Enclosing the sea bed (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly all the land of the Earth has been claimed by one or other of the many States into which the world is divided. The one exception is Antartica which, like the Moon, is governed by an international treaty which bars States and individuals from exercising territorial or property rights over any part of it.

Much of the sea area of the world, however, including the sea bed is still unclaimed. This is now beginning to cause problems as the seabed, especially the various continental shelves, are potentially profitable sources of raw materials like oil, natural gas and minerals. The United Nations Seabed Committee has been meeting in Geneva since August to consider the problem. Various suggestions have been put forward as to who should own the rest of the seabed once the matter of just how far out the territorial waters of coastal States should go has been settled.

The British government has proposed that the seabed outside these limits should be divided amongst all the States of the world, including land-locked ones. The sea would thus, like the land, come to be divided up by frontiers.

Another proposal is that the seabed outside territorial waters should belong to an international agency which could grant licences to States and/or companies to exploit the mineral resources. Royalties might be used to help finance investment in the underdeveloped countries. This proposal is sometimes described, as it was by President Nixon in a message he sent to Congress on 9 July, as one to make the oceans and the seabed “the common heritage of mankind". This is not really accurate but at least this arrangement would avoid the absurdity of drawing frontiers all over the seabed and an international agency would be able to exercise better control over conservation and pollution.

If ownership of the seabed were vested in an international agency this would not make it the common property of mankind, for the agency would be an inter-governmental body responsible to the various capitalist States of the world (including state capitalist Russia) perhaps through the United Nations. It would be an example of common ownership. but by the capitalists of the world rather than by the people of the world.

Individual ownership of land is not essential to capitalism. Indeed landed property is a particularly parasitical form of ownership since the landowner is in a position to extract a tribute as ground rent and royalties from the rest of society, not only without having to work but also without even having to invest any capital. It was this that made landed property unpopular amongst some industrial capitalists in Britain in the last century; they resented the fact that landowners were able to share in the proceeds of their exploitation of the working class without contributing a penny towards it. Various proposals for ending this burden on profits were put forward: estate duty, Henry George's single tax on ground rent, and outright land nationalisation. This last proposal was of course often claimed as one to make the land “the common heritage of the people”. But there was nothing socialist about it as can be judged from the fact that when Labour nationalised the mines in 1948 the coal had already been nationalised previously by the Tories.

Nationalisation of land or of mineral resources is a measure that allows capitalist concerns access on equal terms to these essential materials. The proposal to have the seabed owned by an international agency has the same purpose: some States are afraid that others might deny them access to the resources of the seabed and want some international body set up to ensure that this does not happen.

Something quite different is required to really make these resources “the common heritage of mankind”. This is meaningless unless the land and the manmade instruments of production are also made part of this heritage in a world without frontiers on land as well as under the sea.

Adam Buick

To workers from Ireland (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of you will be concerned about what is happening in places like Belfast and Derry. You will probably support the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland,

We too are concerned about the conditions our fellow workers in other parts of the world have to live and work under. We know that the role of the police and army is everywhere to protect private property and the existing political set-up.

When Ireland got independence in 1921 the North East part for economic reasons, was kept under British rule though given a parliament and government of its own. The government there has since armed itself with various undemocratic powers to use against its opponents. It is against these powers, and against bad housing and unemployment, that the Civil Rights people are protesting.

Protest movements are nothing new and are not confined to Northern Ireland. They exist everywhere and show that everywhere workers are discontented with some aspect of their lot. It is by promising to do something about this that politicians obtain your votes — and it is their failures that lead people to protest on the streets.

The politicians fail not because they are dishonest or incompetent but because capitalism cannot be made to work for the good of all.

If you accept this, then you will see that direct action is in the end as futile as voting for parties that stand for capitalism. You will see too the uselessness of a United Ireland as a way of solving the problems of workers in the North. This would merely be a political re-shuffle — a change of masters, we would say — that would leave unchanged the class basis of society which is the real cause of these problems. As anyone who has lived in the Irish Republic can confirm, people there face the same problems of bad housing, unemployment and insecurity (indeed this may be why you are now living here in Britain).

The lasting solution to these problems in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, Britain and the rest of the world is Socialism.

Concern for causes (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the debate caused by the recent hijacking of a British airliner to a Middle East airstrip, the Daily Telegraph published a delightful letter. It was, like a lot of the Telegraph’s correspondence column, the work of a military man. Its main point was that the Arab guerillas were cowards — full of bounce when dealing with women and children but how would they fare against men!

This rather quaint argument is typical, in its way, of the idea we are fed with from an early age — the idea that there are absolute standards which can be identified as Right on the one hand and Wrong on the other and by which we can conduct our lives. It is ironical, but unexceptional, that the very people who promote this idea are themselves so ready to modify it when it suits them to.

One example of this is in the matter of international trading. The present, capitalist, social system is made up of a host of separate states which, as states, operate in the accepted and necessary way of capitalism. They try to sell the products of their industries to each other; they compete with each other. At times this competition is represented as healthy, productive, necessary.

In this country, as we have all seen so many times during recent times, it is considered a major triumph when British goods are sold successfully abroad; there is no hero like an export salesman who wins an order from a foreign buyer, especially if he is bidding against competition from traditional trading rivals like the Germans and the Japanese. But when this situation is reversed — when firms abroad succeed in capturing a market, or even a part of a market, in this country — it is a different matter.

The motor car industry, for one. is at the moment very anxious about the threat from foreign imports. As the Volkswagens. the Renaults and the Fiats come rolling ashore, the British car makers do not sing ecstatic praises to the purifying joys of competition. Instead, they assert bitterly that British cars are the best in the world and that anyone buying a car in this country should exercise patriotic discrimination in favour of the British-made product. They talk of threats from foreign imports, as if each imported car were some virulent microbe which may destroy us all. To the car firms, as to all exporters, exporting is fine, provided it is all in one direction.

This type of attitude is not confined to British firms. In recent years America has been one of the world's most aggressive and successful exporters. In one way or another American exports have dominated many important international markets — for example in long-range jet aircraft, where no other country gets a look-in. But when the flow seems likely to be reversed, when industries abroad seem to be a threat to American firms, how does Washington react? They do not welcome it. Here are two reports from The Guardian, which illustrate this; the first (5 November) is about an American protest at action aimed at hampering their exports:

   The Nixon Administration issued an unusually tough statement tonight expressing displeasure and concern that Britain's new agricultural levy system threatened to affect American grain exports worth £40 millions a year . . . This protest, hinting at the possibility of a trade war. was being interpreted here today as evidence of the Administration's growing suspicion of the Common Market's price support system towards which Britain has now taken an initial step.

The second, from an earlier (7 October) issue, gives details of a Bill going through Congress which seeks to protect American industry from foreign imports:

  The Bill proposes quotas on US imports of textiles and footwear, which in themselves account for only £5 millions of British exports. But there is also a “trigger" mechanism which could lead to anti-import action by the US on 120 items ranging from ceramic tiles to bicycles and cars in cases where imports have more than 15 per cent of the market.

The Americans, of course, have upset many people in Britain with some spectacular take-over operations. A large part of the car industry is American owned and this has been a source of anger to many a patriotic worker in Luton and Dagenham. But these same workers can have no objection in principle to one country investing in another, else why do they not grow angry about the British money which is sunk in production abroad and which British troops have so often been sent to defend? The argument which raged a few years ago over the presence of British forces in the Persian Gulf area was really about the stake which the capitalist class of Britain had there. They owned about one third of the oil production in the Gulf, with investments worth in 1967 about £900 millions.

