Japan: the other side of the miracle (1987)

From the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist

The following is the text of a talk first given as an open lecture at the University of York, England, in October last year. We reproduce it not only because of its interesting factual content but also because we share its general analytical approach.

Everyone has heard about the "Japanese miracle". Not only is it a term which is constantly on the lips of journalists, politicians and other hacks, but wage-earners outside Japan are constantly admonished to work harder and emulate the Japanese in order that a similar 'miracle' can be achieved in 'their' countries. Of course, socialists are little inclined to believe in miracles, least of all those which are attributed to capitalism. But, with certain qualifications, we too can recognise that the economic growth of Japanese capitalism since Word War Two has been phenomenal. Measured solely by capitalism's standards, there is something miraculous in the way in which, during only four decades, an utterly defeated nation-state such as Japan has been transformed into a major economic power, overtaking many rival nation-states in the process. To put it another way, there is something miraculous in the sheer quantities of wealth which the wage-earning class has created in Japan since World War Two. How has this come about? What price has the wage-earning class paid for the "miracle" of Japanese capitalism? And what lessons should we draw from the experiences of our fellow wage-earners in the land of the rising capital?

POSTWAR ECONOMIC GROWTH

Firstly, let us briefly review the economic growth and social changes which are said to constitute the "Japanese miracle". At the end of the Second World War, Japan's economy had been pounded into submission. Due principally to the military blockade of Japan's ports, industrial production in 1945 was only 60 per cent of average production during the period 1934-6, and a mere 40 per cent of the level attained in 1940. Between 1937 and 1945, 3.1 million Japanese had been killed. Apart from the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, somewhere in the region of 120,000 people are thought to have died in one night of horror alone, when on 9/10 March 1945 American B-29 planes set much of Tokyo alight with incendiary bombs. By the time of Japan's surrender, 30 per cent of all Japanese had lost their homes as a result of war damage. In addition, wages had been driven down remorselessly throughout the years of war. Taking the average wage for 1934-6 as 100, the wage index had fallen to 79.1 by 1941, to 65.8 by 1943, and had reached the starvation level of 41.2 by 1945. By the end of the war, many workers had no alternative but to leave the devastated cities for the countryside and attempt to scrape a living from the land. The drift back to the land continued during the first, punitive years of the American occupation of Japan, so that by 1947 49.9 percent of the workforce was engaged in agriculture (compared to 16.3 per cent engaged in manufacture). Postwar governments also continued the policy of attempting to increase production while forcing down real wages. For example, in 1947-8 the coalition government led by the Japan "Socialist" Party sought to implement a policy whereby wages would be pegged at 26.8 times the 1934-6 levels, while prices would be allowed to rise to 65 times the corresponding levels. One statistic will suffice to illustrate the misery experienced by Japanese workers of the period: the rate of infant mortality was as high as 67 per 1000 live births during 1947-9.

In contrast to the battered state of Japan's economy in the late 1940s, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 marked the beginning of unprecedented economic growth for Japan. The average growth rate for the period 1955-73 was a staggering 10.5 per cent per annum, and although the Japanese economy has suffered from the ill effects of world capitalism's economic slump since then, it has nevertheless generally continued to outperform the economies of most other countries, be they private capitalist countries such as the USA or West Germany, or state capitalist countries such as Russia or China. Tables 1-3 compare the growth rates of Japan's economy over recent decades with the corresponding rates of growth of various categories of capitalist countries.

The result of this spectacular growth is that Japan's economic muscle has increased enormously. In 1955, Japan's GNP (Gross National Product) was less than half the size of the UK's GNP. As late as 1965, Japan's GNP was still smaller than either the UK's or West Germany's, and was a mere 12 per cent of the USA's GNP. By 1984, Japan's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was more than twice the size of the UK's, 47 per cent greater than West Germany's and 43 per cent of the USA's GDP. Not only has the Japanese economy grown, but its structure has changed fundamentally. Agriculture, forestry and fishing now account for less than 10 per cent of the workforce, whereas 55 per cent of the workforce are engaged in the tertiary (services) sector of the economy. Within the industrial sector of the economy too, restructuring has taken place, so that textiles (which were the mainstay of the pre-war Japanese economy) and heavy industries such as steel and shipbuilding (which were at the cutting edge of Japan's economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s) have been relatively marginalised by the rapid development of "high-tech", "knowledge intensive" industries such as electronics and engineering.

WHAT ABOUT WAGES?

If Japanese capital has expanded in this fashion over recent decades, what about the wage labour half of the capital/wage labour equation? After all, structural change for capitalism's economy necessarily means structural change for the wage-earning class, and if we talk about "knowledge intensive" industries, the knowledge in question is not an attribute of industry as such but of flesh-and-blood working men and women. Since the 1950s, the Japanese working class has experienced major improvements in its living conditions and educational standards. Average wages rose rapidly during the peak years of economic growth (doubling in real terms during the period 1965-75, for example) and although since then they have increased only marginally (0.86 per cent in real terms between 1976 and 1985, due to the influence of the world recession) they are now among the highest in the world. This is reflected by the spread of consumer durables among the population. Whereas a bicycle was a prized possession for many working class families in the 1940s, by 1984 69 per cent of all Japanese households owned motor cars and more than 98 per cent owned vacuum cleaners, colour TVs, refrigerators and washing machines. Life expectancy has increased from 59.6 years for males and 63.0 years for females in 1950-2 to 74.8 years and 80.5 years respectively in 1985. As for educational levels, over 90 per cent of young people remain at school until 18 years old and 35 per cent go on to attend universities and colleges.

All this has created the impression for some that Japanese-style capitalism confers benefits on all - capitalists and wage-earners alike. Needless to say, this is an illusion which the agents of capital accumulation have fostered vigorously. The truth, however, is rather less cosy. There has been a price to pay for the success of capitalism in Japan and it comes as no surprise to socialists to discover that it is wage-earners who have been forced to pick up the bill. In other words, the "Japanese miracle" has another, darker side - one which never finds its way into the glossy, technicoloured accounts of Japan's postwar economic development. There are many facets of this "other side" of the "Japanese miracle", but in this article we shall concentrate on two aspects. One is the increasing exploitation and alienation experienced by the better paid and better educated wage-earning class and the other is the rising threat of nationalism and militarism.

Before examining these two aspects of modern Japan, however, one point should be made abundantly clear. Socialists are in no sense embarrassed by the fact that capitalism has developed spectacularly in Japan over recent decades. It is no part of our purpose to paint a misleadingly gloomy picture of Japan or anywhere else. On the contrary, this development has made capitalism riper than ever before for socialist transformation. The accumulation of ever greater quantities of capital in Japan has added to the productive forces which would be available to a socialist world, just as the growth and maturing of the wage-earning class in Japan has created the social force which (in cooperation with wage-workers elsewhere) can bring about socialism.

INCREASED EXPLOITATION AND ALIENATION

One indication that those who praise capitalism are a lot less confident of the virtues of the system which they defend than they pretend to be is the number of lies which they are forced to tell. Many readers will have seen the Nissan advertisements which boast about a company where there has never been a strike. This is blatant deception, ignoring the bitter struggle at Nissan in 1953 which lasted for many weeks and took the form of the company whose workers "have never been on strike" locking out the workforce and engineering the creation of an alternative, compliant trade union. The resulting defeat of the workers' struggle was the rock on which Nissan built its subsequent prosperity. In the same league as Nissan's lies is a graph in a recent issue of the Japan Education Journal which, under the caption 'More for less', purports to show that wage rises in Japan have outstripped productivity. Not only are the wage rises which are shown nominal rather than real (ignoring inflation) but it is wage rises in large companies alone which are compared with general increases in productivity in large and small companies. In fact, when like is compared with like, one sees that increases in productivity have consistently outstripped wage increases. Even though real wages more than doubled between 1965 and 1975, productivity kept ahead, with the result that at the end of this period workers in Japan were receiving wages which represented a smaller proportion of the wealth which they created than previously. This is an important point when we consider the extent to which wage-earners in Japan are exploited. The rate of exploitation is not directly related to the level of wages. Workers do not necessarily become less exploited as their wages rise, nor more exploited as wages fall. Rather, the rate of exploitation expresses a relationship between, on the one hand, the quantity of wealth which workers create which is extracted from them as surplus value and, on the other hand, the quantity of wealth which workers create which is equivalent to the value of their wages. In the light of this, the fact that productivity increases have outstripped wage rises shows clearly that Japanese wage-earners have been subjected to an increasing intensity of exploitation, despite their rising wages and living standards.

