Wages and Profits under Thatcher (1982)

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

From the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the prospect of making a profit that promotes the activities of companies and nationalised industries. Except for comparatively short periods, companies which make losses go out of business or close down unprofitable branches, and get rid of workers. Nationalised industries can extend their period of loss-making to the extent that they can get subsidies from the government. It is one of the features of Thatcher government policy that it is much less willing than were Labour governments to give continuing subsidies. Employers, generally, have an interest in this. They want government expenditure, and therefore taxes affecting their profits, to be kept to a minimum. So they support government efforts to hold down pay levels in the Civil Service, local government, health service and so on and its attempts to reduce the numbers employed in these services.

With the same end in view, that of reducing expenditure and taxes, the government is making unemployment pay taxable (after reducing it by 5 percent in 1980) and has introduced the rule which assumes, for the purpose of the eligibility of a striker’s dependants to receive social security payments, that the striker is receiving £13 a week strike pay from the union whether or not this is so. Most employers have also supported the changes in trade union law (with more to follow) to reduce the effectiveness of trade unions in striking for pay increases.

While Labour governments have not passed legislation to curb the unions, and the Labour Party is pledged to repeal the Tory legislation, the attitude of Labour governments towards wage increases has been much the same as that of the Thatcher government. It will be recalled that in the “winter of discontent” at the end of its term of office, the Callaghan government was trying to restrict the wage increases of local government and other workers to five per cent, against a rise of prices of about twice as much.

In a childishly unrealistic policy document adopted by the Labour Party Conference in 1944, they held out the prospect that Labour governments would double or treble the workers’ standard of living. But within four years the Attlee government had introduced its “wage-freeze” policy—an example followed by every government, Labour and Tory, up to 1979. The present government, while formally disclaiming any intention to do that again, is trying to achieve the same result by exhortation and other means.

For civil servants, and workers in the health service and education, government policy is to hold pay increases this year down to about half the current annual rate of price increases of 10 per cent. Civil Servants claimed 13 per cent and were offered an overall increase of four per cent, but which included no increase for some, and up to 5½ per cent for others. The government argument was that in some areas of the Civil Service there was no case for any increase at all because, at current rates of pay, there are more applicants than vacancies, and it is the intention to let “market forces” have full play. The government agreed to let the claim go to arbitration and the Tribunal awarded some increase to all, ranging from 4½ per cent to 6¼ per cent. For the police and armed forces the government recognised “a special case” and gave substantially higher increases.

In their own field the employers are always trying to keep wages as low as possible and (which has the same effect on profits) trying to intensify work and get a given volume of output produced by a smaller number of workers. For a considerable period after the war, because unemployment was very low (usually under 2 per cent), trade union resistance was too strong and the employers could make little headway, so that the workers’ standard of living rose considerably.

Now there is a deep depression and the case is altered. In many undertakings including coal, railways, steel and the rest of the nationalised industries “productivity” schemes have been imposed, raising output per worker and reducing the number required for a given total output. Though some of the 3 million unemployed have lost their jobs because the depression has reduced sales, a considerable proportion have been squeezed out through greater “productivity”.

The reaction of some unions to employers who have attempted to keep wage increases below the rise of prices has been naive. Though they no longer claim and expect (as they did in the early post-war years) that wages should all continuously move ahead of the cost of living, they have fallen back on the argument that it is “unacceptable” that real wages should ever go through periods of decline. Capitalism never has given, and indeed could not give, any such guarantee. With declining sales and falling profits (in some cases losses) there has been in every sizeable depression in the past a temporary fall in the living standards of most workers. In the present depression workers in some industries have been compelled to accept wage increases which fall short of price rises. In some, like the airlines, they have had to accept wage cuts.

But experience has been far from uniform and the official index of average weekly earnings of all workers (manual and non-manual) has continued to keep ahead of inflation. In this respect the present depression is unlike those in the past. In the 19th century far fewer workers were organised in unions and there was no state unemployment or social security scheme. Workers on strike or thrown out of work had to rely on the limited trade union or Friendly Society funds financed out of their own contributions, or on charity, with the consequence that in times of bad trade most workers were quickly forced to accept wage reductions. In the present depression this has so far happened to only some workers.

The government statistical service also publishes figures showing total payments by employers as wages and salaries to all employees, and the total profits of companies and nationalised industries. They show that from 1977 onwards there has been a continuous and sharp fall of profits in relation to wages and salaries.

In 1977 profits were 33 per cent of wages and salaries. They fell in 1978 and 1979 to 32 per cent then to 25 per cent in 1980 and to 23 per cent in the first three quarters of 1981. (The latest published figures.) There is indication now that the trend has been reversed. Profits are rising again and it is likely that in coming months average weekly earnings of all workers will fall behind the rise of prices.

In addition to the depression. British capitalism has a long-standing problem of its own. It is that a lot of plant, machinery and processes is out of date by the standards of competing countries. This was spelled out during the Attlee Labour government, 1945-51, by Sir Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan. Urgently needed modernisation, they said, requires a vast investment of capital, which can be provided only by holding down consumption, including wages, and this, for political reasons, is extremely difficult.

Consistently since World War II the expansion of production in Britain has been far below that in most other countries. The Financial Times (19 April 1982) published a table showing the annual rates of growth in fifteen countries, mostly European but including Japan and USA. It shows the annual rate of growth in the years 1975-1980 was in Britain by far the lowest of the fifteen. It stood at 1.6 per cent compared with 3.9 percent in USA and 5.1 percent in Japan. This low productivity means inability to produce at competitive prices and helps to explain why unemployment in Britain is higher than in most industrial countries. The British unemployment rate of 12.6 per cent compares with 2.2 per cent in Japan and under 1 per cent in Switzerland.

The many “productivity” schemes in British industry are designed to make it more competitive and doubtless will have had some effect in that direction. All the problems of the Thatcher government are concerned with this problem of British capitalism. The Labour Party is equally concerned with it. In a debate in the House of Commons Shadow Chancellor Peter Shore said:

   The major concern must be to restore the competitiveness of British industry in relation to its overseas rivals. Despite the government’s boasting, competitiveness has suffered dreadfully. There must be a major attack on the unnecessarily high cost of British industry. (The Times, 29 January 1982.)

Among Shore’s policies to bring this about is a revival of some form of “incomes” policy to hold wages down.

Edgar Hardcastle

Robert Owen turns in his grave (1996)

From the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers who feel that the socialist message tends to be swamped by a sea of frenzied capitalist merchandising may have felt a little more optimistic about the situation when the Co-operative Bank announced the arrival of the Robert Owen Visa Credit Card, which was to be “Free for Life”.

“Free for Life” because, the Co-operative Bank explained in their introductory leaflet: “We do, after all have a reputation for innovation.”

This was exciting news; something “Free”, and “for Life”, hardly believable in a capitalist economy.

Did this herald the arrival of a new era in the banking industry? Was some fundamental feature of the current UK banking and credit industry about to be swept away by a credit card which operated in accordance with some innovative idea that the socialist pioneer Robert Owen had advocated in the early 19th century'?

