A student of frauds. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The recent debate in the House of Commons on a resolution of Mr. Snowden’s gave rise to quite a number of articles in the press on what is understood by most people to be Socialism.

Now, most of the writers in the daily press who pretend to deal with Socialism—generally, once and for all—display the most pitiful ignorance of the subject. Not one of them appears to know anything of the writings of Marx, except through other writers and critics who have been either incapable of understanding him, or who have been wholly interested in perverting or misconstruing him.

Marx proved conclusively—and showed how—that capitalism is a system where the mass of the people, the workers, are robbed of the wealth they produce by the class that calls itself capitalist. Hence, the capitalist and those who serve him find themselves in direct opposition to those who have adopted the truths discovered by Marx. They are totally unable to deny, or even meet, these truths. There has never yet been either an honest or dishonest critic who has discovered any weakness or flaw in the reasoning of Marx, nor anything false in his facts or the evidence on which they are built.

The book writers who have spelt out dreary criticisms through dry volumes have involved themselves in endless contradictions, and only succeeded in branding themselves as wordy ignoramuses, or, what is worse, perverters of scientific truths. The latter is more likely to be the correct estimate, as such writers usually show that they have some intimacy with the works of Marx.

The average writer in the press, on the contrary, is as serenely ignorant as the majority of his readers as to the nature of Marxian philosophy or the real meaning of Socialism. Their ignorance, however, is easily accounted for. The slight knowledge they possess is obtained from parties like the Independent Labour Party, which only recognises one fact in common with the Socialist Party—the fact of the workers’ poverty. They have never yet proclaimed the cause of that poverty, never admitted the antagonism between the capitalist and Working Class, and never declared in unmistakable language that the workers must abolish the capitalist system and establish a new order based on the common ownership and democratic control of all the means of wealth production. All they have done is to recognise the poverty of the workers, foist themselves upon them as leaders with promises of reforms, and bleed them. Truly, ignorance of Socialism is seen to be, not a disadvantage, but an asset, for Labour leaders, industrial and political, as well as for the average political writer. They can, one and all, write or speak in accord with popular fallacies without fear of the truth getting in the way of better-paying utterances.

Mr. Snowden’s definition of Socialism was, “The public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution.” A writer in the Daily Chronicle (18/7/23). calling himself “A Student of Politics,” accepts this definition and quite easily shows what a failure it would be from the workers’ point of view. There is no quibbling with words on his part: “Public ownership” means exactly the same for him that it does for Mr. Snowden and the I.L.P. He argues that the public ownership of the instruments of production means the transference of capital from private capitalists to collective possession by them. He points out quite correctly “That it brings no message of comfort to the worker that henceforth his employer will be an omnipotent abstraction called the State”—a point which the Labour Party has never met when challenged by the Socialist.

With regard to the Labour Party’s proposal to buy out the capitalist, “A Student of Politics” says :

  “I can understand confiscation of capital such as has taken place in Russia. That is revolution and robbery. But Socialism which does not confiscate and refuses to rob anyone, seems to me to have no more virtue than a new system of book-keeping.”

To him nationalisation is “Capitalism in a new guise with the State as master” ; and he is quite correct when he describes it in his title as “Sham Remedies of Socialism.” All these kind of shams stand in the way of the real thing and hide it with senseless clatter and drivel.

If industry is nationalised, a “Student of Politics” points out, interest has to be paid on capital, while so much has to be put by for sinking fund, depreciation, etc., just as capitalists do at present. He then asks where is the money coming from for any great improvement in the workers’ position? The Labour Party has been repeatedly asked this question by Socialists. Obviously, if capitalist wealth is not appropriated—which is so-called confiscation— the payment of interest to buy out capitalists must be equivalent to present dividends. To talk of a fair rate of interest, as some Labour Leaders do, is only begging the question, because a “fair rate” would be an average rate on present dividends. But all such points are dust in the balance beside the main fact that only by cheaper production—less workers and reduced wages—can nationalised industries compete in the world markets.

The object of the Socialist Party is the only possible definition of Socialism. Mr. Snowden and “Student of Politics,” together with a host of others with similar ambitions, are, either knowingly or unknowingly, wrong when they define it as anything else. How is it possible to end the capitalist system unless society is established on principles where wealth can no longer be used as capital? It is the use of wealth in this way that gives its name to the present system. The reverse of capitalism must be a system where the means of wealth production are owned in common and democratically controlled by the whole of the people.

Under such a system there can be no question of the State being the only employer, because there are no longer employers and employed, no longer capitalists and wage-slaves. Instead, there are men and women producing to satisfy all their needs according to a plan agreed upon as the result of experience, discussion, and majority voting.

“A Student of Politics” says :

  “There must be some more modern, some more English diagnosis of our trouble than that of the German Marx two generations ago.”

And if Mr. Snowden’s definition of Socialism were identical with that of Marx, “A Student of Politics” would be right. The Labour Party, however, has never analysed the capitalist system correctly; has never shown why we have poverty in spite of the material means at our disposal for production in plenty. Nor has its greatest exponents, or its most irresponsible wild men, ever outlined a course of action for the workers that would free them from their present exploitation.

“A Student of Politics” should study Marx for himself, when he would not make the mistake of supposing that the childish fallacies and futile reforms of the Labour Party and I.L.P. are built on, or in any way deducible from, the writings of that great thinker.

His own contribution to the subject, entitled “A Liberal Alternative,” is just as fallacious as that of the Labour Party :

  “To have more capitalists to distribute the rewards of industrial efficiency more fairly and to insure as far as possible that no industrial virtue should go without its capitalistic reward.”

The cure for hydrophobia used to be a hair of the dog that did the biting. “A Student of Politics” would substitute another bite for the hair. It requires little reasoning ability to see that an increase in the number of capitalists would mean greater competition for markets, a reduction in wages wherever possible in order to cheapen products, and a consequent intensification of the workers’ struggle for existence. Markets would be glutted more rapidly, and the usual “capitalist reward for industrial virtue”—the sack—would be dealt out to the workers more freely.

F. Foan

Letter: The Capital Levy. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Sir,

In your issue of August last you express your opposition to the Capital Levy and to my line of reasoning in defence of it. With your permission I propose to answer your criticism, and will be as brief as I can.

To begin with, let us see how far we are in accord. Firstly, I agree that “a small class does own the bulk of the means of producing wealth in this and other capitalist countries.” In my book on “The Capital Levy” I have demonstrated this (for Britain) by overwhelming figures.

Secondly, I agree that this small capitalist class in the main controls to-day the political machine. Thirdly, I agree that capitalists pay wages not because they are philanthropists, but because they are compelled by economic forces. Finally, I agree that the system of capitalism has many inherent evils and that there is no way out except by Socialism.

I do not agree with you however either (1) that under capitalism the workers as a whole have no “surplus over their minimum needs,” or (2) that under Socialism the burden of the National Debt will be automatically lifted.

With regard to (1), you yourself in another part of your article recognise that wages must be “broadly regarded” as based for “different section of workers under different climatic conditions, and with different social standards and different lines of historical development on their standard of living.” This is surely a much more elastic view than is implied by the words “minimum needs.” But, even so, I cannot admit your case. What I will admit is that standard of living and weekly wages are intimately connected. Take two men—a skilled mechanic earning £4 and a labourer earning £2 10s. The family of the former have a standard of living at the £4 rate, while that of the latter live at the £2 10s. rate. I suggest it is much nearer the truth to say that the standard of living depends on the wages, than that the wages depend on the standard of living.

