Pathfinders: Bad apples (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s a popular saying, origin uncertain, that ‘America innovates, China imitates and Europe regulates’. That’s not true anymore in the case of China, which is leading from the front these days in AI and green tech. But Europe continues to live up to its reputation, last month by fining Apple and Meta €500m and €200m respectively for certain dubious business practices deemed to be in breach of the 2022 Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s attempt at levelling the online playing field. The European Commission declared that Apple was guilty of anti-competitive behaviour with its App Store, specifically by ‘restricting app developers in their ability to inform customers of alternative offers or marketplaces that could be found outside its own and steer them towards purchases.’ Meanwhile Meta had erred by introducing a ‘consent or pay’ model which invites users to take out a monthly subscription or else let Meta hoover up all their Facebook and Instagram user data for sale to third parties (BBC news, 7 July).

The Meta model is a typical example of how firms exploit audience capture. They’ve got their customers hooked, so now’s the time to take the piss out of them with extra charges. It’s a bit like what the big streaming services have been doing lately by introducing adverts into paid subscriptions, and then inviting subscribers to pay extra to go ad-free, all in the name of ‘choice’. But is Meta really offering a choice? One might suspect that the real deal is ‘pay up and we’ll plunder your data anyway.’

Apple have always been known for being control freakish and attempting to lock their customer base into their own exclusive ecosystem, including a special patent-protected charging cable that no one else is allowed to make and which doesn’t work with any third-party device.

People say that capitalism drives brilliant technical innovation, but when you look at the way this happens, ‘brilliant’ is not the word that comes to mind. It is chaotic, spontaneous, unplanned and secretive, with profligate waste and duplication. Under the pressure of competition, each developer adopts a walled-garden approach, for the sole purpose of protecting future profits. Most will eventually fail, and the few successes which do emerge are of course incompatible with each other. Producers have every incentive to maintain this incompatibility, make their products impossible to repair, lock in customers, and oppose any move towards component standardisation. In the ensuing market battle, the ultimate victor may not be the best technical product but the one with the biggest marketing muscle. When you decide to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’, you can end up with a cactus instead of an orchid.

Take electric cars, for instance. What’s deterring buyers, apart from up-front cost, is range anxiety related to lack of charging infrastructure, and long charge times. The real problem is the vast range of models, sizes and batteries being produced. Logically, producers could have cooperated in the first place to produce just one standard battery for all cars, together with standardised quick-replacement mechanisms, so you could swap them out at any garage in mere minutes. But capitalism doesn’t do logic. That’s not to say that EV battery standardisation won’t ever happen, but the battle for profits comes first, and never mind the waste.

Recent EU regulations have been an attempt to override the jarring contradiction between what producers do for profit and what people actually want. So for example, there are regulations to ban designed obsolescence, ban greenwashing, and enforce a ‘right to repair’. These are all worthy enough measures from an environmental perspective, but they are likely to damage the bloc’s overall competitiveness with the less scrupulous USA and China. The Wall Street Journal tartly responded with a 2024 article entitled ‘Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place‘.

So it was that in 2022, in an effort to reduce much electronic waste due to the multiplicity of different charging cables, the EU put a stop to Apple’s proprietary Lightning port and forced the firm to change its Euro-market products to use the industry-standard USB-C charging port. Now Apple are hopping mad about the new DMA fine over its restrictive App Store, and have lodged an appeal. Perhaps they will argue that if the ruling were applied to offline traders, Tesco would be legally bound to advertise Sainsbury’s products, Asda to advertise Aldi, and so on.

Apple boss Tim Cook reportedly got on the whine-line to US President Donald Trump to complain about all this, presumably in the hope that Agent Orange would put the squeeze on the EU mandarins via more tariff threats. Trump might be less than enthusiastic though. He is thought to be greatly dischuffed at Cook’s polite but steadfast refusal to cave in to his demand that Apple ‘reshore’ all its production facilities to the US. From Cook’s perspective, this would be an utterly bonkers move which would cut a gigantic hole in Apple’s profits, given that US workers cost a lot more than Chinese or Indian ones. Moreover, it would require several years of intense planning, making it scarcely worth consideration given that Trump’s effective time in office could expire as soon as November 2026 with the US mid-term elections. So, appeal or not, Apple may decide to suck it up and pay the fine. €500m is a drop in the bucket to Apple, and a lot cheaper than eviscerating a $3tn empire just to give Trump a few good headlines.

If capitalism really worked in humanity’s benefit, there wouldn’t be any need to keep making laws to curb its natural tendencies. All capitalist producers are bad apples in this sense. Meanwhile attempts at regulation can often mean states or trading blocs are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of global competitiveness. The world has long since socialised production. What it now needs to do is socialise ownership and control of that production too. If it doesn’t, the spiralling chaos will continue, with disastrous prospects for humanity and the planet.

Paddy Shannon

What is 'post-scarcity'?

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A post-capitalist society has to be, by its very nature, a ‘post-scarcity’ society. It has to be a society technologically capable of adequately meeting the needs of its people. This capacity constitutes the material foundations upon which the kind of social outlook and values indispensable to the very existence of such a society can arise and truly flourish. Without it, without an ample supply of the goods and services we all need to enjoy a reasonably decent standard of living, a debilitating and scarcity-driven competitive scramble will inevitably set in, undermining our willingness to cooperate with each other and sapping our desire to work for the common good.

But what exactly does an ‘ample supply of goods and services’ mean in practical terms? Obviously, what is ‘ample’ is dependent on how much we are able to produce in the first place, but it is also crucially contingent on what we ourselves consider to be ‘ample’ – our cultural values. That is to say, it is culturally conditioned.

Consumerism

In a capitalist society, your status correlates positively with how much you conspicuously consume in the form of material wealth. This is what makes consumerism such an integral aspect of our way of life under capitalism.

The point about consumerism is that there is technically no upper limit to the quantities, or money values, of goods and services you could strive to consume. Hence the emphasis on it ‘always’ being a desirable goal that one should consume more – a suggestion that conveniently chimes with the commercial interests of businesses wanting to increase their sales. More is always better. That there is no limit on how much you should consume stems from the fact that status competition itself is essentially a zero-sum game. I can only boost my social status within a status hierarchy at your expense (and vice versa).

According to the argument, it is not just that your sense of well-being and happiness is said to grow in line with your rising level of material consumption; crucially, it is also because this rising level of material consumption works to enhance your status in the eyes of others. The corollary of this is that those lower down this status hierarchy must therefore feel, to that extent, a little less satisfied and less happy with life — at least according to consumerist ideology. The only way in which they might mitigate this relative sense of dissatisfaction or deprivation is by striving to consume more – not just more but relatively more than others around them are consuming.

Our capacity to consume more is, however, dependent on us improving our economic circumstances and increasing our purchasing power, in comparison with others. But, of course, this cannot logically happen for most people in a capitalist society since the very mechanism of capitalist incentivisation itself depends on the systemic entrenchment, and even deepening, of economic inequality. Capitalism needs us to feel dissatisfied with our lot in life, by comparison with others, so we can all the more enthusiastically buy into, and embrace, what it is (literally) attempting to sell us. And, of course, work harder to achieve it.

This is an example of contrived or artificial scarcity. It is contrived because what the system is attempting to implant in us are what Marcuse called ‘false needs’.

Produce more stuff?

What can we do about it? It cannot be emphasised too much that ‘scarcity’ in this sense will not diminish and disappear simply by augmenting or adding to our capacity to produce yet more stuff – that is, by further expanding the already formidable forces of production at our disposal.

The problem is not that we lack the technological wherewithal to make a post-scarcity and post-capitalist society feasible. The problem is, rather, that we allow a system of profit-oriented and market-based production to continue to exist and to fundamentally get in the way of fully realising the productive potential we already possess.