The intense exploitation of Japanese wage-earners is reflected in the vertiginous rate at which capital has been accumulated in postwar Japan. Competition between rival capitals dictates that the bulk of the surplus value which is extracted from wage-earners will be used to renew and expand the stock of capital. Figures show that the capitalist class in Japan has proportionally achieved a far higher rate of capital formation than capitalists in many other "advanced" countries. Hence one can say that key elements in the success of capitalism in postwar Japan have been the linked processes of the high rate of exploitation of wage-earners and the capitalists' ability to achieve a high rate of investment.

THE EDUCATION RAT-RACE

Statistics on wage levels and enrolment in educational institutions are at best crude indicators of life as it is actually experienced by wage-earners. Set against the relatively high wage levels found in Japan in recent years, one has to put the expenditures which wage-earning families are obliged to make, and in this regard, education expenses are an important factor. Educational qualifications are vitally important in a highly competitive society such as Japan and are a key element in the capitalists' strategy towards the wage-earning class of divide and rule. Workers in large companies are set against workers in small companies, permanent workers against temporary workers and so on, and the chief means by which each new generation of wage-earners attempts to gain the coveted jobs as workers on the permanent payroll of giant companies is via educational qualifications. This means that most wage-earning families are obliged to make enormous sacrifices in order to educate their children. Current wage levels of workers in Japan look a lot less high when one realises that in 1984 Japanese families spent on average Y170,000 (£569) on education-related items (books, tutors, extra classes etc.) per child in elementary school, Y210,000 (£703) per child in junior high school, and proportionally increasing amounts for children in senior high schools and universities. In addition to regular schooling, more than one in four elementary or junior high school children attend an after-hours cramming school 2 or 3 days per week, paying an average monthly fee of Y9,200 (£30.80).

Not only is education a crippling financial burden on wage-earning families, but the psychological strain is unbelievable too. Socialists might talk about alienation, but many workers use more graphic terms such as the "examination hell". Since pensions are notoriously low in Japan, wage-earning parents buy education for their children as a hoped-for insurance for their old age. Conversely, working class children find that the future well-being of the entire family rests on their young shoulders. Small wonder, then, that many simply cannot bear the strain. During the 1985-6 academic year, the number of children who missed more than 50 days' school for psychological reasons was 30,998. More horrific still are the figures on child suicides. During 1985, 83 children under 15 years of age killed themselves. In 1986, 802 youths aged 19 or under committed suicide, 207 (25.8 per cent) of these because of problems directly arising from education. Could anyone quibble at describing as murderous a system which results in such deaths of young people?

RISING NATIONALISM AND MILITARISM

Japanese capital is locked in a life and death battle with rival blocs of capital, and each victory for Japanese capital has provoked threats of retaliation. For the moment the straggle is taking the form of propaganda salvoes and economic/ political manoeuvring, but due to the nature of capitalism, verbal confrontations and diplomatic sparring of this sort have a habit of escalating, as they did in the 1930s. It is not for nothing that representatives of US capital have been muttering ominously that if Japan wins the race to produce the "fifth-generation" computer, it will be "an economic Pearl Harbour".

In a world of carnivores, the Japanese state too needs fangs. But although the rearming of Japan and the resurgence of nationalism are under way, the Japanese state is having to tread warily in order to realise its ambitions in these fields. The chilling words of the Vice-Chief of the Naval General Staff, who flatly stated on 13 August 1945 that "if we are prepared to sacrifice 20 million Japanese lives in a kamikaze effort, victory shall be ours!", are still remembered by millions of Japanese workers. How could the horrors of war be forgotten when on 6 August 1986 the names of 4,941 people who had died in the previous twelve months from the effects of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb were added to the roster, bringing the total so far to 143,590 dead?

The Japanese state is dismayed that many wage-earners are lacking in patriotism and the spirit of devotion to the Emperor. In an effort to instill such sentiments, in August 1986 the Minister of Education launched a campaign for "moral education" within the schools in order to create "spiritually healthy Japanese, who can correctly inherit the nation's good tradition". Similarly, the government has been engaged in a multi-pronged strategy to revive the cult of the Emperor, whitewash wartime atrocities and re-establish symbols of militarism such as the Yasukuni Shrine, where the war-dead are commemorated. Japan currently has 270,000 men under arms and ranks eighth in the world in terms of military expenditure. The present objective of the Japanese military is to be able to control the sea lanes for 1000 miles around the Japanese archipelago (which, incidentally, means being able to control the entry routes of the Russian Far Eastern fleet into the Pacific). On the occasion of the 1986 RimPac (Rim of the Pacific) naval exercise, Japan dispatched eight destroyers, eight anti-submarine helicopters, eight anti-submarine patrol planes and a submarine. All of which is not bad for a country whose Constitution officially proclaims:

. . .  the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. (Article 9)

There has been considerable opposition from within the wage-earning class to the rising tide of nationalism and militarism. The following incident is typical. Recently, the Ministry of Education directed all prefectural boards of education to raise the national flag and sing the national anthem at all school events. In March 1986a disturbance occurred at a school in Okinawa when the headmaster carried the national flag into a school assembly. Schoolteachers surrounded the headmaster and asked him to remove the flag. When the headmaster refused, schoolchildren walked out of the assembly, together with their parents who were present. Socialists cannot help but be encouraged by incidents such as this and the distaste for symbols of nationalism which they indicate.

ANTI-CAPITALIST TRADITION

Within Japan there is a tradition of anti-capitalism which extends back to the early days of this century. A few quotations, taken at random, can illustrate the quality of this tradition:

What we are aiming at is a fundamental revolution in economic organisation -the abolition of the wages system, in other words. (Kotoku Shusui, 1970) [1]

. . . to take the example of the means of production having been nationalised, this would be nothing more than state capitalism in the end, since the workers could not escape their slave-like conditions. (Arahata Kanson, 1918) [2]

I raised the subject of the abolition of wage labour and commodity production, but that does not only apply to us in the capitalist countries. What is extremely regrettable, and what should be severely criticised, is that in the socialist countries too it is regarded as a dream 'which will come eventually in the distant future'. (Haniya Yutaka, 1974) [3]

Below these peaks of anti-capitalist consciousness is a plateau of hostility to capitalism, which is widespread among Japanese wage-earners. As a day labourer in a slum district of Osaka put it in July 1986:

Stiff competition between construction companies has produced day labourers like us. The companies can hire us only when business is good. So in a recession, we workers become unemployed and are forced to sleep in the streets or in the parks.
Japan is not a first-class country because the government is leaving us in the lurch. Not even gods and buddhas can help us. This place is like a slave market.

When this anger of exploited wage-earners fuses with the above insights into the alternative to capitalism, it will be a miracle indeed if capitalism can survive. Working men and women in Japan and throughout the world need to look beyond the tawdry gadgets and the gnawing insecurity which are all that even "successful" capitalism has to offer them. For until they act to abolish capitalism, their exploitation will continue (no matter whether wages are high or low) and the poisons of nationalism and militarism will fester (no matter how flowery the declarations written into Constitutions or uttered by political leaders).

John Crump

1. John Crump, The Origins of Socialist Thought in Japan (Croom Helm/St Martin's, 1983), p. 350. Japanese names are given in the normal East Asian form of family name followed by personal name. ,

2. Ibid., p. 280.

3. Haniya Yutaka, 'Chin Rodo to Shohin Seisan no Haishi' in Asahi Shinbun, 23 March 1974. Haniya here borrows the term "socialist countries" from popular parlance. In an interview with me, he agreed that the so-called "socialist countries" are state capitalist.

'Against Austerity' (2014)

Book Review from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Against Austerity - How We Can Fix the Crisis They Caused'. By Richard Seymour. Pluto Press. 208 pages. £11.50

Judging by this book, Richard Seymour, journalist and a leading instigator of a revolt within the SWP a couple of years ago, must have been itching to leave them anyway. He sees the way forward as building a party in Britain similar to Syriza in Greece which is a conglomeration of various leftwing and reformist groups, similar to what Left Unity aspires to be. Seymour is in fact now an LU member.

Despite the subtitle, he does not set out an alternative economic strategy to austerity but is more concerned with austerity as an ideology, examining how the ruling class has got people to accept it as a necessity. He sees this as something more than simple propaganda, saying that it goes deeper than this and reflects people’s experience of everyday life that leads them to view what is possible and what isn’t.