If you ask me, “On what then do wages depend?” I will answer in your own words, “on the economic forces,” and these economic forces include such complex questions as the amount of unemployment, the state of trade, foreign competition, world prices, and so on.

Of course, this distinction between us is vital, for if once it is recognised (as I hold) that wages depend on something other than an automatically-assessed standard of living, then the worker is vitally interested in the lightening of the load of taxation, and stands to gain by a Capital Levy, which will enable taxes on tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, etc., to be taken off, and that on tobacco reduced. If, on the other hand, you are right, it would make no difference to the workers if the income tax, super tax, death duties, etc., were done away with, and all the revenue were collected from beer, tobacco, tea and the food of the workers. I would remind you that the apologists for the old French Aristocracy took this view in the middle of the eighteenth century and that the revolution followed.

Turning now to the other principal difference between us, I submit that even under Socialism there will be many important problems to be solved. I would remind you that Socialism does not imply the equal subdivision of all wealth, nor the collective ownership of all wealth. But unless Socialists are prepared to tackle the grave evil of maldistribution they will seriously disappoint their supporters. The first step in this direction is to get rid of the National Debt by placing it on the holders of the existing wealth of the country ; and I submit that this step if not already taken during the establishment of Socialism would certainly have to be taken immediately afterwards.

I should exceed the space you can afford me if I were to attempt to answer all the minor points you have raised, but as these two major differences go to the root of the whole matter they will probably suffice.

Yours, etc.,

F. W. Pethick Lawrence.

Reply.

I must first point out that I did not say that the workers have “no surplus over their minimum needs,” although, as a matter of fact, few of them indeed are able to accumulate any property worth mentioning. What I did was to take two alternatives—”the workers either receive a surplus … or they do not “—and to try to show that, whichever be correct, taxation could not affect them as a class. It was not necessary to say which is correct, and I did not do so, as without further explanation of “minimum needs” such an assertion would be misleading.

The assertion I did make was that referred to by Mr. Pethick Lawrence as “a more elastic view,” and I hoped when I wrote it that I had make it quite clear that the workers’ standard of living is not in my opinion “an automatically-assessed standard of living,” but is “elastic.” It is the resultant of a number of factors which change continuously, and moreover which include the workers’ political knowledge, assertiveness, and mental independence.

I need not labour this further or deal with Mr. Lawrence’s discussion of the relation of wages and the standard ol living, because I think he has not gone to the root of our disagreement. I will therefore restate my view.

The standard of living is not measured simply by the amount of money wages received. It consists of the amount of real wealth, food, clothing’ and shelter, etc., finally consumed by the working class. The relation this amount bears to the whole product of the labour of the workers depends at any given time on the interaction of the “economic forces.” The capitalists, who are the legal owners of the whole, give to the workers just as much as they are compelled to give. Now, unless the Capital Levy disturbs this equilibrium of forces in the workers’ favour, their standard of living will not be improved. Or, as I put it in my article, “Would the capitalists, if there were no taxation at all, give the workers a larger share of the wealth produced, and if so, why?” This basic question has not been answered.

To say that some workers or all workers receive £4 and have to return £1 as taxes, only means that at the given moment £3, and not £4, is the money value of the standard of living produced by the existing forces. If that were not so, the workers would be able to demand and to get an increase of, say, £1 per week. Their ability to make such demands is limited always by the control the capitalists have over the key position, the political machinery.

Of course, Socialist Society will have its own problems to solve, but the National Debt will not be one of them. We are some of those rare people who, in spite of calling themselves Socialists, actually desire Socialism. Under Socialism—that is, a “system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth”—there will be no room for individuals to live by their ownership of some of society’s resources. We do not aim at the “equal” (or unequal) “subdivision” of anything; nor would we be so foolish as to advocate the “collective ownership of all wealth.” Wealth, as distinct from the means of producing wealth, does not permit of being collectively owned.

In view of Mr. Pethick Lawrence’s subsequent remarks, I must dissent from his opinion that he and I are agreed that, “there is no way out except by Socialism.” To me his “way out” seems to be merely a way cut into the wilderness. The Capital Levy is not Socialism ; it does not lead to Socialism ; and it still remains to be shown how its introduction would in any way better the position of the working class within the capitalist system.

Edgar Hardcastle.

[Mr. Lawrence can, if he wishes, have space to explain further his position and to deal with the points raised in the reply.]

Fiction and Fact. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“If labour were going to establish their position in this country there must be no class of society which they could not touch. The time would come when labour would not be content to live under the old conditions. They needed more colour, more art, and romance and beauty, more pageantry and processions and music and dance to make themselves a power in the land.”

J. Ramsay MacDonald, in an address to a Labour gathering at Neath, Briton Ferry and Port Talbot.  Daily News. 7/5/23.

How these flunkeys of capitalism delight in clouding the class struggle. Here is another one on the same stunt:

 “The Labour Party is no longer a class party. It includes aristocrats and democrats, manufacturers and professional men among its representatives. Mr. H. G. Wells’ arrival among us is significant and valuable.”

Mr. John Hodge, Labour M.P., writing in the Star. 27/2/23.

“Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of Capitalist Society and the foundation of modern Socialism knows also that a Socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not Socialism.”

“No compromise—no political trading.”

William Liebnecht.

Quotes. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Might is Right. 

  “Between equal rights force decides. Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class.”

Karl Marx.

  “The rich will not move without ‘capital’ ; a goad—I have and hold—you shall hunger and covet—until you are strong enough to force my hand.”

George Meredith.

 

A rebuke for those who cannot think.

  “Science gives us the conscious domination over things and unconditional security in handling them.”

Joseph Dietzgen.

 

The Freedom of the Press!

  

  “Journalists are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, our lives, are the property of other men.”

Jerome K. Jerome. (The New Witness. 9/2/23.) 

MacDonald’s hypocrisy. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A minor storm hath arisen in one of the London districts in connection with certain past actions of one Ramsay MacDonald.

Some of our members in the district in question asserted in discussion that MacDonald had backed Sir John Brunner’s Bill to Amend the Education Acts and thereby increase child slavery.

Simplicity.

A Mr. Easton took up the point and, apparently so staggered at the suggested duplicity of his “honourable Leader,” wrote MacDonald on the matter. Below is a copy of what appears to be the second letter Mr. Easton wrote MacDonald :

[Copy.]

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P

Dear Comrade,

You will remember I wrote you a little while back re certain charges made against you by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. You suggested I should demand specific evidence. They have brought to our Branch of the I.L.P. a copy of the “Socialist Standard” for July, 1906, wherein is quoted an article of Frank Rose in the “Clarion” stating that you back Sir J. Brunner’s Bill to allow children to be worked by the capitalists. That is the charge, you would help the cause if you will give your reply. I think you were then General Secretary of the I.L.P., 1 am not quite sure.

I hope you will not think me impertinent in following up this matter.

All best wishes.

Your faithful comrade,

(Signed) Fred Easton. 

July 25th, 1923.

Phantasy.

Readers will notice that the charge contained in the letter is, “that you backed Sir John Brunner’s Bill to allow children to be worked by the capitalist.” To this charge Macdonald replied as follows :

[Copy.]

My Dear Easton,

Thank you very much for all the trouble you have taken. The statement that I backed a Bill of the nature described is nothing but a fabrication. I cannot remember the provisions of Bills I backed in 1906, but I know this perfectly well, and I think that I can ask you to accept my attitude on education and child labour as a proof of my statement, that whatever Bill I backed was to protect children from the capitalist and to give them a better chance of education.