Well, hardly, because a study of the accompanying literature tells us that, although this “innovative” credit card may be “Free for Life”, it attracts a staggering interest rate of 32.5 percent on all cash advances under £100, and a rate of 29.8 percent on over-the-counter purchases.

However, as if to justify this the Cooperative Bank application form informs us that Robert Owen “attempted to create a New Social System among the people This was an attempt that the Co-operative Bank doesn’t take too seriously, as they state on the form that applicants for this new card must be: “Over 25, own their own home, and earn more than £15,000 a year.”

Disenchanted readers who feel that they may now be disqualified from the pleasures to be derived from the possession of a Robert Owen credit card, may be beginning to wonder just what Robert Owen’s New Social System was really all about.

Well, unfortunately for the Co-operative Bank the “New Social System” that Robert Owen hoped to establish not only had no plans for interest rates of 32.5 percent, or banks for that matter, but money itself would in his words, “become useless, unsought for, and will be forever abandoned” (New Moral World, 1842, Part 5).

He goes on to emphasise his hostility towards the use of money, stating that in his new social system “there will, be no money, the cause now of so much oppression and injustice"; and continues his attack on money saying “it is an artificial medium which enables some few to become enormously rich, at the expense of the many, dooming masses of them to the lowest stages of poverty, and degradation, those who produce the real wealth suffering the latter, while those who make the artificial wealth, or money from paper, gold, silver, or copper, enjoy all the advantages at present desirable for real wealth, which they obtain for their artificial wealth”.

“In a rational society, "Robert Owen continues, “money will be abandoned, and full justice will be done to everyone, and everyone will act justly to everyone else ” (Part 5, The New Moral World).

As well as his dislike for the money system Robert Owen held strong views about private property. Again, in the Book of the New Moral World, he states that private property “is now the sole cause of poverty, and its endless crimes, and miseries, over the world, and in principal it is, as unjust as it is unwise in practice”, and “will never exist in a future society”. He goes on to add in his 12th Law for a future “Rational System of Society” that when people are living in harmony together “there shall be no useless private property”.

Robert Owen wrote The Book of The New Moral World in the 1830s, and his other books and speeches played an influential part in the development of socialist thought in the 19th century. He died in 1858 and is buried in Newtown, in Powys, Wales. Quite what he would have felt about a credit card being named in his memory when he made his views on money perfectly clear is not hard to imagine, but unfortunately when you are dead there is not a lot you can do about it.

Stuart Schofield

Capitalism in Zimbabwe (1982)

From the April 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The following article was first published on 4 October 1981 under the title “Capitalism Stands in the Way of Social Advance” in the “Talking Point” column of the Sunday Mail of Salisbury, Zimbabwe, where the Prime Minister Mugabe has just announced that his Party will rule for ever. Ian Smith was more modest; he merely spoke of ruling for a thousand years. It is up to the working class, armed with the ideas expressed in this article, to bring Mugabe’s ambitions to nought.

* * *

Important changes are taking place now in this part of Africa we live in, changes in human attitudes and the material conditions by which production continues, briefly, in how human beings spend their time. We must try to understand the society we live in.

The dominant society, worldwide, is capitalism. It is international and it is existing now in Zimbabwe, in a less developed form than in, say, Europe or America or Russia. Capitalism is only a name for a type of society characterised by the way people living together under it have certain dealings or relations with each other in the everyday affairs of life.

It is called by this name, capitalism, because the means of production and distribution of commodities under it, the land, factories, railways, etc., are owned by capitalists, that is, by people possessing large amounts of money that they have invested so as to acquire ownership of these means of production and distribution.

They may be landlords with their money invested in land and buildings, and draw their income in the form of rent. They may be owners of factories or trading concerns, or they may have shares in a large number of companies and receive their income in the form of profits.

Lastly, they may have invested their money by making loans to manufacturing or trading capitalists, or by lending it to the Government or councils. They then received “interest” on the loan. All these groups are alike in that they live by receiving income from their investments, a private property income.

The working class, by applying their energies to nature-given material, produce all of the necessities and luxuries which the whole of the population consume; but as employees they receive a wage or salary which provides them only with the means of subsistence for their maintenance and their families.

The workers in, say, three days’ work a week, produce an amount equal to what they receive as wages: the rest of the week their work produces a “surplus value" out of which are derived the rent, interest and profit of the propertied class, their private property.

Here is the root cause of working class poverty. The workers are carrying the propertied class on their backs, the workers are an exploited class under capitalism.

It has been necessary to describe briefly capitalism to begin understanding in what direction Zimbabwe is going.

The old regime was restraining capitalism under the banner of privilege. So for capitalism to develop, it had to be removed. The capitalist knows that black workers can be trained to be as skilled as any white worker, so racial privilege had to go; and further sees in the black workers a vast, expanding market for commodities.

Also, it is essential for the development of capitalism that the small-scale production and natural economy of the self-sufficient peasant be ended, and so steps are being taken to draw the producers in communal lands into the “money economy”.

Town or city workers who lay claim to rural land will be denied this land in the interest of developing capitalism, since workers to be trained for capitalism must be “stable” and compelled to work for wages only.

The growth of the market, the accumulation of capital, the modification of the social position of the classes, a large number of persons being deprived of alternative sources of income other than wages—all these are historical pre-conditions for the expansion of capitalism.

It is against this reality that capitalists and their sycophants issue their appeal to the workers to “forget class”, “forget exploitation”, “work harder” and enter into harmonious co-operation with their employer in the interest of the company, or with the Government in the interest of “the nation”.

However, there can be no sound basis for reconciliation between exploited and exploiting classes.

Exploitation will cease only when the means of production and distribution cease to be owned by a small class of capitalists and become the common property of society as a whole.

Production will be democratically controlled solely and directly for the use of the whole population with no buying and selling, no price system. Rent, interest and profit, and the wages system will be abolished. Production and distribution will be on the socialist principle: “From each according to ability: to each according to need”. All will have free access to society’s products.

There will be no class division, no working class or owning class and no trade unions; there can be no trade unions because there will be no wages to bargain over and no employers to bargain with. Socialist society can only be worldwide, humanity will not be segregated behind national frontiers or coerced by the armed forces of governments.

The question that needs to be put to all political parties is, therefore, whether or not they stand for the immediate abolition of capitalism, substituting socialism. If they do not, then they are standing in the way of social advance, even though, without any justification, they choose to call their policies socialism.

Sting in the Tail: The C of E and reality (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The C of E and reality

A Church of England vicar in Hertfordshire caused uproar by telling children “that neither Santa Claus nor the Tooth Fairy was real” (Independent, 18 December).

The Rev’s job is safe, though, because his flock has forgiven him.

  “And there was support for him from the Right Rev David Jenkins, the controversial former Bishop of Durham who, writing in today’s Independent, agrees that the teachings of Christianity would benefit from the separation of fairytale from reality.”

Would it really? If all the fairytales about life after death, heaven and hell, virgin births, devils, angels, holy ghosts, etc. were separated from the teachings of Christianity what would be left?


AWL backs a loser

Like fleas on a dog, would-be Bolsheviks have for over fifty years been hanging onto the Labour Party.

