exploited by a native ruling class.

This propaganda had its appeal; while the French soldiers and merchants and their ladies were lording it and trying to forget their workaday worries in the cabarets and bars in Saigon and Hanoi, the nationalist movement was gathering strength. In particular a strange, slight man with a ragged goatee beard was travelling and talking. He visited many European countries, including Moscow and London, where he is said to have been a kitchen boy at the Carlton Hotel. He was, of course, at some time in prison. His name was Ho Chi Minh.

The Second World War gave the nationalists their chance. The Japanese, in their lunge down to Singapore, occupied lndo-China and ran the country with the help of the Vichy French authorities under the Emperor Bao Dai. The nationalists carried on an underground struggle and in 1941, at a congress in China convened by Ho Chi Minh, the organisation known as the Vietminh was formed. At the time this was purely an independence movement, although the Communists were prominent in it. Its name is an abbreviation of the Vietnamese for League for the Independence of Vietnam. But the fact that the Vietminh was fighting the Japanese meant that the Allies gave it their support — with the result later recorded in the appropriate volume of the Official History of the Second World War.

   . . . there were few countries in which the British and their Allies did not also seek to raise the forces of nationalism against the Japanese . . .
  In fact all parties, friend and foe alike, were vigorously engaged in whipping up nationalist enthusiasm.
   It was hardly a matter for surprise, therefore, that when the Allies re-entered Burma, Indonesia and Indo-China, they found a nationalism that was a very different force from that which they had known before the war. (British Military Administration in the Far East, 1943-46).

In March 1945 the Japanese interned the French authorities in Indo-China. In August the Vietminh took over and declared the country an independent republic; Bao Dai became Ho Chi Minh’s political adviser. The Vietnamese nationalists suffered the usual dissensions and into this confused situation, in September, the first British occupation troops arrived at Saigon. With some help from the Japanese army they carried out their mission to “restore order” and shortly afterwards a French force finished the job in a short, brutal action.

The Vietminh, however, was not beaten. There followed a number of complicated conferences, at one of which the French actually agreed to recognise “the Democratic Republic of Vietnam” as a “Free state within the Indo-Chinese Federation” which sounded like surrender, except that nobody was sure exactly what it meant and Paris was not going to help make it any clearer. On both sides, there were those who would now be known as hawks; French admiral D’Argenlieu impatiently wondered why “. . . when France has such a fine expeditionary force in Indo-China her leaders should prefer to negotiate.”

He need not have worried. In a few months matters were brought to a head by a dispute over Customs control. A French cruiser bombarded Haiphong, killing about six thousand Vietnamese. In December 1946 the Vietminh in turn attacked, massacring French civilians in Hanoi, Vietnam’s first peace time war had started.

For eight long years this dragged on, with the French steadily losing and finally suffering a decisive defeat at Dun Bien Phu. This was part of the painful recognition forced upon the French ruling class after the war, that they were no longer a world power of any consequence. France had not been able to fight the war against the once despised Vietminh alone; in 1950 they asked for American aid and from then on the United States bore the war's financial burden, contributing to France an annual average of $500 million. But even this could not prevent Dien Bien Phu and the French went to Geneva in 1954 virtually suing for peace.

In July 1954 the Geneva Agreement, which was going to bring peace to Vietnam, (Anthony Eden, as he then was, got a knighthood for his part in it) was signed. In reality, it was just another of capitalism’s sour jokes, designed to redraw the battle lines and to give each side a breather before the next round.

The Agreement divided Vietnam roughly at the Seventeenth Parallel. North of this line went to the Vietminh; south of it to the nationalists who had fought for the French in the war and who proceeded to set up a series of American supported puppet governments. The Agreement laid it down that elections were to be held in Vietnam in July 1956 — “In order to ensure that sufficient progress in the restoration of peace has been made . . .” The elections did not, of course, happen.

The Agreement prohibited the introduction into Vietnam of “. . . troop reinforcements . . . additional military personnel . . . new military bases . . . reinforcements in the form of all types of arms, munitions, and other war material . . .” But in November that year the American General (he was officially “Ambassador”) Collins arrived at Saigon declaring “I have come to Vietnam to bring every possible aid to the government of Diem and to his government only.” Collins also announced that a United States Military Mission (officially “advisers”) would instruct the Vietnamese army.

This signalled the fact that the Americans had openly taken over from the French. This time it was against the guerillas — the Vietcong — who were continuing the war by gnawing away at South Vietnam and who by 1961 held about a quarter of the countryside. There is no reason to doubt the American conviction that the guerillas were receiving aid from North Vietnam. Just like their French predecessors, the Americans found the enemy tough, well trained and armed. But this time there would be no surrender and so began the process known under the typically ugly name of escalation.

Almost desperately, the Americans have tried to stem the flood with more and more troops and with increasingly ferocious bombardment; from the air with high explosive, rockets and napalm and now from the sea with shellfire. They have pushed the bombing line further and further north until Hanoi itself is under fire. Each step has been excused with the argument that earlier, less ruthless measures have failed. But the Vietcong are still gnawing.

The United States, then, are in the same sort of trap as the French. Washington is pumping tens of millions of dollars into Vietnam, as well as their men. There are now 415,000 American troops there, compared with 215,000 a year ago. The Pentagon recently estimated that 100,000 of these may well be killed during this year.

This massive effort has not had the results expected of it. In May 1962, US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara said “Every quantitative measurement we have shows we’re winning this war.” But in January this year he testified to a Senate committee that “The bombing of North Vietnam has not reduced and will not significantly reduce the level of infiltration to the South.” (Guardian 21/2/67).