From time to time, the section whom you are now fighting has misrepresented—sometimes on account of their ignorance, but not infrequently on account of their malice—things I have said and done, and I can assure you this is an instance of it.

Yours very sincerely,

(Signed) J. Ramsay MacDonald.

July 25th, 1923.

His reply to the charge, then, is, in the first place, “The statement that I backed a Bill of the nature described is a fabrication.”

Fact.

Before the Brunner Bill was introduced into Parliament 12 and 13 were the earliest ages at which children might be partially exempted from attending day school.

In May, 1906, Sir John Brunner asked leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Education Acts. The description on the back of this Bill runs as follows :

EDUCATION ACTS AMENDMENT.

A BILL

To amend the Education Acts, 1870 to 1903. Presented by Sir John Brunner,

supported by

Sir William Anson, Mr. Burt, Mr. Butcher, Mr. Cameron Corbett, Mr. Crooks, Mr. Eve, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Mr. Masterman, Mr. George White, Mr. Whitley, and Mr. Yoxall.

Ordered by the House of Commons to be Printed 21st May, 1906.

Printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode, etc., etc. [Bill 220.]

On the cover (or first page) of this Bill it states :

“Memorandum.”

  “This Bill provides that local authorities may fix thirteen as the minimum age for total exemption from attendance at a public elementary school if they frame bye-laws for the attendance of children so exempted at some recognised continuation school for at least three evenings a week until they attain the age of sixteen years. In the rural districts it is provided that the local authorities may fix twelve as the minimum age for total exemption in the case of boys who have definite and regular agricultural employment, and whose parents desire that they shall be so employed, on condition that they attend a continuation school for at least two evenings a week during the winter months until the age of sixteen.”

Page 1, Clause 1, contains the two paragraphs covering the above two points.

It will be seen that, where formerly children were only partially exempted from day school attendance, i.e., half-timers, this Act gave them total exemption, thus allowing them to be worked, their whole day, in the mind and body destroying atmosphere of modern industry at an earlier age than formerly, and thereby increasing the amount of child slavery—the essence of the charge against MacDonald.

He “cannot remember the provision of Bills I backed in 1906.” Oh, perfidious politician ! Was it then of such small account as to be easily forgotten, this attempt to smother youthful bloom in factory hells? The brutalisation of childish minds; the maiming and dwarfing and mis–shaping of tiny limbs under the influence of the machine?

Not content with working children of such an early age, the whole day long they must needs complete the diabolical work by driving them to school in the evenings, instead of allowing them this small opportunity for the rest and amusement so essential to childhood. They take away the child’s opportunity of acquiring education during the normal time—the daytime—and seek to pump knowledge into him when he is too tired to think. And this is done in the interests of those who want cheap labour.

Imagine the harm suffered by a child leaving the suffocating atmosphere of a factory to work in the close atmosphere and artificial light of a schoolroom ; or leaving the backaching work of the fields to stoop over a desk and cramp little fingers striving to form letters ; or leaving the work of a long day of concentration upon work under a foreman or overseer to force the wandering thoughts to concentrate upon figures under the exacting rules of the schoolroom.

Was this action of MacDonald’s such as “to protect children from the Capitalist and to give them a better chance of education” ?

As to the “better chance of education,” the harm done to the general health and mental capacities of children in the towns where the half-time system nourishes has been frequently dwelt on. Educational experts have pointed out that the children come to school tired and sleepy and lose education during the most important time of their lives ; and of this MacDonald, as a one time teacher, must have been well aware.

Duplicity.

To estimate more fully the depth of MacDonald’s treachery one should consult the Report of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the I.L.P. (1905), page 55, and read clause 5 of their programme of “demands,” which demands—

“The raising of the age of child labour, with a view to its ultimate extinction.”

Compare this “demand” of the party of which he was secretary with the terms of Brunner’s Bill which he backed, and it will be easy to decide from whence comes the “fabrication.”

No wonder Macdonald said, at a Westbourne Park Fellowship meeting on March 12th last:

  “The work of the politician was one long experiment with truth.”—(“Daily News,” 12/3/23.).

If Mr. Easton wishes the evidence of his eyes to verify the statements quoted above, he can obtain it in two ways. Either obtain the Brunner Bill from the Government stationery office, or visit our Head Office and examine the document by arrangement with the General Secretary. The same remark applies to other “unbelievers.”

Gilmac.

“Agriculture and the Guild System” (1923)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“Agriculture and the Guild System.” By Montague Fordham. 24 pages, price 4d. I.L.P., 308, Grays Inn Road.

Mr. Fordham summarises his proposals in a paragraph, thus (p. 9) : —

  “… we have to secure Democratic Control of agriculture, the limitation of the rights of private owners over the land, the establishment of just prices and just pay, and the replacing of the dealers and other middlemen by co-operation. Then, we can get what we should have been aiming at all the time—farming for food, with a reasonable return, many well-paid workers on the land, and the economic basis for restoration of a jovial country life.”

He sees, however, that the bear has to be caught and killed before it can be skinned.

   “It is quite unwise to suppose that what is substantially an agricultural revolution can ever begin, whilst power remains in the hands of the landlords, large farmers, land agents, solicitors, bankers, dealers and middlemen.” (Page 10.)

He tells us also on page 10 that control cannot be obtained through the Trade Unions, but does not tell us how it is to be obtained. He skips this, and goes, straight on to tell us what the parish will do when control has passed “out of the hands of the landlords” into those of a “National Chamber of Agriculture . . . responsible to Parliament alone.” As the owning class control Parliament, we have in fact first to capture that seat of power— a detail Mr. Fordham apparently overlooks. It is by no means an unimportant detail, because the present ruling and owning class, will never willingly yield to any denial whatsoever of the rights of private property. They may be willing to listen to suggestions, for the better ordering of their economic system, and one section of the capitalist class may be not only interested but quite enthusiastic about a harmless-looking scheme which will in effect enable them to plunder some other section. It will be .noticed from Fordham’s statement quoted above that he is not proposing to destroy private ownership, only to “limit” it; and behind some interesting, but quite irrelevant, discussion of the economic machinery operative under the total different conditions of the Guilds in Mediaeval England, we find that Fordham’s suggestion is simply a form of indirect subsidy. He adduces arguments which he considers should weigh sufficiently with the financial and industrial capitalists to make them willing to maintain the agricultural industry, temporarily at least, out of their profits. Since the eighties of last century British agriculture has been badly hit by competition which arose when railways opened up the interiors of North and South America and, later, Russia, thus making it possible to ship foodstuffs to industrial Europe. The first two had virgin soil needing no fertilisers, and so vast as to permit extensive cultivation, and the wheat from all three was put on the home market at a price which forbade profitable arable farming except under very advantageous conditions. This was profitable for the manufacturers, for whom cheap food meant low wages. They had discovered this in 1846, when they repealed the Corn Laws. Incidentally, the ruin of agriculture and the depopulation of the countryside was also good for them, as it increased the supply of cheap labour in the towns.

But during the present century this supply of cheap food from abroad has shown signs of decreasing. Railway freights in U.S.A. have steadily risen, virgin soils are being exhausted, and intensive cultivation has had to be substituted, while the growing industrial populations of these countries are coming to need all their home supplies. Russia has left the market, and, curiously enough, in that country now we have just the reverse of the policy Mr. Fordham suggests. The Bolsheviks are driven to subsidise their bankrupt industries out of agriculture. Whether they can succeed in such a policy will depend on their maintaining their control of the Government. They are at least realists, but Mr. Fordham thinks he can carry out his scheme without capturing political power.