He expresses this in Gramsci’s terms, but it can be put more simply by saying that as long as most people see no alternative to capitalism (as unfortunately they don’t) then they are going to be able to be convinced that there is no alternative to austerity under capitalism in an economic downturn (as there isn’t).

Seymour does make a good point against those ideologists of Occupy he calls “anarcho-reformists” and other anti-parliamentarists when he writes:

‘The fact that the materiality of the state imposes certain limits, that it is heavily pre-structured in favour of the already dominant classes, that it is selective in favour of strategies that benefit the capitalist class, does not mean that one can abandon it as a site of contestation.’

Unfortunately, he has in mind a reformist use of parliament, but the same point applies to the propagandist and revolutionary use we envisage.

Adam Buick

Socialism and uneven world development (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

It might be thought that the present uneven development of productive resources throughout the world could be brought into greater balance within capitalism itself. It might be said that as modern productive techniques have been brought into use in one place, there should be no great difficulty in setting these up in other places where they are needed, but under capitalism this question cannot be considered solely as a technical or practical problem. The pace at which productive organisation develops is governed entirely by the operation of capital, and this applies in all parts of the world.

Certainly there is a pressure on productive organisation to develop, but this can only take place within the constraints of the profit system. The economic factors which hold back development include the fact that means of production only come into use as invested capital, therefore capital must be available. This in turn depends upon the market opportunities for invested capital to be operated profitably. Other factors are involved, but without available capital and market capacity, development within capitalism cannot take place.

It was not therefore enough for underdeveloped countries to throw off colonial domination. The ruling elites who replaced colonial power still faced the problem of finding the capital resources for developing their independent states as profitable capitalist enterprises. It is often thought that a state of underdevelopment presents unique economic advantages in that particular opportunities exist for bringing backward economies swiftly into line with the more advanced countries. But their backwardness involves a low market capacity at home, and the ability to take advantage of gaps in the world market tends to rest with the advanced economies which are already the most cost efficient in terms of industrial and manufacturing organisation. It is quite true that multinational corporations can operate their capital in underdeveloped countries, taking advantage of cheaper labour and a timid work force with little experience of trade union organisation. But this does little to realise the class aspirations of the ruling elites who expect to accumulate their own capital from the exploitable populations who are under their direct control. The great concentrations of capital reside in those countries where capital has been accumulated from the exploitation of workers over many generations in an advanced economy.

So the ruling elites in underdeveloped countries have taken out massive loans amounting now to many billions of dollars, but with the deepening world depression and weakening prices of many key export commodities, they now find they face impossible debts. Trade goods such a sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton, zinc, copper, aluminium, rubber and vegetable oils, have slumped in the world markets and this means that development hopes have been buried under mountains of debt. It also means that many underdeveloped countries are so drained of foreign exchange that they cannot import vital supplies of even such things as books and medical supplies. Development projects have been halted.

Even before the famines of Ethiopia and sub-saharan countries, the warning went out that African countries could find themselves overwhelmed by a natural hazard such as drought if this should happen against the background of economic stagnation.

There is no foreseeable prospect that the great disparities of development may be evened out within capitalism.

INTER-REGIONAL COOPERATION IN SOCIALISM

The development of capitalism as a world system has included the development of communications of every kind. Even in the 19th century, Karl Marx was aware of the importance of communications in overcoming the problems of distance in the organisation of production:

A relatively thinly populated country, with well developed means of communication, has a denser population than a more numerously populated country, with badly developed means of communication (K Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Allen and Unwin, p.346).

This now includes not only transport such as roads, railways, shipping and air travel, but also a world system of electronic communications which provides for instant world-wide contact between all peoples. For this reason it can be said that we now live in a "global village". What this means is that socialism would have no difficulty in organising the world as one productive system directly for human needs.

It is likely, however, that when socialism is established some populations could enjoy greater advantages arising from prior development within capitalism. These populations could benefit from developed industry, manufacture, agriculture, energy supply and systems of transport and distribution. Together with this there would already exist health and education services, a highly developed system of administration including planning departments, local services and an accumulation of statistical information which would be immediately useful in the organisation of society directly for needs.

In many parts of the world these useful facilities may not exist.

One of the first priorities of world socialism would be to rapidly expand food production in line with needs. World action would include assistance with any local agriculture that was poorly developed in relation to local needs. Comparing the present position between Africa and Europe, for every 1,000 hectares of arable land in Europe, there exists 60 available tractors and over 6 combine harvesters. In Africa, for the same land area, there are only two tractors and 0.2 combine harvesters. In South America, where food production could be vastly increased through irrigation schemes, of the 108 million hectares of arable and permanent crop land in use only 5.5 per cent is irrigated. Similarly in Africa only 4 per cent is irrigated.

Another problem which would require urgent world action in socialism is the housing problem. Even in Europe the housing problem is bad enough, with many homeless families and chronic urban blight. Throughout the world, particularly in Asian capitals and such cities as Mexico City, millions of people live in the squalor of shanty towns, with no sewage, supplies of clean water or decent services.

Free from all the constraints of capitalist production, people throughout the world would concentrate their energies on solving these problems, taking the necessary initiatives in their own areas. It is likely, however, that the world centres of developed industry and manufacturing would initially need to supply machinery and equipment, installations, storage facilities and technical know-how to the underdeveloped areas, to assist with such projects as housing development and irrigation schemes for food production. As well as this it is likely that there would be an urgent need to set up education and health services, and infrastructures for transport and communications.

COLLECTIVE WORLD ACTION

As a world system organised directly for human needs socialism cannot be conceived in any exclusive regional context. Concern and action for need would be universal. Notwithstanding any particular advantages which may exist in some regions as a result of capitalism having previously developed the forces of production there, in socialism such advantages would be at the disposal of the whole world community. This is what the socialist object spells out when it speaks of common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. The whole community is simply every person on earth.

Even within capitalism, where individual workers in the developed countries are preoccupied with their own problems of getting by as best they can, they show concern for the needs of other people who live in desperate circumstances. This is indicated by the support given to charities such as Oxfam, War on Want, and the surge of response to the starving of Ethiopia through Live Aid. Voluntary medical workers and agricultural experts are willing to devote part of their lives in assisting with urgent problems. Dockers in Southampton who loaded a grain ship for Ethiopia without wages did so simply to help other people in need. This is the spirit of concern and cooperation that socialism would release. It would be organised in a practical and controlled way on the basis of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for needs.

The administrative machinery for such collective world action already exists. An adapted form of the United Nations Organisation could provide an instrument of organisation working through such bodies as the Food and Agricultural Organisation, the World Health Organisation as well as other existing world bodies. Such bodies could co-ordinate the initiatives of world action in dealing with world problems.

Who can doubt that the existing material resources of humanity could be swiftly mobilised for the work of creating decent living conditions for all people? Without the national divisions which now exist as rival capitalist states, without the insane waste of military and the allocation of resources for the forces of destruction, without the constraints of production for profit which now crush the skills and energies of people and their spirit of cooperation, the world community in socialism could immediately get on with the urgent work that has to be done.

The days of national politics are long since ended as a useful framework of political action. The existing reformist parties offer nothing more than a destructive future within a framework of national divisions. The worst prospect is that they will lead humanity into annihilation in a nuclear holocaust. That is the ultimate logic of world capitalism.

Pieter Lawrence (Britain)

Cooking the Books: The Recession that Roared (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘It’s official: the Great Recession has ended. Growth set to match record peak of 2008’ was the front page  headline in the Times of 9 May, anticipating the publication of figures which would show that in April GDP had reached the same level as in March 2008. This, after six years: ‘The British economy shrank 7.2 per cent in the 15 months from April 2008, before suffering the slowest on record’.

This was always going to happen sooner or later but the terminology is interesting. ‘Recession’ was a word introduced by economists in the 1950s and 60s to describe the small, short-lived reductions in production which occurred during the long post-war boom. It was meant to suggest that ‘depressions’ as larger, longer-lasting reductions had become a thing of the past. In this sense a ‘great’ recession should be an oxymoron, but bourgeois economists still cannot bring themselves to use the D-word.

The course of capitalist production is upward but in cycles: a boom ending in a ‘crisis’, followed by a ‘slump’, followed by a recovery, followed by another boom and so on. There is no such thing as a permanent boom as boom conditions inevitably lead to overproduction in one key industry in relation to its market and to this having a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy.

Equally, there is no such thing as a permanent slump. That’s because what happens during a slump (clearance of stocks, devaluation of capital, falling real wages, lower interest rates) creates the conditions for a restoration of profitability and so, in the profit-driven economy that capitalism is, for a recovery, however long this might take.