So what can Washington do? Present policy seems to be based on the reasoning that to admit defeat will also surrender Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to a hostile power. It would open the gateway into Malaya and thence into the very heart of America’s sphere of control in South East Asia. For Johnson, Vietnam is just as much a sticking point in a long process of retreat as Suez was for Eden in 1956.

This interpretation need not be correct. China is an old enemy of Vietnam and, to get its valuable resources — its anthracite, phosphates, chromite — would doubtless be prepared to repeat the invasions of the fifteenth century. Perhaps the Vietnamese will end up fighting them once more; not the only irony of the situation is that peace with America might make Ho Chi Minh one of Washington’s staunchest allies.

And if there is not peace? U Thant has forecast a “prolonged and bloody conflict” and this seems to be the likeliest outcome of the immediate future. The Americans will step up their effort, the fighting and the bombardment will become more intense. Perhaps it will go a stage higher in escalation, and bring in nuclear weapons. The official propagandists, will tell us that this is all being done to save humanity — an assurance which will not be readily accepted by the people who suffer under the bullets and the blasts and the unimaginable horrors of napalm.

Vietnam is not a tragedy. Nor is it a mistake, those who say that it is, whether they protest or not, are trying to excuse the inexcusable. They are trying to prove that capitalism’s wars need not happen — that they are the result of wrong judgments or moral lapses. The whole point of this pretence is that, if we accept it, we also accept that wars can be prevented simply by finding cleverer, or more morally sensitive, leaders. There is then no need to get rid of capitalism.

The melancholy history of capitalism, of its World Wars and of its smaller conflicts like Korea, Algeria and Vietnam, provides the evidence which exposes this pretence. There is small hope for the world, while society regards its problems as tragedies. Capitalism is full of international conflicts. When has it made a comedy of them?

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Housing: What is the Problem? (1967)

The Finance and Industry Column from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unlike the other parties, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not claim to be able to control interest rates or rents or house prices or rates. We make no promises on housing — or on any other issue for that matter — because we know that within the framework of private property society there is no solution to the problem. It would be dishonest and foolish of us to pretend otherwise.

It is easy to make promises, as the other parties do, but to honour them is another matter. Governments, national and local, do not have the control over economic forces they like to think they have. Take the factors affecting the rate of house-building, for instance: the price of land, finance, materials and labour-power, to mention only a few. Only people who are confident they can control all these factors should make claims about how many houses they will build. Otherwise they are just cruel confidence tricksters.

Lets take an example: interest rates. Interest is the price paid for the loan of money. But finance for house buying or building is not the only demand on savings. There are many more, all competing. Thus when, in response to the international situation, the Bank Rate is raised this exerts an upward pressure on all interest rates. It would be a bold man who would claim to be able to control the world economy. Yet this claim is implicit in many of the promises we hear at election times. Such people should heed the fate of Mr. Three Per Cent — George Brown.

How British industry fares on the world market is a most important factor limiting what the British government can do. And we all know that, as a result of the defeats sustained by British industry on the world market, the Labour government has had to shelve its expensive social reform schemes and has had to cut our standard of living — and so also, of course, our already limited liability to afford good housing.

Housing certainly is neglected. But is this really a housing problem? Surely, as far as the production of sound houses for everybody is concerned there is no problem. The materials for this exist together with the architects and building workers. What stands in the way, then? Why, in a world of potential plenty, is a basic human need like shelter so neglected? The answer is simple: most people cannot afford decent housing. And. if people can't afford comfortable houses, then, in accordance with the laws of the market no such accommodation will he built for them.

No builder is going to put up houses he can't sell. In stead perhaps the government may step in to provide cheap, utility housing. This problem of how to meet an unprofitable basic need in a society based on profit is one which the other parties have grappled with for decades. Yet still the problem remains. And so do the promises. The Socialist Standard will offer a prize to anyone who can guess which candidate, of which party made this promise at which election: Vote for X "because he is in favour of providing better housing accommodation for the workers at a reasonable rent”.

Our standard of housing, like the whole of our standard of living, is rationed by the size of our wage packet or of our salary cheque. Our wage or salary is a price and. as such, is fixed by the workings of the market. The price of the mental and physical energies which we sell to our employer is fixed, roughly, by what it costs to keep us in efficient working order.

So we’re in a vicious circle: our standard of housing depends on our income and our income depends on what it costs to keep us alive. This is why in housing, as in everything else, we get at best only the minimum comforts. This is how it will be, and must be, as long as the means of production are the property of a few for whom the rest of us must work for a wage or salary.

A sanely organised human community would give priority to meeting its needs of food, clothing and shelter. If production were carried on solely and directly to meet people's wants then there could be no problem in housing. But production for use is only possible when society controls production. Which demands that the means for producing wealth belong to the whole community.

Our Poverty Exposed
We don’t really need figures to tell us at what level we have to exist despite a world of potential plenty. Yet figures, especially official government statistics, are useful in showing the extent of our lack of means or poverty. The latest annual report of the Board of Inland Revenue (Command 3200, HMSO, 24s) has, for the first time since 1962, a table showing “Estimated Total Net Wealth by Size in Great Britain” compiled from death duty returns. The year is 1965.

So, official statistics show: A mere 12,000 people, each owning over £200,000, own more wealth than 7,298,000 people each with less than £1,000. 84 out of 100 people own less than £5,000 — and all you have to reach this figure is, say, own a house. The remaining 16 own nearly twice as much as these 84 put together.

And, as we saw, in last month’s Socialist Standard, these figures are likely to underestimate the real concentration of ownership of wealth.

On incomes, you only need £2,000 to be assessed for surtax. Yet only 338,000 taxpayers came in this category in the year 1964-65. And for this year the number of “millionaires”, that is, people with an income of over £100,000 a year, increased by 32 over the previous year to 138. If you care to work it out £100,000 is probably more than you will earn in a lifetime.

Adam Buick