In view of the changing agricultural situation, the British industrial capitalists have had to consider of recent years whether it would not be worth their while artificially to stimulate agricultural production by subsidies, in fact of the declining quantity and threatened rising price of foreign wheat. The problem was temporarily brought to a head during the war, when a bonus was given for the growing of wheat and oats, coupled with a statutory minimum wage for agricultural labourers. The whole of this machinery was scrapped in October, 192l. Mr. Fordham does not want the re-introduction of the Corn Production Act, but he wants prices to be “stabilised” and “a just price to be based on cost of production.” This, he thinks, would also cut out the middleman who at present gets the bulk of the retail prices of farm produce, and lead to the formation of Distributive Cooperative Societies.

Fordham admits that the limitation of imports would be necessary, which means that prices would, in spite of his statements to the contrary, be raised above world prices to benefit agriculturists. In short, through all the fog of Mr. Fordham’s reasoning we see that the essence of his case is that the industrial and financial capitalists are to be asked to dip their hands in their pockets to guarantee to farmers the average rate of profit on their capital.

The necessary adjunct of capitalist private ownership, the wage system, is to remain, but wages of labourers are to be secured at an “adequate” level by the price-fixing authority.

The introduction of this scheme will depend, while the capitalists remain in power, on their view as to whether the economic, political, and military gains to them justify the expenditure. Mr, Fordham should therefore offer his advice to the proper quarter.

As Mr. Fordham says (page 6), various things will happen, “If the British Government will give facilities,” etc., etc. There is just one thing for which the British Government will not give “facilities” ; that is Socialism. It yet remains to be shown by Mr. Fordham how a slave class can improve its position except at the expense of its masters, or how propertyless workers can emancipate themselves except by appropriating for the use of society the private property of the present owners.

If the workers capture political power for the purpose of introducing Socialism, they can, in abolishing capitalism, also sweep away the minor evils and problems of organisation which worry Mr. Fordham.

I notice with amusement that he receives most flattering notices from G. K. Chesterton and A. J. Penty. Chesterton once remarked of Penty that he was one of the two or three really original minds of our day. I wondered then who was the third. It now only remains for Mr. Fordham to say something really nice about Chesterton.

Personally, I wish all of them would find some little hell of their own on which to inflict their precious schemes for the Feudalisation of society. The workers would do far better to learn something about capitalism as it really is to-day, than to be misled by the fantastic pictures of Mediaeval Europe drawn by these three romantic humbugs.

Edgar Hardcastle

SPGB Discord Meeting: Is class consciousness a thing of the past? (2021)

Party News from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party Discord Meeting

'Is class consciousness a thing of the past?' 

Speaker: Anton Pruden

Friday 7 May 19.30 (GMT + 1)

A sideways look at Marx’s distinction in today’s world, focussing on historical events that changed the world and how we can apply them to our revolutionary case. Why have all those calling themselves socialists, including us, failed to implement major societal change in a very unstable world? For Socialism to be implemented, do we all need to embrace a whole new paradigm? Lively discussion welcome.

All Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are currently online on Discord. Please contact the Forum Administrator at spgb@worldsocialism.org for details on how to join.

Towards Zero (2021)

Book Review from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: the Political Economy of Saving the Planet. Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, with C.J. Polychroniou. Verso £12.99.

This is not truly a book written by Chomsky and Pollin together; rather both respond individually to questions posed by Polychroniou, who adds a short introduction. Chomsky begins by saying that climate change presents a new ‘threat of destruction of organized human life in any recognizable or tolerable form’ and then discusses how the US Republican Party has served corporate power, with the Koch brothers supporting the use of fossil fuels, where they made their fortune. But it’s not clear if this justifies describing the Republicans as ‘the most dangerous organization in world history’.

Historically, the main blame for causing climate change since 1800 falls on Western Europe and the US (i.e. the economic systems there), while the richest tenth of the earth’s population are responsible for nearly half of all emissions tied to personal consumption. The poorest are the hardest-hit, such as dry land farmers, who rely on rain for irrigation. Extreme weather events, such as cyclones and hurricanes, have had devastating impacts on some places, including Zimbabwe and Puerto Rico.

Pollin notes that it is realistic in principle to reduce global CO2 emissions to net zero by 2050, by means of improving energy efficiency and expanding clean renewable energy sources. Existing nuclear plants, which do not emit CO2, could continue for a while, yet cannot be part of a long-term solution. Despite some alarmist claims, relatively small proportions of land need to be used to generate sufficient solar and wind energy, perhaps three percent of the land in the UK and just one percent in the US, which is less densely populated.

Closing fossil fuel enterprises would mean the loss of masses of jobs and far smaller tax revenues, but use of clean energy can lead to job creation; unfortunately these points show how much the authors are really stuck within the assumptions and framework of capitalism. They do show some scepticism, such as Chomsky saying that we are doomed if profit-making remains the driving force, and that production for profit cannot be sustained. ‘Dismantling’ capitalism is supposedly not possible in the time frame needed, but doing so should proceed in parallel with averting environmental disaster, though no argument is made that the two together can be achieved in time.

Pollin states that eco-socialism and the Green New Deal are fundamentally the same project, but since the latter assumes the retention of money and employment, it is certainly not the same as our vision of World Socialism. There are some references to ‘establishing the basis for a future free and democratic society within the present one’, apparently based on Bakunin’s ideas, but hardly anything about achieving this is in a practical way. After all, it will be much more straightforward to implement carbon reduction in a world without profit and corporations.

Paul Bennett

Would you Adam and Eve it? (2021)

From the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tall tales of Biblical proportions …

Jesus walks on water, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Jesus feeds the five thousand and, my own personal favourite, Jesus turns water into wine. Just a few acts of magic and mystery performed by the son of God and ‘Virgin’ Mary that wouldn’t look out of place on the Penn and Teller stage show in Las Vegas – although not nearly as entertaining!

But where do all these shenanigans stem from? Did God indeed invent man? Or vice versa? Let’s try to find out.

As a child at the tender age of around five, I remember vividly the first time I saw a Church of Scotland minister entering my school classroom. A big tall scary man, dressed in a full-length flowing black gown and white dog collar, resembling a kind of caped crusader from an episode of Batman. With a deep, booming, almost sinister voice, he started to address the assembled children by wishing us all a Happy Easter and proceeding to tell us these amazing tales about a man who could perform all these wondrous acts and miracles, as I sat there both mesmerised and bewildered by his every word. This being my first ever encounter of what I eventually came to understand as organised religion.

This event took place every year throughout my primary education, with each story becoming more and more fanciful. However, the older I became, the more unbelievable I discovered these stories to be. All of these bizarre and absurd events that apparently took place a couple of thousand years ago, mixed in with the minister’s personal experiences and anecdotes within his own life, led him to make the most moral and sanctimonious of judgement calls in order to reach the kind of pure and self-righteous standards that he was trying to bestow on the rest of us, in order to stay on the straight and narrow road to becoming good clean law-abiding children who inevitably grow up to be adults.

Now far be it from me to single out this particular man of the cloth or Christian worship in general, as the only demon in the room. Organised religion comes in many different shapes, sizes and guises. From the do-gooding Gods that inhabit heaven to the most destructive of devils and entities that one’s imagination can conjure up, with just a little help from those who are only too willing to preach about these worrisome apparitions who might present themselves to us one day should we misbehave and step out of line. The nice ones willing to save your soul to a wonderfully angelic afterlife spent luxuriating in heaven, others just as keen to have you damned for eternity in a hell-hole of fire and brimstone, all depending upon your behaviour here on earth.