That is why, throughout the depression, we were always careful not to say that capitalist production would not be able to recover; in other words, that  the capitalist economy had broken down and/or entered a period of permanent stagnation. Others were not so careful. A case in point being the Trotskyist group around the paper Socialist Appeal whose editor, Adam Booth, wrote in its 26 November 2013 issue an article entitled ‘The permanent slump – an organic crisis of capitalism’. This, he claimed, would have happened thirty years ago had workers not been lent money to buy things. He went on:

‘The use of credit to artificially maintain demand and avoid a crisis is a symptom of the contradictions of capitalism itself: primarily the contradiction of overproduction, due to the nature of capitalism as a system whereby production is in private hands and is only for profit, which means that – since profit is nothing but the unpaid labour of the working class – the working class (as a whole) can never afford to buy back (with wages alone) all that they produce. The current crisis is a reflection of this contradiction unravelling itself on a global scale. All the chickens have come home to roost for the capitalists, and now they – and society as a whole – are faced with an organic crisis of capitalism and a new normality.’

The fallacy here is that the market for goods under capitalism is confined to what workers can buy. But what workers can’t buy, capitalists can, not necessarily or even primarily consumer goods but the elements of production (raw materials, machinery, energy, factories, etc); in a word, investment.

The boom/slump cycle is in fact a reflection of the fluctuations in what capitalist firms chose to invest in the light of the prospects for making a profit.

Pieces of paper (1984)

A Short Story from the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

George did odd jobs for us every Saturday. He was a tall man . . .  sixty odd . . . ascetically lean of frame and face and his clothes showed, at least, secondary ownership in their shortness and looseness.

He always washed and valeted my car and, in the season, helped Mary in the garden. His manner always seemed slightly obsequious but there was something in the way he called me "sir", or "Mister" Stevens, that I always found slightly disconcerting.

He had been with us—on Saturdays only, of course—since the time when his reward was a £1 note. Now it was a fiver. Mary said she was ashamed to give him a fiver for five or six hours work but there was no way we could afford more. Indeed, when I finally succumbed to Mary's persistent pressure and bought our second car—a five-year old Renault 4 that looked its age—we agreed that she would use it sparingly and George's fiver would pay for the petrol.

When he arrived the following Saturday morning, Mary was upstairs. The previous evening I had argued that, since it was her car that had created the need for us to dispose of George, she should tell him. There'd been a good deal of banter at first but, as always happens when we talk about things related to our domestic budget, Mary becomes defensive and angry. We both knew she would not carry out her threat to get rid of the car but the scene did become unpleasant and Mary slept with our baby daughter, Carol, that night.

As I said, next morning when George arrived Mary stayed upstairs. All morning I'd been thinking about George. He rarely mentioned anything about his personal life to me but, over the years, Mary had learnt a lot. She always made him a cup of tea and they would talk during the short period he would spend with her in the kitchen.

The accumulated tit-bits of George's revelations added up to a fairly full biography of poverty and misery. His father had died in the First World War, six months before George was born, and his early years had be'en a grim apprenticeship in privation before "the real luxury" (his actual words, often quoted by Mary when she talked about him) of army life during the Second World War. He had not been wounded—not hit with a bullet or shrapnel or anything like that—but he had spent six days in a farm outhouse in France, pinned down by crossfire between a stubborn rearguard of panzers and a section of the advancing allied forces. The experience had been pretty grim— one could almost say, harrowing—and had undoubtedly left a mark on George.

One of his two comrades was killed the first day when the outhouse was swept with machine gun fire from one side or the other. His body had lain "laughing"—again, a direct quote—in the corner, frightening George and his companion more than the hellish cacophony outside. After two days, without food and with the water gone, George and his comrade decided to make their escape during a lull in the fighting.

His companion was in front as, bending low, they prepared to move through the door of the outhouse. When he was shot he fell back onto George. He lived for three more days, across in the corner opposite the laughing corpse, and, all the time, he maintained a delirious soliloquy in a sad, low voice.

The man was obviously one of those characters who had read a great deal; a sort of autodidact, full of unconnected knowledge. Unquestionably deranged, he punctuated his monologue every now and then with a question and then proceeded to answer his own question. These questions and answers were, apparently, quite fierce assaults on the values and standards that underpin our whole way-of-life. Not the sort of talk that a reasonable, civilised human being would normally indulge in but, in the thick of it, so to speak, dying and all that . . . I suppose, really, some men die less bravely than others. George was not too sure about the answers the dying man had given himself but he did, unfortunately, remember the questions and he did remember the other saying, a short time before he fell silent forever, "How can patriotism be a good thing? It's a fucking killing disease!"

The experience had left a grim shadow on George's mind. He was obviously a wee bit . . .  well, not quite . . . right. Not crazy, you understand; just a bit . . . peculiar.

He always talked about the less seemly things. I'm in insurance and one day I was foolish enough to comment on some aspect of my work. George said, "Humanity should be its own insurance". I was slightly non-plussed. "What do you mean, George?" I asked, indulgently. He looked at me, his mind probably back in that hellhole in France, then he seemed to draw back, "Just seems to me, Mr Stevens, that people can make enough of the things they need to ensure them against every contingency. It's the paper, sir, the pieces of paper, that cause all the problems." I didn't say anything in reply; George was . . .  innocent, so naive, and, as I have said, a little . . .  peculiar.

It was his peculiarities I was thinking about as I asked him to sit down at the table in the kitchen that Saturday morning. I had decided to give him the fiver first, and, then, the bad news—and I wouldn't ask him to clean the car or attend the garden. Christ! Mary had left me in a bloody spot and now she was huffing in the bedroom. All because of a miserable, second-hand banger. What the hell—I couldn't afford a fiver! Irrelevantly, I thought about being forty next birthday.

When George had sat down I gave him the tin of beer I normally held over for myself—for Sunday. He listened to my explanation; I was completely frank— though I maybe did overstate Mary's need for the Renault. When I was finished, he was silent and I felt the need to go on. The proffered fiver lay on the table between us—stark, embarrassing. "Of course, George, you realise, with the mortgage, the rates, the payments on the car . . . well, really, everything, and the recession . . . Less demand for insurance now. Ironically, more need, but less demand. Business is in a hell of a way. Well, you know it yourself, there's acres of unsold cars down there at the car plant—I'm told they are going to lay off another eight hundred next week—probably another load of lapsed policies! But what can they do? No point making more cars to rust in the fields beside the others. Jesus, George, if Mary could have done without the car—say car easy; it's really an old banger—probably another headache! But, with Carol starting school and all . . . "

I looked at him; his eyes were half-closed and his face was set in such a curious way that the thought occurred to me that his . . . his mental state might not be quite as congenial as I had imagined. Desperately I searched for words that might assuage his anger and I found them in the most disarming honesty of self-analysis I had ever subjected myself to. It was my moment before death; a brutal revelation of my hidden anger. Anger at my life, my job, anger, even, at Mary—my God! even at the child! How easy it would be if it was only me—if I were alone! George's voice stopped me and, fleetingly, I reflected that he was alone.

"Mister Stevens". It was as though he had shouted "stop!". Then, quietly, "Mr Stevens, it's all mad, isn't it, sir? All the pretence. Disguising ourselves even from ourselves. You know, Mr Stevens, there's the world out there . . . a veritable fairyland of everything. Everything. And there's more besides; oh, aye, far more for everybody that needs or wants more, if we were allowed to grow it or make it. And, y'know, few would really want more if everybody had enough. But it's the pieces of paper, Mr Stevens . . . The pieces of paper. The bloody title deeds, the certificates, the banknotes—the whole, bloody, wasteful documentation of human servitude. It's the pieces of paper that restricts and demeans us. If we could only use the technology, the machines, the computers and all the rest, use them in the same way as our primitive forefathers used their clubs and spears, we'd maybe be civilised. Jesus, sir, even the language of it all is . . . obscene . . . humiliating!"

I had never heard George swear before and I was, frankly, a little afraid. Hoping to terminate the interview, I stood up, lifted the five pound note from the table and forced it into George's hands, clasped on the table. "It is a funny old world, George", I said, with more lightness than I felt. Then, really feeling the moment, "I really do wish I could help you, George—you know . . . help in an ongoing way. Something sort of . . .  permanent. But what can I . . ."