A post-capitalist society, while it is not a recipe for a kind of stoical belt tightening is, on the other hand, not an excuse for some sort of turbocharged consumerism. The grounds for rejecting the latter are as compelling as the grounds for rejecting the former

Instead, there is a middle way, if you like. According to this approach the technological potential to meet humanity´s basic requirements for food, shelter and so on, to a reasonable level, should be looked upon as providing us with the means and the opportunity to better accommodate, or attend to, those other (and often neglected) needs we all have as human beings quite apart from our physical or material needs.

Lifestyle changes?

One thing is for certain: just privately reflecting upon the subject of consumerism and consciously seeking to adjust your own consumer behaviour, however much this might be welcomed, is not going to be enough. Not nearly enough. ‘Consumerism’ as it has been defined here is fundamentally a social phenomenon.

This is the problem with much of the currently burgeoning literature on the theme of a post-growth – and even, post-capitalist – society, awash, as it often is, with informative and penetrating insights into the negative social and environmental consequences of ‘consumerism’. The focus is too much on the particular lifestyles of particular individuals.

With some notable exceptions, there seems to be little in the way of a well-grounded analysis linking this phenomenon we call consumerism with the underlying socioeconomic relations that define our existing capitalist social order. The general tenor of the approach is essentially moralistic in tone and, ultimately, the solutions offered seem to hinge more on reforming or tinkering around with the system than getting rid of it.

Of course, changing values is undeniably important if we are to fundamentally change the nature of the society we live in. The point is simply that we cannot just rail against the ‘consumerist values’ of this society, as we see it, without understanding where they originate from, the material circumstances out of which they have arisen. Criticism has also to be coupled with a clear commitment to changing these circumstances.

Not just subjective

We need also to look at the supply side of the equation as well – not just the demand side. We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society where we can just go out and kill an antelope or gather roots whenever the hunger pangs prompt us to do so. We depend instead on a highly developed system of food production linking the farmer and the consumer through a complex chain of intermediate stages.

In other words, ‘artificial scarcity’ has an ‘objective’ dimension, aside from being rooted in an ideology. It would be absurd, for instance, to accuse a starving person or a homeless person of ‘consumerism’ because they wanted food or shelter. The scarcity they experience is real enough, but the point is that the reason for it occurring is both contrived – artificial – and inexcusable. Quite simply, people should not have to go without in this day and age. Yet they do.

One very obvious reason why this happens is the enormous diversion of human and material resources away from socially useful production into socially useless forms of economic activities. The purpose of such activities is not to meet human needs but to keep the capitalist system ticking over on its own terms.

Keeping the capitalist money system ticking over involves quite literally reducing the human and material resources available for meeting human needs. These are the very real opportunity costs of propping up a system of capitalist production, which cannot be denied or just brushed under the carpet. There are other, more direct and visible, ways in which human needs are blatantly disregarded and ignored as well. Thus, while we talk of starving and homeless people, we surely cannot be unaware of the grotesque spectacle of millions of empty homes languishing in the face of a growing problem of homelessness or food being destroyed in the face of hunger for no better reason than to push up prices or keep them high.

Such scarcity is ‘artificial’ in the sense that there is no logical reason whatsoever why it should exist other than the fact that it arises from the nature of the society we happen to live in. It will not cease to exist until this society ceases to exist and replaced by one in which meeting human needs is the sole concern.

Robin Cox

Cooking the Books: Axe the rich (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the measures being urged on the government to solve its ‘fiscal problem’ is ‘tax the rich’ by means of a levy on the personal wealth of some capitalists.

‘Advocates of a UK wealth tax, including Lord Kinnock, have proposed an annual 2% tax on wealth above £10m. Wealth tax campaign group Tax Justice UK has calculated this would affect about 20,000 people — fewer than 0.04% of the population — and raise £24bn a year’ (Sky News).

According to the latest figures (for the period 2020 to 2022) from the Office for National Statistics, ‘The wealthiest 1% of households had wealth of at least £3,121,500’.

So, the proposal would only affect some of the super-rich, not even all of the ‘top 1 percent’, let alone the whole of the capitalist class.

The ‘fiscal problem’ facing the British capitalist state, which Labour currently has responsibility for running, is how to pay for its essential spending on such things as the military, education and health for the working class, ‘benefits’ for those not in work, as well as its own administration. This can only be covered by money raised from taxes or through borrowing. The government doesn’t want to borrow more since this risks raising the rate of interest it has to pay lenders; which in turn increases the amount of tax it would need to raise, since taxation is the only source it has of money to pay the interest on its debts (the so-called ‘National Debt’).

The irony is that all taxes already fall in the end on property and property income, irrespective of who pays them in the first instance. Obviously corporation tax, income tax on dividends, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, and employers’ national insurance do so directly. But other taxes do so indirectly.

To be able to work efficiently workers require a given standard of living and an adequate money income to pay for this. By and large, though not automatically, what workers are paid goes up in line with the cost of living. If this rises, so sooner or later will wages. Taxes such as VAT on what workers need to buy to maintain their working skills are in effect passed on to employers. Similarly with a direct tax on wages; this too gets passed on. In fact, with PAYE, workers never even see the tax part of their nominal wages; what counts in terms of maintaining a standard of living appropriate to their working skills is their take-home pay and what it will buy.

Arguments about taxation are essentially arguments about how much in taxes particular sections of the property-owning class should pay. Taxes on wages and on what workers consume fall on employers. A wealth tax would be a tax on what capitalists consume in extravagant living and would enable part of the burden of taxation to be shifted from employers on to the super-rich. It wouldn’t make any difference to workers.

A wealth tax also implies the continued existence of the super-rich. One of their arguments against it is precisely that one effect of such a tax would be to drive some of them out of the jurisdiction of the British capitalist state.

Socialists don’t want to maintain the rich so that the state can milk them. Nor do we want to redistribute their wealth amongst the rest of the population so as to try to achieve a more equal society contrary to capitalism’s nature. We want the means for producing wealth to be commonly owned by society as a whole so that they can be used, under democratic control, to directly provide what people need. We don’t want to tax the rich. We want to abolish the division of society into the rich and the rest.

The state of the state’s finances (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politicians love talking big numbers: ‘We’re spending £5 million to stop The Thing.’ Or ‘We will spend an additional £20 million to increase The Pittance by a penny.’ When Starmer and his chums came into office they mummered and howled over discovering the astronomical £22 billion ‘fiscal black hole’ left in the public accounts by the Tories. Of course, for the majority of people living on pennies at a time, such figures represent unimaginable amounts. Eking out a few quid from week to week and making every pound work is the lot of most people, so such sums seem like an unforgivable profligacy.

Everyone in politics knew there was a gap in spending plans, and that Labour, despite all its promises not to increase taxation, would have to find a way to close this spending gap. The Tories had arguably laid a trap for Labour, in the form of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a supposedly apolitical authority that marks the UK government’s financial homework. The problem is, if politicians and press just ignore it, it doesn’t do much good.

It does provide useful data, though. Its Brief Guide to the Public Finances provides a lot of the clarity regarding government spending that is missing from much of the daily rhetoric. The key piece of data is the total spend by the government: ‘In 2024-25, we expect it to spend £1,278.6 billion, equivalent to around £45,000 per household or 44.4 per cent of national income.’ Against that background, £22 billion is a rounding error that could easily be sorted by knocking a few invoices into the next financial year.

The issue is that the income for the state is expected to be ‘£1,141.2 billion, equivalent to around £40,000 per household or 39.7 per cent of national income.’ This is the infamous deficit of £137.3 billion. This means adding to a rising national debt: ‘in 2024-25, we expect debt to be equivalent to 95.9 per cent of national income. It is equivalent to around £2.8 trillion or £98,000 per household’. This is significant, because the government has to pay interest on that debt: ‘Net interest payments on the national debt are expected to cost £105.2 billion in 2024-25’.