Thankfully nowadays more and more young people are continuing to question the absurdity of these stories that we’ve all been exposed to from such an early age, in much the same way as we all eventually come to realise that Santa doesn’t really exist. So too are we beginning to understand the motivation that lies behind the mask of religion – that a God-fearing society with all of its coercion and control, is a compliant society.

With church attendances dropping year upon year and more people either agnostic or turning to atheism, hopefully it won’t be much longer before all such religious preaching and activities become increasingly frowned upon as insane and dangerous indoctrinations that create more problems than they solve. Including acts of violence, war, and all too often, widespread death and destruction of varying degrees and severity throughout the world.

Middle East

Of course, Christianity is not the only religion with diminishing numbers. Two recently conducted and very comprehensive surveys in the Middle East and Iran, have come to similar conclusions: they both show an increase in secularisation and growing calls for reforms of religious political institutions. With the Arab states having major Muslim populations, varying from around 60 percent in Lebanon to almost 100 percent in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the countries’ religious establishments also serve as governmental bodies, with governments playing a significant role in religious life, as they control prayers, media and school curriculums.

Of the 40,000 people interviewed by the Group for Analysing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), which researched Iranian attitudes toward religion, it found that no less than 47 percent reported ‘having transitioned from being religious to non-religious’. Tamimi Arab, assistant professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University and co-author of the survey, sees this transition as well as the quest for religious change, as a logical consequence of Iran’s secularisation. ‘Iranian society has undergone huge transformations as the literacy rate has gone up spectacularly; the country has experienced massive urbanisation, economic changes have affected traditional family structures, the internet penetration rate grew to be comparable with the European Union, and we see an increase in secularisation and a diversity of faiths and beliefs’. Concluding that, ‘the most decisive factor is the entanglement of state and religion, which has caused [much of] the population to resent institutional religion, even though a majority still believe in God’.

Compared with Iran’s 99.5 percent Shiite census figure, GAMAAN found that 78 percent of the participants believed in God — but only 32 percent identified themselves as Shiite Muslims. Figures show that 9 percent identified as atheist, 8 percent as Zoroastrian, 7 percent as spiritual, 6 percent as agnostic, and 5 percent as Sunni Muslim. Around 22 percent identified with none of these religions.

The sociologist Ronald Inglehart, Lowenstein Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and author of the book Religion’s Sudden Decline, analysed surveys of more than 100 countries, carried out from 1981-2020. He observed that rapid secularisation is not unique to a single country in the Middle East. ‘The rise of the so-called ‘nones’ who do not identify with a particular faith, has been noted in Muslim majority countries as different as Iraq, Tunisia, and Morocco’ (bit.ly/3bwoD3z).

Self-belief

So why do we in the Socialist Party take such a critical view of religion in general? Well, the answer is simple, it is our belief that our fellow workers (the real wealth creators) should have more faith in themselves, rather than in some figment of their imagination that has been planted there through years of indoctrination and brainwashing that usually begins during those early school years.

The reality is that religion is probably the most coercive and damaging instrument of control that the state and the church have on one’s ability to think clearly, constructively and open-mindedly about all that is going on in the world around us. And they’re not afraid to use it.

There are many negative effects of religion responsible for destroying people’s lives that can eventually cause many people to become afraid of life itself. For example, in order to avoid being thrown into hell, religion demands that people prove to God that they are worthy of heaven by following the dogma of religion. Naturally, when they are put in such a situation, they find themselves in a continuous state of fear. They are always afraid of whether their actions are right according to their religion or not, and if you believe that you are being constantly watched by the all-seeing eye of God, you have to act in certain ways to please him. The fear of hell is always on your mind, filling you with worry and anxiety. Religiously indoctrinated people can become neurotic, and in some cases, even psychotic. With often harrowing and dire consequences.

If you fail to do what God has ordered, you start hating yourself. You begin to accept the idea that you are indeed a bad person, corrupted, unworthy. And once you do so, your mind becomes filled with hatred, bitterness and resentment – a true hell on earth.

If you accept the idea that you are a sinner, you start seeing those around you as sinners. You may fear that those you meet want to harm you. They are evil, ill-willed, enemies of yours. You may not tolerate religious ideologies that are different from the one you hold. Identifying with a particular religious ideology and believing it to be the only truth and way to live, might lead to many negative effects and actions, including prejudice, bigotry, and varying degrees of violence – just think of how many wars have been fought throughout history in the name of God and religion.

So, when you have grown up conditioned to believe what is right and wrong according to religious dogma, and you’ve been taught that to doubt the religion you were born into means to go to hell, naturally you become afraid of seeking knowledge. You stop searching to find truth, and hence to educate yourself and grow as a human being. Knowledge and wisdom are incompatible with dogmatic religious ideologies. Instead, religion is confining people’s minds to the darkness of ignorance, and those who do question reality and the truth, are ultimately condemned by religion.

This way, religion keeps people blinded by all sorts of beliefs that are not based on any factual or scientific evidence, which only serves to stunt their intelligence. To blindly follow religious ideology, simply means to restrict your perception, suppress your thoughts and emotions and leave you in a state of mental angst, misery and subjugation.

Freedom of choice.

Of course, life is made up of choices, and to make the right choice isn’t always easy. Once an idea is firmly implanted in your mind, it can be difficult to break free from its grasp, believing that the word of God is the ultimate authority. But until we stop allowing any authority to tell us what to do or what not to do, we will never be free to live the way we could and should.

In a world society where we are all equal and able to organise ourselves genuinely democratically and for the benefit of all. One where we are truly in control of our own destiny and not limited or restricted by the irrational ramblings of any religious maniacs who want to control our minds and therefore our ability to think freely and without the fear of some maverick spirit or holy ghost influencing how we think, the decisions that we make, and the way in which we arrive at them. Put simply … A world socialist society, built by each and every one of us according to our own self-defined needs and abilities. It’s there for the taking.

Paul Edwards

Educating our sons (2021)

From the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the last few years the abuse of women and girls has been prominent in the news and on social media. From the ‘Me Too’ movement which started in 2016 but gained momentum with the Harvey Weinstein affair, to the highlighted significant increase in domestic violence in the current lockdown, to the Sarah Everard protests where at least one placard read ‘Educate your sons’. Well, it seems our sons have been getting the wrong kind of education.

Soma Sara is a 22-year-old young woman and founder of the Everyone’s Invited website set up in 2020 and where she shared her personal experience of what she describes as ‘rape culture’. In a few days there were over 10,000 posts, testimonies of abuse, harassment and assaults in schools and universities from pupils and ex-pupils. The majority of reports were from girls and young women but a few from boys and young men.

‘Rape culture’ is the normalising and trivialising of sexual violence, from inappropriate sexual language, misogyny and non-consensual touching through to assault and rape. Many of the posts were initially from posh private schools and mainly in London but reports quickly showed the problem to be country wide and equally prevalent in state schools. Heads have been accused of covering up the problem regarded by some as an ‘open secret’, and even some teachers have been accused of sexual harassment.

Most incidents of a more serious nature occur outside of school, at friends’ houses or at parties, and the stories make disturbing reading. Date rape is not an uncommon experience especially in universities. The vast majority of assaults are not reported for various reasons, embarrassment, not wanting to cause trouble, not being believed or simply accepting that these things happen. Inappropriate sexual behaviour towards others has even been observed and reported in primary schools.