Little wonder, that under capitalism war and oil are almost synonymous terms. And when a country goes to war we are confronted with yet another example of double-think, when its propaganda machine puts out the idea that whatever atrocities are committed (nobody seems to doubt that there will be some) will be the work of the other side. Because in war “our” side is made up of people like the boy next door, our own brothers and fathers, no one is too eager to believe that they could be involved in acts which are readily attributed to the other side. For a person to uncover and denounce any barbarous acts by his own side takes great courage and persistence and in any case has to meet a general assumption that the “enemy” is less than human and is, therefore, not too sensitive or needing consideration.

Such double standards have been freely used during the recent hijackings, which we have already mentioned, and when the FLQ in Canada carried out their kidnapping of Quebec Minister of Labour Laporte and the British diplomat Cross. In all these cases, people were held as hostages while their captors demanded some political concessions. This loosed off torrents of advice to the governments concerned, usually from those whose lives were not in any danger, not to give way to the threats (the hostages probably thought differently about the morals and the tactics of the affair.)

At the same time the captors were described as cowards, brutes, blackmailers and worse. It is true that there were the customary elements of ruthlessness in these events. In particular the killing of Laporte was a chilling business. In the same way, if the guerillas had blown up the aircraft with all its passengers, as seemed possible at one time, that would have been a horrifying act.

But none of this should obscure certain facts. The men who carried out these escapades displayed characteristics which, in different circumstances, are glorified. All of them are devoted patriots ; they are determined, even ruthless ; they arc brave enough to pull off a daring exploit and to take the consequences. Anyone who committed similar atrocities in the name of British capitalism would be hailed over here as a hero, decorated, almost canonised.

In the last war there was an extensive guerilla system on the Continent, working against the German occupation. The underground fighters were responsible for all manner of sabotage, murder, disruption. Sometimes they did something knowing that it would call down a reprisal in which their own side would suffer out of all proportion to the damage they did to the Germans. In all this they were supported by the Allies, whose official propaganda emphasised only their courage and the savagery of the reprisals.

The Allied policy of support for the guerillas did not always pay off. In Yugoslavia they backed Tito's men only to find after the war that they had done much to set up a hostile regime. Since then, of course, the alignments of world capitalism have changed somewhat. This has not happened in other cases; for example in Indo-China. where the Ho Chi Minh guerillas were supported during the war and then, soon after the cease fire, were double-crossed with the help of Japanese troops. That was a long time before the name of Vietnam came to mean a bloodshed obviously useless, apparently endless.

Ho Chi Minh never came to be accepted by the rulers of the Western capitalist powers although there is reason to think that in time he would have been. It is a common experience, for yesterday's hated bogeymen to change into today’s honourable leaders and fellow bargainers. They have only to go over, from one side of thieves to the other. We saw this happen to De Valera, who was once under sentence of death for his anti-British activities. More recently there have been Nkrumah, Makarios, Kenyatta.

Perhaps it is more accurate to describe these examples not as double dealing but as treble, quadruple, inexhaustible . . . The guerillas of the Middle East and the kidnappers of the FLQ are wildly, tragically misled, as were the lrgun Zwei Leumi in post-war Palestine. as were the EOKA in Cyprus in the Fifties. All such movements are devoted to the idea that they are struggling for humane, useful ends; in truth they are seeking to replace a ruling class of one nationality by one of another nationality. And as we have seen in Ghana. Israel, Cyprus, Kenya, that is not something worth struggling for, certainly not worth killing for.

What it comes down to is the guerillas and the FLQ differ only slightly, if at all, from those who denounce them from the other side. Capitalism misuses and perverts human qualities like courage and loyalty. By consistent standards these should be recognised for what they are but here again capitalism distorts and denies. The social system which prates about bravery makes cowards of us all.

Ivan

The Mask of Opportunity (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In society today: split as it is into two opposing social classes of buyers and sellers of labour-power the word “opportunity” looms large in the everyday vocabulary; implying an advantage over one’s fellows.

The national and provincial press display an endless array of advertisements hammering home the opportunity theme to a labour force who have so far, failed to see the surplus-value con trick hidden behind this mask of opportunism. Here the Armed Forces, large company or international concern encircling the globe: all compete as they fish in the vacancies columns for the human labour-power from which alone flows the coveted profit margins that make capitalism tick.

Tory, Labour and Trade Union leaders all join in a chant of “equal opportunities”, to get to the top of a pile of white- or blue-collared wage stiffs! completely ignoring the Marxian fact that all labour power is homogeneous!

But behind these alluring adverts are some “opportunities” discreetly UN-mentioned; including having one’s legs blown off in the army, being shot down in the air force or torpedoed in the navy. All in the day’s work maybe, according to the ethics of a sick society. A society which has nothing better to offer large numbers of the flower of youth than to dress them up in “smart” uniforms to bolster their morale as they are sent about their murderous tasks by a ruling class bereft of any social conscience.

A recent advertisement in The Guardian of 16th September 1974, seeks suitable sellers of labour-power to participate in the production, maintenance and flight of an Anglo-French fighter plane which boasts, in their terminology of death and destruction, that it can “Deliver 4,000Kg. of free fall, retarded or cluster bombs”: which leaves old-time merchants of death like Basil Zarahoff among the also-rans. But has the Guardian any scruples about accepting such deadly adverts? Apparently not. After all they are staunch supporters of capitalism with its wars, slums and “equal opportunities”.

Now the Socialist Party of Great Britain contends that the working class is certainly capable of a more dignified destiny than that of a hired assassin or mere commodity with a price tag on his carcase denoting the ingredient labour-power in the exploiting process of capitalist society. And although at the moment, the key note of opportunism is the ruling ethic of “every man for himself”: this alien philosophy is being slowly unmasked by Socialists the world over and all men and women who put their shoulders to the wheel of the Socialist Revolution have risen above the otherwise empty, frustrating, money-grubbing existence of mediocrity, matching in inanity that of the capitalist as a machine for accumulation!

Finally, Socialism offers no advantage, no promotion. No stripes, no medals, no gory glory, no guns, and no enemies, no pensions and no governments: but plain social ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the genus homo. Then only will the world be our country and mankind our brethren and the cacophony of “opportunism” will be but a faint echo in the corridors of time.

G. R. Russell

Cooking the Books: Labour’s Share Goes Down (2012)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July, the OECD, an organisation grouping the developed capitalist countries of Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia, published its Employment Outlook 2012. Chapter 3 noted that ‘during the past three decades, the share of national income represented by wages, salaries and benefits – the labour share – has declined in nearly all OECD countries’. The Times (11 July) summarised the report:

  "Automation and computerisation are responsible for as much as 80 per cent of the decline in so-called “labour share”, which measures wages as a proportion of total income generated by the economy … The research … shows that the average labour share dropped from 66.1 per cent in the early 1990s to less than 62 per cent in the late 2000s. In all but four of the 26 OECD nations analysed, workers’ slice of their country’s income declined between 1990 and 2009.”

What the OECD was trying to measure, at national level, is what Marx would have called ‘relative wages’, i.e., the workers’ share in what they produce. This does not necessarily mean a decline too in ‘real wages’ (what wages can buy). In fact, according to the OECD, ‘in essentially all OECD countries, while the fraction of national income accruing to labour decreased, economic growth was still sufficiently rapid so that real labour compensation increased and workers were on average better off.

