Election Results (1970)

Party News from the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The result of the election of the two seats contested by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the general election on 18 June was :

CLAPHAM

Skelton (C)       16,593

Pitt (Lab)         13,473

Thwaites(L)       2.982

Simkins (Soc)       220

Boaks(Ind)             80

HORNSEY

Rossi (C)           21,434

Pestell (Lab)      17,645

Brass (L)              3,755

Morris (Comm)      624

Grant (Soc)             156

The Socialist Party also contested a local by-election in the Town Hall ward of Haringey Borough Council on 4 June. The result was: Carnell (Lab) 1.234. Painter (C) 1,146, Buick (Soc) 11.

Food Production: The World Can Feed Us All (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main function of food is to provide the human body with energy. This it does in chemical form. This chemical energy is converted into mechanical work and into heat (to maintain body temperature). What a human being needs can be worked out in energy terms and the unit generally used to measure this is the “calorie” (or, more correctly, the kilocalorie). Many people don’t realise that this is a unit of energy, equally applicable in physics as in biology.

Depending on his age, sex, work and climate a person’s calorie needs can be worked out. If he is not getting these calories then he is underfed and can properly be regarded as “starving”.

But calories are not all that a person’s food must give him. It must also provide the various substances the body needs to develop and function properly especially proteins, vitamins and various minerals (like iron, calcium, iodine).

The bulk of people’s food is taken in the form of carbohydrates (starches, sugars) and fats. The carbohydrates, which come from corn, rice, potatoes, are cheap. Which is one reason why they are the staple diet of most people. The fats provide more calories and come from eating meats and some vegetables.

They say that you could in theory live without carbohydrates and fats; the same does not go for proteins, however. Protein-foods also provide calories (which is why they could replace carbohydrates and fats) but their main role is in supplying certain essential ingredients to the body to grow and to renew itself. The trouble is that proteins are found in the more expensive foods. Thus malnutrition arising from protein deficiency is fairly widespread. Malnutrition can also be caused by a deficiency of vitamins and minerals.

You often hear it said that “two-thirds of the world are starving”. That all depends on what you mean by starving. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates “that up to half of the population of the world continues to suffer from under-nutrition and malnutrition in varying decrees” (1963). But is malnutrition, as opposed to under-nutrition, properly called “starvation”? To most people starvation means not getting enough food, being almost at death’s door. If two-thirds of the world were starving in this sense then the world’s population ought to be going down as they die off. It is safer to say that up to half the world’s population is either underfed and/or badly fed. Estimates of those actually underfed put the figure at about 10 to 15 per cent; the half being made up by cases of malnutrition mainly from protein deficiency.

Faced with these terrible figures people say its the result of ignorance or of too many people or of not enough land to grow food on. In fact this problem is caused by none of these. All this human suffering is unnecessary and could be rapidly ended given the necessary changes in the structure of society.

That the natural resources of the earth and the knowledge and machines of its people are sufficient to provide an abundance of foodstuffs is a well-established fact. Listen to Professor Clark, formerly of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of Oxford University:

  The purpose of this article is to consider whether the earth’s resources, if properly developed, would yield material goods sufficient to provide, a satisfactory livelihood for the whole human race. Although it is not usual to state one’s conclusion at the beginning, in this case it can be stated without qualification. The material resources of the world would easily suffice to make such provision, not only for the whole human race as it now is, but also for any conceivable expansion of our numbers which is likely to occur for a very long time. Whatever was the case in the past, we can certainly say now that, with modern scientific and technical knowledge, the fact that so many people fall short of satisfactory livelihood must be blamed entirely upon human shortcomings, not upon the inadequacies of nature (“The Earth Can Feed its People”, Christian Responsibility and World Poverty. A Catholic Viewpoint).

Prof. Clark is a Catholic and an opponent of birth control, but even supporters of birth control as one way to solve capitalism’s current food problems agree on this. N. W. Pirie, of the Rothamsted Experimental Station, writes in his recent book Resources: Conventional and Novel (reviewed, Socialist Standard, September, 1969) of the possibilities of increasing food production by the further application of conventional agriculture:

  At many points there is great scope for further research, but the vigorous application of existing knowledge on a worldwide scale could increase immensely the amount of food produced. The extent of the possible increase is a matter of opinion. But only a very cautious prophet would predict less than a doubling.

In 1963 the F.A.O. published Possibilities of Increasing World Food Production, a region-by-region survey of food producing potential, and declared that “it is clear that world potentials for increasing food production are very substantial indeed”. This conclusion is all the more impressive since the FAO openly assumes that food will continue to be produced for sale and traded on the world market (a great restriction on production).

It is perhaps worth running through what are these conventional methods that could be vigorously applied: (1) Cultivating more land; (2) Irrigation; (3) Better varieties of crops; (4) Use of fertilizers; (5) Use of weed killers and pesticides.

All these techniques could be further applied as soon as Socialism were established in order to increase food production immediately by a substantial amount.

Developments in agriculture are not the only ones that can allow food production to be increased. It is often said that although the food can be produced in America, Europe, Australia, the facilities for transporting it to the people who need it either don’t exist or are quite inadequate. The ports of India are said to be so overcrowded that it would be physically impossible to transport more food there. There are said to be no roads to the places where people are starving so that the food would have to be carried by porters over long distances. This may well be true but there are transportation techniques which are also not vigorously applied. When there is a war on, the logistics sections of the armed forces overcome such problems and the Indo-China war has shown that the USAF can build temporary air fields in the middle of the jungle in a very short time.

Besides the more vigorous application of conventional methods of agriculture, further research could lead to the discovery of new methods by which food production could be increased.

Food, as we saw, is energy in chemical form and, if really necessary, essential foodstuffs could be produced synthetically toy industrial processes. In the last world war, Germany had a factory producing artificial fats. Vitamins and minerals are already produced industrially. Research into ways of manufacturing proteins is also going on, as newspaper stories about food from oil and coal show.

Then there is the sea, a vast source of untapped food potential, especially of protein-rich foods. As far as obtaining food from the sea is concerned mankind is still largely in the hunting and gathering stage from which on land we developed millions of years ago. Very little farming of the sea is done as yet. Two scientists, writing in the April 1969 issue of World Health (WHO), estimate:

  If the sea’s resources were used rationally, an acre of its surface could produce twice as much protein-rich food as an acre of high-class pasture. . . . According to estimates made by the oceanographer Professor L. Zenkevitch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the productive capacity of the sea is more than a thousand times that of the arable land area.

Half the world is inadequately fed despite the existence of the resources to provide the food they need in abundance, not because of overpopulation nor because of nature but because of the capitalist system of production for profit on the basis of the class ownership of the means of production.