How did we get here? Sex sells. It is a cynical and manipulative exploitation of a basic human need. Pre-teens are targeted and sexualised by cosmetic and clothing companies and dumbed down and mirror imaged on social media. The porn industry is a multi-billion-dollar concern and its most violent and degrading content is readily available to young boys on their smart phones. Gone are the seemingly innocuous images of the 1940s pin-up girls and gone are the porn mags on the top shelf of the local newsagents, embarrassingly purchased and packaged in concealing brown paper. Most likely young boys wouldn’t have been able to afford too many and would probably find it harder, with an eagle-eyed parent about, to keep it secret.

Parents who have or have had teenagers know that they are online almost constantly. A 2018 Ofcom report revealed that more than 450,000 children aged 12 to 15 spend between 6 and 8 hours a day online at weekends. A survey commissioned by BBC3 of over 1000 young people aged between 16 and 21 showed that one in four had seen online pornography by the age of 12. Gender differences were clear with one in five of the young women questioned saying they had never seen internet pornography, but only 4 percent of young men saying the same. A common response given in the survey was that young men expect young women to behave like porn stars and that porn also gave young men unrealistic ideas of women’s bodies. Often a young person sees online sexual images by accident or through natural curiosity looks it up for the first time, however, thanks to internet algorithms it’s not long before sexual content will just pop up without initiation and gradually get more explicit and violent as it goes on.

The online world is giving boys some very clear but misleading messages about women, sexual violence, feminism and sexism. Anti-feminist jokes, memes and videos on social media can be extremely unpleasant, and peer pressure from messages from online forums perpetuate dangerous assumptions, such as that women are lying about sexual assaults. The boundary between online and offline becomes increasingly blurred.

How are young men supposed to develop healthy, loving and consensual sexual relationships when women are objectified and abused? Trying to choke a girl while having sex, as described by one young woman on the Everyone’s Invited site, is shockingly not the way to do it. How far removed is a desensitised attitude to abusing women from the explosion in global domestic violence? Pornography on smart phones has been cited as a contributory cause of rape in countries like India, named the rape capital of the world though cultural attitudes towards women and girls are doubtless also responsible. Despite national poverty most young men there have or have access to smart phones where they can share often violent images.

Sex and relationship education is still not compulsory in all schools and plans to introduce it will give faith schools an opt-out. Hopefully it is not – or will not be – restricted to the mechanics of sex and contraception, but will include education on sexual attitudes to the ‘other’ and mutual consent. It would seem something is going horribly wrong. A report into the issue of sexual harassment and violence in schools, and overseen by Conservative MP Maria Miller was published in 2016 by the Women and Equalities Commission, but it appears nothing has been done since. Instead we are continuing to see peer abuse in schools with the authorities either ignoring the problem or trying to cover it up.

These issues reflect a systemic power structure whose hegemony filters down and becomes part of our culture almost as if we invented it ourselves. We live in a violent world and a society where everything is for use or sale including men and women. Instead of co-operation and empathy we have competition and exploitation and women and girls seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order. Gender stereotyping and sexist attitudes can start young, boys being seen as stronger and more technical, girls being the weaker and more caring sex. We’ve all heard the jokes about the mother-in-law and women drivers, and women’s aptitude for housework. It seems harmless but it’s a drip-by-drip reflection of the power men often have over women in capitalist society.

Until all power structures are dismantled both social and economic, until we live in a world as equals, where buying and selling is obsolete and respect for the ‘other’ is universal, these problems will not go away. Men and women have to work together but as long as there is distrust and disrespect between the sexes, as long as there is sexism and fear of the ‘other’, women may not always feel totally included in the struggle for socialism and as women make up over 50 percent of the working class that could mean no socialism for anybody.

Carla D.

Metabolic Materialism (2021)

Book Review from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Introduction to Karl Marx: New Materialism, Critique of Political Economy, and the Concept of Metabolism. By Ryuji Sasaki, translated by Michael Schauerte, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

This book examines the theories of Marx stated in the above subtitle, particularly their significance to the transformation of society. The focus is on one of Marx’s most famous works, Capital, but it is not intended to be an introduction to that work. Marx came to reject the realm of philosophical ideas as an explanation of the world (common at the time) preferring the insight that his basic world-view is ‘the actual, given relations of life’ and this ‘method is the only materialist, and therefore the only scientific one’ (Capital, Volume 1, 1867). This is what was new about Marx’s method and it is a succinct explanation of the relationship between materialism, science and socialism.

The first volume of Marx’s Capital has the subtitle ‘A Critique of Political Economy’ and is not merely a work of political economy (or economics, as it would be called today). For instance, in Marx’s day many economists accepted ‘Say’s Law’ (after the French economist JB Say) which asserted that production creates its own demand. Some economists today still accept this and argue that any imbalances between production and consumption are temporary and ‘self-clearing’. In this view, crises are impossible. Sasaki argues that, for Marx, it is the money economy which makes crises possible. Buying and selling in the aggregate is inherently unpredictable and, Marx wrote, ‘crises cannot occur without the circulation of money’.

Metabolism is a concept that became well known in the nineteenth century through the work of the chemist Justus von Liebig, becoming a more broadly encompassing term that included not only the chemical changes that individual organisms undergo but also the interaction between living organisms and their surrounding environment. The term metabolism began to influence not only the natural but also the social sciences, and was used analogously within political economy to refer to the circular, organic activity of human beings in-volved in production, distribution, and consumption.

Marx first used the term metabolism in 1851 as an analogy to explain the cyclical activity of society as an organism. All the way through to his writing of Capital, Marx continued to use the term in the sense of organic economic activity. However, Sasaki argues that Marx’s use of metabolism was not limited to that meaning. Eventually he began to use the term to express the material circulation between human beings and nature. Capitalism is a disturbance of the metabolism; socialism will restore the metabolism. For Marx, socialism will be a society in which the ‘associated producers’ will ‘govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, … accomplishing this metabolism with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature.’

At the end of this book there are a couple of lengthy appendices, one on Marx’s method and another on his theory of reification. It is encouraging to see a work of this quality being produced in Japan, and congratulations are due to Ryuji Sasaki and his translator, WSPUS member Michael Schauerte.

Lew Higgins

Vocational exploitation (1985)

From the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nurses often cherish an illusion of "professionalism" despite the fact that they are subordinate to medical staff, are poorly paid, work shifts, weekends and public holidays (for which they receive lower rates of enhanced pay than most other workers), have poor working conditions in the majority of cases, and engage in stressful, demanding work within the rigid discipline of a status-conscious, hierarchical organisation.

Nursing qualifications are protected by law and it is a punishable offence to make a false claim to be a trained nurse. But there are two levels of qualified nurses. Registered nurses have qualifications which enable them to aspire to higher positions while enrolled nurses are unable to gain promotion beyond senior enrolled nurse grade. Doyal has pointed out that overseas nurses coming to Britain to train are encouraged to qualify as enrolled nurses only to find that their qualifications are not recognised in their own countries. She states:

  Nurses born overseas are over-represented in hospitals dealing with mental illness, mental handicap and geriatrics, and very few indeed are to be found in the "prestige" teaching hospitals. Overseas nurses are, therefore, clearly used to compensate for the shortage of British recruits into notoriously underpaid and often unpleasant work. Their role as a “reserve army" has recently been demonstrated with particular clarity by the fact that because of high levels of unemployment among British nurses, overseas nurses are increasingly being refused a renewal of their work permits.