The latest group is the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) which is totally obsessed with Labour which it sees, despite that party’s anti-working class history, as being worthy of support because they can “win significant support for socialist ideas inside the party”. What they mean by “socialist ideas” may be gauged from their approval of the misnamed Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MP’s.

At election times the AWL actively works for Labour to the farcical extent of delivering into working-class homes literature full of ideas and policies which they themselves condemn!

Of course, Tony Blair is their arch-villain and is denounced as a “grinning idiot”. Perhaps he is grinning because he is thinking “How can I lose when even opponents will be working and voting for me? With enemies like these, who needs friends?”

Shouldn’t each AWL member be asking themselves just who is the idiot there?


Circumstances alter attitudes

Francis Lee and Alan Ball, chairman and manager of Manchester City FC, have been complaining about “over-paid”, under-talented stars” (Manchester Evening News, 16 December).

Said Lee, “We are talking about people with Frank Sinatra’s tastes and Frank Spencer’s voice”, while Ball yearned for the days when managers could “hit players in the pocket” by dropping them.

So top players, and it is only those at the top, are taking advantage of a favourable market, but Lee and Ball must know that British football’s biggest stars were paid a pittance until the abolition of the maximum wage, and they should remember how short players’ careers can be, so why shouldn’t they cash in while they can?

Anyway, football’s chairmen and managers were saying much the same about players when Lee and Ball were in their prime in the 60s and 70s, but did that stop the pair going for the best possible deals they could get?


“Dearer” means “cheaper”

For years the package holiday industry has been increasing and then decreasing the prices and the number of holidays in its brochures in futile attempts to anticipate the market.

Last summer’s heatwave helped make 1995 a disaster, and the industry engaged in a ruinous price-war which sent profits into a tailspin. To avoid a repeat of this, the industry’s giants, Thomson’s, Airtours and First Choice, have cut summer ’96 holidays by 10 percent and upped brochure prices by around 17 percent.

First Choice’s chief executive Francis Baron claimed that this means the industry is “set for a bumper year”, but advance bookings are 30 percent down on 12 months ago, and in a desperate move to drum up business the big three have announced discounts bigger than the price increases!

Yet another price-war is underway, and the package holiday industry remains a prime example of the anarchy of the market in action.


A ducal visit

Those sanctimonious old Tories who prate on about “Victorian values” must have been touched by the Duke of Westminster’s proposed Xmas visit to the Liverpool as reported in the Observer (24 December).

The Duke, reported to have a £2 billion fortune, will take his wife and two eldest daughters from his Eaton Hall estate near Chester to visit drug addicts on the streets of Liverpool.

It is not only backwoods Tories who are impressed by this. Dr Sue Ruben of Liverpool’s Drug Service also applauds the visit:

“Many of my clients have very low self-esteem and anything that gives them a sense of worth, even a short visit by a Duke, is worthwhile.”

How a visit by one of the richest men in Britain will give a “sense of worth” to desperate workers living in hostels is beyond our comprehension. A “sense of rage” should be nearer the mark.


Causes of war

Socialists are forever pointing out that all modern wars are fought over markets, trade routes, military bases and other economic concerns. Defenders of capitalism, on the other hand, like to imagine that wars are fought over ideologies like, freedom, democracy, self-determination and other high-sounding ideals.

Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, commenting on the recent “peace” deal is quoted in the Independent on Sunday (31 December) as saying:

  “I can say we achieved half our goal— we have half of Bosnia, more than 40 cities and some good land.”

Well, who has got it right? The socialists or the defenders of capitalism? And how much of a “peace” deal is it, when half of Bosnia is only half of Karadzic’s goal?

There Now ! (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent issue we pointed out that our capitalist masters would not neglect their bulldogs, the police. We have not had to wait long for verification. The exceeding dexterity with which the police in various parts of the country have handled their staves during the recent troublous times is already meeting with its due reward. The Metropolitan constables have received a rise of 1s. 6d. per week, sargeants 2s., station-sargeants 2s. 6d., and other officers in proportion.

The particularly noisome work the police have been called upon to do of late was worth an extra price, and no doubt this will suffice to prevent the strike fever reaching “buttons.”

Editorial: The Only Way To Win. (1911)

Editorial from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war on the world's workers has been far fiercer and more prolonged recently than for many years past. From the Norwegian fiords to the sunny shores of Spain it has affected capitalism in all its climes. The railwaymen of John Bull’s other island”; the miners of Wales; the cultivators of the grape in “Fair France”; these are but a few of those who have been driven to strike.

From all over the civilised world, too, comes the bitter cry of the toilers against the ever-rising prices of commodities, more particularly of the essential necessaries of life, the items of the working-class fare.

France has abolished the Monarchy, separated Church from State, and parted with her House of Nobles. Portugal has dethroned and exiled her king and installed a capitalist Republic. Germany has Tariff Reform and working class “salvation” in State Insurance. The United States of America have Protection, no conscript army, State Church or House of Peers. Ireland has the “lavish” Land Acts of the Liberal party, and both Eighty Club and ugly Ulster unite in protesting that "Ireland is prosperous.” Yet despite these things ; despite the fact that all the reforms lustily shouted for by the workers here are in operation in one country or another, there is war, bitter, bloody, and brutal, between the toilers and their masters.

The workers, asking for higher wages on account of the famine prices in France, Austria and Belgium are being shot down and massacred by the Gendarmerie. In America the “Trust busters” and the trustifiers have entered into a conspiracy to smash the unions, the latest act being the imprisonment of the union secretary. McNamara, on the trumped-up charge of blowing up the office of the “Los Angeles Times.” In modern Mexico ex-President Diaz finds a worthy successor in the Liberal, Madero, who, true to Liberal traditions everywhere, is drowning every aspiration of the toilers in a torrent of blood.

In England, too, the masters are rallying for a smashing blow at the workers. A new force of mercenaries—a permanent body of special constables with a retaining fee of £5 per annum and a wage when they are actually called upon to do their filthy, black hundred's, work—is being raised. Signs of what the capitalist ghouls contemplate manifest themselves in their persistent demands that picketing shall cease, and perhaps still more definitely in the working-class enslavement Bill recently introduced by that capitalist henchman, Will Crooks. Soldiers and police are being drafted to all parts of Ireland as in Gladstone's “golden” days. The united force of man and gun is being used to conquer the slaves of Erin.

The lesson conveyed by all these cold, staring facts is not a very subtle or elusive one--in fact it is as blatantly, obtrusively plain as the facts themselves. It is this: The only way for the toilers to triumph is by fighting for Revolution, not reform. Social reform is powerless to affect materially the conditions of toil. Social Revolution alone is the remedy. The recent railway strike in Ireland sufficiently proves this contention. Those strikers support the Home Rulers. But under Home Rule they will be sweated and robbed, even as they are now, because they will still be, what they are under the Saxon heel, proletarians—property less.

Home Rule is a question for rulers, not for the ruled—for priests and landlords and capitalists, not for working men and women. How little the Home Rulers help the workers was shown by their eloquent silence during the Belfast massacre in 1907. None of the sturdy independence they boast of was seen upon that occasion, and they showed plainly enough that the Home Rulers’ wind and fury centres around the question of who shall suck the Irish working class orange—that the Irish working class shall be an orange, to be sucked dry by somebody, is an article of faith of Home Ruler and Unionist alike.