Since the income of the self-employed was divided between labour and capital, a decline in labour’s share meant a rise in capital’s, with the result, as the Times pointed out, that:

  ‘Corporate investors have been the big winners, as businesses save on salaries and their profits increase.’

Further, as workers became on average better off, the shift meant that ‘corporate investors’ had to have become even more better off.

The OECD’s figures have some bearing on the arguments amongst students of Marxian economics about what has caused the present economic downturn. Some say that is due to a fall in the average rate of profit; others, that it is due to the decline in labour’s share of national income. One passage in the OECD report seems to give some credence to the latter view:

  ‘… the shift of income away from labour (and, in particular, from low-wage workers) towards capital (and top earners) may have a negative impact on aggregate demand to the extent that workers with below average pay tend to have a higher consumption propensity than do top earners and capitalists.’

On the other hand, it may not, as long as the capitalists use their increased profits to increase their luxury spending and, more importantly, to re-invest in production; which in fact they did until 2008.

The OECD figures say nothing about the rate of profit since they concerned only the division of new income corresponding to new wealth and value produced in a year. The rate of profit measures total profits in relation to the total amount of capital invested. No doubt, due to ‘automation and computerisation’ that went on during the period in question, the stock of capital would also have increased. Whether it would have increased more than the increase in the amount of profits – which it would have to have done for the rate of profit to fall – is not something the OECD went into.

While capitalist firms do calculate an expected rate of return to decide when, where and whether to invest, and check whether or not this is being achieved, they will not take into account the rate of profit of the whole economy, if only because this is something they have no means of knowing.

Cooking the Books: The Bank Charter Act (2012)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bank Charter Act of 1844 is back in the news. An article in the Guardian (13 July) by Deborah Orr discussed its terms and stated that it “removed from banks their licence to print money.” It did remove the right of banks other than the Bank of England to issue their own bank notes, but gradually rather than immediately. Banks which had been issuing notes until 1844 were allowed to continue until they merged or were taken over, but not to increase the amount they had been issuing. Some banks continued to issue notes for the rest of the 19th century, the last continuing till 1921.

According to the wikipedia entry, “The Act exempted demand deposits from the legal requirement of a 100-percent reserve which it did demand with respect to the issuance of paper money.” The source for this claim is given as the Ludwig von Mises Institute, as if this could be regarded as a source of reliable information.

This claim is wrong on two counts. The Act does not mention “demand deposits” at all, let alone exempt them from anything. Nor did it require banks to hold an amount of cash (gold or Bank of England notes) in their vaults equal to the face-value of the notes they were allowed to continue to issue.

The basic aim of the Act was to regulate the issue of paper currency which its promoters thought would lead to inflation if too much were issued. This was based on the theories of the Currency School, but was challenged by the Banking School who argued that, as long as bank notes were convertible on demand into a fixed amount of gold, this would not happen. Marx agreed and a whole chapter of Volume 3 of Capital is devoted, with contributions from Engels, to “The Currency Principle and the English Bank Legislation of 1844.”

The Act was not concerned whether or not banks backed up their notes with an equivalent amount of cash in their vaults. How much cash to hold was left to banks’ judgement. Knowing that only a small percentage of the notes were likely to be presented at any one time for payment in cash, the banks would normally only keep that amount in their vaults.

Giving someone a wad of notes was just one way in which banks could then make a loan. Another was to grant the borrower an overdraft, which is presumably what the Mises Institute mean by “demand deposits”. But these did not need to be backed by “a 100-percent reserve” either. The amount of deposits that a bank would need to retain as cash would depend, once again, on the bank’s experience of how much their clients were likely to withdraw in this form. That you don’t have to retain as cash all the money deposited is the basic principle of banking. To have required all loans to be covered by an equivalent amount of cash in the banks’ vaults would have turned banks into safety deposits and rendered all lending by them impossible. The promoters of the 1844 Act did base it on a fallacy but they weren’t that stupid.

The Act didn’t even require the Bank of England to cover all the notes it issued by an equivalent amount of gold in its vaults. It was authorised to issue £14 million, known as the “fiduciary issue”, without this. This proved not enough during financial panics and the Act had to be suspended in those of 1847, 1857 and 1866, as Marx chronicled in detail in Volume 3 of Capital. His conclusion is as valid today as it was then: “Ignorant and confused bank laws, such as those of 1844-5, may intensify the monetary crisis. But no bank legislation can abolish crises themselves” (chapter 30).

Socialists and the Crown (1936)

From the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

An anonymous correspondent refers us to an article in The Daily Telegraph (October 19th), supporting the view that a “snatched victory at the polls’' would be utterly useless for the purpose of achieving Socialism, because the whole of the forces of capitalism, including the Crown, would successfully repel any such bluff. The S.P.G.B. has of course always held that view as against Labourites and Communists. We are obliged to our correspondent.

Editorial Committee

The S.P.G.B. and Trotsky (1936)

Answer to correspondent from the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

E. P. (Bradford).—The articles on the Russian trial do not indicate that the S.P.G.B. supports Trotsky or shares his point of view. We thought this was made clear in the articles. On many occasions during the past 18 years we have indicated our disagreement with the Russian Communists, including the Trotsky faction. Trotsky is as much at fault as Lenin and Stalin in believing that violence and dictatorship are justified or can make up for backward industrial development in Russia or the smallness of the Socialist movements everywhere.

The existence of discontent in Russia is not due to agitation by Trotskyites or anyone else, but to disappointment with conditions (the low standard of living, inequality of wages, etc.) and with Government policy at home and abroad. Although the active discontent may be relatively small, and not united, the Stalin Government evidently fears lest the various discontented groups come together, especially in the elections due shortly under the new constitution.

Editorial Committee

"A World to Win" (1936)

From the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ye Lords of Wealth, who hold in thrall
    The workers of all lands,
Shall with your ruthless system fall
     When Power lies in our hands!
For paltry wage your wealth we pile,
     Your useless class we keep:—
We’ll raze your robber-system vile,
     And we who’ve sown shall reap! 

Lords of the wealth that we have made—
     Lords o’er our very life—
Think you our purpose shall be stayed ?
    Ye germs of bloody strife!
Tho’ race slay race at your vile call
    When lust of gold and power
And “Profit” is your all-in-all . . .
   . . . . Yet will we make you cower! 

The day will dawn when we, who make
    The wealth of every land,
Combined in all our power, will take
    Control from out your hand:
Wage-slaves not then in time of “peace,”
    Nor pawns to win your wars!
Your tyrant’s might for e’er shall cease:
    We’ll triumph in Our Cause! 

Fulness of life (not slavery !)
     With joy and peace for aye,
Shall bloom for us, as liberty
     Turns man’s long night to day! !

J. G. M.

What to Do About Fascism (1936)

From the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fascist Pot and the Communist Kettle

In the sacred name of liberty Sir Oswald Mosley – who proposes, like his heroes, Mussolini and Hitler, to destroy all opposition parties if he gets power – demands the right to lead his blackshirt troops into the East End. In the sacred name of liberty the Communists – who propose here, as in Russia, to crush all opposition parties if they get power – call upon us all to rally against Sir Oswald Mosley. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, which does not propose to prevent anyone, anywhere, from voicing his opinions and organising peacefully to propagate them, is completely and permanently opposed to both of these suppressive movements. We are opposed to their objects, their methods and their secret finances, but principally to their objects because they neither of them have the solution for the problem of our age. The underlying discontent with things as they are in State-capitalist Russia is so widespread that the dictator and his yes-men are thoroughly scared lest one exile in Norway should prove a rallying point and endanger their positions. In the Fascist lands poverty and promises are as much the order of the day as in the capitalist democracies. Italy and Germany are as much the paradise of the moneyed men, the exploiters of human labour, as England and America. Nothing is changed except the patriotic trimmings and the colour of the shirt.