Nursing auxiliaries, although forming a substantial part of the work force, are untrained and unable to call themselves nurses.

The nurses' professional organisation, the Royal College of Nursing, tends to be dominated by senior nurses and excludes nursing auxiliaries from membership. Indeed, prior to 1960 male nurses and enrolled nurses were also excluded. The RCN, in an attempt to maintain professional exclusiveness, has asked for nursing auxiliaries to be omitted from pay negotiations. The conservatism, elitism, avowal not to strike under any circumstances and tendency to concentrate on pay campaigns in favour of nursing administrators, have helped successive governments to divide the workforce and made their task of keeping wages low that much easier. Although in recent years the RCN has adopted a slightly more radical stance (possibly to avoid losing members to the trade unions representing nurses — NUPE. COHSE and NALGO) it remains a reactionary, divisive force.

A profession can be defined as an occupation requiring advanced education and nursing can reasonably be considered as such. However, the subordinate role of nursing has been demonstrated by the case of Derek Owen, a former staff nurse at Walsgrave Hospital. Coventry, who refused to participate in administering electroconvulsive treatment to a 76 year-old woman and was sacked. At the employment tribunal hearing Justice Popple well stated: “. . . it's not the nurse who decides what treatment a patient would benefit from, but the doctor" (Nursing Times, 1984). Iliffe deals bluntly with the much vaunted professionalism in nursing:

  When nursing is restricted to mopping-up vomit, emptying bedpans and washing the bed-bound, it is only a special example of the caring role allotted to women, and nurses are therefore allotted the same autonomy as women generally. Nursing "professionalism", therefore, aims at acquiring trade secrets (more politely called professional skills and knowledge) to give some nurses more autonomy, status and money. The evolution of special skills and knowledge necessitates a special education, with access to it restricted to ensure that the market is not overloaded with tradesmen.

The appeal to professionalism is also used as an unsubtle form of blackmail to coerce nurses into docile conformism. The fact that trained nurses risk losing their qualifications through taking effective industrial action assists considerably in maintaining a compliant labour force.

When carrying out dirty work some form of protective clothing needs to be worn, but nurses insist on calling their overalls "uniforms" and wear useless frilly hats, perpetuating their domestic servant/hand maiden image. When their uniforms were compared with ". . . a plumber who insists on wearing a puce boiler suit, a purple beret, and his City and Guilds Certificate pinned to his chest!" (Pinel) there were horrified letters of protest in the nursing press. It is easy to dismiss the different coloured "uniforms" as a harmless, outdated tradition, but its perpetuation is designed to reinforce the rigid hierarchical structure and promote status consciousness. Servile, unquestioning workers accustomed to knowing their place within the organisation, dressed in a "uniform" designed for Victorian domestic servants, are easier to control.

Unlike other shift workers, nurses talk of their "duties"—a euphemism which disguises public holiday, weekend and night work often far in excess of shift workers in factories. It is only in the last twenty years that nurses have been able to receive extra pay for working unsocial hours and even now, in spite of being gradually increased over the years, nurses receive only time and one-third for Saturday, "unsocial hours' and night work and time and two-thirds for Sunday and public holiday work. These rates lag well behind those paid in industry or. indeed, the rates paid to hospital ancillary staff.

With 10.000 nurses and midwives without jobs, a large pool of unemployed labour to fill nursing auxiliary vacancies, reduced demand for labour as hospitals are closed as a result of cutting resources to the health service and the weakness of trade unions during a recession have emboldened the government to try to abolish enhanced rates of pay for unsocial hours. Such a move, if successful, would cut the nurses' standard of living and reverse twenty years of struggle to achieve pay conditions comparable with industrial workers.

Many hospitals were built in the Victorian era and are still in use today. Poor Law infirmaries, former workhouses and prison-like asylums still serve as district general hospitals, geriatric hospitals and psychiatric hospitals. With the cut-back in health service expenditure those hospitals that have survived closure have been patched up in a haphazard and piecemeal manner. The old buildings were never intended for modern nursing and condemn nurses and patients alike to substandard conditions. Very few buildings have been constructed to replace old hospitals. In the first seventeen years of the National Health Service only one new hospital was built. But as Widgery points out;

  . . . the size and location of the finished new hospitals often worsens rather than improves the national distribution of medical resources. The Royal Free in Hampstead is situated in the most affluent and healthy part of North London, while hospital facilities in the Northwest London industrial belt and in East London are being closed.

Such closures oblige nurses to move or travel long distances to work.

Residential accommodation for nurses has been the subject of several campaigns to secure improvements. However, the government intends to sell off two thirds of the nurses' homes (presumably that which is most profitable to speculators) and retain only a minimum stock of housing. Nurses, at the mercy of private landlords, would find their living standards declining further:

  Resident nurses are frequently subjected to a number of petty restrictions which would not be tolerated by private tenants elsewhere, and must represent one of the most pernicious forms of "tied cottage" arrangements in existence today (Pinel).

The lodging charges for resident nurses were due to increase by 5 per cent from 1 April 1985 although the government has announced that nurses' wages must not rise by more than 3 per cent.

Nurse managers have opted out of nursing practice to "police" other nurses. They accept extra remuneration (or bribes) to enforce discipline, increase exploitation and punish their fellow workers, although as workers themselves they are dependent on the posts they hold for their livelihood. Male nurses, although making up less than 10 per cent of the nursing labour force, occupy one-third of the senior administrative posts, reflecting the sexist divisions of the broader society while the dearth of immigrants in senior posts is part of a deliberate policy for, as a Lanarkshire Health Board Memorandum stated: "No alien (Mauritian. Filipino. Chinese) person is to be promoted without the sanction of the Home Office" (Nursing Mirror, 1980).

During an industrial recession there is a surplus of labour and it is not so profitable to spend money conserving the workers' health. Cuts in the health services and hospital closures have, therefore, weakened the bargaining power of nurses. But the divisive "professional" stance of nurses, their failure to recognise their class interests and to understand the exploitative role of capitalism have depressed the conditions of Britain's 350.000 nurses and assisted successive governments in under-funding the health service.

Carl Pinel

References

Doyal, L. with Pennell. I. The Political Economy of Health. Pluto Press. 1979. p.206.

Iliffe. S. The NHS: a Picture of Health? Lawrence and Wishart, 1983. p. 147. 

Nursing Mirror. News item. 151 (20) 4. 

Nursing Times. News item. 80 (43) 5.

Pinel. C. "Are uniforms necessary?" Nursing Mirror. 14 November 1974, p.41.

Pinel. C. "'Us' and 'them' at work". Nursing Mirror. 158 (10) 9.

Widgery. D. Health in Danger. Macmillan Press. 1979. pp. 52-53.

50 Years Ago: Old Fake Cure for Unemployment (1985)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every time unemployment rises to high levels some feather-brained political genius is sure to rush into print and speech with a brand-new proposal for solving the problem by setting the unemployed at work constructing public works, roads and bridges, and so on. The funny thing is that they all believe they are the first ever to have thought of such schemes. Mr. Lloyd George's “New Deal” plan is at bottom nothing more than this, and his predecessors are legion. The ILP and Labour Party have been trotting it out for forty years. Sir Oswald Mosley, when he propounds it for the British Union of Fascists, has doubtless forgotten that Mr. John Strachey borrowed it for him from Bishop Berkeley, who recommended it 200 years ago, coupled with what was, in effect, slave-labour for the unemployed.