Remember, too, that the Irish party’s chief whip. Sir T. G. Esmonde, is a director of the Great Southern and Western Railway—the most bitter against the men. Mr. Willie Redmond also urges the men to go back to work (“Daily Chronicle,” Sept. 26th.)

No, Home Rule, like the other reforms, has proved powerless to help the workers, wherever it has been tried.

Revolution alone is the hope of the toiling masses, and not Reform. For Reform—whether political or social —does not affect the cause of the workers’ troubles. Change the entire conditions of social life and labour by the capture of the political machine by au educated and organised working class, and use it to abolish wage-slavery for ever, and to establish society upon a basis of common ownership in the means and instruments of production and distribution. Thus only can, then only will, the ills and anxieties of the wealth producers cease.

Rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, for it has one Object—Socialism ;one method—Revolution.

Intelligent machines, enough for an intelligent society? (2018)

From the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

 Artificial Intelligence seems now more than ever a concrete reality. Machines can now learn in a similar way as humans and adapt to new problems and situations, solving problems which may have some degree of unpredictability. Quite some media coverage was dedicated to the victory of Google’s AlphaGo, artificial intelligence system, over the best Go human player (Ke Jie). This is because unlike chess, Go is not only matter of logic, there is a degree of 'gut' feeling to it. 

Artificial intelligence is founded in machine learning. This is a fascinating field of computer science which has experienced recent advances that have revived the concept of artificial intelligence. For the first time artificial intelligence seems more realistic than just a Sci-Fi story.

Machine learning boils down to an algorithm (a set of rules) being able to draw from a pool of data what the expected output is and rerun this process over and over until it gets it right. These training and iteration abilities are what makes the machine able to learn good old trial and error, but done by machines at mind-boggling speed. For example, given 10 images (e.g. human faces), the algorithm learns to recognise them using a limited number of features pre-selected by the human operator (e.g. face size, colour, shape, nose size, etc). It will then condense these features to the minimum required to recognise the images. The algorithm will not guess the images completely right at first, but, because it can compare its output (guess) to the real images manually labelled by a human operator, it will adjust its settings and try again and again until there is a perfect match. Moreover, when a new image is provided the machine is now trained to recognise it. This is what we humans learn to do at a very young age, when we are less than 2 years old.

An artificial neural network is a branch of machine learning. Here the algorithm pretends to work like the neurons of a brain. Given some inputs, let’s say the features characterising an image, as with the human face in the previous example, several hidden layers will compute all possible combinations, which will lead to the most likely output. It is the typical black box approach, which means that no-one really knows what is going on inside it. Essentially, the machine is able to recognise images, sounds, or other things only because human labour has told them exactly what they were. All inputs (e.g. images) need to be labelled. Nothing amazing so far, and lots of human labour involved. 

The story becomes more interesting when these algorithms become able to learn in an unsupervised way (without labels). These are multi-layered algorithms, also known as deep learning algorithms. Let’s say that I apply an algorithm that has learned to recognise types of dogs to now recognise types of cats, but in the latter case I do not have labels or features which will tell the algorithm which is what. The algorithm will extract features itself based on patterns inherited in the data itself, and will use the prior 'knowledge' acquired when learning to recognise dogs. Deep learning is the first credible, though rudimentary, concretisation of artificial intelligence. The step of self-learning is an important breakthrough in technology. Some even dare to say that this is the new industrial revolution. Yet, deep learning requires a huge amount of data (Big Data), high processing power and of course the capacity to store this data. All these do not come out of nowhere, but require a huge amount of human labour. 

Open-source services, or platforms like Google and Android, or open-application programming interfaces in general, have facilitated the advances in deep learning through being able to produce big data and in some cases build on each other’s work. Data becomes so valuable that the privacy of those who have provided it is often neglected (see Facebook and others alike), requiring the intervention of governments to set new boundaries (see the recent General Data Production Regulations). 

For the first time, some 'skilled' jobs risk being substituted by intelligent machines. Is this a problem? Some trade unions are starting to talk about a robot-tax, in order to compensate for the jobs robots are going to take away from humans. Some others question whether Marx’s labour theory of value still makes sense when human labour is no longer involved in the production process. 

The whole point of a system not based on exploitation of human labour is to have machines that would do most or possibly all of the work for us. Within the logic of the labour theory of value it is clear that if no humans are involved in the production of goods and services, the organic composition of capital (fixed capital / variable capital) would be affected, meaning there is fixed capital only, and so the rate of profit would be affected too (surplus value/fixed capital + variable capital), potentially becoming zero. In other words, if no human works, no human will receive a salary, thus most will not be able to afford to buy the very commodities being produced. 

Because of time factors and the interconnection of productive sectors, this depletion in exchange value would not happen overnight. In fact, as long as there are workers with enough salary, and capitalists with enough profits, to close the productive cycle with a successful sale, profit for the fully automated companies would not be zero. Additionally, the abstract value crystallised in the making of the robots and their intelligent self-learning algorithms originally come from humans. Yet, the more productive cycles are conducted in full automation the less the profit generated.

The question is, would this type of development be the natural end of capitalism? No, it wouldn’t. It would influence economic crises for sure and mass poverty as it always did. Capitalism won’t collapse by itself, though, it will adapt. Not all jobs will be in any case replaceable. Soft skills jobs will still be conducted by humans. Capitalism will carry on with its contradictions and sharp inequality. Automation in a capitalist society will mean changes in the patterns of employment and unemployment, whereas in a socialist society, it can liberate humans from manual labour aimed at producing goods and services. It will allow humans to acquire skills and improve society. Yet we are nowhere near that degree of automation yet.

Cesco.

The Hoary Illusions of Youth (1933)

From the December 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Jack Edwards, Chairman of the League of Youth Advisory Committee, in an article in the Daily Herald of September 21st, 1933, states the case, as he sees it, for youth.

He says: “Modern youth is in fact better, brainier and more inquisitive.” He ascribes the terrible effects of war upon the mothers of that period as being due to “The blunderings of a generation tied to antiquated traditions.” He goes on to say that youth now is different, opposes war and, instead of marching off to the next war, will pause and ask why!

He says: “The more whys we ask, the more unsatisfactory becomes the answer.”

“We do not believe that there is no work amidst such want. Given the opportunity now we would free the world from the misery, want and suffering caused by uneconomic management and bolstered up by armed force. Peace is our object.” 

He suggests a world parliament, where “Men of heart and will, men and women of knowledge, doctors, teachers and mothers,” could all come together and thrash out the world’s problems. Then as to practical measures for settling these problems, he suggests that if youth had the power, it would do the following:—

   “A drastic cut in working hours, without reduction in pay; wider and greater opportunities in education; a new and adequate pension scheme; compulsory retirement from industry for those on pensions; directions to local authorities to speed up housing and public works, with public finance to aid them; Government control of the banks and the closing of the Stock Exchange, the establishment of a national investment board to direct money into the channels most advantageous 1o the community.”