Adam Buick

World Mineral Resources: Enough to Last (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until the rise of capitalism as a source of energy mankind was mainly dependent upon wood which was also a major raw material. Today wood has been replaced by minerals as the major source of energy and for many of its uses as a raw material.

The development of industrial societies in the capitalist era is directly related to the expansion in the exploitation of the world’s mineral resources and there has emerged a significant correlation between the consumption of energy per head per annum and the Gross National Product per head per annum in any country. Countries with the highest energy consumption per head turn out higher values of product per head, and they tend to be large consumers of the non-energy minerals.

Capitalism’s need to form more capital, its drive for profit and a lower cost of production of minerals has often led to an irrational exploitation of mineral resources, and a constant search for alternatives. Flooded mines, collapsed workings, underground explosions and fires has made the future of some deposits difficult. Thousands of workers have lost their lives or had their bodies maimed just to meet the need of capital.

In the past coal, and more recently oil, has been the base for economic growth in the industrial countries. Since 1880 there has been an almost thirtyfold increase in the world’s production of commercial sources of energy. Although oil is now more important than coal the world output of the latter continues to rise because under-developed countries find its exploitation technically more feasible. As industrial development becomes more widespread throughout the world, and as population increases, the demand for energy will become greater.

One estimate of demand is that by the year 2000, compared with 1960, the population will have doubled and energy consumption will have risen five times.(1) Population forecasts can be said to be well informed guesses, and as consumption under capitalism depends upon the vagaries of the market and the extent to which such competition results in physical conflict, such an estimate can only be very tentative.

Nevertheless increases in consumption are historically obvious and present trends have at times caused concern about the ability to meet future energy needs.

The reserves of coal deposits are easier to prove than those of oil. The reserves of both change because of technical developments and new discoveries, which are both likely to be more significant in the future. For example although undoubtedly the most likely areas to contain minerals have been surveyed, only 20 per cent of the U.S.A. has been mapped geologically. (2)

One estimate of coal reserves maintains that even if coal supplied all energy needs up to the year 2000 there would still be enough coal for another 100 years at the level of consumption expected to be prevailing at the end of this century. (3)

Because oil reserves are never really proved until commercial exploitation takes place estimates vary widely. (4) Undoubtedly new techniques will increase the percentage of oil taken from existing fields, and although recently the extent of proven reserves has not kept pace with output this may be a reflection of the opposite situation in the twenty years after the war when there was not a fuel “glut” as there is at present.

It would appear that fossil fuels are likely to supply the world’s energy for many years to come for hydro-electrical power is of small importance outside a few countries and as yet solar radiation, an almost inexhaustible supply of energy, is technically limited to minor uses. Nuclear power with the development of the Advanced Gas-cooled reactor and the Fast Breeder reactor will be of more importance in the future despite the vast projects necessary and the doubts about the supply of high quality ores.

A similar situation exists for the non-fuel minerals. Some advanced countries have exhausted their better deposits of iron, copper, lead, zinc and other ores. Fears of shortage of the non-fuel minerals are largely a reflection of the fact that more ores have been extracted from ‘the earth since 1900 than in the entire period of man’s history before that date.

The total demand for minerals of all kinds is increasing as new uses are constantly being found for minerals already important to man as well as for those of little importance in the past. For example although steel output is constantly rising it is being replaced for many uses by aluminium and pre-stressed concrete.

The two world wars have played a significant part in depleting the non-fuel mineral reserves of Western Europe and America. Nevertheless discoveries elsewhere in the world are being exploited. The post war fears of shortages are being overcome by modern survey methods, i.e. electromagnetic surveying from the air and geochemistry aiding the discovery of vast new deposits in isolated backward areas of the world.

Despite increasing exploitation of the world’s mineral resources it is now becoming recognised that they never will be exhausted. Advances in technology permits exploitation of leaner ores and also creates new resources.

The fears of shortage of supply of all minerals is in reality a reflection of capitalism in which production for sale causes periodic gluts and shortages which are accentuated by political division. The needs of the market may dictate that mineral resources be exploited in a manner that is not technically the best. The British coal industry in the last century and the American oil industry in the early years of this century provide good examples.

Capitalist society accentuates the demand for minerals in a manner that a sane society would think ludicrous. The production of battleships, locks, cash registers, bombs and thousands of other articles designed to protect or secure property, or if only of commercial use, are wasteful of mineral resources.

If there were fears of world shortages of minerals it would be doubly criminal to use them in the production of articles to kill, to restrict the freedom of, and to assist the exploitation of man by man. But capitalism cannot be doubly indicted for its technology has amply demonstrated that man need not fear a shortage of mineral resources for hundreds of years to come.

Ken Knight

1. SEARL, M. F. Report to the. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.

2. FEISS, J. W. Technology & Economic Development. Ch. Minerals.

3. AVERETT, P. U.S. Geological Survey.

4. SCHURR, S. H. Technology & Economic Development. Ch. Energy.

World Administration: A Framework for Socialism? (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

World government is an idea most people understand. Indeed, if science fiction books and comics are anything to go by, most people expect it to come sooner or later. Even though people expect world organisation to take the form either of a world dictatorship or of a federation of national governments they are still treating the world as one unit. This is a way of thinking we Socialists want to encourage. We do not stand for world government (we are opposed to governments everywhere) but for, to adapt a phrase, a world administration of things — the planned production and distribution of wealth on a world scale to meet human needs.

We have always understood the change-over from capitalist government to socialist administration to involve the capture ‘by a socialist-minded working class of the various national governments of the world to be followed by the dismantling of the coercive features of the old government machines but the retention, in adapted form, of some of the non-coercive technical functions now exercised by governments. In Britain, for instance, some of the functions of the Ministry of Transport or the Post Office might be retained insofar as they concern the technical side of communications.

Equally this could be done on the international scene. There is not as yet (if ever there is, which is unlikely) a world government but there is the United Nations Organisation a body which has in primitive form some of the features of this and which the advocates of world government want to see developed further. Just as on the national scale some of the institutions of the capitalist government machine could be adapted and used as part of the new socialist administration, so on the world scale could some of the institutions of the UN.

The UN was set up by the victorious powers in the second world war at a conference in San Francisco in 1945. Socialists have no illusions about the UN; we know full well that the expressive phrase that used to be used of the League of Nations — “the League of Bandits” — applies equally to the UN. It is a league of the various governments of the world at which most ruling classes are represented (the most notable exceptions being those of West Germany, Japan and state capitalist China). It is a body which serves the interests of the big powers, and especially America. It is only with their support, not to say their manoeuvring, that its meagre coercive powers, its so-called peace-keeping force, are used.