Earlier still, when Henry VIII was first contemplating the seizure of the lands and property of the monasteries, a plan was put forward for using some of the plunder “for aiding the poor and unfortunate, building up new towns, restoring decayed manors, reclaiming unprofitable parks, and constructing new roads throughout the kingdom”. (Economic Causes of the Reformation in England, Oscar Marti. Macmillan & Co. 1929. Page 195.)

(From the Socialist Standard, May 1935.)

Commodity production (1985)

From the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealth, as the etymology of the word suggests, is what contributes to human welfare; it consists of material objects, or goods, which serve to satisfy some human need. The basic source of all wealth is nature since goods are either found in nature or fashioned from materials that originally came from nature. Nearly all goods come into the latter category of being products of labour, in the sense that human beings have to exercise their mental and physical energies in order to create or produce them.

Producing a good does not involve creating new matter, but changing the form of existing materials. In the process of production human beings employ their own energies. and other natural forces and processes, to change nature-given materials into articles that can be used to satisfy some human need. Materials found in nature are given a new form, new physical characteristics. It is these newly-created characteristics capable of satisfying some human need that constitute goods and wealth. Wealth production is thus essentially a process of transformation of nature to make it useful to human life and happiness. Those goods which are products of labour are parts of nature that have been so transformed.

A good, then, is a part of nature which has, or has been given, particular physical characteristics which can be used to satisfy some human want. These useful characteristics of a good are its use-value. As in the end the good is its useful characteristics — it is these that make it a good for humans — the word use-value can be used as a substitute for good.

An item of wealth is always, by definition. a use-value but under certain circumstances can also acquire another characteristic which has also been called value. But how can an item of wealth have a value for humans other than its use-value? Surely the value of a good can only be its ability to satisfy some particular human need? These common-sense, and basically correct, observations caused the early political economists no end of trouble when they came to study the prices which goods acquired in an exchange economy. For they noticed that the proportions in which goods exchanged for each other bore no relation whatsoever to their relative utilities, or use-values; goods which were very useful, even vital, to human beings had a relatively low price while goods which had a limited use-value, such as gold and precious stones, had a relatively high one. The answer found to this paradox was that prices did not in fact measure use-value but some other kind of value: exchange-value.

A good produced for the purpose of being exchanged has traditionally been called a commodity in English. From an etymological point of view this is unfortunate since "commodity'' ought to be an alternative way of saying "good" or "use-value". but the usage is too long-established to be changed. It still remains true that the German and French equivalents — Ware and Marchandise — are much more expressive since they immediately indicate that what is being talked about are not goods as physical objects but goods as articles of commerce, as "wares and merchandise". But just as we can call goods use-values so we can call commodities exchange-values.

Strictly speaking, exchange-value and value are not the same. The exchange-value of a commodity is the expression in exchange of its underlying "value”, of the economic value which it has in an exchange economy even when it is not being exchanged. The disagreement between Marx and orthodox economics was not so much over what determined value (for Marx, and some others, it was the amount of socially necessary labour incorporated in a commodity in the course of its production from start to finish) as over its nature. For Marx value was not a feature which goods possessed by virtue of being goods but a social relation, a feature goods only acquired in commodity-producing societies; in other societies the only value goods had (or would have) was their use-value.

The other expression of value in an exchange economy is money as a unit of account. Money originated from barter, the simplest form of exchange, as the one commodity in which the exchange-value of all other commodities could be expressed and measured. Money still performs this role today so that exchange-value normally appears as a price expressed in monetary units.

This distinction between use-value and exchange-value, between wealth and value is a key concept for understanding capitalism, which is essentially a system in which wealth is produced as value rather than exclusively as use-value. This is because capitalism is an exchange economy in which most wealth, from ordinary consumer goods to vast industrial plants and other producer goods, takes the form of commodities, items of wealth that have been produced with a view to sale on a market.

Commodity production existed before capitalism but in previous societies was marginal to the predominant form of the production of wealth. In previous societies such as feudalism wealth was principally produced for direct use and not for sale on a market. Wealth was used by those who produced it or else by the privileged classes who lived off the producers and acquired wealth from them by the actual or threatened use of force. In capitalism the roles of production for sale and production for use are reversed; it is now production for use that is marginal, while the great bulk of wealth is produced for sale. In particular, the elements needed for producing wealth (raw materials, machines, and human mental and physical energy) become commodities.

Adam Buick

Socialism explained (1985)

From the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The following brief statement was presented to a recent meeting held at the University of London, entitled What Would a Socialist Economy Be Like? The Leftist speakers offered no clear idea of what they meant by "socialist economy"; indeed, the first (an economist) concluded his speech by saying that nobody on earth could define socialism! Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain were left to answer the question which the appointed speakers lamentably failed to deal with. Incidentally, the term "socialist economy" is itself a contradiction in terms, as there will be no economics in a socialist society.

For too many years there has been widespread confusion about what socialism really means. Workers cannot be blamed for rejecting the so-called case for a socialist economy when it is identified with nationalisation (nearly forty years ago the coal miners of Britain were told that the industry now belonged to the public), state tyranny (as in the so-called Communist countries where wage slaves are beaten up and imprisoned for organising in unions to defend wages and conditions) and wage freezes, union-bashing and austerity measures (as carried out by all previous Labour governments and by the bogus socialist governments in France, Spain and Greece now). To millions of workers socialism is regarded as having been tried and failed. Such ideas are reinforced by the popular Leftist conception of socialism, which amounts to a sterile vision of state capitalism — a centralised, bureaucratically-controlled market economy is the best that the Left is able to offer as an "alternative" to the so-called free market.

The objective of socialists is to abolish the market, not to regulate or humanise it. In a socialist society the production of goods and services for sale on the market with a view to profit will not exist. Commodity production. which is a feature of capitalism, will give way to production solely for use. There will be no buying and selling, but free access by all people to the goods and services which can be made available. Wealth in a socialist society will be produced according to people's abilities — with each person contributing voluntarily to the social effort without the need to work for a wage or salary — and will be available to all on the basis of their self-defined needs.

Socialism will be a wageless, moneyless world society. It will be a social system in which the means of wealth production and distribution will belong to the people of society as a whole (there will be no property) and be controlled democratically, utilising to the full the modern means of mass communication. Freed from the inefficient and wasteful structure of the property-money-wages system of production for sale and profit, socialist society will be able to set about the task of satisfying human needs. The countless problems caused by capitalism, such as mass starvation alongside food mountains and cuts in health services while thousands of doctors and nurses are on the dole, will be solved in a short time once society has eradicated the market and its priorities and is organised to produce for use.

Those seeking a real alternative to both private and state capitalism should not be afraid to state boldly the case for a completely new way of organising social affairs. Yes, we will be labelled as Utopians by conservatives of the Right and Left wings of capitalism for daring to propose a solution to the problems of present-day society which goes beyond the outdated barriers of the buying and selling system. But socialism, as defined by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, is the only alternative which offers a revolutionary challenge to the status quo. Not only is it the sole alternative to the futile attempt to reform capitalism, but it is an attractive and exciting option. Instead of the old Leftist demands for lower bus fares or cheap spectacles on the NHS or more slums to be built by councils, we argue for a social transformation which is really worth getting enthusiastic about: a society where there will be no fares, no rents, no prices; decent homes, food, clothing and amenities for everyone; free access to the wealth which money has always prevented us from having; the abolition of the wages system and its replacement by unalienated, cooperative and useful production.

If you think that such an alternative is practical, desirable and urgent you should investigate further by contacting your nearest branch of the Socialist Party or writing to our Head Office for introductory literature.