The Right to Wear what Clothes We Wish

When Sir Oswald Mosley, fresh from his visits of adoration to Mussolini and Hitler, asks if in this country “a man might not wear the clothes he wished to wear?” as he did in an address to Manchester business men on October 9th (Manchester Guardian, October 10th), he at once betrays the limitations of the Fascist movement, and of his own understanding. Nowhere in the capitalist world, whether under Baldwin, Sir Oswald’s former political associate, or under the foreign Fascist dictators, at whose feet he now sits, can a man wear what clothes he wishes to wear. All he can wear is what his class-position enables him to afford. If he is a typical worker, a wealth-producer, he will wear clothes that are cheap and nasty, tasteless and inadequate. If he is a member of the propertied class, whether Liberal or Nazi, Conservative or Fascist, then, and only then, can he exercise his choice about the way he lives, including the clothes he wears. This is the crucial test of all the reformist movements from Mosley to Morrison. None of them dare face up to the question why it is that they propose to use power to preserve the class ownership of the means of production and distribution.

The Fascists Can’t Cure Capitalism

True, the Fascists can point to the manifold reformist activities of the Fascist Governments – and to the decline of unemployment. But this is now the favourite theme of all the apologists for capitalism, everywhere. Capitalism, after its latest crisis, is going through an expanding phase. So unemployment declines because of the expansion of trade and also because of the expansion of capitalism’s most thriving industries: armies and armaments. The Berlin correspondent of the Economist (September 19th, 1936) reports that the official number of unemployed is down to 1,098,000, and adds:

  "The Reich Unemployment Board considers that the shortage of skilled labour in certain industries is the result of compulsory military service.”

And what does it mean, anyway, when we admit that all the capitalist Governments are busy with schemes for patching up this, that and the other evil of capitalism? It means that capitalism is always producing more evils, and that the Fascists are as incapable as any other capitalist Government of solving them. Catholic Dictator Schuschnigg, in Austria, plays the age-old game of bread and circuses because the “Corporative State” is as mangy as all the other variations of capitalist rule. Read what the Vienna correspondent of the Daily Telegraph writes:

  “The Government is presenting 50,000 tickets of admission to football matches, 50,000 cinema, and 10,000 theatre tickets to the members of the (Fatherland) Front. About 400,000 free breakfasts and free railway transport for all will be provided.” (Daily Telegraph, October 15th, 1936.)

This was Schuschnigg’s great victory parade at which the population were to give a spontaneous demonstration of loyalty and enthusiasm. The attendance was splendid – it was compulsory for large numbers of workers: “attend or lose your job” was the threat. Still the dictator failed. His “promises of improved conditions for the masses were received without enthusiasm. When he denounced Socialism and democracy the great crowd remained silent.” (Daily Telegraph, October 19th, 1936). It appears that the workers opened their mouths for the free meal and then kept them obstinately shut.

In Italy, a land of semi-paupers and millionaires, like the rest of the big powers, Mussolini blethers about Empire and prosperity like any Conservative but he cannot cure unemployment, he does not find a remedy for desperate poverty, and he never fails to look after capitalist interests. What else can he do, having no choice but to carry on capitalism? On Tuesday, October 13th, his Government instructed stockbrokers to submit the names and addresses of all clients who buy industrial shares. This was at 9.30 a.m. The Fascist syndicate of brokers promptly held a meeting and passed a resolution that “it would be advisable to close all the bourses rather than have to obey the latest order.” The Government instantly climbed down and agreed by 9.45 a.m. to waive the order. (Daily Telegraph, October 14th, 1936.) This is Mosley’s paradise for the workers in which he affects to believe that money no longer rules.

Then in Germany, where the Nazis claim to have got rid of talking-shops, and introduced Socialist deeds instead of capitalist and Labour Party promises, Hitler stages his own brand of circuses for keeping the workers’ attention off their own slave-like conditions. The Nuremberg rally of the Nazi Party in September, at which Hitler begged the German workers to keep their eyes fixed on poverty in Russia (lest they should look nearer home), was a splendiferous jamboree costing £2,000,000 (Daily Telegraph, September 8th, 1936). It contained all the fun of the political fair, every species of mental dope calculated to stop a worker from thinking.

Then, at home, what has Mosley to offer except a mixed bag of reforms of capitalism picked up on his passage from the Conservative Party, via the Labour Party, I.L.P., and New Party to the British Union of Fascists. I.L.P. reforms – 40 years old – plus Communist violence, plus the current exaggerated economic nationalism and patriotism, plus half-baked Stafford Cripps doctrines of rule by Order in Council. That is the sum total of Mosley’s programme: it is as rotten as the rubbish heaps from which it has been gathered.

The Fascists and Disorder

The Fascist technique of propaganda and gaining power is simple, but its effectiveness depends entirely on the level of political knowledge and experience of the workers and on the behaviour of the opponents of Fascism. Fascism (copying most of the traditional methods of the Labour Parties) exploits every phase of working-class and small-capitalist discontent. It denounces Jews, Freemasons, Catholics, Trade Union officials, bankers, all big corporations, bureaucracy, Parliament, financial scandals, unemployment, etc., etc. Where it scores over the older methods is in provoking disorder with the assistance of those who believe they are hindering it. Given an increasing number of marches and the appearance if not even the reality of disorder the Fascist leaders know that they can count, with certainty, on growing support from numerous quarters. They get the support of all who have grievances against Jews, Freemasons, and so on, but, above all, they get the support of large numbers of people who, knowing little of politics, are simply scared by disorder. Such people, if they believe they have to choose between the Communist Party and the Fascists, choose the latter. Every riot brings Mosley support from them.

How, it may be asked, do the Fascists manage to win over workers who formerly supported the Labour Parties; as they succeeded in doing in Italy and Germany, and are doing here? Why is the Labour Party reformist demagogy less successful than it used to be? The answer is simple.       

Labour Parties and Fascism           

Before the War the world was obviously governed by and for the propertied class, landed and plutocratic, on a more or less restricted Parliamentary franchise. The inevitable discontent with capitalism naturally drove workers to support democratic parties claiming to be particularly concerned with political and social reforms.

After the War the franchise was made more or less universal in nearly all countries, and Labour or Liberal-Labour Governments became common. With what result? Capitalism continued, therefore discontent continued. But now the discontent had to find a new outlet. Having tried capitalism under democracy, the workers were ripe for a new kind of demagogue, one preaching dictatorship. Renegade Labour leaders hastened to adjust themselves to the change of fashion. They reaped the harvest, but who sowed the seed? None other than the Labour Parties. It is they who poisoned politics with their doctrines of reforming capitalism without abolishing it.