However the UN is more than the Security Council, its talking-shop General Assembly and its troops in blue helmets. It also has an Economic and Social Committee to which are responsible a number of bodies known as the “specialized agencies of the UN”. Most people are familiar with some of these without perhaps knowing they had anything to do with the UN — the FAO, WHO, ILO, IMF and World Bank, to name a few. These agencies are concerned with gathering information and giving advice in their respective fields, though some of them play a vital regulatory role as well.

Nine of these agencies could perhaps be adapted to play a part in the socialist administration of the world. They fall into two categories: those needed even in a capitalist world to regulate international communications (a further proof that we do have one world now under capitalism) and those which are essentially world advisory and statistical services in various fields.

Into the first category come:

1. The International Telecommunications Union, originally set up in 1865 to ensure an orderly telecommunications network.
2. The Universal Postal Union (1874), set up to ensure the orderly distribution throughout the world of letters and parcels.
3. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) regulates international air traffic allowing regular scheduled flights; it also promotes standardised technical equipment.
4. The Inter-governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation (IMCO) plays a similar role with regard to ocean shipping.
5. The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) gathers and disseminates information on the world’s weather.

These organisations could play a basically similar role in world socialist society. Their significance for Socialist propaganda today is that they show that capitalism itself is already a world system and that it has to set up certain world organisations to deal with matters that can only be dealt with on a world scale.

The other bodies, besides collecting and disseminating information, are also involved in the economic development (albeit under capitalist conditions) of the so-called backward parts of the world:

6. The International Labour Organisation (1LO) deals with working conditions and training.
7. The United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) deals mainly with education and eradicating illiteracy.
8. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
9. The World Health Organisation (WHO) deals mainly with health hazards.

In addition there is one other relevant UN body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This is concerned with the peaceful uses of atomic energy, but also has a political role insofar as it aims to preserve the monopoly of nuclear weapons of the big three powers (sometimes called preventing the spread of nuclear weapons).

In the UN, then, there are ten bodies concerned with postal services, communications, air transport, ocean shipping, the weather, labour, education, agriculture and health which could form the basis of institutions for controlling these matters on a world scale in socialist society.

It is true that none of these bodies is involved in the actual production of wealth and that the more directly economic UN bodies — the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs — are more concerned with finance and commerce (which would have no place in Socialism). But some of the information which even these have gathered could be useful for planning production on a world scale to meet human needs. Planning in a socialist society, remember, will be essentially a statistical exercise, correlating estimated human needs with known world resources.

In the specialized agencies of the UN (and in the administrative networks of the growing number of trans-national corporations) the basic framework for a world administration already exists. It only remains for the workers of the world to realise this and to organise to take it over for the benefit of all mankind.

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: Who Wants To Pick This Bone? (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Grateful as we are to our guardians in Westminster who labour mightily to protect and nurture us we should not overlook that they also have human needs. Like a flexibly regulated system of claiming for incurred expenses. Like meeting the demands of flamboyant media producers to expose themselves to the nation’s reverential scrutiny. Like their need to relax the tensions of relentlessly legislating by giving way to laughter in the Chamber where their talents are displayed- laughter as a kind of therapy for them, side to side erupting in a booming, orgasmic release. Luckily there are in that august setting some who have a reputation for their skills in stimulating such pleasure. When any of these rise to their feet with the words “Thank you, Mister Speaker” they are not expressing gratitude for the opportunity to mouth yet another gabble of platitudes and evasions but are giving notice of the release to follow from their words. This is considered to be a useful, constructive way for Members of Parliament to spend their time.

Pleasing the Wife

The constituency of Wellingborough, Rushden and Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire is represented in the House of Commons by the Conservative Peter Bone, who can be relied on to entertain the Commons in the style to which they are accustomed by opening his contributions to their proceedings with mention of his wife: “This morning at the breakfast table Mrs. Bone was saying . . .” or perhaps “It would be a great help to my wife and the Bone household if . . .” Mysteriously, this reduces the MPs to frantic laughter, as Bone asks David Cameron to rule out any more contributions to a Eurozone bail-out or to agree that it is necessary to maintain the laws against blasphemy and blasphemous libel or to denounce gay marriage as “completely nuts” (a particular preoccupation of his; last month he strongly objected to Nick Clegg naming those with such views as “bigots”). Amid the hilarity David Cameron, perhaps wriggling on the hook in Prime Minister’s Questions, is able to get his share of laughter by a smoothly suggestive reply: “A very big part of my life is spent trying to give pleasure to Mrs. Bone” or “I wish my wife was easy to please as Mrs. Bone”.

From behind this screen of sickening drivel it may be difficult for Mrs. Bone to get herself noticed. She works as Mr. Bone’s Executive Secretary (at a top-end £40,000 a year) in which she rates herself “a one-woman focus group” who “listens to people on the ground” (which seems to include only those who agree with her). Mrs. Bone has political ambitions of her own, which were disappointed when her application to stand as the Conservative candidate for election as the local Police Commissioner was rejected on the emphatic terms that she “did not display a sufficiently developed understanding of what the job would entail and did not have a sufficiently clear vision of what she might do if elected” (requirements which might rule out her husband as well as a whole clutch of MPs). But the disappointed candidate was not put off; this, she sulked, was “bully-boy behaviour . . .  the party grandees wanted to get at Peter through me”. It might have been expected that the next step for her would be to resign from this collection of bullying exponents of the tactical underhand were it not that capitalist politics, with its competing ambitions and need to deny reality, does not operate with such consistent honesty.

Speeches

And “consistent” Is not a word to be readily associated with this pair of wedded Tories.  Peter Bone’s first experience of trying to be an MP was encouraging for him when, standing in Islwyn against the hapless Labour leader Neil Kinnock, he recorded the highest ever Tory vote there. However he did not come up to this promise in subsequent elections in Pudsey and Wellingborough because he lost to swings notably worse, for his party, than the national trend. In fact when, in 2005, he eventually won at Wellingborough it was by 687 votes – a swing of only 2.9 per cent when the national swing was 3.1 per cent. Perhaps there was a message in this about him personally and his voter- averse style (in 1995 the Daily Mirror condemned him as “the meanest boss in Britain” in response to him paying a 17 year-old trainee 87 pence an hour). In action in the Commons, he was rated as a prolific speaker but in case this gave the wrong impression he was one of three who, according to The Times, “boost their ratings on the internet by saying very little, very often” with an example of one contribution of only three short sentences which was about the postmaster of the tiny Northamptonshire civic parish of Little Irchester. He is on record as describing the NHS as something which “would not be out of place in Stalin’s Russia” and for opposing regulations designed to give equal rights in goods and services to gay people. He could not have been surprised when, earlier this year, Tory MPs ejected him from the Executive of their mouthpiece, the 1922 Committee.