To put that in perspective: ‘The biggest items [of public spending] are health £193.3 billion, education £89.2 billion and defence £37.6 billion.’ Whilst, in theory, the state is immortal and need never pay back its total debts (when particular debts fall due, it can just roll them over and borrow more money to pay its creditors), servicing the interest bill can become expensive, especially if confidence in any particular government falls and creditors demand higher interest rates to cover their risks. This means the government has to manage the size of its debt: this is why deficits become such an all-consuming obsession.

Politicians, however, point to the difference between capital spending and current spending. The government invests ‘£146.1 billion – 11 per cent of the total – on capital investment such as roads and buildings and on loans to businesses and individuals’. This spending is backed by physical infrastructure and leads to ownership of assets. On top of that it spends ‘£450.7 billion on the day-to-day ‘current’ running costs of public services, grants and administration. This is 35 per cent of public spending’. Additionally, the government spends £313.0 billion on welfare payments (£150.7 billion of which is pensions).

The government thus prefers to look at the current deficit which: ‘counts all receipts and all current spending, but excludes spending on net investment’. The current deficit stands at £60.7 billion.

This accounts for why Labour made politically disastrous decisions, such as freezing winter fuel payments and cutting Personal Independence Payments (for a paltry £5 billion in savings, which is tiny compared to overall spending, but one twelfth of the current deficit).

They can, if they are lucky, rely on economic growth (which raises tax receipts, and lowers welfare costs) to cover much of the gap: but the plan is to have a current surplus, which gives the Chancellor of the Exchequer space to either cut taxes or increase spending in fresh areas. The expectation is to have £9.9 billion of such headroom by the next election: so the strategy is pain today and jam tomorrow.

As the OBR notes in its Economic and Fiscal Outlook – March 2025:: ‘The tax-to-GDP ratio is forecast to increase to a post-war high of 37.7 per cent of GDP in 2027-28. Part of this increase is driven by the policies announced at the previous Budget, including the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions and increases to capital taxes’. From the point of view of the capitalist class, in general, that money going to taxation comes from their available profits and lowers the amount of money available for their profitable capital investment. A record high tax rate, especially one fuelled by an effective employee tax (National Insurance employers’ contributions) will be concerning for them in terms of international competitiveness.

In their eyes, then, government indebtedness is preferable, as it forms a means of funding the state under the control and discretion of the rich, with interest rates being a kind of vote of confidence in the way a government handles the debt. The money from interest payments is also welcome to those of them who lend the government money.

The March report also notes that the government is committed to ‘increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP over the next Parliament, which would be equivalent to £17.3 billion in 2029-30’. This would in part be paid for by a £6.8 billion cut in overseas development spending (this simply represents a change from soft to hard power). This unplanned shift in spending priorities shows how the government’s carefully laid plans to generate a current surplus can easily be thrown off course.

All this wealth, though, was originally produced by the efforts of the working class. How much better and more efficient would it be if that effort was directly focused on human needs, instead of producing taxable money?

Pik Smeet

Waking up (2025)

Book Review from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the common jibes directed at the Socialist Party is that, though we have been in existence well over 100 years, we have made little or no progress in garnering support for the system we advocate to replace capitalism. We’re talking here about a stateless, moneyless, marketless society of common ownership, voluntary cooperation and free access to all goods and services – one that will be organised democratically on the basis of from each according to ability to each according to need. Our response to the jibe has always been that what we are at least doing is keeping the idea of that society alive and it will be there for the majority to establish once social consciousness has developed sufficiently for them to see the necessity of it.

Positive signs?

And we do see some positive moves in that direction, evidenced by the idea of a moneyless, borderless world society being advocated from a variety of quarters, often quite independent of any contact with or knowledge of the Socialist Party. In recent times, for example, we have reviewed books such as Beyond Money: A Post-Capitalist Strategy by Anitra Nelson from Australia and Description of the World of Tomorrow: A World Without Money or Barter or Exchange: a Civilisation of Free Access by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal from France. A couple of years ago, in the United States, we had Moneyless Society: the Next Economic Evolution from Matthew Holton, founder of the ‘Moneyless Society’ Facebook site, which boasts 20,000 members. Earlier this year, Justin Fairchild, also from the US, brought out Unchained: Living Without Money, advocating a society in which ‘cooperation replaces competition, access replaces ownership, purpose replaces profit’. And now, from Harald Neslein Sandø, a Norwegian living in Spain and writing in English, we have Waking Up. A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, whose subject of exploration is unmistakeably the kind of society we have always advocated, even though he does not call it, as we do, ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’.

Exploring possibilities

Sandø ‘s book also differs from the others in that it is a work of fiction, science fiction in fact. In his introductory note, the author describes science fiction as ‘a canvas for exploring possibilities’ and his book as ‘an invitation to imagine, question and reflect’. It chooses, in fact, to tell the wholly imaginary story of an individual, Benjamin, who, having been cryogenically frozen when about to die from cancer in 2015, is brought back to life 100 years later after a new society has been established. This is a society based no longer on money but on ‘community effort’, where, as Benjamin is told by one of the first characters he meets, there is ‘shared stewardship’ of the planet and ‘no one owns it – we belong to it’, and there is ‘no money, no ownership, no competition’.

We get little explanation of how this new state of things was brought about, apart from asides such as ‘the planet was about to collapse due to climate change and pollution’, ‘the need for a completely different system became clear’, ‘the monetary system was killing the planet as it demanded a constant overconsumption of resources’, ‘it was a global, democratic decision’, and ‘this transformation has been made possible through a new mindset – a mindset of trust and respect’. We are, however, supplied with intricate details about how the society operates via Benjamin’s discovery of the new way of living people have and the unimaginably advanced forms of technology that challenge everything he once knew. He finds a sustainable world in which human beings collaborate with one another, innovation thrives, mutual support has taken the place of conflict, and there are ‘no supervisors, no bosses, no payroll, no urgency’. And he is told: ‘For the first time in the written history of mankind … we have evolved to a stage where we can look at this planet as a whole, see humanity as one family, and live without borders. This is a world where we all coexist peacefully, without war.’ He also learns that ‘through the efficient management of resources, we have achieved a relative abundance that allows everyone to live comfortably in their own way, regardless of where they are in the world’. It has also become a world of regenerative agriculture where ‘rewilded landscapes flourished’ and which ‘thrived not on domination but on unity’. One of the characters Benjamin meets tells him: ‘We take care of each other, and in doing that, we take care of ourselves. There’s no struggle, no scarcity. Just collaboration.’ The same character goes on: ‘Human nature turned out to be not only selfish and violent. You can choose and, you choose friendliness, which I’m very happy for’.

Human interest

A bit of a fairy tale, a pipe dream, some might say. But it is made less of one – and given a certain plausibility – by the author’s continual explanation of how it works in practice, how the highly advanced technology used to make it operate has been developed and keeps developing. This plausibility is enhanced – and the reader is drawn into the narrative – by the ‘human’ story it tells of how the individual who has been brought back to life adapts to the new world he finds. The book had begun by painting a picture of Benjamin’s former existence when he was a billionaire capitalist driven entirely by the need he felt to accumulate wealth. Now on waking up to find that money plays no part in anyone’s existence, he first feels out of place, ‘obsolete’, ‘not knowing where he belongs’, as he puts it, and he (and we) wonder whether he will cope mentally, how he will accept and adjust to the completely new system and mindset he finds all around him..

As a way of trying to comfort Benjamin and ease his integration into the new world, the guide assigned to him puts an ingenious twist into what he is finding by saying ‘We are all capitalists, as we are living off the shared capital of the planet and universe’. He is then pulled into the drama of a small group of ‘renegades’ who seek (unsuccessfully) to sabotage things and return the world to its old competitive ways, but he comes out the other side in clear opposition to this and in support of a ‘borderless globe’, where, in words that he himself now utters, there is ‘seamless harmony between humans and nature’, where everyone leads ‘their own versions of a good life, respecting each other and the planet’. All this lends some genuine ‘human interest’ to what might otherwise be an accumulation of dry technological detail and, in fact, manages to make the book something of a page turner, its 200-odd pages having been devoured by the current writer in a single sitting.