This seems a tall enough order, but Mr. Edwards then airily says: “These are but some of youth’s plans to grapple with poverty at home.” To plan seems the only indulgence which the L.L.Y. is allowed. It is not allowed representation on the E.C. of the Labour Party at the moment, and much as its members resent this, their “plans” certainly prove that they will need to ask more whys and get a sounder understanding of the position before they can be given serious consideration.

From the point of view of soundness, however, the parent body can certainly not teach its child anything worth knowing.

The rest of the article is devoted to obvious facts of the capitalist system which need not be repeated, but it is rather amusing to hear Mr. Edwards cite the civil servants as being those who work for OUR common good, and deploring the fact that THESE should be subject to wage attacks.

Why these any more than any other worker, and if they are workers for the “common good,” how about all the rest of us, who are producing all the necessaries of life, not for use, but for the profit of our masters ? Mr. Edwards evidently has not asked enough whys yet.

It is now time for us to ask a few whys of Mr. Edwards.

First of all, then: Why does he give us a rigmarole about antiquated traditions being the cause of war?

Economic conditions are not antiquated traditions. They are the natural workings and outcome of the existing system of society. The economic conditions of capitalist society are such that production for profit, which is commodity productions, demands an outlet for the goods produced. When a market cannot be obtained through ordinary trade treaties, etc., then the capitalists have to engage in war in order to put their rivals out of action on the productive field, and so that the agreements after the war can be arranged advantageously for the victor; which, of course, they hope to be themselves.

Disarmament Conferences, to which Labour politicians can be invited, are the scratching grounds upon which the capitalists can sort out the tit-bits. The Labour politicians give the assemblies an air of realism and serve to keep the workers quiet. When war occurs during a Conference, such as the Chino-Japanese affray recently, the family gathering breaks up to allow the fight to continue; when it is over, the naughty children are scolded and the happy family is once more reunited. No, we are not dealing with antiquated traditions, but the very much up-to-date methods of modern capitalism.

Why is it that there isn’t employment for some workers under capitalism? Mr. Edwards proves clearly why, later in his article, when he says “Youth bids its elders no longer to tolerate a world in which people cannot buy bread because there is too much wheat; where crops from the tea plantations must be restricted, while people cannot buy tea ”; etc., etc.

We Socialists do not cry out for more work. Many workers do far too much, and needlessly unpleasant work; become, in fact, merely beasts of burden, knowing nothing of the delights of living. Art, music and literature are only fine-sounding words to them.

Mr. Edwards only states a half-truth in the previously quoted passage.

It is not only because there is too much tea, wheat, etc., but because the goods produced are privately owned. Unless they can be sold at a profit, further production is stopped or restricted; hence unemployment. This is the necessary outcome of capitalist society, and neither Mr. Edwards, with his youthful demands, nor the Labour Party can abolish it without first of all abolishing capitalism, which is the cause of it.

But this Mr. Edwards does not want to do. Otherwise there is only need for him to advocate one policy instead of the many plans laid down by him and previously quoted. That policy is Socialism.

Let us examine his plans.

First of all, then, who pays the wages? The capitalist, obviously.

Higher wages with less hours means a reduction in capitalist profit, unless output per head can be increased. This gives the capitalists an added inducement to speed up production, and instal labour-saving machinery.

Who advances the money for the State to take over or nationalise the essential services? The capitalists. In other words, people with money to invest, would-be bond holders. Who is it who runs the Stock Exchange? The same people. We see, then, in order to do any of the things which Mr. Edwards suggests the first thing to do is to dispossess those who now own and control the wealth. This is the only measure that needs enforcing. It is, in fact, the key to the situation. Although Mr. Edwards gives lip service to this idea, he goes on to deal with all the ramifications of capitalist society. Why, when the workers are in control and the capitalists dispossessed, Mr. Edwards still wants a National Investment Board is beyond us.

If Mr. Edwards thinks that the workers and the capitalists can work together advantageously to both, then there is no need to render lip service to Socialism. He is quite in order in trying to get support for his plans to rejuvenate capitalism, but he and other confusionists do the cause of Socialism incalculable harm by tacking its name upon their projects.

The point which stands out clearest in the whole article is Mr. Edwards' lack of knowledge of the fundamentals of Socialism. The end of the workers' troubles must and will come with the dawn of Socialism.

Socialism means the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution that goes with investment boards, public finance, Government control, money, in fact, everything which Mr. Edwards has taken such pains to impress upon his Daily Herald readers that they must build up under youth's guidance.

As Socialists, we know that our job is to teach Socialism in every possible place and way we can. We can only do that when we understand it ourselves, and we can only get it when the majority of the workers understand it and are prepared to work for it.

Mr. Edwards is either a very muddled thinker or a deliberate confusionist.

May Otway

The Dispute at the London Docks (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The trouble at the London docks is an excellent illustration of the capitalist outlook of the Labour Government. The dockers are willing to unload all ships except the Beaverbrae and Argomont, the two Canadian ships which are involved in a Canadian trade union dispute. The dockers are also, prepared to see troops unload the Canadian ships but are not willing to unload them themselves because they contend that these ships are “black ships.” The Dock Labour Board refuses to allow the dock workers to unload other ships unless they are prepared to unload the two Canadian ships. At the moment of writing the government has threatened to declare a state of emergency unless the Port of London is working fully on Monday, July 11th; thus the Labour Government, like all previous capitalist governments, is taking the side of the employers against the workers.

On July 10th Reynolds News contained the following :

   “Mr. Sam Watson, chairman of the Labour Party, said at Brandon (Co. Durham) yesterday that the dock strike was the work of foreign agencies, was purely political and could be solved if the members of the unions threw out the anti-British agitators.”

What a familiar ring this statement has. For a hundred years every strike of any size has been put down to the nefarious influence of “agitators” sometimes foreign, sometimes home-grown. Many of the Labour leaders who are fighting the dockers were included in this category long ago; now that they support the Labour administration of capitalism they take up the capitalists’ cudgels and sing his tune.

But let us subject Mr. Watson’s statement to a little examination.

First of all the Government’s ultimatum requires that work must be resumed on all ships, including the two Canadian ships. Whatever may be the merits or demerits of the dockers’ attitude over the Canadian ships the fact remains that the Government is prepared to bring chaos to the docks and interfere with the unloading of food ships rather than permit the dockers to abstain from working two out of over a hundred ships, although over ten thousand dock workers have taken up this attitude. And yet we are told that the dock workers are solely to blame for the trouble, and that it is the work of “foreign agencies.”

Secondly the unions are the organisations of the workers in particular industries for the purpose of improving wages and conditions of labour or resisting a worsening of those conditions and wages. The trade union officials that the workers appoint and pay are appointed and paid to carry out the work that the majority of the workers in the union instruct them to do. Since the coming into power of the Labour Government leading trade union officials have attempted to curb their members’ struggles for improved conditions and, in particular, have used their position to try to prevent the workers from using the strike weapon, the only effective weapon the workers have on the industrial field. Labour Government still leaves the workers dissatisfied and struggling for improvement in their conditions; whoever gives adequate expression to this dissatisfaction in particular instances and attempts to put into practice the workers’ wishes is likely to receive their backing, regardless of political colour.