Trafficking 

In February he opened a Commons debate on human trafficking – among the cruellest, most ruthless of crimes estimated to generate $82 billion a year, almost as much as arms dealing and drug smuggling. It is, in other words, typical of the capitalist system – savage and inhuman as it is driven by the all-dominant motive for profit and the abuse and waste of human life. It was inconsistent with this reality for Bone to offer the argument that an independent National Rapporteur – such as there is in Holland – would be more effective in keeping a check on the problem than the present slapdash system. Significantly he also supported his case on financial grounds: “ . . . it would do all the things we want at a fraction of the cost”. Peter Bone is one among many who claim an ability to manipulate a significant change in this horror. But in fact he is only likely to find a place in history as a feeble joker.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Betting Becomes Respectable (2012)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the new legalised betting shops are off to a good start and working class punters adorned with the dubious honour of a mantle of bourgeois respectability wherever they can lose their fair day’s pay in a more dignified way; it may be timely to compare the old back street hole-in-the-corner betting dens of Manchester with some of the present chromium plated outfits blossoming forth under the new regulations.

No longer is there any need to slip surreptitiously down a back alley or dodge P.C. 49 and the Black Maria in a frantic effort to play up one’s pension or the rent on the elusive 2.30 winner; one awaits the result, jammed tight in a sweating mass of the unfortunate class of society, who never seem to tire of trying to gamble their way out of poverty, merely because they do not yet realise the cause of it.

Those repulsive conditions of working class punters, in grim contrast to the environment and atmosphere of Ascot lawns, etc., have given way, despite the hypocritical opposition of the men of God, to armchair betting in the main street betting shops, with loudspeaker commentaries, official receipts for all commissions, and rapid payment after results and the weigh in.

(…) [W]e point to the cause of all this gambling activity—the crazy profit system of production which divorces the producers from their products, leads them up the garden to chase shadows in State-organised lotteries, Football Pools and Bingo rackets, and the rest. This is typical of capitalism in 1962: but in a cooperative world of production for use, a money-less, class-less, trade-less community, gambling will cease simply because profits and losses, poverty, privilege and luxury will give way to the social equilibrium of production for use.

(from article by G. R. Russell, Socialist Standard, October 1962)

The Fear of God (2012)

The Halo Halo! column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communicating with, and tending to the whims of the gods has always been a specialised business. From the earliest religious beliefs any human behaviour that might offend the deities and bring down their wrath on the whole community had to be guarded against. The task of interpreting the god’s words and satisfying their needs has always been entrusted to an elite caste of priests, oracles or holy men who jealously guarded their power and mysterious rites. And as gods have come and gone over the last few thousand years nothing much has changed in this respect.

The hierarchy of the Catholic Church still try to maintain an air of mystery with their absurd rituals, robes, mitres and use of incense etc. Until recently the widespread use of Latin, too, helped to bamboozle their followers. Until the 1960’s it was used for all documents published by the Vatican.

“The language of the Roman Church is Latin. It is therefore forbidden to sing anything whatever in the vernacular in solemn liturgical functions” said Pope Pius X in 1903. And Pius XII declared “The use of the Latin language affords at once an imposing sign of unity and an effective safeguard against the corruption of true doctrine”. Now the current Pope, worried about the decline of religious humbug and mumbo-jumbo amongst the clergy wants to bring it back.

This is just a harmless pantomime though compared to the bizarre and rigorously enforced blasphemy laws that are used to preserve religious authority in Islam, particularly in Pakistan. Can you imagine what would happen if a TV series like ‘Father Ted’ were to be made about a group of bumbling mullahs? Unfortunately the Islamic equivalents of Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack have never been very funny, and can be terrifyingly dangerous.

As this article is being prepared Rimsha Masih, the 14-year old girl who suffers from Down’s syndrome and was beaten up and imprisoned after being falsely accused by a local mullah of burning pages from the Koran, has finally been released after bail of one million rupees (about £6,200) was raised.

A Christian couple were sentenced to 25 years imprisonment after being accused of touching a Koran with unwashed hands. And a doctor in Hyderabad who threw away the visiting card of a pharmaceutical salesman found himself in serious trouble. The word Muhammad, part of the salesman’s name, was printed on the card. (Guardian online 19 August and 6 September).

But it’s not just the courts and mullahs who are terrified of blasphemers. In two separate incidents in Pakistan in 2011 Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti were gunned down in the streets because they spoke out in favour of reforming the blasphemy laws. And between 1990 and 2010 in Pakistan, in addition to formal convictions, there were at least 34 extrajudicial killings of people accused of blasphemy. (Guardian 5 September).

And it’s not only in Pakistan where Allah strikes fear in the hearts of his followers. Here, Channel 4 has cited security concerns as the reason for having to cancel a rescreening of its documentary ‘Islam: The Untold Story’ which claimed there was little written contemporary evidence about the origin of the religion, and attracted over 1,000 complaints from outraged believers.

Why do the followers of such powerful gods feel so insecure?

NW

Proper Gander: Giggly Walking CCTV Cameras (2012)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Making a hasty, ill-informed judgement about someone you don’t know is easy, thanks to the internet. You can post it on their forum thread or Facebook update, laugh, then hide behind your username and the ‘log off’ option. It’s not quite as straightforward as that in real life, as those taking part in The Audience (Channel 4) find out. In this show, a volunteer has opened up their life to the scrutiny of fifty strangers and a film crew. The volunteer has “a life-changing decision to make”, and will seek the advice of the others who literally follow him around for a week.

The first episode’s lamb-to-the-slaughter is Ian Wainwright who, being a farmer, has probably slaughtered a few lambs himself. Nice guy Ian slaves away on the farm owned by his two septuagenarian uncles, who can’t do much other than bark from their farmhouse chairs. Imposed guilt and family loyalty tie Ian to the long hours and little money. He knows he’s trapped, and that he’s not spending enough time with his girlfriend. So, should he find a new life with her, as this means leaving his uncles to an uncertain future?

The crowd of fifty start out like giggly walking CCTV cameras. They follow Ian to the milking shed, then the fields, then they meet the rest of his family, firing questions and discussing him along the way. Their initial snap judgements on his situation give way to a realisation that it involves conflicting viewpoints, and then there are tears as the decision looms. Obviously, the programme-makers milk all this for its emotional capital, much like Ian milks his cows. He takes the advice to leave the farm, and the producers must have been rubbing their hands with glee when he rounds off the programme by proposing to his girlfriend.