He stood up, uncrumbling the note in his hands, then he bent across and, almost ceremoniously, left the fiver in the middle of the table. I was startled when he put a hand on my shoulder, but his eyes were soft and, strangely sad and, when he spoke, his voice was laden with . . .  with pity!

"No, Mr Stevens. I don't want to hurt you, sir, nor would I want to. But you really need the money, Mr Stevens. Oh, you do, sir! Funny how a miserable little piece of printed paper can come between people . . .  cause hurt. And it can cause hurt, sir, hurt and hunger—even death. I wish I could help you, Mr Stevens; you and the millions of others. But it's hard to see beyond the bits of paper."

I bought two new car mats for Mary's Renault with the fiver and it was the difference between love and war in our house that weekend! She didn't sleep in Carol's room on Saturday night and, for a long time, we both lay in bed talking about George. Mary listened while I told her all about the morning's conversation. She was quite distressed; she really liked old George. Afterwards, when we had changed the subject, she said, quietly and irrelevantly, "Isn't it funny the way the war affected some people".

Richard Montague (Ireland.)

Socialism —A world of unity (1987)

Editorial from the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist

The modern age is noted for its declared desire for a world of accord. Over the past century since communications have brought the human population into closer contact, national leaders have never ceased to proclaim their desire for a world of peace. This has been rhetoric without substance. If mere words were enough, the speeches of statesmen would have long since realised the unity of all people. But alongside these "peaceful" tirades, and in spite of international institutions such as the League of Nations, The International Court of Justice, and the United Nations Organisation, humanity has remained divided. We are threatened by mutual annihilation.

During this time, killing techniques have been rapidly developed and have never been so sophisticated or horrific. The century numbers the war dead in many millions. The development of world communications has been accompanied by the greatest mass slaughter in history. Never have so many people been under arms, and never in the past have the productive resources of humanity been so greatly allocated to the means of waging war.

Yet the technology which has given us the long-range nuclear missile has also given us photographs of the Earth from space. These are the images of one world, inhabited by one human species. Those astronauts who have witnessed this view of humanity's home in space describe it as a beautiful place. It contains the natural resources which could provide the needs of everyone if only we could live and work together in cooperation. The question is, why doesn't it happen?

Why is it that in spite of a universal need for peace and material security, in spite of a world system of production and highly developed communications of every kind, humanity still remains divided? Why are we armed to the teeth, living in tension, and in some places, still fighting wars? What happened after the "wars to end all wars'?

Are there reasons, inherent in the differences of history, language and culture, which prevent people from cooperating together? No; to imagine this is to deny the fact that cooperation does take place between people from different countries. It is common that people respond to the desperate plights of others in countries where there is famine, or such disasters as floods or earthquakes. It is not true to say that ordinary people are pre-occupied by a compulsion to bomb and kill others in distant lands. On the contrary, experience shows the reverse to be true. People have to be conscripted for war under penalty of imprisonment or death if they refuse, then trained and mentally conditioned by propaganda to fight. War imposes stress and anxiety on all those who find themselves involved; and when war ends there is relief and celebration. So what are the facts about this divided humanity?

The human population is divided amongst 160 rival capitalist states, including the state capitalist nations of China and those under the dominion of the Russian state capitalist Empire. Within nations populations are divided again by economic class. Privileged minorities own or monopolise natural resources and the means of producing wealth. The vast majority are non-owners, compelled to live by selling their only means of life, their mental or physical energies, for a wage or salary. This is the modern system of wage slavery which divides all communities and all nations, where the rich and the powerful maintain their dominant position through governments who control different portions of the Earth's surface. The world's working class produce the commodities which their national masters then own and sell for a profit on the markets.

Governments stand not the slightest chance of bringing about a world of unity. They are driven under the relentless pressure of economic competition to pursue strategies based on rival capitalist interests. This is the cause of constant international tension, the reason why nations remain armed to the teeth, and why, from time to time, struggles over trade routes, sources of raw materials, spheres of political and military influence, break out into war. Governments and the entire system of exploitation which they represent are an anachronism which must be swept away.

Against the inevitable conflicts between rival capitalist groupings, the world's working class can have no interest in a divided world. Whereas capitalists are bound by the terms of their existence to compete and, through their governments, to organise for war, the interests of workers are in common the world over. In the conflict between wage labour and capital it is capital which is inherently competitive and exploitative, and therefore must maintain a divided humanity. Only labour, the world over, has the common interest which can establish world unity.

Pursuing this interest and organised as the World Socialist Movement, workers must strip the world's capitalist class of their monopoly of the means of life and establish a world system where all resources and all means of production are held in common by all humanity.

This will be a world of common ownership, democratic control, cooperation and production directly for needs. This will be a world without frontiers where machinery of governments will have been converted into a system of democratic administration at local, regional and world levels; where the obscene waste of resources in the military will have been re-allocated for useful production. In Socialism, communications such as transport, information technology, radio, telephone and television links would be immediately adapted for the benefit of all people. Thus the useful structures of existing world organisation, both technical and administrative, would serve the common interests and needs of one people in one world.

The positive action to establish this can only come from one source, which must be separate from the actions of governments; this must be the world's working class organised politically as a single socialist movement. In 1848 Karl Marx declared that workers have no country; that they have a world to win. Against the toll of human misery since that time, and against the appalling prospect of continued world capitalism, we repeat it now with greater urgency.

The Euro-Elections in Ireland (2014)

From the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In common with all other EU states, European elections took place in Ireland last month. There were also elections to a reformed local government structure.  In spite of the interest which the mass media devoted to both these spectacles, it’s a close call to decide which poll epitomised most the lack of real and meaningful politics under capitalism.

Socialists make the claim that national parliaments are little more than talking-shops; full of theatrics, posturing and verbosity whose main output are inconsequential debates on the issues of the day. All the while, the fundamental business of capitalism goes inexorably on, irrespective of whatever pronouncements and edicts emanate from those self-important halls. This criticism is even truer of the European Parliament and local councils. For the former, the inability of the European capitalist class to agree on a trans-national system of governance for the Union has rendered the Parliament at Brussels more meaningless than its national counterparts. One obvious manifestation of this in Ireland, as with many other EU countries, is the apathy and consequent low voter turnout that the Euro-elections engender. It is only the second division of politicians who contest these elections; the jibe that it is usually those politicians whose national careers are behind them and who are in search of a comfortable retirement home still rings true.

Most voters, even those with a reasonable interest in political life, would be hard-pressed to name even a couple of their MEPs (apart from the few ‘colourful characters’ who inevitably are present) and know much less about any accomplishments of the members. Of course this can sometimes work to the politicians’ advantage; one Irish MEP in fact has had prolonged absence from the Parliament in Brussels/Strasbourg (due to illness) but given the extremely low profile attached to these positions, this has not been noticed by the electorate and so poses no electoral risk whatsoever in his bid for re-election. Nonetheless competition was quite fierce between the rival candidates. This was accentuated this time around because there were fewer seats available as a result of the need to accommodate enlargement of the organisation to Eastern Europe whilst not increasing inordinately the number of parliamentarians. There’s no doubt that the generous remuneration on offer and relatively light demands of the job are attractive to many career politicians.

State of play

What is the state of play between the rival political parties? The ruling coalition of Fine Gael and Labour stood on their record in government for the last three years. They came to power in the 2011 general election replacing the absolutely discredited, previous administration consisting of a Fianna Fail / Green Party coalition. Their main task in that time has been to implement the budget cuts demanded by the troika (EU Commission, ECB and IMF) who came to Ireland’s rescue after the financial crash of 2008. They now have a predicament because of Ireland’s recent exit from the bailout programme. Prior to that all cuts to social welfare, health, education etc could be blamed on the bungling of the previous government and the strict conditions attached to Ireland’s financial aid programme. Now it is more difficult to justify the continuing cuts and the extra taxes on home-owners and new charges on previously free commodities such as water.

That long-time ‘natural party of government’, Fianna Fail is hamstrung as it is still identified by its gross incompetence in the handling of the economy during the last doomed years of the Celtic Tiger and as they made the initial agreement to the stringent bail-out terms in 2010, they cannot logically oppose its consequences of austerity on the working class.

Sinn Fein was the major winner in terms of tapping into the public disenchantment with the establishment parties; in fact something similar to the ground being staked out by UKIP in Britain although Sinn Fein occupy a different position on the conventional political spectrum. It’s all part of their progress from solely being the political wing of and apologists for the IRA to being a ‘radical’, left-of-centre movement. However even that radicalism is now being dropped as too intimidating to the voting public on the basis that it could hinder the party’s electoral advance. Sinn Fein is now positioning itself as a much more ‘respectable’ party which inevitably means their erstwhile ‘socialistic’ policies are now being discarded and being replaced by a more mainstream platform although some leftist rhetoric is maintained for effect.