While it is true that the communists strive to fish in troubled waters a communist spokesman can only carry his fellow-workers with him if he is travelling along a road they want to travel. As long as he does this, and as long as the workers control his activities, it is immaterial whether he is a communist or a tory in political outlook. It is often forgotten by those not directly concerned that when workers come out on strike it is a very serious matter for them; they are jeopardising their livelihood and are hardly likely to do this at the behest of a few wild and irresponsible individuals. Whether their action is good policy at the given moment or not is immaterial; they have given it serious consideration and have taken action seriously, and therefore the charge that they are led by the nose by political agitators is particularly insulting when coming from the people they appoint and pay to fight their battles.

The fact of the matter is, in the dock strike as well as the other labour troubles that confront the Labour Government, that Labour Government has gone to the heads of leading trade union officials and they no longer adequately represent the views of their members. They have fallen behind and have given an opening for others who put the workers' case in industrial disputes more near to the demands of the situation.

Mr. Hartley Shawcross, the Attorney General, we are told (Reynolds, July 10th) delivered a “scathing attack on the ‘ wretched ’ unofficial dock strike ” and said:

   “But the freedom of the trade unions, the very right to strike, must depend on the members’ loyalty, and their use of the negotiating machinery."

To whom are trade union members supposed to be loyal? Surely to themselves and not to the officials who fail to carry out the policy for which they were appointed. As a lawyer Mr. Shawcross may be hidebound by legal formulae but that is his affair and not the workers. “Negotiating machinery” was not devised to help the workers but to aid the employers in keeping the machinery of capitalism running smoothly. Give a date weeks ahead when a strike is proposed so that (1) the employers can make adequate preparation to defeat it and (2) so that the workers will be bamboozled by long drawn out negotiations that will weary them into agreeing to compromises favourable to the employers. The strike that has the best chance of succeeding is the one that comes out of the blue and, if unsuccessful, is abandoned before the workers’ organisation has become too weak to enable them to strike again out of the blue with better success.

On the industrial field the workers are fighting the employers and their only loyalty is to themselves. Where the officials they appoint fail to recognise this they should be replaced by those who do. Strikes cause disorganisation and some suffering; if they did not do so they would be worthless as weapons to be wielded by the workers in disputes over wages and conditions.

In the present dispute the dock workers, rightly or wrongly, are taking sympathetic action to help fellow workers on the other side of the Atlantic. Until the Labour Government came into power this was an ideal supported passionately by all who claimed to be acting in the interests of the working class. Now “loyal citizenship ” has taken the place of international labour solidarity and Sir Hartley Shawcross concluded his speech with the threat:

    “The choice between the dockers on strike is whether they will resume work now as loyal citizens, or will continue to jeopardise the security of their employment by waiting until the community asserts its authority, as it can and will, by emergency measures.”

How like a statement emanating from a Tory Government or from the Russian Government? The "community” is, of course, the Government in power.

It is also claimed that the communists influence union action by carefully and artfully laid plans to influence the attitude of workers at conferences, mass meetings and so forth. But are they the only people that play this game? Are the trade union and labour leaders innocent of wire-pulling? What of the carefully-framed resolutions that are brought forward at the “right” moment and the speakers that are deputed to speak at the right moments? Or the weighty declarations backed by “my long and valuable work for the members”? There is only one way for the workers to arm themselves against wire-pulling and falling for seductive speeches and that is to know what they want and how to get it. Penalising people for their political opinions is not only undemocratic—it is fatal because one day the penaliser will find that he is throwing a boomerang which will come back and knock him out.

The Labour Government are now using the emergency powers regulations to try and force to their knees some of those workers who helped to place them in power. Is it too much to expect that this and similar Government attitudes in industrial disputes during the last four years will be remembered when the workers are called upon to vote in the General Election?

The Labour Government, backed by leading Trade Union officials, is constantly appealing to the workers to refrain from pressing demands for increased wages. In spite of this the demands are widespread and more and more insistent; there is unrest about living costs amongst the workers in industries all over the country and the Government does not appear to be able to do anything about it. In face of this, it is curious with what rapidity and unanimity the “state of emergency” was invoked—with everything cut and dried, and in a dispute where the workers adopted a customary trade union attitude of not unloading “black” ships. Can it be that the Government wanted a show-down in order to curb the general demands for increased wages?

Gilmac.

Raw Recruits (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years ago, when capitalism seemed to be a divinely-ordained system, destined to last for ever, the “upper classes” made no bones about admitting that all the work was done by the “labouring classes.” The capitalist economists used to reflect on the happy arrangement of society by which landowners, shareholders and the rest were free from the painful necessity to work.

Here are three quotations made by Marx within the space of two pages of “Capital.” First, from Sismondi’s “De la Richesse Commerciale”: “Thanks to the advance of industry and science, every labourer can produce every day much more than his consumption requires. But at the same time, while his labour produces wealth, that wealth would, were he called on to consume it himself, make him less fit for labour.. . . Exertion to-day is separated from its recompense; it is not the same man that first works, and then reposes; but it is because the one works that the other rests. . . . The indefinite multiplication of the productive powers of labour can then only have for result the increase of luxury and enjoyment of the idle rich.”

Second, from Storch’s “Cours d’Economic Politique”: “The progress of social wealth begets this useful class of society . . . which performs the most wearisome, the vilest, the most disgusting functions, which takes, in a word, on its shoulders all that is disagreeable and servile in life, and procures thus for other classes leisure, serenity of mind and conventional dignity of character.”

And third, from Townsend’s “Dissertation on the Poor Laws": “It seems to be a law of nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident, that there may always be some to fulfil the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the. community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved from drudgery . . . but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions.”

But now, condition's are changing. As the upper class begins to realise that only lack of knowledge prevents the workers of the world putting an end to the present system, and with it the consumption of surplus value by a favoured few, so they begin to change their tune. One by one, like so many Uriah Heaps, they try to persuade the workers that they are all only humble working men. Brigadier Ralph Rayner, Conservative M.P. for Totnes, recently wrote to the Dartmouth Chronicle, detailing all the arduous duties he has to perform, in support of his claim to be a worker. The Sunday Express (31/7/49) announced that the Earl of Harewood’s fiancee is only “a working girl she met her future husband at a music festival, in the same way that any working-class girl might meet an earl at a music festival. But perhaps one of the most notable of recent claimants to working-class status is Sir Bernard Docker. Sir Bernard’s aspirations were revealed in an article in the Sunday Express (17/7/49) about Lady Docker, who not long ago had jewellery worth £50,000 stolen from her. One statement made by the author of this article is especially interesting: “When I met Lady Docker the jewellery she wore seemed insignificant to me—a small sapphire and diamond bracelet, two wedding rings, and an engagement ring fashioned from stones which once belonged to her husband’s mother. She said, ‘These and a Royal Thames Yacht Club badge in sapphires and diamonds are usually all I wear.’” Lady Docker confessed that she had “always been attracted by the solid man of achievement, not the playboy.” Lady Docker is to be congratulated on her taste in husbands. Her first was Mr. Clement Callingham, “a fine, hard-working business man,” one of whose presents to her was a diamond brooch valued at £7,000. Her second was Sir William Collins, who died in 1947, leaving nearly a million pounds. And her third is Sir Bernard Docker, who thinks that “every ordinary working man—and I class myself as a working man—wants to have the opportunity to save money and spend it how he likes.”