Maybe some choices benefit from having other people patiently look into all the pros and cons to come up with some reasoned advice. But it’s less likely that a situation will be improved by the manipulation and selective editing of a film crew. The Audience feeds on the fashionably alienated belief that if you have a problem, then the best way to get help is through a TV show.

Mike Foster

Meanwhile in Barnsley (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Washington DC was preparing for its bombastic military parade. It seems the US president had been inspired by his new friend in Pyongyang. Meanwhile, a few thousand miles to the east, another more modest, though worthwhile, procession took place through the streets of Hoyland Common, Barnsley.

Led by a brass band an invited group walked from the Saville Square pub where they’d assembled along a short route to an unassuming terraced house. The occasion was the unveiling of a blue plaque honouring Barry Hines, the author of A Kestrel for a Knave. Written in the 1960s, it became the film Kes directed by Ken Loach who took part in this event.

The honour of unveiling the plaque fell to Barry’s surviving brother who delivered a short speech about how the son of a South Yorkshire miner came to write the book that made his name. Speeches concluded and, following a final couple of tunes, instruments returned to their cases, it was time to return to the Saville Square for lunch.

In the foyer of the pub stood a full-size fibreglass version of the bronze statue, sculpted by Graham Ibbeson, which is to stand in Barnsley in Barry Hines’ honour. The money for this has been raised through a vigorous funding campaign led by Ronnie Steele and a dedicated group of volunteers. Beginning in January 2018, through a mix of crowd funding, the sale of bronze maquettes and live public performances by an eclectic mix of musicians, the statue has been cast and paid for.

It depicts the central character of the story, young Billy Casper, his arm extended with the kestrel perched on his hand. It presently stands in Barnsley’s new library, but the group intend that eventually it will stand on a plinth outside for all to see. Ronnie Steele gave a brief speech of thanks to all involved before declaring the buffet open. While people ate there were songs by performers Dave Cherry and Del Scott Millar, and Celtic-style traditional music by Barnsdale Hood.

There are a few political points to be drawn from this event. Common arguments against socialism are that people will not work for free and, as people are naturally greedy, free access to resources will result in people taking far more than they need.

The many, actually uncounted, hours of often quite tedious work by Ronnie Steele and his group to organise the campaign and events was entirely voluntary. The performers who gave their time to play at those events did so unpaid. All they required was a shared objective.

The buffet itself was greatly over-catered. However, people did not eat more than they wanted, each more than capable of deciding when enough was sufficient and then stopping. People had to be almost pleaded with to take remaining food away and then no one scooped up armfuls. Just a paper plate or two for family or friends who would appreciate the largesse.

And this is very much in the context of capitalism where selfish individualism is supposedly the driving force behind how people act. While this is not socialism of itself, it is a glimpse of possibility, that people without state or company direction can organise and act in a social way.

The world of mining communities as depicted by Barry Hines has gone, but the potential of the working class remains, if still largely untapped.

Dave Alton

Africa: Can it help feed us all? (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Africa’s Potential Bread Basket

‘It is people who make the world: the bush has wounds and scars.’ – a Malawian proverb

Global food security is one of the most serious concerns of our time. The global food system is at the root of many environmental and health crises.

Humans have made the African savanna their home since the dawn of time and have greatly affected the environment. People in pre-colonial Africa were engaged in hunting and gathering, agriculture, mining and simple manufacturing. Agriculture involved most people and there were many different systems of agricultural production in pre-colonial Africa, to suit the variety of conditions the people faced. Without modern machinery and modern inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides they were not, however, able to transform nature on a large scale and were to a large extent at the mercy of the land and the weather. Intensive agriculture makes it possible for populations to grow.

Today, Africa does not grow enough food to feed its own population and African countries have tended to satisfy their increasing demand through expensive imports from the global market. The agriculture sector in many African countries is in a perilous state. It’s a situation that results in discontent and unrest. It is stating the obvious that the solution to the food crisis in Africa is for Africa to grow more food. Africa does in fact have the ability to grow enough food not only to feed itself, but also to help feed the rest of the world.

Africa is host to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet currently spends tens of billions of dollars per year on importing food. This figure is projected to shoot up to US$110 billion by 2025. Africa is importing what it could actually be producing. African countries export raw goods outside the continent to be processed into consumer products imported back into Africa for purchase. In essence, Africa is exporting jobs outside the continent, and contributing to Africa’s poverty.

The African Guinea Savannah is one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world with less than 10 percent used to produce crops. An area twice as large as that planted to wheat worldwide – a swathe of land with potential fertility that runs from the coasts of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Senegal eastwards to the Ethiopian border, then veers southeast to cover parts of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the Congo before spreading across the continent over large areas of Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and western Madagascar. Population figures are hard to come by when looking at the savanna, ranging from two to over 100 people per square mile and roughly 45 percent live in urban centres. 

The Guinea Savannah zone covers about 600 million hectares, of which about 400 million hectares could be used for crop agriculture. Currently, less than 10 percent of this area is being cultivated. This region has the potential to feed Africa and send produce elsewhere. It features a warm tropical climate with 800–1,200 millimeters of rainfall annually, allowing for a growing period of 150–210 days. The variable annual rainfall and poor soil quality make this a challenging agro-ecological environment. It supports three main farming systems:

(a) the root crop farming system; (b) the mixed cereal-root crop farming system; and (c) the maize mixed farming system.

All have potential for increasing agricultural production. The zone is one of the major under-used resources in Africa. It accounts for about one-third of the land area in Sub-Saharan Africa and underpins the livelihoods of more than one-quarter of all African farmers. Maize is the most important cereal in most African countries and also serves as a staple food source for some 200 million people in the developing countries. People have farmed grains in this area for centuries. One could try to enhance productivity through increasing use of manure to better fertilize their fields. Or to be mixing creatively different crops together that complement one another, so mixing legumes with grains, for instance — the legumes fix nitrogen and increase grain productivity. But one that is not so dependent on fossil fuel inputs from outside of the area.

According to Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank:

‘There is therefore absolutely no reason for Africa to be a food-importing region. Africa has huge potential in agriculture, but, as Dr. Borlaug used to say, nobody eats potential… Unlocking that potential must start with the savannas of Africa.’

There is indeed no ‘absolute reason’ why Africa couldn’t produce enough food to feed its inhabitants, but there is a practical one: capitalism and its production for profit instead of to meet people’s need for food (and everything else).