How do we get there?

There is clearly some comparison to be made here with other attempts at depicting life and organisation in a future non-market society of voluntary cooperation and free access. For many it will bring to mind, for example, William Morris’s late 19th century News from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn’s News from Gardenia from 2012, and, in particular, the very recent attempt by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass (Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics) to provide a kind of day-to-day outline of what a future society ‘without money or a market’ might be like, something they call ‘a total alternative to capitalism’ and offering, as the authors put it, ‘everything from a plan for resource allocation to an outline of what life will feel like’. The main difference between this book and Sandø’s, however, is that, while Vettese and Pendergrass’s depiction is founded on profound knowledge of and reflection on the scientific and technological problems that a marketless society would need to deal with and overcome, Sandø’s vision, while also technological, is far more ‘imaginative’, fantasy-laden one might say. At the same time, it must be said, this is a factor that contributes to its readability.

From a socialist point of view, the main problem that arises from Sandø’s book – and indeed the others mentioned here, including William Morris’s classic – is that none of them deal effectively with the ‘how’, ie, how we get there. None of them specify the spreading of consciousness by the vast majority of workers as the prime condition – the sole condition – under which a socially conscious working class can, by democratic use of the vote, take the power necessary to abolish capitalism and set about organising a genuine socialist society of the kind looked forward to by all these sources – even if they do not all necessarily use the term ‘socialism’ to describe it.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

A number of the other books mentioned in this review have themselves been reviewed in previous Socialist Standards:

• Oct 2022: Beyond Money. A Post-Capitalist Strategy by Anitra Nelson
• Oct 2022: Description of the World of Tomorrow by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal
• Jan 2023: Moneyless Society: the Next Economic Evolution by Matthew Holton
• Mar 2023: Half-Earth Socialism by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergras

Economics Reworked (2025)

Book Review from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Economy of Want. Economics Reworked. By Donald Power. ISBN 978-1399985888. Also available free from Amazon as an e-book.

This self-published book starts off well enough. That, like all other animals, humans survive by applying their natural energy to obtain from the rest of nature what they need. Thanks to humans’ particular anatomy, their needs — or ‘wants’ as Power calls them — have become immensely greater than those of any other animal, as have the ways of obtaining from nature the means of satisfying them. How they obtain them has been the basis of the economic system of every human society.

Present-day society, he points out, is one where a minority owns most natural resources and instruments of production, fashioned and refashioned from materials that originally came from nature, while the rest have nothing but their natural ability to work. The latter have to work for the former and provide them with the means to satisfy their wants. This means, Power claims, that the economy is driven by what the owners ‘want’ in order to satisfy their needs. They pay workers to produce these and so provide workers with the money to satisfy some of their own ‘wants’ even if not much more than enough to maintain their particular ability to work.

That is alright as far as it goes, but the assumption is that what drives the economy today is the consumption wants of the owners. Power explicitly states this and it is the basis of his argument against the dominant school of economics that teaches that the free market system tends to lead to full employment and also of his explanation of booms and slumps. According to him, the level of employment depends on what the owners want (desire) to consume, so it is entirely possible that they might not want enough to bring about the full employment of the whole workforce. Booms are explained by the owners coming to want more and slumps by their coming to want less after the bubble bursts. He would seem to be saying that the economy is driven by the arbitrary desires of business owners.

He is, however, on the right track in that how today’s economy moves does depend on what the owners do with the surplus that the workers provide them with. But it is not what they want to consume that drives the economy but what they re-invest — or don’t. Power is well aware that they seek profits but gives the impression that this is something they decide to do when they desire to consume more. In reality, it is something that is forced upon them by the workings of the competitive struggle for profits, which is part of what capitalism is; they have to give priority to re-investment in more modern machinery and methods just to survive as a business concern. The capitalist economy is not driven by consumption, not even the consumption of the capitalists. It is driven by business owners’ market-imposed quest for profits, not their own consumption. What we have today is not so much an Economy of Want as an Economy of Profit.

Power’s main concern is to save the planet. Because he thinks that the economy is driven by wants rather than profits, he thinks that it can be reformed — ‘redesigned’ is a word he uses — to work differently by measures to change what people want to buy or use. He proposes to limit the consumption of the owners and, through taxes and subsidies, to re-direct the population towards wanting goods and services whose production and use don’t harm the rest of nature. This is a desirable goal but is incompatible with the present economic system which is driven by profits not wants and so requires its abolition.

Having said this, the book is written in simple, easy-to-read English. It is also refreshing to read a book from a critic of the way capitalism works who doesn’t repeat nonsense about banks having the power to create money from thin air. He accepts that work is the basis of wealth-production. In fact, he uses a labour theory of value, even though he doesn’t realise that Marx was as aware as he is that this doesn’t explain the price of land, paintings or the high income of talented footballers and other artists (demand in relation to unique supply does; the labour theory only applies to what can be reproduced).

Adam Buick

Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I understand that about twenty of the lasters recently discharged from the Wheatsheaf Works through the introduction of new labour-saving machinery, have this week each been handed a solatium of £10 by the Committee of the Wholesale Co operative Society.”—”Shoe and Leather Record.”

* * *

Lucky dogs ! I don’t know which they ought to be most thankful for—Co-operation, or the fact that they are lasters. Now I’ll tell you what I should do if I were a laster displaced by machinery, but with a solatium (blessed word) of £10 in my pocket.

I’d just let the machine do the work, and I’d last out on stout and oysters and rest till the old-age pension came along. Of course, one would have to be a pretty good laster to do it, but then what is the good of being a laster if you can’t last ?

* * *

Ireland is not the only subject of injustice. Mr. Douglas Hall, M.P., has discovered that the ‘armless (ask the Manchester carters), necessary copper is unjustly put upon on occasion, and he has taken up the cudgels on his behalf. He has entered into wordy warfare with Mr. Winston Churchill on the subject of the policemen’s Coronation medals, for he thinks it a burning shame that the police force in the Isle of Wight should not have medals to commemorate the fact that they have done some work—of a kind.

The hon. member felt so strongly on the matter, and the pure flame of chivalry blazed up so strongly within him, that he was moved to get up a petition, and “in less than an hour” (says he in a letter to Mr. Churchill, (which he also took the opportunity to get inserted in that excellent advertising medium, the “Isle of Wight County Times”) he obtained 100 signatures of Members of Parliament to the appeal.

* * *

Since it was discovered at Belfast that police cannot be relied upon to “bash” strikers while they have grievances of their own to brood over, quite a lot has been done to make “buttons” lie more comfortably. The policemen’s Sunday rest, is a case in point. It would be a pity to spoil all this for the sake of a few medals.

But I was forgetting—it may interest some of the workers who were lately bashed on the head by policemen at Tonypandy, Hull, Manchester and other places, to learn that among the M.P.’s who signed the petition are those prominent members of the Labour Party, Mr. George N. Barnes and Mr. Philip Snowden.

Couldn’t either of these gentlemen be induced to get up a petition for the recognition of the extremely valuable services of the police who were sent to South Wales in connection with the colliery dispute ? I am sure he could get the signature of every colliery-owner in Wales.

* * *

“The reason of the strength of Socialism was that it was so strenuous and uncompromising.”

Thus the “Daily Chronicle” (13. 7.11) reports Lord Selborne. It is very well said. Socialism must be uncompromising in order to be Socialism ; it must be strenuous in order to be strong. It seems the I.LP.-er and S.D.P.-er may learn something from a lord—I had thought they were incapable of learning anything from anybody.

If Lord Selborne will watch us and read the Socialist Standard in the future as he has evidently done in the past, he will discover that there are other sources of Socialist strength.