The impact on the election outcome of the recent arrest of Gerry Adams was difficult to gauge. On one level it cemented his appeal to hard-line republicans and the fact that he recently spent four days in a British police station being questioned about ‘republican activities’ during the ‘armed struggle’  did him no harm. As against that there is the crime he is associated with and its resonance with the wider public particularly down South. Jean McConville was a woman, a widow, a mother of ten children. Even in 1972, PIRA recognized the damage the claiming of her execution would do to their image and hence her fate of being secretly buried rather than the usual end of those the IRA termed ‘informers’; beaten, shot dead and their bodies dumped along the border. The fact that former close ‘comrades’ have implicated him directly in her murder made the Party nervous.

There was also a clutch of minor groups and independent candidates going forward. The minor groups tend to occupy the left end of the spectrum and broadly indulge in Euro-sceptic rhetoric and promoting ‘grassroots resistance’ while the independents can be impossible to meaningfully classify though are usually inchoate populists and as likely to be right wing as left wing.

Proliferation of posters

Apart from media coverage, the other unmistakable manifestation of the on-going election campaign was the proliferation of posters on any available lampposts and poles. These were remarkable for their uniformity and bore the imprint of some prior consultation with an advertising agency. More than half of the poster space was taken up by a picture of the candidate, photo-shopped onto a bland background. A shirt and tie is the standard attire for the men, jewellery and make-up for the women. About a third of the poster had the candidate’s name in large letters with the word ‘Vote’ prominently displayed beside it. Interestingly the name of the party that the candidate is representing was quite small: with the demise of major ideological differences between the parties and the weakening of the party system, increasingly elections are morphing into straightforward personality contests.

Generally the posters for the mainstream politicians carried no slogan. Even when one was present it was only distinguished by its vacuous nature; ’Power to the People’, ‘Strengthening Your Community’, ‘Working For You’ etc. etc. As to Sinn Fein, twenty or more years ago their candidates’ pictures on their posters had the appearance of men still in or recently released from prison (which indeed quite a number were). Now they are more likely to be young, presentable and female designed to obscure any association with balaclavas, car-bombs and Armalites.

The impact of money on the election process was easy to discern from the appearance of the posters. Those of the independent candidates and fringe parties were smaller, more likely to be mono-chrome rather than glossy colour and much less ‘professional’ in appearance. One redeeming feature of them is that at least these posters had some quasi-political slogan on them indicating an attempt to promulgate a message rather than relying on personality. In fact the overall nature of the posters can be seen as a succinct metaphor for the state of politics now. Any real engagement by the electorate with the process is being diminished with time which means the parties themselves realise it is pointless devoting time and space to programmes or manifestos. Image and spin is much more important to success which entails the indiscriminate harvesting of votes and is unconcerned with any understanding or agreement with policies.

No difference

It’s a pity that the opportunity that elections present, in terms of a slightly higher interest by the general public in politics, is completely wasted. The fact that people don’t engage is probably because they realise, either consciously or subconsciously, that the result of these elections makes no difference to their lives. If you have a house and job, you’ll probably continue to have both after this election. If you’re unemployed, you may or may not have a better chance of picking up a job. If you’re a billionaire, you’ll almost certainly remain very wealthy whoever wins on election day. There is an unstated realism at play; at some level the electorate know full well the pointlessness of this charade in terms of real impact on their lives.

When we contest elections we don’t engage in this type of smooth and glib electioneering. We do not involve ourselves in the hiring of image consultants and spin-doctors, the cynical analysis of focus group responses to discern where lies the greatest electoral advantage or the cultivation of the media to project some image. We openly state that our aim is the replacement of the current basis of society (capitalism and production for profit by an alternative society (socialism and production to meet people’s needs) and we work towards this aim.

Kevin Cronin

Marx (2012)

Book Review from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s Das Kapital for Beginners by Michael Wayne; Illustrations by Sungyoon Choi. www.forbeginnersbooks.com. US $16.99. 138pp.

This little book is on the whole an excellent and handy introduction to the ideas of Karl Marx. Most of it is quite readable and fairly easy to follow, and pretty accurate in its summary of Marx’s Das Kapital. It also touches on a number of his other books in passing. Its main virtue is that it succeeds in showing some of the ways in which Marx’s ideas are in fact as relevant as ever today, despite the widespread myth that he was discredited by the events of the twentieth century.

Marx analysed the social and economic system he lived under in studious, methodical detail by starting from the very categories used by the bourgeois economists themselves: the commodity, the exchange of commodities and then, most important, the buying and selling of labour power, which is at the core of the system of wage-slavery, a system we still live under in 2012 throughout the world. Marx solved the paradox of the origin of profit created in the production process. He did so, as explained very well by Wayne, by distinguishing labour from labour power. The latter is the worker’s ability to work for a given number of days, whereas simple labour is the work performed during this time. If you pay someone a wage of £500 per week, that is what they need to live on and carry on being fit for work. You have bought their labour power for the week. But they will be able to generate £500’s worth of value well before the week is over, and the surplus belongs not to them but to the employer.

The chapter on ‘Reproduction And Crises’ is both the weakest and most problematic, as Wayne allows himself to get bogged down in the tortuous debate as to exactly how it is that capitalism runs periodically into crisis, and whether there is an underlying tendency for such crises to get worse over time. Within the Socialist Party we have sometimes debated among ourselves about the precise mechanics of this. Wayne leans, at times, toward an ‘underconsumptionist’ description of capitalism, which is flawed as it neglects to take account of the “purchasing power” of capital itself. He also gets lost in some dubious mathematics and loses track of how little some of this matters as against the urgent need to end capitalism, however its crises are caused. He redeems himself, however, by the well-chosen summary that “the overall anarchy of the market” is the ultimate cause of crises.

Given the gross distortions and misrepresentations of Marx’s ideas sustained through the twentieth century Russian experience of Bolshevism, Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism, it might have been apt to devote at least a page or two to noting how Lenin twisted Marx’s ideas for socialist revolution into his manifesto for minority-led insurrection to establish industrial capitalism in Russia in the early twentieth century. This laid the groundwork for the Stalinist dictatorship which followed and did incalculable damage to the progress of genuine socialism in the world today because it was done under the banner of “socialism” and “Marxism” rather than being named more honestly as the capitalist revolution that it was.

Instead, Wayne devotes a disproportionate six pages of his 138-page book to extolling the virtues of the Italian intellectual Gramsci as a kind of missing link. This, like Wayne’s pessimism about the transformation to socialism (see below), arises from a lack of conviction that ‘ordinary’ members of the working class can have the ability to reach socialist consciousness themselves, as a simple and direct result of their own experience of capitalism. He shares with Gramsci the arrogant assumption that a special category of ‘intellectuals’ (including presumably Wayne as well as Gramsci) have the historical role of teaching the workers about the exploitation they are experiencing.

Perhaps the best and most thought-provoking chapter here is that on ‘Commodity Fetishism And Ideology’. Wayne explores Marx’s fascinating insights about the way in which social relationships in capitalism are skewed by the power given to objects and the force of economic imperatives. This is a very rich seam which Marx opened, and is still worthy of much further research and exploration. This is about the ways in which our present social system increasingly causes personal misery, alienation, depression and cultural implosion, all of which are becoming more and more pressing issues in our present era.

There is a grave disappointment in the final pages of Wayne’s book. Having usefully outlined some of the positive ways in which socialism will liberate humanity from the limitations of the market system, he then abandons the revolutionary agenda to state that once production for need and collective control of production arrives, ‘various forms of collective ownership and control would grow, while both the state and the market for labor power would diminish. This could only take place over what presumably would be a long period of transition, spanning many generations’ (page 135).

In support of this ‘gradualism’ he quotes Marx (page 132) saying that

“the time which society is bound to devote to material production is shorter...in proportion as the work is more and more evenly divided among all the able-bodied members of society, and as a particular class is more and more deprived of the power to shift the natural burden of labor from its own shoulders to those of another layer of society...”

Looking at the original German and the French translations of this passage (at the end of chapter 17 of Volume I of Capital), however, it appears most likely that Marx was not using the phrase “more and more” to imply a gradual change over generations, but simply to make a mathematical point about proportions. In much the same way it might be explained that the more you remove the air from a fragile container the lower its pressure, and the more and more likely it is to smash. This does not mean you are proposing that such a container might have a half-an-half vacuum for generations.