However, there is a cautionary note. When land is cleared and cultivated, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from the soil, and the plants, shrubs and trees that grow there. The more densely the land is packed with vegetation, the more carbon is released when it is cleared. Nevertheless, if even a small fraction is turned into farm-land – some 16 million hectares – is transformed, it could set Africa up to decrease dependence on food from elsewhere, feed itself and contribute to feeding the world.

Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa.

‘We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, then groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of sustainability,’ said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a professor of Hydrogeology at University College London. Scientists are learning how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they respond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already looking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more sustainability.

Using the Guinea Savannah predominantly for agriculture will inevitably, as all agriculture does, bring some environmental costs, but agriculture can also benefit the environment. This ecosystem is delicate and it needs to be kept in balance.

People attribute Africa’s problem to overpopulation yet most parts of Africa are not densely populated at all with much lower density rates than many states in America. Yet there are those in the ecological movement who tend to focus on the population issue and concentrate on family planning. Hunger is not Africa’s inescapable destiny and it can be eliminated.

There is no such thing as benevolent capitalism. Socialists know that under capitalism attempts to change the way food is produced so as to fill the empty bellies of Africans will be thwarted by the international trading system and foiled by the national ruling class. But this land is our land and should be used to feed the people and not the greed of shareholders in Wall Street, the City of London or Shanghai.

What is required is the democratic self-empowerment of the workers to replace the exploitative global economic system of capitalism by socialism so as to be in a position to genuinely satisfy the food needs of the people. This is no fantasy but a practical, revolutionary proposition to live in a world without waste, want or war, and in which each person benefits from sharing in the fruits of the Earth. Hunger is not Africa’s inescapable destiny but it can only be eliminated by ending the capitalist system.

ALJO

Mental Health: In a Mad, Mad World (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us are likely to experience mental ill-health at some point or another in our lives. For some it might be a short episode of low mood, or feeling a bit fed up and will usually pass within a few days or weeks at most. While for others it may include prolonged periods of intense depression and possible suicidal thoughts. And in the most extreme cases, the ending of one’s own life.

So, what are the reasons that cause so many people to feel so hopeless and helpless as to feel that they have no choice but to take such a desperate measure as suicide?

The answer to this is of course a very complex one that cannot possibly be attributed to any one single factor affecting any one person’s life. For most people who feel there is no longer any point to their existence, the chances are that their problems and challenges feel insurmountable and impossible to deal with, and as such they cannot face another day of the relentless torture associated with their thoughts and feelings of perpetual misery.

Sometimes these feelings can be caused by biological factors that affect thought patterns within the brain, while for many these feelings are entirely as a result of environmental factors.

Chemical imbalances

The brain is an extremely complex and intricate part of the functioning of the human (and other mammals) body. Comprising some 86 billion cells known as neurons, it is the command centre of the nervous system that in turn controls the body’s sensory organs and outputs information to the muscles, which in turn control movement.

The brain is responsible for producing a number of hormones associated with pleasure including dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. They each in their own unique way and when in balance are supposed to maintain a healthy and happy state of mind and mood. But what happens when things go wrong?

For some people they will no doubt take matters into their own hands. That is to say, they will quite often try to alleviate their symptoms by self-medicating in order to induce some kind of relief from the stress and/or misery that they are experiencing. This might take the form of a quick puff on a fag or maybe something stronger like a spliff – which some medical professionals say may actually worsen the situation. Some may hit the booze, while for others a coffee and a cream cake might offer a quick fix.

Should things not improve it may well become necessary to book an appointment with the local GP. No doubt having waited for several weeks for your appointment to finally arrive, it may be that having discussed the matter with your hard-pressed doctor you will be presented with a prescription for any one of the myriad antidepressant drugs available in order to try and lift your mood by restoring the natural chemicals that are missing. A further appointment will probably be made and following on from that, if the meds have worked and some relief has been found then you will probably be advised to keep taking the pills, given a pat on the back and told to come back if the symptoms worsen. On your way out you will probably pass another long line of people with identical problems waiting for their 10 minutes with the Doc and another repeat prescription for their preferred choice of antidepressant drugs. While somewhere in the background, the big pharmaceutical companies who produce these drugs are laughing all the way to the bank.

Rising Problem

In Scotland alone there has been a significant rise in the rates of suicide between 2017 and 2018. Recent figures show that in 2018, 784 people took their own life, an increase from 680 the year before, with the increase in suicide rate among young people age under 25 in Scotland, the highest annual rate since 2007. While over the last 5 years, 3,560 people took their own life. Making the average suicide rate in Scotland for that particular period 13.4 deaths per 100,000.

James Jopling, Executive Director of Samaritans Scotland, said: ‘Suicide is preventable. And that means not just looking at access to mental health services, but also at how money worries, job insecurity, experiences of loneliness and disconnectedness can impact young people’s wellbeing … People of all ages reach out to the Samaritans for a wide range of reasons – some of the most common include worries about their mental and physical health, family and relationship breakdown and feelings of loneliness and isolation. Just under a third of people who contact Samaritans express suicidal thoughts and feelings’.

While these figures are but a snapshot of the picture in Scotland, the issues are the same the world over. And while each and every government or NGO attempts to solve these issues in their own way, there will never be enough resources available to deal with the epidemic that is such a blight on what the professional politicians and leaders like to describe and convince us is a civilised society, and the only one available to us. No matter how hard they try to dress things up with their many brainwashing initiatives such as ‘resilience building’, ‘managed expectations’ and ‘dealing with disappointment’, there can be no escape from the harsh reality and brutality that is the fall-out from the present global (dis)order, and root cause known as capitalism.

What can be done?

Regular readers of this magazine will be all too aware of the issues raised within this article, most will readily relate to its content and will need little advice or information about the underlying cause and affects that capitalism has on predominantly the working class (I would not be so foolhardy as to suggest that members of the capitalist class are somehow exempt from feelings of clinical depression). However there can be little or no doubt that the challenges faced by the working class are far greater than those at the top of the tree looking down.

So, what can and must be done to find a cure for this imbalance and exploitation?

Far be it from us to sound like preachers or motivational speakers – we’re sure you get enough of that bullshit when attending works seminars and such like. You know the kind of thing, everyone in a room for team building exercises, being forced to pair off with someone you don’t really like, or worse still, if you’ve drawn a particularly short straw, the ‘team leader’ – the company man (or woman) for whom the company is the be-all-and-end-all in their life.

Mental Health within socialism

Given that socialism – properly understood – has never had the chance to be tested anywhere in the world before it is almost impossible to know precisely how this new system of society will unfold. That said, we can be sure of one thing, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than it is for most of us under capitalism.