The Key to Modern Politics

The idea still survives that politics is concerned with a struggle of ideas about Government, trade, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. Politics is concerned with the ownership of the land, factories, railways and all the accumulated property of the country. The small minority who own and control all that matters, the late Sir J. Ellerman with his £50 million, Joseph Rank and Lord Nuffield, reputed to be worth upwards of £20 million each, the Lady Houstons and the Wills and Coats families, and all the rest of the owning class, have one overriding interest, one motive, one determination. They may tell simple-minded newspaper readers that “Money means nothing to me. I could just as easily go back to where I started – in fact, I might be happier if I did” (Lord Nuffield, News Chronicle, October 17th, 1936), but their actions, individual and combined, belie their words. No exploiting class ever gives up its privileged position until it has tried every conceivable device to retain what it has.

Broadly speaking, in the 20th century the capitalist class are on the defensive. Ideas are on the march. Workers are beginning to think. From the capitalist standpoint that movement must be stopped, destroyed, divided, or turned into blind alleys – anything to preserve capitalism. If the discontented organise to secure reforms the capitalists can try buying off the leaders, offering small concessions to the rank and file, playing off one section against another, Catholic against Protestant, Jew against Arab, German against English, Blackshirt against Greenshirt and Redshirt. And if one group forges ahead and becomes influential, then the capitalists must come to terms with it – hence Labour Governments, and if, in due course, the popularity of Labour Governments wanes then the new rounders-up of working-class votes, the Fascists, must be given their turn. So capitalism goes on.

In Italy and Germany Mussolini and Hitler trod on the heels of discredited Syndicalism and Labourism, backed by capitalist money and under the protecting arm of the State.

Now Mosley says that he is receiving support from English industrial capitalists (see Rome Giornale d’Italia, quoted in News Chronicle, October 19th, 1936). They hope that he will be able to give capitalism – meaning themselves – a further lease of life.

If the Workers Go Fascist

Many who are alarmed at the growth of Fascism in England talk in a panicky way of fighting or crushing the movement, and appeal to the Government to ban uniforms. This is all so much waste of words. The issue rests with the workers in the main. If the workers understood capitalism and Socialism they would not fall for the Fascist claptrap – but neither would they fall for Liberal. Labour or Conservative claptrap. If, on the other hand, the workers here can, as in Italy and Germany, be won over in their hundreds of thousands to the Fascist programme then all talk of suppression is idle. If the workers want Fascist Government they will get it, as they got Labour Government. At certain stages of the Hitler movement the Prussian and German Governments did try to ban his movement, forbid uniforms and demonstrations, etc., but they failed to stem the drift towards him.

The only answer to Fascism, as to other capitalist-reformist movements, is knowledge and understanding. Their economic programme would deceive no worker who gave serious thought to it –which is, doubtless, one reason why the Mosleyites prefer riotous demonstrations to quiet meetings at which their programme has to be stated in all its poverty.

The most seductive claim of the Fascists is that they are Socialists. Hitler repeated this again in Berlin on October 6th (News Chronicle, October 7th, 1936), and it is the common argument of the Mosley movement nowadays. Every Labourite will laugh at the notion that the Mosleyite programme of reforms is Socialist; but they have little enough reason to laugh. Who, if not the Labour Party and I.L.P., started this dishonest practice? Who made it possible for Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express to say (October 1st) that it opposes Socialism but not the Labour Party – “that is a very different thing.”

If the Fascists can get support by misrepresenting Socialism, that is largely due to all the Labour speakers who have done the same in the past.

The Struggle Will Go On

The rise of Fascism to power in this country is, to say the least, improbable. The problems facing the British capitalists, in particular the international situation, are not of a kind to make them give up flattering the Labour and Trade Union leaders in order to encourage Mosley. At a pinch a more likely development, if the situation threatens war, is an enlarged “National Government” in which Trade Union leaders and Mosley work happily together defending British capitalism. 

What is more important to remember about Fascism here and abroad is that the eventual failure of the Fascist movements is as certain as the failure of Labour Governments which helped them to rise. Fascism is incapable of making capitalism work satisfactorily. It is an impossible task. Capitalism goes on producing discontent under the surface. The future of Fascism is forecast in the growing activity of anti-Fascists in Italy and Austria. Sooner or later all the Fascist facades of capitalism will fall away, leaving the main problem still to be tackled. The workers will still have to be won over to Socialism. That is the task for Socialists, whether under Dictatorship or Democracy.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Bitter Fruits of Nationalisation (1948)

Editorial from the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over 40 years ago when the S.P.G.B. was formed nationalisation was being preached by the I.L.P. and other organisations and was being exposed by the S.P.G.B. Our case was, and still is, that capitalism is not ended by nationalisation but merely, undergoes a change of form; and to those who argued that even so it had certain small advantages the S.P.G.B. replied that there is one respect in which the worker under a State-owned concern is worse off than before: he can no longer hope to get a job elsewhere in the industry if he gets the sack and is blacklisted. The workers who delightedly celebrated the nationalisation of the mines are just discovering how right we were as will be seen from the News Chronicle's account of events at mines in the East Midlands. It is reported that "miners guilty of habitual absenteeism in the E. Midlands division are being sacked and barred completely from the coal mining industry” (News Chronicle, 2/10/48).

It is stated by a News Chronicle reporter that nearly all Derbyshire, Nottingham and Leicestershire pits are “carrying out 'purges’ of miners who stay away from work without excuse.”

  "At Creswell colliery, near Mansfield, the names of eight men sacked from the pit are being publicly displayed on the notice board outside the colliery baths. The notice declares that these men are not eligible for employment at other collieries.” 

An official of the E. Midlands Goal Board stated that the posting of names was done on the proposal of the men's representatives themselves, but it did not receive universal approval, for one miner (not himself affected) who had been employed at the colliery for 42 years, told the reporter that it was "the wickedest thing I have ever seen posted up at any pit since I started work at the age of 13.” He added

  "I see nothing wrong in dismissing a man for not following his employment, but this does not stop at dismissal. It brands him before the public and makes it impossible for him to find employment elsewhere. I feel that nothing worse has been practised in Germany or Russia.”

Doubtless those who in their muddled way supported nationalisation did not foresee this consequence, but what have they to say about it now? And particularly Mr. Ernest Bevin who, when he was Minister of Labour in 1941, spoke against such methods of industrial discipline. In a debate in Parliament on April 2nd, 1941, Mr. Bevin made the following remarks:— 

  "Some hon. Member, I do not remember who it was, said that industry relies upon the power of dismissal to maintain discipline. What does that mean? It means that there is an economic drive on the workman to work, the ability to force your will on another by the imposition of starvation, which inculcates fear and resentment in the other man’s mind. By relying on that you do not get the right kind of discipline. . . . That means that the basic condition upon which your system is run has been starvation or the ability to make another citizen unemployed. Well, that has meant war.” (Parliamentary Report, 2/4/1941. Column 1076.)

We can imagine Mr. Bevin’s answer if the question were now put to him whether he still holds those views. He would probably say, “I thought so then and I think so now, but what are we to do if men still won’t work in spite of the fact that the mines are no longer run on capitalist lines.”

And this brings us back to the point from which we started. Nationalisation is not Socialism, but State Capitalism. The mines are run on capitalist lines and with a capitalist purpose, that of making a profit in order to continue the payment year by year of millions of pounds of interest to capitalist investors, both the former owners and those who invest new money through the Coal Board. It may be an amiable delusion on Mr. Bevin’s part to hope to have socialist incentives operating under capialism, but it is a delusion just the same.