* * *

The hopelessness of the workers’ fight for anything else than Socialism (though, of course, the struggle must be kept up) is finely illustrated in the columns of the “Manchester Daily Despatch” (10.7.11), wherein it is pointed out that owing to the carters’ strike in that city there has been an unprecedented demand for motor lorries and waggons. The result has been that many firms have found these vehicles so economical, speedy and convenient that they are adopting them as rapidly as their demands can be met. It is claimed, and probably upon fair grounds, that when the carters’ strike is finished, many of the men will have no work to return to.

The tragedy of the workers’ position under capitalism is that their struggles, and still more their victories, handicap them against their pitiless competitor, machinery. Though it does not justify resigning the fight, it is, nevertheless, a never-to be forgotten fact that the lower wages are the slower machinery advances.

There is but one escape from this—Socialism. I am not going to adorn the tale with a moral.

* * *

Mr. Lloyd George, speaking at the Welsh Baptist Chapel, Castle Street, London, on June 25, is reported to have said :

“No reform was ever brought about by the people who suffered only, but always through the help of those who profited nothing.”

As it stands the statement is sheer nonsense, for it is just those who “suffer only” who gain nothing from reforms. However, ascribing this to temporary aberration (perhaps on the part of the printer), and reading the true meaning into the words (i.e., that reforms are never brought about solely by those who are to gain by them, but always with the help of those they will not profit), it seems to me that the statement is very near the truth.

I am not well up in the matter of reforms, but as far as my observations go they bear out the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot call to mind any reform that has not solely benefited the ruling class, but to get which they have not sought and obtained the assistance of the gullible section of the working class.

* * *

Mr. Lloyd George also said upon the same auspicious occasion : “All the poverty of London was really at the door of religion.”

How redolent of truth he was that fine summer afternoon. Some little correction, possibly, is needed, as with all general truths ; but in the sense that religion is one of the chief pillars of the present system of robbery, the pronouncement is substantially correct—though the parson must think it is like the politician’s darn’d cheek to go into the chapel and say so.

* * *

One more little selection from the same candid chin-wag. There was no stopping him when he got on the straight and narrow path of truth. You see he had escaped from the House of Commons, where only good, honest, downright lying is permissible, and he felt something of the wild exultation of the converted cannibal who has the good fortune to drop into a hut where they are boiling the missionary for supper. He spake unto the multitude thus :

“There is nothing between the people and tyranny but the spirit of the Christian Church.”

That’s just it—the vacuous, ethereal, ghostly, spirituous, spiritual spirit of the Christian Church—an intangible obfuscation of the foggy order that romps the land with a collection bag—a something just solid enough to hide the tyrant and his methods, but no sort of a foil against his mailed fist.

Yes, it is quite true that the spirit of the Christian Church is all that stands between the workers and tyranny, and that is one of the reasons the former cannot see who is hitting them

* * *

The “Evening News” of July 15 has the following on the action of the Labour Party in voting for the Financial resolution of the Insurance Bill after protesting against it.

“It was a Labour Party—

    The ‘Independent’ sort—

Its manner bluff and hearty,

    Its temper sometimes short.

It was its chiefest glory

    Its manly breast to thump

And say for Rad. or Tory

   It didn’t care a dump.

“It had its fixed convictions,

   Its views on what to do ;

And knowing no restrictions,

   It meant to see them through.

If, thinking these were novel

   (And O, his lights were dim)

The Premier didn’t grovel,

   Well, all the worse for him.

“Amendments most extensive

    It cheerfully designed ;

Its manner was offensive,

    But O, its heart was kind !

And when its speeches sprightly

    The Chancellor had chid,

It touched its hat politely

    And voted as he bid !—C. E. B.”

So doth genius put the whole thing in a nutshell.

A. E. Jacomb.

History proves the soundness of our position. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, of all the political organisations in this country, is the only one which stands solidly and consistently for the attainment of the Socialist system of society. Others (meaning, of course, political organisations) have displayed that compromise and trading resulting either from ignorance of the worker’s status under the present system, or from the fact that certain persons preferred personal aggrandisement to the straight path of a revolutionary party.

The innumerable instances quoted in the Socialist Standard and the S.P.G.B. Manifesto are sufficient evidence of the treacherous nature of parties who parade as Socialists. But the S.P.G.B., since the day it was formed, has ever insisted upon this basis as the essential to working-class salvation—the imperative necessity of

THE CONTROL OF THE POLITICAL MACHINERY.

The constant use by the capitalist class of that power to quell any semblance of revolt on the part of the workers; the endeavour to terrorise our class with demonstrations of military force, must be an indication of the value of the armed forces to the master class.

We of the S.P.G.B. realise, then, that the primary function of a Socialist party is to capture political power. What transpires after that will depend upon the democratic decision of an enlightened proletariat.

The record of incidents in the development of society should be a means of assisting the workers to realise how powerful, how necessary, is political control. History is a formidable foe to those who harbour Anarchist and reformist ideas. Generally speaking, the history of most countries, according to the majority of historians, is a record of the likes and dislikes of kings and queens and their favourites and paramours. Interesting as all this may be, it is not, and from a scientific standpoint cannot be considered to be, the history of the race. History to is is but

A SERIES OF DEVELOPMENTS

of all mankind, in which process one nation plays but a small part.

Further, unless we realise that the records of one epoch result from the actions of a previous state, and that our actions are but the inevitable growth from a condition in society precedent to us ; unless we clearly grasp that fact, a correct view of history cannot be obtained. Moreover, the keener the investigation into history, the clearer becomes the position we, as a party, occupy in this country. For by historical reference we are more than fortified in our position. In fact, the Socialist Party are the only party who can justify their attitude by history.

To us every method of government, whether it be monarchical, autocratic, plutocratic, theocratic or “democratic,” is tyrannical, since government implies a subject class in society. Let us get to the Athenian ascendancy for proof of this contention.

Athenian society originally was tribal. Later on the citizens were divided into classes principally on a private-property basis. Each section had political power corresponding to the volume of property it possessed. In Athens there existed a large population of propertyless slaves, who had no political rights of expression.

A remedy for such conditions being necessary, the famous constitutionalist and law-giver, Solon, so organised the political State that though the democracy had a voice, the aristocracy

WERE ALWAYS THE DOMINANT FACTOR

in Athenian political life. Nor was Athens the only State where such happenings were recorded, for after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus—the last of the seven Kings—from Rome in 509 B.C., the Romans swore they would never have another monarch.

Admirable as that may have appeared, it was in reality a further means for the nobility to suppress the “lower orders.” The Patricians and the Plebians were really the Aristocracy and the Commoners of the time. The latter had a split, and threatened to withdraw from the State unless there was some modification of the laws.

The masters (that is the controllers) of the political machinery, thereupon permitted a tribunate to be appointed, who were invested with power to veto certain actions of the Patricians. Then came the “Licinian Rogations,” due to combined action by the tribunes Licinius and Sextiud.

From the economic standpoint those laws, passed about 367 B.C., had no great value, and were purposely introduced to give the aristocracy greater power. It caused discontent to be stifled by grants of land to the plebians in all new territory conquered by the Romans. A later result of those laws was the extension of citizenship to the occupants of conquered cities, but with no political rights in the way of voting. The idea of the rulers in Rome was, “Keep what you like but let us have the political dominance.”

With the development in Rome came, too, the intermarrying of wealthy Plebians with the Patricians, with the result that the two sections became, socially and politically, a combination, and monopolised the public offices,

ALL AGAINST THE PROLETARIAT

of the day. Further, the constant usage of the political power had caused many acts which had been passed to become dormant. An instance is the Hortensian law of 287 B.C., which finally permitted the Plebian tribes to make laws without the assistance of the Comitia Centuriata.