In fact, once we have a majority who understand that capitalism has outlived its usefulness, the change from capitalism to socialism will be enacted, pure and simple. You just cannot have the co-existence of socialist and capitalist relations of production in the world for any significant period of time, and certainly not for generations. This should be clear to Wayne and his readers from every observation throughout the rest of his book about the all-encompassing global nature of capitalism and, by extension, of the very different system which must replace it.

Clifford Slapper

"Communist Kids" (1997)

Book Review from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Children of the Revolution: Communist Childhood in Cold War Britain by Phil Cohen, Lawrence & Wishart. £12.99.

To begin with I was quite excited at the prospect of reading this book. In a sense I would be returning to my childhood, to a life shared with a Communist Party father, and then later on to a schism in that relationship during the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the revelations about Stalin, and to my subsequent resignation from the Communist Party at the age of twenty-two.

Although it would be true to say that I could identify, politically and emotionally, with some of the experiences of the "children" interviewed, there are nonetheless, major differences. Whilst I lived with a father who possessed a paid-up CP card but was not active within the CP the people portrayed in the book are offspring of parents who were very active within the party and also often held leading positions in the CP and the trade union movement. Despite my father's infatuation with Communist Party ideals, the fact that he met few other party members meant that he did retain some original Marxist thinking, so that although he always supported the Soviet Union he most certainly never claimed they had socialism and he believed implicitly in the abolition of capitalism. Also only two of the people interviewed in the book were born in the thirties (1936 and 1937) others in the forties and fifties and one in the sixties, while I entered this world in 1935 and eventually became a member of both the YCL and the Communist Party where I was to remain for about six years.

But I found much in this book to depress me. When those interviewed use the word "socialism" none of them gives a satisfactory definition of it. Neither does anybody talk about the abolition of the wages system, although all appeared to believe in a fairer distribution of wealth and social justice, apparently this to be achieved by reforms to take place sometime in the future. Most disturbing is that even with the full knowledge of the denunciation of Stalin and the tragedy of the Hungarian uprising the children could still see no reason not to join the YCL and the CP not so long after these very events had become a catalyst for my leaving. But, as Phil Cohen says in his introduction, "Values are partly a question of upbringing affected by what you know will please your parents, and the experience that shape you as a person, which are inevitably bound up with your parents. But the benevolent paternalism of the CP could be stifling to those growing up within it. Teenage rebellion was not easy when you were told that saving from the world from imperialism was the key thing in life." Quite so, but similar pressure did not prevent me from making my exit from the CP in 1957 and what is more I still held to the basic tenet of socialism somewhere in the back of my mind.

But some lessons had been learnt. Another contributor states "We weren't a revolutionary party at all, and I was a member for thirty years, half of its existence. We had the rhetoric, we talked about the class moving this and that but we never saw it in those terms. Even when we analysed our electoral work, which I now look back on as a complete waste of time, we presented the lowest common denominator of the argument: that we were part of the anti-Tory movement and a lot of people who couldn't bring themselves to vote communist would be stimulated to vote Labour, so we were vital to help return Labour candidates. To some extent that was true, my great moment was getting five hundred votes in the East Lewisham constituency and people saying to me there was absolutely no doubt I had helped Labour to get elected. But what is revolutionary about helping to change the complexion of parliament."

To Communist Party parents the education of their children was of vital importance so that as a result most of those interviewed have professional jobs or careers. I had a rather different experience where my father saw nothing wrong with manual work or labouring although he did tentatively suggest I might feel more comfortable in an office. My own experience of being a member of the CP was that those members with well-paid careers or important political administrative posts were much admired. I'm not saying that this was in any way party policy, but doctors, teachers, writers, scientists and so on were regarded with a good deal more respect that, say, factory workers or shop workers. During my time in the party I was very much aware of this, perhaps because I was a factory worker at the time. Another theme running through the book is of the liberality and freedom permeating the children's childhoods. Books, family discussions, and always a feeling of being somehow "different" from other children. My own experience too, but some of the children say their parents exhibited a kind of religious fervour and a streak of puritanism.

This book cost me a couple of sleepless nights; reading it forced me to examine my own political life since 1957. I too joined the Labour Party, but briefly and for infiltration purposes, and I became quite active in the peace movement, whilst always arguing from a working-class standpoint.

This is a fascinating book, well worth reading, but at the end of each and every interview I felt disappointed, let down, as though I had come to expect something "other" from the children, perhaps even fuller analyses of why they had come to join the CP at such an inauspicious time.

Heather Ball

Obituary: Sam Orner (1973)

Obituary from the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have to report the sad news that one of the tough old stalwarts of the Socialist Movement — Sam Orner — has passed away at the age of 79. Sam led an active and eventful life and spent nearly the whole of it in the struggle against social oppression.

In 1913, when about 19 years old, he joined the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) which was connected to the Socialist Party of America. Then he was attracted to the excitement of the "Wobbly" movement and became active in the I.W.W. He travelled all over the United States, often riding the rails in the freezing cold or the scorching sun, helping to organize the low-paid workers, particularly those employed seasonally in the fields.

He was at one time a speaker for the S.P. of A. and spoke at meetings all over Brooklyn, at Coney Island, Brownsville and Williamsburg. In 1921 he was conducting classes concerned with Marx's Value, Price and Profit. However, in 1923 Sam came in contact with and joined the Socialist Education Society. This was the fore-runner of the W.S.P. in New York City.

In the early 1930's, he took part in organizing the New York taxi-cab drivers. When they struck in 1934 he was compelled to leave the W.S.P. to concentrate upon the involved affairs of the union. This was the strike that formed the subject of Clifford Odets' play Waiting For Lefty. Our Sam Orner was "Lefty". As he did not fall in line with the views of the gangsters who were seeking control of the union he was badly beaten-up and taken to hospital. A friend got him out of the hospital before the mobsters could finish him off.

He finished with cab-driving and rejoined the W,S.P., speaking frequently in Union Square. His name appeared for many years in the back-pages of The Western Socialist for interested readers in the New Jersey area to contact. He was always an active member. In 1965, he made a trip to England and spoke at a Trafalgar Square meeting as well as elsewhere. On the 4th of July of this year, Sam suffered a stroke from which he seemed to be recovering. But on the 13th August he had another stroke and for three weeks thereafter he lay in hospital until he finally passed away on September 2nd.

All his life, up to the last, Sam was a tough and fearless warrior in the working class movement. When the present writer saw him lying in agony in the hospital he was reminded of an old poem:

See an old unhappy bull
Sick in soul and body both . . .
Waiting for the flesh that dies.

People of Sam's calibre leave a gap when they go. There are many who have been indebted to him for help in the past, both financial and otherwise. A long time ago, one little girl in Boston used to call him "Sammy Claus".

He was like a dynamo, and his impatient activity was inclined to arouse antagonism at times. However, he was a sincere and energetic advocate of Socialism, which was his main interest in life. By this he will be remembered now that he gone to the realm of eternal silence. Would that there were more Sam Orners.

GILMAC.

The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is 150 years since Friedrich Engels wrote his classic The Condition of the Working Class in 1844. He described in graphic detail the wretched lives that workers were forced to lead at that time, and he looked forward to the early ending of the capitalist system and its replacement by socialism. His hopes have not been realised, and today we may ask two questions: (1) in what ways and to what extent have the conditions of the working class changed since he wrote? And (2) is the call to abolish the capitalist system and replace it by socialism as valid today as it was then?

In 1844 the Industrial Revolution was approaching its zenith. Engels vividly documents the sordid conditions in the working class districts of the great towns; the effect of competition ("the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in modern civil society"); the immigrant Irish workers willing to take even lower wages than the impoverished English working class; the poor health and short lives that were the rule, and the drunkenness and depravity that were common; the factory hands exploited long hours in filthy and often dangerous conditions, by day and night, women and children as well as men.

There is no doubt that working and living conditions in Britain have vastly improved for the working class in the last 150 years. Workplaces are cleaner and safer, hours of work are generally shorter, homes better constructed and furnished, health improved and longevity extended. Yet in some ways the situation has not changed that much. This is what Engels wrote about London:

"The turmoil of the streets have something repulsive, something against which human nature rebels . . . The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space . . . the end of it all is that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains."