How Not To Save Democracy (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Candidus,” who writes for the Daily Graphic, had an article on October 6th on the need for all the friends of democracy to unite and save the world from Communism. His theme is that the Communists are and always have been against democracy and free speech; whereas “Tories believe in liberty. So do capitalists," and so do "bogus socialists" (meaning the Labour Party) and "genuine socialists" (meaning the S.P.G.B.). After some flattering remarks about our pamphlet, ‘‘Russia Since 1917" (referred to elsewhere in this issue), he summed up thus:—

   “A fact which the democracies have got to face is that the world is now divided into two camps—the Communist and the anti-Communist. All true Socialists should range themselves with the anti-Communists, for if Communism should ultimately prevail, Socialism (genuine or bogus) would be among the first casualties."

In these troubled times we shall be hearing a lot of propaganda on these lines, so it is worth while to examine it.

"Candidus" chides his readers with having short memories or else they would, he says, remember “that in the elections of 1929, 1931 and 1945 the Bolsheviks made a point of breaking up Tory meetings if they could. The Socialists looked on benevolently."

The reference here to "Socialists" is meant to refer to the "bogus" ones, not to the S.P.G.B., as we think “Candidus" knows that we do not break up any meetings. It is also worth mentioning that it is very rare for any of our opponents (including Communists) to interfere with our meetings, and for a reason worth noticing. Because we are not in favour of suppressing any point of view in any circumstances, and because we act up to it by inviting questions at our meetings and allowing our opponents to state their case on our platform, the good sense of the audience is usually sufficient to discourage any who may intend to interfere with the meeting.

On this question of good memories, may we remind "Candidus" not of 1929 and 1931, but of 1933 to 1939 and of 1941 to 1945. In the first period, though all moderately well-informed people knew that the Fascists and Nazis stood for a brutal totalitarianism, there was quite a widespread conspiracy by public men and the Press to whitewash those enemies of democracy, and they used as one of their excuses the need to save the world from the Communists. In the second period a slight change had taken place, and there was an almost universal conspiracy of public men and newspapers to hail Russia and the Communists as men and brothers, and as good democrats standing side by side with Britain and America in the struggle to save democracy from the Fascists and Nazis. Now we are being asked to return again to the earlier phase. We do not charge "Candidus" personally with having shared in these somersaults, as we do not know, but we can confidently predict that if the anti-Communist crusade progresses it is not unlikely that white-sheeted ex-Fascists may be found sharing in the honour of saving democracy once more.

There are two things wrong with "Candidus" and those who think like him. One is that they believe that class conflicts and wars between the nations are caused by "ideologies." The second is that they do not see where the real danger to democracy lies.

Wars occur because trade rivalries, inescapable from Capitalism, give the ruling class groups something real and important to fight about, important to them, that is. They do not fight about ideas though they find them useful to stir up enthusiasm. As soon as one enemy is defeated the Powers immediately start regrouping to fight the never-ending conflicts all over again, and if that involves appealing to some different set of slogans and lining up with former detested enemies, well, so be it And if some thick coats of whitewash are required the politicians and the Press are always there to lay it on.

And here we may emphasise the point by referring to something published in the Socialist Standard in November, 1914. ("Candidus" will appreciate this because he compliments the S.P.G.B. on its longsightedness about ’Russia). At that time, before Germany was defeated, before the Czar was overthrown (his autocracy, by the way, was then the good ally in the fight for democracy), before the man in the street had heard of the Communists and several years before the British Communist Party was formed, the Socialist Standard prophesied that when Germany was defeated we might expect to see Russia elevated to the position of principal commercial and territorial menace to British capitalism. The S.P.G.B. did not foresee the rise to power of the Bolsheviks, but it did, that early, recognise that Russia was on the way to becoming a powerful rival to British capitalism, and it is out of that development that the war threat arises, not out of the political philosophy of the Communists.

The second error touches all those who think that democracy is something that can be saved if its self-proclaimed friends all get together. Democracy is not in danger from the numbers of convinced Communists or Fascists in this country, or from their theoretical case for dictatorship. What puts democracy in peril is the discontent of the mass of the workers with the kind of existence to which they are condemned. The evils that create their discontent are the unescapable outcome of the capitalist system, and because the workers do not clearly comprehend this they might, as in Russia. Germany and Italy, express their discontent by giving their support to some group or other that promised a seemingly different programme. For the friends of democracy to unite with each other to run capitalism —that is the only basis on which they could unite— is just the way to drive the despairing workers into the hands of the avowed enemies of democracy. The S.P.G.B., by continuing its independent work for the achievement of Socialism, really does help democracy, in a way no other party can.

Workers who doubt the value of democracy when it appears to them merely as a cloak for Capitalism do not doubt its value when they come to understand the need for Socialism and perceive that democracy is necessary as a means to Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Accumulation of Capital (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is a system of production in which commodities are produced. Commodities are articles that are produced for the purpose of being sold at a profit – in other words goods that are sold on the market. When goods are sold they have realised their values represented by certain quantities of money.

All productive concerns commence with the investment of money in certain ways. The conversion of a sum of money into means of production and labour power is the first step taken by the quantity of value that is going to act as capital. This conversion takes place on the market, within the sphere of the circulation of commodities, that is within the sphere of buying and selling. The second step, the process of production, is complete when means of production have been converted into commodities whose value exceeds the value of all items used up in the productive process, and thus contains the original value (or capital) advanced plus a surplus value. This whole process is constantly repeated and forms what is called the circulation of capital. Money into commodity into money, the latter being greater in quantity than what was originally invested.

Capital invested in production takes two forms – Constant capital and Variable capital. Constant capital comprises all those things whose value reappears without change in the new article; such as raw material, machinery, buildings, etc. Variable capital consists solely of the physical and mental energies of the labourers; it is labour power whose value plus a surplus appears in the new article-because the consumption of labour power, the activity of the labourer, adds more value than is incorporated in its cost of production. Means of production can never add more value to a product than they originally possessed. Further, means of production only become capital under certain conditions. A machine is not capital because it is a machine. It only becomes capital when it is used to extract surplus value, unpaid labour, from the workers.

The rate of profit given in the returns of commercial companies does not by any means give the real picture of the amount of unpaid labour wrung from the workers employed by those companies; the rate of exploitation is far higher. The rate of profit is the relation between the surplus value and the total capital, but the rate of exploitation is the relation of the surplus value to the amount of capital invested in labour-power, wages and salaries, because it is solely the labourers’ work that has produced the surplus value. Let us suppose that capital to the amount of £1,000 has been invested and that this investment has taken the form of £500 for machinery, etc., and £500 for wages and salaries. Let us further suppose that this investment has resulted in the production of goods to the value of £1,100. The rate of profit is the relation of the extra £100 to the £1,000 capital invested, that is 10 per cent.; but the rate of exploitation is the relation of the £100 to the £500 invested in wages and salaries, that is 20 per cent. Thus the rate of profit conceals a much higher rate of exploitation.

The capitalist concern engaged in the production of surplus value shares this surplus value with landowners, moneylenders, and others; for the purpose of this article, however, we assume that the original capitalist owns the entire surplus value. The way surplus value is split up into rent, interest, profit, etc., has no bearing on the particular matter we are discussing.

If the surplus value produced serves only as a fund to provide for the capitalists’ personal consumption then it is only simple reproduction, there is no industrial expansion. It would be just as if a farmer only sowed enough seeds each year to provide for the needs of himself and his family. This of course is not the way capitalist production works or the gigantic trusts of today would not have come into existence. It is the constant reconversion of surplus value into capital that is the basis of capitalist expansion. Accumulation of capital resolves itself into the reproduction of capital on a progressively increasing scale. Accumulation of capital is really accumulation of surplus value—unpaid labour.