Another interesting matter is that though each city conquered by Rome was given local autonomy, in most cases they were subordinate to the officials appointed from Rome. That had a tendency to give loyalty to the Romans, who, as are the British with regard to Egypt and India, were simply inspired by the possession of private property in the interest of the ruling class.

After the futile endeavours of Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, still another incident transpired that proves our contention conclusively. It was the reorganisation of the army by Marius, and after his death the actions of Sulla in using that army. The latter proved master of the situation because he had control of the army.

Let it be clearly understood that Rome was in a state of anarchy at this time. She was unable to master her possessions owing to the

GROWTH OF CORRUPTION

amongst the propertied classes.

Another fact illustrating the strength of the political power is afforded us by a reference to the actions of Constantine when he was at war with Maxeratius and Licinius for control of both the Eastern and Western Empires. Maxentius was defeated at Myvern Bridge, and Licinius, who hated Christianity intensely, was anxious to become emperor. Constantine, knowing full well that Licinius had great power, made Christianity a State religion, by which means he got greater support than ever. But for that incident Licinius would have defeated him, and Constantine would have become a cypher. The political exigences caused Constantine to extend his protection to the Christian or his power would have gone. With the support given him by converts to his curious mixture of Christianity and paganism he was enabled to overwhelm his rival and retain his throne.

Coming still nearer to the present time, we find that the wisdom of Charlemagne gives a voice in the government to the people. That voice was the bi-annual conferences he presided at “to hear the opinion of his people.” His control was so great that at his coronation the pope paid homage to him.

Perhaps the history of England may be viewed profitably to show that, whatever economic power any class possessed, they were always at the mercy of those who possessed the political power. If it was economic power that was the prime factor, how was it the Roman Catholic dominance was destroyed by Henry VIII ?

Perhaps it is unlikely that any Direct Actionist or other individual displaying

ANARCHISTIC TENDENCIES

would deny that the control of Parliament by Halifax and Cromwell caused a change in the British Constitution in 1649. A fact ever illuminating in history is that a class that had acquired great wealth were never free to utilise that wealth to its fullest advantage unless it had first the control of the political machinery. The severest impediment to the capitalist in this country was the control and monopoly by the landlords prior to the Reform Bill of 1832. 

In order to give free and full development to industry ; in order to sanction and legalise the. robbery of the working class ; in order to cheapen the cost of production, the present capitalist class were compelled to get political control. But that was simply the act in the final development of capitalism. Then our capitalist went to Parliament himself, but now he is leaving his work to paid hacks, lawyers, solicitors, and professional politicians.

The increasing productivity of the working class has solved the problem of production. Prior to the capitalist system the periodic panics and financial catastrophes were unheard of. Now we have them frequently, showing that even the ingenuity of the capitalist cannot avoid the ever intensifying control capital has over the capitalist. No longer can he control the profit system—the latter completely dominates him, and that is why the working class will have to take control of the political force. That this is evident one can see from the way the capitalist uses the political machinery. Strikes and economic eruptions,

“RIOTOUS OUTBREAKS”

as they call them, are squelched (where the starvation process is not sufficient) by sending armed forces into the disaffected districts.

We desire to obtain immediately a condition of society wherein we will enjoy all the means of life to the utmost advantage, and our fellow-slaves must be made conscious of it. The naval and military section of the working class can be made to understand that; and surely, when intelligence becomes uppermost in their minds, they will see that life under democratic control is much better than the rigorous discipline under which they exist at present.

Those who hold political power dominate the country in which they live. Therefore we strongly appeal to the working class to exercise their intelligence and to examine this question from the historical standpoint. The Socialist Party of Great Britain have never deviated from the scientific position such an examination logically leads to. It remains for you to put yourself in agreement with that position and to join us, and to assist in the spreading of working-class enlightenment.

Moses Baritz

Naked and unashamed. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an old adage running somewhat to the effect that when men of doubtful honesty have a difference of opinion, then is the time for honest men to come by their own. The Labour Party, through its prominent members, who appear at the moment to be very much at variance, enables us, by means of its internal squabbles, to give further proof of our contention as to its utterly incompetent and fraudulent methods ; enables us to show, once again, how much—or rather, how little—reliance can be placed in its vaunted independence of the Liberal party and policy.

As is well known, for years past, in and out of Parliament, the members of the Labour Party have vehemently protested their independence, have repudiated with indignation and scorn any suggestion of a coalition between them and the Liberals. Now, however, it would seem that the object for which they have been striving and intriguing is near enough to accomplishment to render any further disguise on their part unnecessary. They stand condemned, not from the words of the S.P.G.B., but out of the mouth of one of their most prominent leaders, who, for reasons of his own, wishes still to pose as an incorruptible.

Mr. Philip Snowden, writing in the “Labour Leader” of June 14, referring to the vote of the Labour Party the previous Thursday on the Financial Resolution of the Insurance Bill, says :

“Six members of the Labour Party voted against that resolution ; the majority supported the Government.

“The Labour Party had amendments down to raise the contribution of the State from 2d. to 3d. They had others which proposed to increase the benefits. The Financial Resolution submitted by the Government was designed, as Mr. Lloyd George frankly said, to rule out every amendment which would increase the State’s contribution.

“In answer to a question the Chairman said that if the Resolution was passed it would not be permissible to move the Labour Party’s amendments. Yet in the face of this the official spokesman of the Labour Party, after joining with the Unionist speaker in condemning the resolution, and after condemning the State’s ‘inadequate contribution,’ announced, not that the Labour Party would vote against it, or abstain, but that they would support the resolution which killed every one of their amendments worth trying to get !

“If the I.L.P. will stand this it will stand anything. If it submits to this it is time to go into voluntary liquidation as a preliminary to affiliating with the National Liberal Federation. The official Labour Party is now indistinguishable from the official Liberals. The Labour Whip was put on to send the Labour Members into the lobby to destroy their own amendment.”

Further, in “The Christian Commonwealth,” July 12, he writes with reference to this same amendments :

“There was never a clearer case of men deliberately putting an halter round their necks. … The Labour Party was instructed by the Conference which met three weeks ago to proceed with that amendment.

“But when the test of its independence came, when it was called upon to choose between obeying the instructions of its own conference and supporting the Liberal Government on an occasion when the Tories were not voting, the Labour Members, with about half-a dozen dissentients, showed that they were more anxious to follow the Liberal Whip than to obey the authority from which they profess to derive their mandate. This action on the part of the official Labour Party finally completes their identity with official Liberalism.”

This righteous indignation on the part of Mr. Snowden is rather amusing when one considers that it emanates from the man who, but a short time ago, was eulogising the honesty of Mr. Asquith, defending the action of the Liberals in sending the military to shoot down the workers at Belfast and Featherstone, and who was only returned to Parliament with the aid of Lord Morley and by Liberal votes.

If further evidence is needed of the betrayal of their followers by these leaders of “Labour,” it can be found in a recital of their doings during the recent Coronation festivities. As was pointed out at the recent I.L.P. conference, a Labour Party representative was allowed to serve on the Committee which sat in connection with the Coronation celebration. At the Coronation ceremony itself Messrs. Mullin and Davis attended on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress ; Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, “in faultless morning dress, disquietingly like a labour leader” (“Christian Commonwealth”), also graced the ceremony with his presence.

The sycophantic attitude of the Labour Party to Royalty is still further illustrated by the appearance of the Chairman of the Labour Party at the luncheon party given by the Secretary of State for War in honour of William II. of Germany. Mr. MacDonald went to the luncheon with the consent of the Labour Party, thus becoming its official representative. It might well be asked what a member of the Independent Labour Party, which a few months previously had been indulging in what was called “a great anti war campaign,” and who himself had taken a prominent part in the campaign, was doing in such a galley. He had as fellow-guests, such lovers and advocates of peace as the war-lord of Germany himself, Count Matternich, Gen. von Plessen, Admiral von Mülller, Lord Kitchener, and numerous others. Did the Kaiser and the Labour leader discuss, during their long conversation, the brutal repressive measures that have been taken in Germany, even in recent years ? Did Mr. MacDonald mention, for example, the ruthless manner in which the police shot down men, women, and children at the end of September last year during the strikes in Berlin ? Possibly, however, these small troubles of the working class slipped his memory—the memories of Labour leaders are conveniently short upon occasions.