Today most workers have more than a bare existence, but the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider. We are encouraged by the system to pursue our private interest and this does lead to isolation and brutal indifference, mitigated only by the collective efforts to resist the inequalities and the injustices.

The stern realities of capitalist employment are the same now as then. We work if an employer can see a profit in employing us, otherwise we don't. The current version of the system is more than hitherto. Relatively high paid managers do the dirty work of the capitalist class by hiring and firing workers, organising their exploitation and breaking their strikes. Such is the anarchy of the system that managers are sometimes called on to fire other managers.

On the second question of whether the call to socialism is as relevant today as in Engel's time there can be little doubt. Defenders of capitalism point to the improvement in the material conditions of life for the mass of people over the last century or so. Certainly most workers are better housed, better fed and better clothed than they were. How much this is due to the beneficence of the ruling class and how much to their opportunities to extract profits from getting workers to improve their own conditions is another matter.

But working-class life is still far from ideal, still far from the life that is possible if production for profit were replaced by production solely to meet needs. More purchasing power entails poverty of another kind, that of economic insecurity, of worry about losing the job on which "prosperity" depends. And we must not forget that, even if the material conditions of working class have improved in the economically "advanced" countries, many workers and their families in the Third World still suffer deprivations comparable to, if not worse than, those described by Engels.

In 1844 there might have been some excuse for not demanding an immediate end to the system that produced poverty for the mass and riches for the few: the wealth produced by workers was far less abundant. Today there is no such excuse. We have the means - the knowledge, the accumulated capital, the technology and the willing workers - to meet all the reasonable needs of all the world's population. What stands in the way is the support given to the profit system.

Engels understood well the nature of socialism, even though he was over-optimistic about when it would come. He wrote of "the moment when the workers resolve to be bought and sold no longer" and of "the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat". The language may be archaic but the thinking was and is sound. Socialism is not out of date. It is more needed and more practically possible than ever.

Stan Parker

The Games (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Olympic Games are upon us again, with their displays of athleticism and endurance and their political threats. The inspiration for the founding of the modern Games is said to have been the idea that the ancient ones were a reason for the Golden Age of Greece (which rested, in fact, on the exploitation of slaves). The various national representatives to whom Baron de Coubertin put his belief in 1894 might have told him he was a mistaken ass, but set that aside in favour of the prospect of a regular festival of commerce and the nation-state.

The presumptions of the Olympic Games were socially irrelevant even in 1894. Running, jumping, javelin-throwing, boxing and wrestling, equestrianism were valued as military exercises in the ancient world, as archery and quarter-staff were in the Middle Ages; at the end of the nineteenth century the modern era in warfare was beginning and national armies were being remodelled. Amateurism in sport, which the Olympic movement took for granted, was starting to be replaced by professionalism. To the extent that amateurism survived, it opposed the Olympic ideal of transcending social status, since it was plainly the province of the leisured and better-off.

It may be thought this irrelevance is the virtue of the Olympics—that they represent sport for its own sake not as a contribution to other purposes. Nothing would be less true. From the London Games of 1908, the last ones to be monopolized by Britain and the USA, they have provided a bargaining-counter for political conditions. The Germans were excluded from the 1924 Games in Paris; before the 1936 ones in Germany there was a strong movement in the USA against participation. Germany and Japan, the defeated nations in World War II, were absent in 1948, and at every Games since then there have been withdrawals and threats of them on political grounds. The present ones in Montreal were preceded by a dispute over the recognition of Taiwan as "The Republic of China" that involved a trade deal between Canada and Communist China and a threat by America to withdraw—implying an irreparable loss of commercial support—from the Games, and then the withdrawal of 21 African and Arab states in protest against New Zealand's inclusion because the latter had played games with South Africa.

For each nation the Olympic Games are a manifestation of strength; not simply the symbolic vigour of its young men and women, but the amounts of money put into colleges and facilities. The prowess of the USSR since it first won Olympic medals in 1956 has had this effect and since 1960 athletes from the African countries have begun to come to the fore. On the other hand, the scantiness of victories for British competitors is taken as a conformation that Britain is "in decline". The staging of the Games also carries prestige for the nation concerned, implying prosperity and confidence to deal with a rush of commerce.

Given this importance in the economic and political rivalry between nations, the "true spirit of sportsmanship" of the Olympic oath (pronounced on behalf of the competitors before each Games) becomes derisory. Amateurism has been demolished by the intensity of the competition, which demands full-time training; likely Olympic participants are supported by their governments or by commercial firms in return for advertizing. However, the continual pressure for higher levels of performance has inevitably led to devices for overcoming physical limitations. The spectacle now is of athletes driven on by stimulants, heavy men enlarged by steroid drugs and, in the case of girls, pills to suspend their menstrual cycle. In an interview published in the Sunday People on 11th July a champion hammer-thrower said: "One thing's certain—the influence of drugs on performances will be at its peak . . . It's the only way you can compete with the world's best, particularly from the Iron Curtain countries."

It is still claimed, in periods of respite from them, that sporting contests promote good will among nations. What can be seen clearly from the Olympic Games, as well as international football and most other contests, is they do nothing of the kind; they do not even start with that intention, and usually end with an intensification of ill-will. Of course sport in itself is not a cause of international rivalry. Its development into world competitions is an effect of nationalism—the political voices of the economic structure of capitalism. Nor is there anything wrong with games and contests as such. Indeed, one of the regrettable consequences of big-scale sport with commercial and political motives is the damage done to sports as recreation.

In the light of the tensions which now surround them. It is possible that in a few more years the Olympic Games will be abandoned and replaced by competitions among particular groups of countries. In that case, each will no doubt swear its dedication to the highest sporting ethics before trying to do down the others by every means. That is not human nature: it is the ubiquitous reflection of the capitalist system. When we talk about Socialism, it is not just "politics". It is the desire for a world where we can enjoy ourselves and exercise the co-operative faculty which distinguishes man and capitalism does its best, but never manages, to stamp out.

Robert Barltrop

World without Money . . . (1994)

From the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

You must be joking! It'll never work. Where's the incentive? What about greed? How could you make it work? It's a theory, it's never been tried; at least we know that capitalism, warts-and-all, works.

Not one, but a combination of the above objections to socialism is responsible for the fact that we still live under capitalism today. Socialism is a co-operative system which relies on the agreement of the majority of men and women throughout the world. For them to agree and agree to co-operate, they first have to know about it. Unfortunately the Socialist Party and its Companion Parties in other parts of the world do not have the resources of the major political parties or organised religion to spread our message, but we use our voice and whatever means are available to us to do so. We are fully aware that until we do, we cannot achieve the sane world where everything is produced in sufficient quantities to satisfy people's needs and not for profit for the minority. Now to address the objections made above.

Duncan is a gardener. He works hard but does not get paid. Neither does Lesley, who is a printer. An interesting article in Choice (July 1994) tells of the spread of LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), an arrangement where money is only used for dealing with "outsiders" and the community operates through a complicated barter system. People go on a register listing their special skills or goods and earn points which are registered centrally for work done. When they need goods, they "pay" from their accumulated credits; even "overdrafts" can be arranged in case of need. The Socialist Party does not advocate such a system, or barter of any kind. What this community (like other co-operative ventures operating without money within their communities) proves is that the contention "no money, no incentive" isn't true and that satisfaction of doing needed work, well done, is incentive enough.

Nor is it sensible to suggest that, with things freely available, people will be greedy and take more than they need. Under capitalism we are constantly brainwashed to judge people by their possessions; hence the urge by so many to prove their "worth" by what they can acquire. The argument fails when that "value" judgement us removed. For instance, people with free travel passes under capitalism do no spend their days making unnecessary journeys.

How will goods be ordered and distributed? We don't know how far technology will have developed when socialism is established, but capitalism's methods today point the way. When you go through the check-out at the supermarket (note: they are no longer referred to as "tills") the bar code on each item is read by the computer, which feeds the information direct to the warehouse for replacement. The computer at the warehouse automatically arranges for this, at the same time checking stock and reordering if necessary; and so on down the chain to the raw materials suppliers.

At the check-out the prices of all the items in your basket are added up and you either pay with notes and coins or get it charged on your plastic credit card. In a socialist society there will be no need for this last stage. The last objection should perhaps not be taken too seriously; "socialism is a theory . . . " For thousands of years to the present day, millions upon millions of people have believed in different versions of "pie in the sky when you die" and have lived their lives accordingly. No-one has ever been there; no-one has ever seen it. What we propose is more believable, sensible and achievable.

Eva Goodman