In the productive process the worker is not paid until after he has produced; he produces his wages at the same time as he produces surplus value. Thus it is the labourer’s own labour, realised in a product, that is advanced to him by the capitalist in the form of a wages fund. Under Feudalism the peasant worked, say, three days on his own land and three days on his lord’s land. The first three days kept him and the second three days kept his lord. When the lord took away the peasant’s land, cattle, etc., the latter had to work as a wage labourer, but still three days covered his own keep and three days his lord’s. From the moment when forced, or customary, labour was changed into wage labour the labour fund took the form of capital advanced as wages by the employer.

The amount of capital originally invested by the capitalist disappears after a time and his declared capital only represents surplus value, accumulated unpaid labour. The surplus value has been capitalised and served to buy means of production and labour power to produce further commodities and at the same time surplus value. Thus the ownership of past unpaid labour has become the sole condition for the appropriation of living unpaid labour on a constantly increasing scale. The more unpaid labour the capitalist has accumulated the more he is able to accumulate. This entirely disposes of the claims made by capitalists that their wealth is the result of their own efforts.

One of the conditions of commodity production was the exchange of equivalents but it has become the very opposite because there was only an apparent exchange of equivalents. In appropriating the surplus value the capitalist is taking without equivalent a portion of the labour of the workers. The laws of property that are based on commodity production work out as the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of the workers and make it impossible for the latter to own their own products; these laws have converted the workers into a propertyless class.

Accumulation of capital is obtained by increasing the mass of surplus value produced by the worker and therefore that portion of it that is capitalised. To attain this end wages are forced down as much as possible; piece work is introduced with a progressive lowering of the price paid for work done; hours of factory operation are increased by shift work which lessens the proportion of constant capital needed to provide a given amount of surplus value; new machinery and methods are introduced which results in more production at the same cost. The greater productivity obtained means, however, a greater quantity of raw material worked up in the same time and hence more machinery, larger factories, improved means of transport, and so forth. This in turn means that a smaller quantity of labour is required in proportion to the means of production. As the capitalist is not concerned with the production of useful articles but only with the accumulation of surplus value he forces the productive powers to the limit and also builds up ever greater masses of constant capital to offset the shrinking number of labourers required to produce a given quantity of products.

The accumulation of capital, with the introduction of improved machinery and methods, involves the periodical growth of the unemployed army, at the same time this unemployed army is a necessity. In order to meet the needs of accumulation the capitalists must have at hand a reservoir of labour upon which they can call at any moment for the purposes of expansion and can discard when no longer required.

Accumulation of capital means growth in the wealth and comfort of the capitalists and growth in the misery and degradation of the workers. In the course of history it has developed the means of production to a point where the needs of all can be met without involving unhappy toil, insecurity, degradation and misery for the worker. It only remains for the workers to take possession of the means of production and use them to provide comfort for all instead of surplus value for an idle and useless class.

Gilmac

The Hard Left: A 21st Century Anachronism (2018)

From the September 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conservatism of the Hard Left

One of the things the Socialist Party is often accused of by what is loosely called the Hard Left is ‘utopianism’. We are ‘utopian’ for wanting to establish an alternative to capitalism where goods and services are no longer produced for sale but to directly satisfy human need, where the class division of society into employers and employees, along with the whole system of waged labour, has ceased to exist and where the productive resources of society are owned in common by everyone.

This is indeed a utopia in the strict sense of the term – meaning ‘nowhere’. A socialist society does not exist, and has not existed, anywhere. But that does not mean it cannot exist.

True, on the Richter scale of political insult being called a ‘utopian’ ranks fairly low down. One could be called a lot worse in the colourful lexicon of the Hard Left.  We could have been branded as ‘revisionist’ or an ‘imperialist stooge’.

All the same, there seems to be something a little odd about this charge of ‘utopianism’; it has the ring of cognitive dissonance about it. After all, aren’t these assorted grouplets of Trotskyists, Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, Hoxhaists, Castroists and the like, supposed to have as their ‘ultimate objective’ precisely what the Socialist Party stands for? Are not the ‘iron laws’ of history, in their view, relentlessly pushing us in that direction, anyway?

Well, it seems not. It seems that the Hard Left – we can forget about the Soft Left who don’t even pretend to have socialism as a long term goal – have hit the pause button on history and that is where they intend to indefinitely remain. It seems that the pragmatic necessity of campaigning for reforms is always going to take precedence over the need for social revolution. Their reasons for thinking this will be examined later

Preconditions of Socialism

It should be obvious that to bring about a socialist society you have to have a significant majority who want it and broadly understanding what it entails. That is because socialism constitutes a radical change in the ‘rules of the game’, so to speak – meaning the norms and social expectations that govern human behaviour.

For instance, in socialism, since the very notion of economic exchange will have disappeared as a logical consequence of making the productive resources of society the common property of everyone. Exchange, after all, denotes an exchange of property titles and, hence, the existence of private property – what this means is that labour in a socialist society could no longer be coerced by the need to sell our working abilities for a wage; it must necessarily take a voluntary form. It also means that products of our collective labour – the goods and services we consume – would be made available to all on a completely free basis without any kind of quid quo pro exchange being involved.

In fact, these two things – ‘free access’ and ‘volunteer labour’ – hang together as social practices inasmuch as the one implies the other. They constitute the very essence of what is meant by the old socialist slogan ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’. But, clearly, in order to implement this, people have to know what to expect of each other. We need to feel the sense of security that stems from a shared vision of how society ought to function and a common set of values to guide and motivate us. Otherwise, the result will, very obviously, be chaos and societal breakdown.

Equally obviously, this social arrangement can only be implemented where there exists the technological potential to produce enough to satisfy the needs of the population.

Otherwise, chronic material scarcities would undermine and subvert the cooperative ethos upon which a socialist society depends. Self-interest, instead of complementing altruistic values (as would be the case in a healthy, balanced society), would increasingly work to crowd out the latter, as individuals scrambled to grab what they could regardless of the consequences for others.

Socialists contend that this technological potential has long been in existence; the barrier to its realisation is capitalism. Not only does capitalism deliberately curtail production to what can be profitably sold but a very large and steadily growing share of economic activity under capitalism is devoted, not to meeting human needs, but to meeting, instead, the systemic needs of capitalism itself – a prime example being the entire financial sector of the capitalist economy.

This massive wastage of human and material resources (from the standpoint of meeting human needs) will abruptly come to an end in socialism. These resources will be freed up for the purpose of significantly increasing the overall output of socially useful wealth while also, paradoxically, helping to mitigate the enormous and unsustainable pressures currently being exerted on our global ecosystem – simply by changing the basic purpose for which wealth is produced in the first place. That is to say, by changing the nature of the society we live in.

Supporting Capitalism

Where do the Hard Left stand in relation to all of this? Since they are not really interested in talking about, let alone advocating, socialism – because it would be ‘utopian’ to do so in their eyes – how is a mass socialist consciousness ever going to come about, in their view? When precisely will it no longer be ‘utopian’ to talk about socialism – if ever?

They frequently cite in their defence that famous quote by Marx in The German Ideology (1845), completely misunderstanding the point Marx was getting at, and interpreting it as justification for their lack of interest in promoting a genuine alternative to capitalism:

   ‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.’