Again, at the recent investiture .of the Prince of Wales, it might reasonably have been supposed that the official representatives of Labour would have no part. At the time this investiture was taking place, on the hillsides and in the valleys of South Wales were thousands of locked out and striking miners, fighting what must, unfortunately, be a losing fight with the powers of capitalism. The distress prevalent among these men and those immediately dependent upon them was appalling in its intensity. One would have thought that in common decency the least the Labour representatives could have done would have been to refrain from identifying themselves with the symbols and regalia of the flaunting wealth of capitalism. But no ! In the procession formed to do honour to the boy Edward, among other Welsh M.P.s, walked Mr. Keir Hardie, the Rt. Hon. W. Abraham, Mr. William Brace, Mr. J. Williams, and Mr. T. Richards. So glad were these men to be allowed the opportunity of licking the boots of Royalty, so eager were they to be acclaimed loyal subjects, that less than nothing to them were the starving men and women whom they have the audacity to claim to represent. The insult contained in this wanton callousness could not very well be greater.

The Labour Party appear to have thrown off all disguise. What does this kow-towing to kings and princes, this servile waiting upon the Liberal party, portend ? Perhaps the following paragraph, which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of 19 July, may throw some further light on the subject.

“The Ministry of Labour Bill, the text of which was issued yesterday, has for its object ‘to establish a Ministry of Labour for the better organisation of the labour market, for the prevention of unemployment, to regulate and in certain cases prohibit child labour, and to establish a general minimum wage for adult workers.’

“The salary of the Minister is placed at £5,000 a year, ‘and to the secretary, assistant secretary, officials and servants such salaries as the Treasury may from time to time determine.’

“The Bill, which is presented by Mr. Lansbury, is supported by Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Jowett and Mr. Snowden.”

The vultures are gathering together about the carcase and have already started fighting among themselves for the choicest tit-bits. They are welcome to the spoil. The present writer, however, for one, finds that even the thought of its putridity is almost too nauseating for his mental digestion. Would that the whole working class could say the same.

F. J. Webb

The cardinal point in wages. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing editorially in “The Gas World ” of July the 15th, a learned scribe asks how the cardinal point of wages in a certain locality and for a particular description of work, is determined.

Lord Robert Cecil, we are informed, delivered himself, at the last Co-partnership Conference, of some pearls of economic wisdom. The “ultimate” sanction of rates of wages payable, he said for instance, is the law of supply and demand, but the employers only know from time to time what wages they can afford to pay.

The clarity with which the scion of a noble house elaborated his case can only be compared with a good old-fashioned November fog. For he leaves the Editor of “The Gas World” rolling up the whites of his eyes and inquiring what determines wages.

“So far as we can see for the present,” says the editor, “the principle of co-partnership does not touch this dictum.”

May I ask the literary gentleman what laws determine the wages of the printers, compositors, and others whose labour produces that scintillating wonder of Bouverie Street, “The Gas World” ? If the supply of these workmen was not equal to the demand, they could secure higher wages. If the supply and demand were equal and there was no surplus either way, then supply and demand cancel each other. Now take conditions as they really are. There is, to-day, a greater supply of labour-power than there is demand for. According to Lord R. Cecil, wages fall steadily pro rata, as the balance of labour-power exceeds the demand.

It is clear, however, that this is absurd, that something else is necessary to determine wages.

Before touching this let us consider what is necessary to permit of the issuing of a single copy of “The Gas World.”

First we must have the raw material—paper, type, ink, etc. These, shovelled into a heap, would make a fearful mess, and though the resemblance to the editor’s economics might be striking, its resemblance to “The Gas World” would be undiscernible.

The thing essential to the assembling of the raw materials in such manner that they will lure the wily coppers out of the pockets of a wide and ever increasing clientele is human energy.

Now in reckoning out the selling price of the paper it has to be considered that if the price is too high a competitor will be let in. This fact will keep the price down, just as a superabundance of labour-power will keep wages down.

But suppose a competitor does appear—is that fact going to run the price of the journal down to zero ? No, you then begin to tot up the cost of production, and when you find that you are not making the necessary profit and have no chance of freezing out your rival, you think of the official receiver and cease publication. So supply and demand are not the only factors in the determination of price.

In the same manner wages, which are the price of labour-power, though fluctuating with supply and demand, find their “cardinal point” in something very different. That something is the necessary cost of subsistence—the cost, that is, of the production of the labour-power.

If the noble lord is left with only supply and demand to determine wages, then, with the application of science in industry continually displacing labour and making the supply increasingly in excess of the demand, a time would be reached when the workers’ wage would consist of air and daylight. This consummation of the dreams of the advocates of co-partnery is, however, too absurd for anybody but a lord.

"Southerner."

Some Paddington activities. (1911)

Party News from the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Paddington Branch have been busy in the work of expounding Socialism, to the dismay of those pusillanimous purveyors of capitalist platitudes that crowd the street corners nightly.

A somewhat protracted discussion has been, raging in the local paper on the “evils and perils of Socialism.” It originated in an enquiry from a correspondent as to whether Socialism was atheistic or not. This elicited the following from an I.L.P.’er : “As chairman of the Paddington I.L.P. I feel somewhat responsible for the opinions that are being circulated in the district concerning the philosophy we are organised to teach. Now I and all Socialists wish it to be clearly understood that Socialism has nothing whatever to do with atheism or religion ; in the Socialist movement we have every cult under the sun.” He also claimed that the I.L.P. had made Socialism a practical working theory by forcing local authorities to municipalise gas-works, trams, etc., and getting old-age pensions granted by the Government, and the Workmen’s Compensation Act put on the Statute Book. These things, they claim, are steps in the right direction.

A letter from our Branch was inserted, repudiating the right of this I.L.P. chairman to speak in the name of Socialism, since his letter made it clear that he was intent upon keeping the working class confused on this matter.

The discussion afforded opportunity for certain individuals priding themselves on their “Socialism,” to flatter their honesty at the expense of their intelligence. They attempted to deflect the discussion from its course with an outrageous mass of biblical quotations and hoary superstitious illusions that exposed their duplicity to those who recognise the irrepressible antagonism that exists between the master and his slave. The materialist conception of history was cited as showing that Socialism and religion are not synonymous terms, but are as incompatible as fire and water. The new pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” was forced upon their attention. Yet, when the Socialist seeks to dispel the rhetorical dust kicked up by these professional misleaders, he is met with mutterings of “materialism will not do” ; “Socialism is not based on science—only on a part of it” ; “Socialism has nothing to do with materialism,” and so on.

Of course, these frauds strenuously resist the light of science, for it is only because the workers are steeped in ignorance that the Labour crooks are able to climb over their backs into “jobs,”

The Anti-Socialist Union was also represented in the discussion by a person who held classes for anti-Socialist speakers in the district. The amount of preposterous piffle with which he sought to stifle the subject clearly proved that, being unable to refute the arguments for Socialism, he was compelled to resort to deliberate lying and misrepresentation in order to combat us.

Our forthcoming week’s mission will afford us the opportunity of exposing the utter cant and humbug of all these champions of confusion.

The Clarion Van has been in our midst doing its dirty work of spreading confusion and despair among the working class. The lecturer had the brazen effrontery to state, on a platform over which the word “Socialism” shone like a beacon, that at the last three elections he had voted Tory to further Socialism. He did this to balance both parties, to play off one against the other and so gain concessions for the Socialist !

We want all Paddington to come to our week’s mission (and also our regular meetings) and hear what we have to say on the matter. We guarantee they will hear Socialism explained in clear and cogent phraseology that will be understood by everybody.