When Socialism is established, these eleventh-hour recruits to the working-class will have a chance of substantiating their claims.

Alwyn Edgar

Other Days—Other Ways (1946)

From the February 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Arthur Deakin is fast gaining reputation as the Labour Party's most blatant capitalist propagandist.

Quoted with great satisfaction in the Daily Herald for November 6th, 1945, he calls upon the workers to reject unofficial stoppages which are rendering a grave disservice to the "nation" and (as an afterthought) their fellow workers.

   “While applying our minds to schemes for sharing wealth," he writes, "we have also to get down to the job of producing wealth."
   "The nation is fighting for its economic survival, and if it is to succeed, the people, both workers and management, must put their backs into the job with the same team spirit as in the days of the war.”

We have shown, in recent issues of the Socialist Standard how the Labour Party, loudly demanding a drastic re-distribution of income when out of office—on the grounds that there was plenty of cake; only too few had got too much— suddenly discovers when in office that "we” have got to produce more—the cake isn't big enough !

What we would here point out is Mr. Deakin's naive and stupid conception of Socialism, which he imagines is "schemes for sharing wealth."

Socialism is not "a scheme for sharing wealth.” It is the only method of producing wealth up to full capacity by modern society. Socialism is the ONLY way to take the capitalist brake off production.

When wealth is produced in superabundance under Socialism—it will not be "shared out" by a "scheme" it will be freely distributed. These Labour Party Trade Union officials never have known, and still do NOT know, what Socialism is.

Horatio.

The Westminster By-Election. (1924)

From the April 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the National point of view the by-election for the Westminster Abbey Division presents no particular point beyond the spectacle of four supporters of capitalism competing for one seat.

From the local point of view it afforded some amusement, while certain features are worth noting.

The outstanding feature was the large poll given to the Labour candidate, Mr. Fenner Brockway. The Labour Party are jubilant at their second attack upon what has always been looked upon as a Tory stronghold since. John Stuart Mill sat for the division.

Mr. Scott Duckers, the Liberal candidate, claims to have kept Mr. Churchill out, because those who voted for Mr. Scott Duckers would otherwise have voted for Mr. Churchill. There is very little evidence, however, for this statement, and it is far more likely that had Mr. Scott Duckers not run the bulk of the votes he received would have gone to the Labour candidate, who, like Mr. Scott Duckers, was a conscientious objector during the war.

It was interesting to see one objector opposing the “Five Cruisers” scheme, while the other one supported the scheme. It shows how poor a base sentiment is for a political policy.

The Tory Party split over the candidates put forward and the official machine realised it had a formidable task in front of it. Not only was there the great wealth of Mr. Churchill’s family behind him, but the yellow gutter press and the Observer were using all their influence to support Mr. Churchill. Added to this was Mr. Churchill's record and the fact that he is a master of platform clap-trap. In fact, the only thing he appeared to lack was a sense of decency.

Mr. Churchill conducted his campaign as a “Show” or piece of buffoonery. Fighting men, jockeys, comedians, etc., were his principal speakers. Processions of highly decorated motor-cars toured the streets, and the candidate joined in the procession at times. This gutter method of conducting a campaign shows the shallow mind of the individual responsible for such method.

But a later incident looks rather curious. During the closing days of the campaign, the newspapers reported that a motor-car, carrying the Labour Party placard, persistently followed Mr. Churchill’s car, and whenever he attempted to speak drowned his voice with motor horns, rattles and shouting.

This incident must have swung some hundreds of votes to Mr. Churchill, as the “waverers” in both Liberal and Tory camps would vote for him under these conditions, because “he was not getting fair play.” The Labour Party stated that the car was not officially connected with them, despite its labels, and among so many blatant “stunts” in operation, the suspicion arises that the hooligan car was run by Mr. Churchill or his supporters on purpose to gain the sympathy of those mentioned above.

Now hooliganism, long a favourite method with the Tories, whether indulged, in from a motor-car or the kerbstone, is both reactionary and cowardly. It is an admission that the hooligan cannot meet the arguments of his opponents And so indulges in methods to prevent him being heard. Such tactics are to be condemned, no matter who indulges in them. .

One other fact emerged from this by-election. Practically all the capitalist press united in talking of ‘‘Mr. Churchill’s brilliance,” “his great gifts,” ‘‘his remarkable abilities,” etc., but when one reads the carefully prepared speeches he gave, they turned out to contain nothing but stale and worn-out platitudes.

Any members of the working class, who were led away by this praise of the press, will now be able to realise that Churchill is only a shallow-pated chameleon.

Jack Fitzgerald

Books Received (1969)

From the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers' Mutual Aid by John Lawrence, 35 Micheldever Road, London, SE12 1s. 

Short anarchist pamphlet which rejects all political parties and wants equal wages while money exists. See Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy and Value, Price and Profit for the socialist reply to each of these points.

A Matter of Perspective (2018)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the July 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Living in a prosperous part of South England I occasionally encounter people who claim to be happy with their lives. They seem not to be suffering alienation in their work and are content with the standard of living it provides. What is a socialist to make of such an individual and is our call to revolution impotent in the face of such contentment? Certainly the traditional Marxist case depends on developing and politicising the pre-existing frustration and unhappiness that usually accompanies wage slavery. What does socialism have to offer such people?

Although initially taken-aback by the self-centeredness and political myopia of such individuals socialists can still offer them personal and political liberation by pointing to the perspectives of ‘time and place’. In terms of time we will refer to the struggles of the past that have enabled them to enjoy the relative material and political freedoms they have and point out that these can be eroded and/or destroyed by the instability of capitalism at any moment. The economic crashes that define capitalism can destroy jobs and savings just as its wars can murder its children. Anyone who is content to leave the future of their children in the hands of politicians whose only loyalty is to those with wealth and power is surely guilty of both extreme naivety and neglect. And if they are fortunate enough to personally escape these wider inevitabilities then even the most optimistic among us would be in complete denial not to be concerned about the dangers of pollution and global warming that will be their inheritance.

As I grow older I become aware of just how fragile our individual world is. Even the most successful and healthy individual can succumb to accident or illness at any time. Although socialism could not prevent such vicissitudes of existence it will end the added stress that accompanies loss of earnings in capitalism. Falling into poverty because of illness or bereavement is a common enough phenomenon in our present society. Living in a culture of such great inequality of wealth and opportunity creates crime. The relatively affluent among us are very fortunate if they do not fall victim to crime at some time. As Gil Scott-Heron memorably said about injustice in his song Angola Louisiana: ‘It can walk into your living room as long as it surrounds your home’. They might equip themselves with state-of-the-art security but all this does is foster the feeling of being ‘under siege’ and further alienates the individual from the wider community.