A major premise to which Marx was alluding here was precisely the existence of a sufficiently developed technological potential to make communism (aka socialism) realisable. While socialists contend that this potential has long been around, the Hard Left, on the whole, tends to deny this and, in doing so, inadvertently and unnecessarily helps to prolong capitalism.

For them, it is not really capitalism that is responsible for the persistence of needless poverty. Though they may rail against ‘greedy corporations’ and how these prioritise profits over people, the problem, they suggest, is that we still lack the necessary technological infrastructure that could make socialism a material possibility. In short, we still need more in the way of capitalist development.

For instance, absolute poverty, defined by the World Bank as a condition of severe material deprivation in which individuals are compelled to live on an income of less than $1.90 per day in 2011 prices, continues to affect hundreds of millions of people around the world. Overwhelmingly the absolute poor are concentrated in the Global South. From this it is inferred that the problem boils down to the unequal relationship between the ‘rich world’ and the ‘poor world’ – as if poor people don’t live in the former and rich people don’t live in the latter.

For many on the Hard Left this unequal relationship is a function of ‘imperialism’ rather than capitalism as such. Consequently, what is required is a struggle against imperialism and the imperialist nations – in particular, the United States. This entails supporting ‘national liberation struggles’ in the Global South and the efforts of these poor countries to develop themselves economically, freed of the malign influence of this First World imperialism. In this manner do the Hard Left partisans of ‘Third Worldism’ align themselves with the interests of local capitalisms in the Global South.

The problem is that capitalism is a global system; it is everywhere driven by the same logic. That is a logic that works to block the realisation of the enormous productive potential we already possess and it is only by establishing a global alternative to capitalism that we can hope to release this potential. You can hardly do that if you are an advocate of Third World nationalism. Nationalism is no threat to capitalism; on the contrary, it is an ideological prop to capitalism.

Not only that, the Hard Left naively assume that ‘material abundance’ is something that must become an empirical fact, an experiential reality for everyone, before we can even begin to talk about socialism – a sociologically inept idea, anyway, given capitalism’s compulsion to constantly induce in us, through the power of advertising and the like, a chronic sense of deprivation, even when our lives are already cluttered with often useless gadgets and our fridges are stuffed to overflowing with packaged food. Until then, argue the Hard Left, capitalism is still needed, albeit under the tutelage of the benevolent state and dressed up in the trappings of socialist terminology.

Such backward and distinctly non-revolutionary thinking stems from their deep attachment to the state capitalist model of capitalist development such as was implemented in the early decades of the Soviet Union. At the time this model did indeed seem to permit a comparatively rapid rate of capital accumulation in international terms. A case can certainly be made that state capitalism was better suited (from that point of view) to an earlier period of capitalist development than rival models (such as laissez faire capitalism) – what the economist, Walt Rostow, called the ‘take off’ stage of economic growth in his influential book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960).

Later, however, as the Soviet economy grew in size and complexity and shifted from an extensive to an intensive form of economic growth, this state capitalist model with its built-in structural rigidities and inefficiencies, increasingly became an impediment to capitalist development, resulting ultimately in the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. But the fundamental conservatism of the Hard Left, with their obsessive preoccupation with ‘productivism’ and GNP growth for its own sake, makes it difficult for them to relinquish their blind faith in state-led capitalist development. It is as if they are trapped in a 1930s time warp when good old Uncle Joe Stalin ruled the roost and so called ‘central planning’ was all the rage.

Since (state) capitalism is still needed, in their view, a corollary of this is that there is no point in working to put in place that other major premise upon which the establishment of a socialist society is predicated – namely, majority understanding of, and the desire to bring about, socialism. Such talk, they say, is premature and ‘utopian’. Their stock defence of this position is that they are ‘materialists’ so putting forward the case for socialism is ‘idealist’. We learn not through ‘abstract propaganda’ but ‘practical experience’.

Hard Left idealism

Actually, this betrays a crude, mechanical and completely reductionist view of what materialism is actually about. Ideas are part of our social environment, not something separate from it. There is no dichotomy between ‘ideas’ and ‘experience’. Ideas are the means by which we make sense of our experiences. In the Communist Manifesto there appears the following passage:

  ‘All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority’.

The emphasis on ‘self-consciousness’ here is deliberate and intentional. You cannot logically separate the notion of a working class that has become aware of its status as the dispossessed productive class in capitalism – Marx’s ‘class-for-itself’ as opposed to a ‘class-in-itself’ – from the collective desire to make the means of wealth production the common property of all. The one thing implies the other. In other words, putting forward the case for socialism – what the Hard Left dismisses as ‘utopianism’ – is actually a key part of the development of proletarian self-consciousness.

In the Hard Left’s mechanistic conception of what ‘materialism’ is about, the desire for socialism is somehow supposed to magically spring out of the material conditions in which workers find themselves without the active intervention, or propagation, of ‘ideas’. But how is this possible since we don’t live in a socialist society and can only anticipate it in our imagination? Yet it is precisely the role of imagination that the Hard Left is intent upon deriding and downplaying in its mechanistic conception of revolution.

In Capital, Marx touches on precisely this point when he distinguishes between the instinctive labour of (other) animals and human labour:

  ‘A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.’

(Volume 1, chapter 7).

Precisely the same argument can be applied to the establishment of socialist society. And yet, the process of imagining such a society as a precondition for establishing it is dismissed by the Hard Left as ‘utopianism’. Tellingly for them it is only when the vanguard (which – presumably – alone possesses this ability to envisage an alternative to capitalism) has captured political power on behalf of the workers that the latter can be instructed or socialised into the ways of socialism.

In short, their mechanistic view of materialism goes hand in hand with their own elitist, social engineered conception of revolution.

A self-fulfilling prophecy

Thus does the Hard Left’s entire thinking on this matter help set in motion a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that fundamentally hampers the spread of socialist ideas. The mere fact that the socialist cause continues still to attract comparatively few supporters is cynically cited by them as the very reason for spurning it. In this way, the Hard Left joins hands with the overt supporters of capitalism in striving to ensure socialism remains firmly off the political agenda.

But as long as the socialist cause is spurned, so long will it continue to attract few supporters. Its lack of support is somehow equated with a lack of credibility – though ironically many of these groups that ridicule us for being ‘utopian’ are significantly smaller in size than the Socialist Party itself.

However, the basic assumption being made here – that if an idea attracts little support it must therefore be lacking in credibility – seems questionable. In an ideal world size shouldn’t matter. An idea would stand or fall on its own ground and irrespective of the support it attracted.

After all, Hitler came to power on the back of the electoral support of literally millions of German workers. Are we then to infer that Nazi ideology had much to commend itself for this reason? Conversely, Nicolaus Copernicus advanced his heliocentric theory in the 16th century in the face of near universal opposition, even outright hostility. Should he have abandoned that quest and caved in to the prevailing consensus? Some historians suggest that Copernicus’ ideas are what helped to kick-start the subsequent scientific revolution.

Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, socialists today are in some ways the political equivalent of Copernicus back in the Renaissance era. What is scorned and mocked today can become the common sense and convention of tomorrow and more rapidly than we can ever imagine in a world in which the pace of change is accelerating

Socialism is an idea whose time has come and, small though the number of socialists may now be, it only takes the logic of the Butterfly Effect to make a real and cumulative impact on the world we live in.

Robin Cox