Ben Carthurs

“Labour’s” tragic triumph in Australia. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Labour” Prime Ministers and “Labour” leaders of Australia have been prominent in Great Britain of late, owing to the Imperial Conference and the Coronation. They have fraternised with the Lords of Capitalism and rejoiced at the progress of the “greatest Empire (read vampire) the world has ever seen.” All the enemies of Labour have gathered together to do honour to “these men who have risen from the plough.” Amidst the eulogies of Asquith, Balfour, and the rest of the holy capitalist family, they have toured the country urging the propertyless wage slaves to emigrate to the scene of “Labour’s triumphs,” and so escape from the suffering they encounter here.

 

The fact that a “Labour” Party controls the “Commonwealth,” and is supreme in at least two States, has misled some into following their advice. But these unfortunate workers will have a rude and rapid awakening.

 

The Labour Government in the Australian Privatewealth have a platform which includes the conversion of trusts into State monopolies. Already in the Antipodes, although the population is sparse and the land to a great extent uncultivated, the great industries and services are becoming trustified. That is eloquent of the speed with which the newer lands ore influenced by developments in the old.

The State ownership of such services as are already nationalised has been a mixed blessing to the toilers. New South Wales is the State of Labourism’s greatest advance, yet the capital (Sydney) will be remembered as the centre of the great strike of State employed tramway men for “a living wage.”  State ownership is the refuge of the business men being crushed by the trusts.

 

“A White Australia” is another plank in the Labour platform. They have always had a particular preference for “White Slavery” as opposed to other hues. Yet a “White Australia” hasn’t saved the workers from the ills that affect them in “open door” countries. Sydney, for instance, boasts of slums as hideous as the classic ones of the East End of London. The homeworkers of Sydney are a frightful example of how capitalism crushes women, as well as men, “in the land beyond the seas.”

Employment in “White Australia” is precarious. The "Sydney Daily Telegraph" of May 26 contains the following news:

 “Mr. A Rickard, of Messrs. Arthur Rickard & Co., admits he received a surprise yesterday morning. He advertised for forty-one general labourers in the Telegraph, and before noon he had several hundred applicants. When the office opened at nine o’clock there were dozens waiting and the number increased rapidly; they ran over the premises inside and jammed the door outside. Judging the men as a whole they were of the average hard-working type, and were mostly eager to accept the offered 8s. a day. We engaged 59 men and could have had as many more had we wanted them.”

 This in a country where the cost of living is more than double that in Britain, and where the rise in prices in the last decade bas been phenomenal and is still advancing.

 

The Taxation of Land Values is a prominent feature of the Labour programme. Its existence in the Commonwealth has led to it being boomed here, and in view of Australia being the pet example of the “good” effects of land taxes, it would be well to show their real character and influence.

The great merit of land taxes is said to be the releasing of the land and bringing it within the means of the poor man. But the Labour Premier, Mr. Andrew Fisher, told a deputation from the London Chamber of Commerce that “land sold at prices quite as high as, if not higher than, those realised before the tax was passed,” and the report (Manchester Guardian, 14.6.11) goes on to say that “he asserted that since the tax was passed Australian credit had been higher than for many years before.” In face of the criticism of land financiers he “denied that the tax was intended to he vindictive against anybody.” Plaintively he asked: “Could anything be more offensive than to charge his Government with class legislation?”

 

Whether offensive or not, it is but true to charge them with legislation benefiting the capitalist class. Their tax on land values been warmly welcomed by the merchants and store keepers of Australia (for it means a reduction of taxation to them), whilst the capitalist nature of their rule has been shown to all by their institution of compulsory military service to protect the property of Australian plutocrats from seizure by other nations. Conscription! How well it makes for the liberty of the worker in the “land of the free”! Liberty for the employer but continued slavery for the employed – that is the guiding principle of the Labour policy.

The brutal attitude they adopt towards workmen on strike is an instance of this. The Labour Party have control of the State legislature in S. Australia, and they have had many opportunities to show how they stand toward struggling Labour. At the present time down at Renmark, in the agricultural portion of the State, a fight is being waged by the fruit pickers in the endeavour to make their wages cover the increased cost of living. They have been met with the most bitter opposition of the Growers’ Association – the organisation of the masters. The Government have helped the blacklegs and sent down armed police to protect them. The Adelaide Advertiser published an interview on May 11 with Mr. Verran, the Labour Premier, who said: “There is no doubt whatever about the policy of our Government regarding industrial disputes. We stand straight for Compulsory Arbitration. We have no sympathy with Unions that profess a revolutionary tactical policy. Labour in our State has said the strike is a barbarous, out-of-date method of deciding differences between employers and employees”.

 

“Then what are you going to do to prevent trouble like that being experienced at Renmark just now?” he was asked.

 

“Unfortunately we have no power now,” was the reply. “But since the Federal Referenda have decided that local disputes are to be a State matter, my Government has decided to introduce a Compulsory Arbitration Bill. The principal provision of the measure will be to make every union and every association of employers register under the new law, and the Wages Board’s decision must bet be observed, just as any other law is abided by. Once the two Houses of Parliament say all industrial disputes must be decided by law the striker will be treated as any other law breaker.”

“What about the Right to Strike?” “There is no Right to Strike recognised,” said Mr. Verran. “When a Labour Government is in power it is just as necessary to have law and order observed as at any other time.”

“Then why does not your Government prevent lawlessness at Renmark?”

“We have taken every precaution to see that the law as we find it is carried out. It is not true that we hesitated regarding action at Renmark. The police authorities there have not asked for additional help. Indeed, they have reported that the police are sufficient to cope with any trouble. In spite of that, when we heard that there was likely to be something special happening there on a certain date, we sent two additional mounted police to Renmark. We do not fear any legitimate unionism, but the leaders in the Renmark strike are men with revolutionary intentions, who make no secret of their opposition to Labour. We have no necessity to pander to them in any way and we attack them openly. This class of opposition causes us no embarrassment.”

In the same paper Mr. J. Murphy, the men’s union organiser, says: “The police action is the result of bias against the workers. Ever since the Hon. J. P. Wilson  (Labour Minister) took up his well-known attitude against the workers and the Hon. C. Vaughan (Labour Treasurer) backed him up, the Growers (masters) and ‘scabs’ have been very aggressive, as they know the Government are behind them.” Speaking of the suppression of the men’s meetings he said: “Our men are prepared to continue holding meetings of protest there against what we regard as the Russian tyranny of the Labour Government over this Free Speech question.”

The employers’ representative (Mr. R. Young), interviewed, said: “In future the employers’ association will not employ any but non-union men or free labourers, as they are called. It appears to me that the Growers can get plenty of non unionist hands. My impression is that the Renmark Growers will always win, as they have won three times already, easily beating all opposition.”

The damning indictment of Labourism these facts contain should make the workers ponder over the actions of the British Labour Party. The latter’s praise of their Australian colleagues, in spite of their open hostility to struggling toilers, is but another of their many crimes. The workers of Australia are in the same abject condition that the English toilers stood in in the time of the Tolpuddle martyrs – the days before the Combination Acts.

The Labour Parliament offer the workers Compulsory Arbitration – a method by which the capitalist arbitrator lets the wage-slaves down every time. Compulsory Arbitration is such an overt fraud that the miners of Broken Hill and Newcastle (Australia) suffered imprisonment rather than agree to it.

The lesson for the working class is well pointed by these facts. They can hope for little while means of living are owned by the capitalist class and controlled by their henchmen, “Labour” or otherwise. At the 1911 Annual Conference of the Political Labour Leagues of New South Wales Mr. Verran (who attended) voiced the following sentiment :

“They must be exceedingly careful not to be intoxicated by their own success, and to remember that they were pledged to carry on the same social order as had developed up to the present time”.

A. Cleveland