In terms of the ‘place’ element of our subversion of any feelings of smug contentment and complacency we need only point to the ease with which such a person can get on a plane and within hours be in the company of parents who have to watch their children die for the want of clean water. This is not some unrelated and alien ‘third world’ but a world that our actions and/or inaction have created. The components of the electronics (for instance) that a ‘first world’ consumer enjoys may well depend on the low wages of a sweat shop on the other side of the world. Because capital always flows to the area of production with the highest rate of exploitation this quite often means, in the underdeveloped world, very low wages and so contributes greatly to maintaining regional poverty.

And you don’t have to travel far to be ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’ since the very act of travelling can kill or maim you. A staggering 1.3 million fatalities occur on the roads every year as part of the overall 50 million injuries per annum. In this country alone there is an average of 2,000 fatalities per year among the 200,000 injuries. Given the speed and power of contemporary vehicles together with the desperation to meet delivery deadlines combined with long and monotonous hours involved in commercial traffic, this is hardly surprising. Every time you start your car you take your life into your hands. 

There is an endless list of potential everyday hazards created by capitalism that can put you ‘in the eye of the perfect storm’ including: food adulteration, dangerous working conditions, tired doctors and nurses, faulty domestic appliances, etc., etc. I thought, at one time, that I had finally come across a purely ‘natural disaster’ when I heard about the terrible tsunami in Sri Lanka some years ago; only to discover that the local council had turned off the early warning system because of ‘financial considerations’! 

Life is fragile enough without the additional threats inherent within capitalism. We are so interdependent that we are all, by default, ‘our brother’s keeper’. The ultimate perspective was first provided by the Apollo 8 spacecraft back in 1968 when it emerged from behind the moon to see our planet some 240,000 miles distant. If life is fragile then just how much more is its host; a tiny blue jewel hanging in the midst of nothingness. It is the shared inheritance of us all and no parasitic minority should be allowed to destroy it. At the moment the majority of our species inhabit this world like ghosts haunting it instead of truly living as a part of it. We urgently need to realise this and resurrect ourselves as politically conscious and interactive members of the human family so that we may protect each other and our planet – that is our challenge to those who profess to be content with their lives.

Wez.

Political Notes: Splits (1982)

The Political Notes column from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Splits

Does the Tory government know its own mind? On the one hand we have Howe and Tebbitt, dredging among the official statistics, assuring us that there are unmistakable signs that the worst of the recession is over and that we can now look forward to better times ahead. On the other there is Francis Pym, who has the job of master-minding the government’s propaganda, warning us that things are going to get worse:

  In the short run, living standards generally can only fall . . . we have to find ways of coping with and living with much higher levels of unemployment

There is no evidence that Pym was thinking about his own living standards or his own unemployment, although he talked about what “we” have to cope with. In any case, those with memories extending beyond last week may well prefer this sort of gloomy prognostication, from their experience of what has too often followed a politician’s hearty assurance that better times are just around the corner.

Are speeches like Pym’s, then, completely irrelevant? In fact, some people might find consolation in them, for no politician can forecast what will happen to capitalism’s economy; they can no more foresee a slump than they can a boom. If they had this ability the present recession would not have happened. There would be no three million dole queue. There would be no public expenditure cuts. We would be spared the offensiveness of ministers like Norman Tebbitt, who pretends that poverty (ours, not his) is good for us. We would not have to endure Thatcher’s nervous defiance of the reality she sees all around her. And we would be freed of the drivel of people like Pym.

Whatever stress this government is under, they are not split on the fundamental principle that capitalism must be run in the interests of its owning minority of parasites.


Malignant

The death last month of Ritchie-Calder saw the end of an identikit lefty, who moved easily in the unreal world of soft headed, temporising liberals, ready to support any excess of capitalism provided it is the work of their favoured party.

A devoted member of the Labour Party and a journalist who wrote mainly about science—which he saw as a means of dealing with social problems—Ritchie-Calder must have been thrilled when, in 1963, Harold Wilson began to claim for Labour the role of the party of science. The red (or was it white?) hot technological revolution, promised Wilson, was going to abolish poverty and strife through a four per cent growth in productivity. It sounded simple and it deceived a lot of people, like Ritchie-Calder, who should have known better. And of course it didn’t happen as Wilson promised.

Typically, Ritchie-Calder was a professed pacifist who nevertheless supported war, ending up with an important job on the Political Warfare Executive during 1939/45. Plenty of other lefties went the same disreputable way, after a brief obligatory struggle with what they called their principles.

After the war, Ritchie-Calder's continuing quest for impotence led him into the United Nations; he toured the Congo on their behalf during the troubles in 1960. He probably felt more comfortable there; the history of that country’s blood soaked exploitation by the rubber-seeking imperialist powers can keep a left wing journalist’s typewriter rattling for months.

Inevitably, he joined CND. No Aldermaston march was complete without his personification of the delusion that capitalism can be a society where human knowledge and achievement are used for human benefit.

And inevitably again, the ruling class showed what they thought of him that he presented no threat to their interests—when in 1966 he became a life peer and. a few years later, chairman of the Metrication Board.

Ritchie-Calder was one of those eminent people who give respectability to the organisations of capitalist reform—and therefore to capitalism itself. They may or may not be sincere; what is undeniable is that they are dangerously misguided. We have had too much of them and of their works. Behind a benign exterior they are as devastating as a malignant disease.

 

Cuts

Margaret Thatcher was once dubbed by Labour MPs, taking advantage of the abolition of free milk for some school children, as Thatcher the Snatcher. (The Iron Lady later said that she had been so wounded by these slurs that she would creep home and weep privately to her husband Denis.)

Well now the Prime Minister has advanced up the scale of criminality and from a snatcher has become, according to one outraged Labour MP. the Westminster Ripper. This parliamentary language may be written into the Labour Party campaign to exploit the government’s discomfiture over the cuts in public expenditure, which are now being blamed for almost all our ills from suicidal unemployed to decaying hospitals.

From this there has emerged a handy, distorting equation: Tory equals cuts equals poverty; Labour equals no cuts equals prosperity. Like all such propaganda, this has no basis in truth.

The Labour government of 1929 was infamous for its attacks on the already precarious living standards of the workers. That this was no accident was proven by such Chancellors as “Austerity” Cripps and Roy Jenkins, with his lugubrious warnings about the disaster awaiting us if we continued to live it up in our palaces on caviar and champagne. As a result of watching Jenkins on TV, a number of slum dwellers are said to have guiltily reduced their consumption of fish fingers, hoping thereby to contribute to the national recovery.

The last in this line—Denis Healey—was known as the “first monetarist”, which did not mean that he was a “monetarist” but that he zealously pursued a policy of public expenditure cuts. The latest account of this is in the book Inside the Treasury by Joel Barnett, who was Healey’s Financial Secretary. Apart from admitting that, in contrast to their promises to be able to control capitalism, the Labour government of 1974 did not have the first idea of what to do about the economy, Barnett records how Healey’s proposed cuts were pushed through the Cabinet, against some typically inconsistent opposition: “There is no will in this Cabinet,” expostulated Peter Shore, “To tell the IMF to take a running jump, even if unemployment rose to 2 million”.

Both Labour and Conservative governments have imposed cuts, which is another way of saying that they have both tried to do what the capitalist system demands of a government. They are basically in complete agreement on that. And that is another way of saying that no member of the working class, with the power to transform society, should misuse that power by supporting them.