No more wars or terrorism, no more greed, hunger and thirst, no more decision-making based on budgets or cost effectiveness, no more social isolation or loneliness, seclusion or discrimination, no more choosing between heating or eating, and the list goes on and on and on.

With people throughout the world living their lives according to their own self-defined needs and in harmony with each other for the benefit of each other, there can be no doubt that slowly but surely as we all work together in order to reverse the damage caused by around 300 years’ worth of the destructive fallout from capitalism, people’s health, both mental and physical will improve dramatically as we all give and take our share of working together towards a truly civilised society, where no one will be left behind to fend for themselves. The elderly, the disabled, anyone born with a genetic condition and who may be predisposed to mental health issues, will all receive the best treatment and care without having to consider costs.

In truth, and for the sake of the continuation of our species, we simply cannot afford to do otherwise. 

Paul Edwards

The Review Column: Sonic Booms (1967)

The Review Column from the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sonic Booms

Let no one deceive themselves that the sonic booms over various parts of the country last July were inflicted as part of a test of people's reactions.

Firstly, it soon became clear that Wedgewood Benn's Ministry of Technology had not bothered to set up any machinery to gauge reactions to the booms, secondly the booms were nothing like what can be expected if supersonic airliners are allowed to fly overland.

If the development of other types of aircraft is any guide, the operators of the supersonic planes will want to fly them all day and all night, everyday and every night. The prospect which this conjures up is nothing like the single isolated crack of a small jet fighter in the middle of a summer afternoon, described by Wedgewood Benn as ". . . at an intensity well below that of supersonic airliners”.

Of course the booms provoked a lot of protest, but Wedgewood Benn, under fire in the Commons, had the answer to them all: 'Substantial sums are being put by this country into advanced aircraft, the financial success of which will in part depend on whether the aircraft fly from other people’s territory.'

The Concord, then, is no more than a typical product of capitalism. A lot of money invested in it; side effects unpleasant, probably dangerous; competition the driving force behind its production; no profit incentive to solve the problem of its effects.

In this situation, the comfort and safety of people on the ground are only a secondary consideration. There is reason to believe that the booms last July were not tests of our reactions, but the first step in getting us accustomed to the idea of them, in preparation for the days when they are banging off in earnest.

And this, let us remember, is what capitalism calls progress.


Aberfan

The Aberfan Tribunal promised that there would be no whitewashing. They produced a report full of memorable phrases (“bungling ineptitude"; "subterfuge and arrogance by the National Coal Board"; “eight years of folly and neglect”) and they laid the blame for the disaster, on the National Coal Board, its headquarters, its divisional board, and four of its officials.

In this, the tribunal followed the accepted pattern of all enquiries into disasters. Somewhere, somebody—a railway signalman, an airline pilot, a ship's captain—makes a mistake or breaks a rule. It is all too easy, afterwards, to point the finger.

Very few people care to wonder about the context in which the ‘mistakes' are made, the rules ‘broken’.

Only in passing, for example, did the Aberfan tribunal deal with the basic cause of the disaster, which was the very existence of the slag heaps, up on the mountain above the doomed village.

Tipping waste from coal mines is, after all, the simplest and cheapest way of disposing of it. In South Wales, the valleys cannot be used for the tips because that is where the pit heads and the houses must be built. So that the stuff is dumped onto the mountains, where it is a continual eyesore and menace.

Of course they could stop tipping but, as the tribunal said on this very point ". . . the reflection that to stop tipping could bring about the closure of the Merthyr Vale Colliery may well have led to the quick suppression of those doubts . . ."

Of course they could deposit the stuff underground but this, said the tribunal, was neither “technically feasible now nor economically practicable" (The Times estimated the cost of removing tip complex alone at £3 million).

Thus the tribunal accepted the economic confine within which capitalism’s industry operates. It accepted that anything which is not economically practicable must be rejected, it accepted that people must live in the constant need to work for their living. It accepted that, although a certain amount must be done to mitigate the hardships of this social set-up, in the end we must make the best of it.

The economic practicabilities of capitalism have a lot to answer for, in coal mining more than in most other industries. Aberfan was only the latest, if one of the most unusual, of the disasters caused by the ‘economic’ production of coal.

Lord Robens (as the Daily Telegraph of 7th August was unkind enough to recall) once said that the Labour Government in 1950 “washed the blood off the coal” which was normally on it when the Tories were in power.

After Aberfan it may be convenient to blame individual workers, employees of the National Coal Board. The true culprit is capitalist society—and there is still, after all, blood on the coal.

Sandys’ Racialism

One of the first to exploit the irrational fears the Detroit riots created was Tory former Minister Duncan Sandys. In a statement he called for a stop to all entry into Britain of what he called coloured people and added, for good measure, “including relatives of those who are here’’. We don’t know if Sandys has prepared a series of amendments to the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts which will provide immigration officials with a precise standard for judging who are to be considered coloured and who not. We doubt it. For Sandys seems just to be concerned with encouraging hostility between people with lighter and people with darker skin pigmentation.

Perhaps the most revolting part of Sandys statement read:

  The breeding of millions of half-caste children would merely produce a generation of misfits and create increased tensions.

The words breeding, half-caste and misfits seem to have been carefully chosen—with a view to stirring up hostility to so-called mixed marriages and their offspring. What precisely does Sandys mean by misfit? He may be subscribing to the old racialist myth that what they call race-mixing leads to physical and moral degeneration. Or he may just mean that such children will be subject to prejudice. Or perhaps he deliberately meant to be ambiguous; to suggest one thing while having a let-out if challenged. If he means that these children would be the victims of prejudice, we can only assume from the fact that his words encourage such prejudice that he thinks it a good thing; that he favours a virtual caste system under which the so-called whites are on top and the so-called blacks at the bottom. We can only suggest that as a former director of Ashanti Goldfields and other goldmining companies in Ghana he should be careful about biting the hands that have fed him for years. He should also be careful about talking of sending people back. Somebody might take his fancy French name as a reason to send him to Normandy.

What to read (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Besides Capital there are various other books and pamphlets that the student of Marxian economics might find useful. Marx himself summarised his views in simple language in an address he gave in 1865 to the First International. This was later published as the pamphlet Value, Price and Profit. The first five chapters deal with views that are no longer widely held if held at all, but from the sixth chapter onwards Marx explains his theory of value and exploitation. Engels, too, wrote a useful review of Capital for a German paper in 1868. Karl Kautsky, who did so much to popularise Marxism, tackled economics in his work The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, which went through many German editions. This sticks closely to the form of the first volume of Capital but also incorporates material from the other volumes which were published after Marx’s death. Another German Social Democrat, Julian Borchardt, in The People's Marx, wrote what translators call "an abridged popular edition of the three volumes of 'Capital' " which, despite the limitations of such abridgements, is worth looking at. 

Perhaps the best original (rather than popularising) work in Marxian economic theory is Louis Boudin’s The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, written in the first decade of this century. This book is no simpler than Capital but it does deal very well with the various criticisms that sprung up after the deaths of Marx and Engels. The best pamphlet is without doubt John Keracher’s Economics for Beginners, published in America in the thirties.

Some of these works will probably not be available at local libraries but they are all in our library at head office.

#    #    #    #

The pages of Capital reproduced on the cover are from the edition published by George Allen & Unwin, translated by Moore and Aveling.

50 Years Ago: Artists and War (1967)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world will never know what men of talent, of genius, who probably would have contributed their quota in the realms of art and literature, poetry and science,' have, through their masters’ orgy of futile organised slaughter, been crushed and destroyed in the ruthless progress of the ‘great war'. It is indeed a tragedy for the individuals and for humanity also.

* • *

To the Socialist it is pleasant to know that certain artists “continue their work as though they had never heard of the war which is now raging”. The spirit of art and that of the warrior are frankly antagonistic. One is creative and contemplative; the other is destructive, and thinks in terms of force. 

(from an article by ‘G’ in the Socialist Standard, September 1917).

How Workers are exploited (1967)

Click on picture to enlarge.

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Law of Value holds that the values of commodities are determined by the quantities of socially necessary labour time congealed in them and that commodities, in the long run, sell at their values.

This Marxian analysis has stood the test of time. All other theories have been found wanting because they are, primarily, subjective rather than scientific. Two examples will suffice: marginal utility and supply and demand. There are no methods for measuring usefulness in any meaningful sense. Not all persons find fishing rods useful and the values of fishing rods are not governed by personal considerations. As for supply and demand, there still remains a value when supply and demand balance each other out, even though some economists maintain that there is a “natural price” when supply and demand equilibrate. Similar limitations apply to the "scholarly, profound” economic text books so popular today.

The evidence of experience has amply demonstrated that there is a correlation between the socially necessary labour time required by society as a whole for the production of commodities and the values of commodities. Both are not only measurable but labour, applied to natural resources, is the only source of wealth. (And this was recognised long before Marx’s time.)

Let us examine the unit of capitalist society: a commodity—an item of wealth for sale in the market. What distinguishes capitalism from all previous social systems is that buying and selling (the dollar bill) permeates every facet of life whether it be a rare art treasure or a loaf of bread; bibles or whiskey.

In the chart above, note the centre block. It represents the commodity. All items to the left of the block indicate hours (units) of socially necessary labour time. All items to the right of the block indicate units of value expressed in dollars.

For purposes of illustration, let us assume we are analyzing a $16 raincoat that took 16 hours socially necessary labour time to produce. Each hourly unit of labour time added $1 in value.

The manufacturer had purchased raw materials and machinery for the production of raincoats. The raw material that went into this coat cost $7 and the depreciation of the machine allocated to the coat was $1. It required 8 hours socially necessary labour time to produce the portion of the raw materials and machinery used up in making the coat. This $8 value was transferred to the value of the coat. It was a mere transfer because 8 hours socially necessary labour time was stored up in it before its use in the raincoat factory.

In order to convert the raw materials and machinery into a finished product, the manufacturer must hire labour power. Machines and raw materials, by themselves, are incapable of producing raincoats. It required 8 hours living labour to make this conversion. Living labour added $8 NEW value to the coat.

The total value of the coat is $16 produced in 16 hours socially necessary labour time.

In order to produce commodities, factory owners must buy such other commodities as raw materials, machinery and labour power (the muscles and brains of workers).

Labour power is a commodity owned by workers, who sell it in the market to capitalists. The value of labour power is determined in the same way as all other commodities: the socially necessary labour it takes to produce it, in other words the socially necessary labour time it takes to produce what a worker needs in terms of food, clothing, shelter, raising a family, training, minor luxuries, etc. This value is expressed in wages.

In the chart, the value of the commodity labour power is represented as being $4. At the end of 4 hours, the worker has created $4 worth of new value (replaced the value of his labour power). Everything should be even-steven. He had fulfilled his obligations and he should be through for the day.

But, lest we forget, labour power and labour time are not synonymous terms. Labour power is a commodity that the worker sells to the capitalist. Actually, labour power is really the only commodity that is exclusively his. However, once he sells it, it becomes the property of the capitalist to use as he sees fit. At the end of 4 hours, the raincoat is only half finished. The capitalist can only sell completed raincoats, which require 8 hours living labour to make.

Here comes the great discovery of Marx: How profits are made by selling commodities at their value and how the workers are exploited at the point of production.

The cost of production was $12 ($7 for raw materials, $1 for wear and tear of machines and $4 for labour power). The value of the commodity is $16. The 4 hours labour time the capitalist did not have to pay for are essential for profiting commodities and constitute the surplus value which belongs to the capitalist class. There is a doggerel called Surplus Value that goes:

The merchant calls it profits
  And he winks the other eye;
The banker calls it interest
  And heaves a cheerful sigh.
The landlord calls it rent,
  As he tucks it in his bag,
But the honest old burglar,
  He simply calls it swag.

Within capitalism, wealth assumes three basic forms: 1. Wealth, as such—things that satisfy human needs and social wants, part and parcel of that social animal, man. 2. In capitalism, wealth takes on the form of commodities — goods for sale in the market. 3. Likewise, wealth, within capitalism, also takes on the form of capital—wealth used to create more wealth with a view to profit. 

What is produced in capitalism is not primarily wealth to satisfy needs and wants (use values); it is surplus value for the capitalist class. It can be said that the capitalist class is a consuming class; it consumes the chief product of capitalism—profits. The workers, like the machines and the cattle, merely consume the necessities to keep them in good working order.

The ownership of the means of producing wealth (capital) rests in the hands of the capitalist class. By virtue of this ownership they are enabled to extract surplus value out of the sweat and blood of the working class.

The mechanism for accomplishing this objective is variable capital—the self-expanding capacity of labour power to create a value greater than itself. As noted above, the raw materials and machinery merely transfer their own value to the finished commodity. That is why they are described as constant capital. 

This chart serves a useful function in the movement for Socialism. It gives a visual picture of basic Marxian economics and presents a panorama of the Marxian Law of Value. For over thirty-five years it has been very effective for use in economic classes. It has been instrumental in encouraging further reading of the Marxian classics and paved the way for a clearer grasp of their contents.

Isaac Rab

(WSPUS)