Trade wars (1993)

From the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a recent meeting at the White House, President Clinton promised John Major that he would "try to make the GATT accord succeed" (Financial Times, 25 February). Subsequently. however, both he and his Secretary of State. Warren Christopher, were less conciliatory in their pronouncements.

Speaking to students at Washington University. Clinton said “we will say to our trading partners that we value their business, but none of us should expect something for nothing". Warren Christopher, addressing NATO foreign ministers, referred to “a new diplomacy that views domestic and foreign issues as inseparable. Wc will elevate us economic security as our primary foreign policy goal” (Daily Telegraph, 27 February).

The North America Free Trade Agreement, the supposed US answer to the European trade bloc, has resulted, however, in the use of cheap labour in Mexico by American industrial manufacturing companies with resultant lay-offs in the corresponding industries in the US.

The United States is constantly calling for a “level playing field" with the other major capitalist powers. This ignores the fact that America has imposed import duties on steel, wine and cereals. The volume of US exports abroad expanded by 74 percent between 1985 and the first quarter of 1992, compared to increases in German exports of 28 percent and those of Japan by less than 20 percent (Financial Times, 10 February). So the "cooperation" that Clinton and Christopher are demanding is really a greater share of the world market.

Barriers

In Europe the promises of prosperity based on an expansion of trade with the former Eastern Bloc countries has given way to the worst recession of the post-war period. Nor has the German economic miracle that was to follow the unification of the two former German states materialised. Instead. Europe now has increasingly bitter internal conflicts over jobs, trade, currencies and interest rates. The volatility of the two latter is indicative of the failure of the larger market to produce convergence or stability.

The average level of unemployment in Europe has risen to 10 percent. Recently 7000 German steel workers demonstrated against proposed job cuts. Car manufacturers in western Europe have drastically cut costs by restructuring plants and laying off workers. Far from stimulating trade, the EEC has put up barriers, particularly to countries such as Poland and the former Czechoslovak Republic whose labour costs are lower (hourly rates for car workers are about one tenth of those of western German workers). Exports to the EEC from the former Eastern Bloc countries have increased to 19 percent during the past half-year. Czech exports to the EC alone rose 10 percent last year to 51 percent of the new regime's total exports. Restrictions on textiles, farm products and cement imports already exist and it is anticipated that these measures will shortly be extended to steel products from Hungary. Poland and Slovakia.

Western capitalist politicians who welcomed the break of the eastern European states with the Soviet Bloc as a triumph for democratic capitalism which would lead to an economic boom are now erecting a reverse version of the Berlin Wall by creating trade barriers.

Japan and China

Japan, a country involved in a worsening slump, is frequently the object of exhortation by American spokesmen to lower its trade barriers on industrial goods as well as rice imports. Industrial production is falling, bad debts are increasing rapidly as property values continue to slide whilst banks struggle with at least 100 billion dollars of doubtful loans. For a country in this position to lower import barriers so as to admit manufactured goods could only worsen a rapidly-deteriorating situation. Domestic sales of cars fell by 7.2 percent in 1991. Importing Fords and Chryslers will hardly mitigate the problem. Against this background Japan can offer a market for little else than Japanese goods. As an export dependent country to an extent greater than its rivals, Japan has no alternative other than to struggle for an outlet for Japanese manufactured goods.

One country whose production is rising rapidly is China which is already beginning to seek an outlet for its manufactured goods on the world market. As it is, China’s exports to the United States are rising and this is causing tension:

  The Americans have made it clear that GATT membership for China will not lay to rest the provisions of America’s own laws that make China’s most-favoured nation (MFN) status a perennial subject of dispute. The Clinton administration’s China policy is still unformed, but it seems likely that human rights, Chinese arms sales and China’s huge trade surplus with the United States (more than $18 billion last year) will all crop up yet again in this years’s MFN debate. (Economist, 6 March).

Already the US trade negotiator Douglas Newkirk has gone on record as saying that ’’China and America are further apart now' than they were before the talks were broken off in 1989”.

What we are witnessing is the division of the world into rival trade blocs where the major powers are following the “beggar thy neighbour policies” of the 1930s. Far from stimulating world trade this can slow it down drastically. All the high-sounding phrases such as “free trade” and “cooperation” are merely attempts to dress in respectable language the struggle of the various capitalist powers to grab a bigger share of the world’s markets.

Many observers have draw n parallels between the present world economic crisis and the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Wall Street Journal (15 February) recalled that Cordell Hull, United States Secretary of State under Franklin D. Roosevelt, had said in 1937 "I have never faltered and will never falter, in my belief that enduring world peace and the welfare of nations are indissolubly connected with friendliness, fairness, equality and the maximum practicable degree of freedom in world trade”. Thus the same nebulous phraseology was being used then as the modern politicians are using now. One other more significant quote is attributed to Hull in the same article, and is said to be heard nowadays in the corridors of GATT headquarters in Geneva, "that when goods don't cross frontiers armies do”. War commenced in Europe two years later.

The present crisis and trade war exemplify the anachronistic nature of capitalism in terms of social development. Marx saw the contradiction clearly:

  The enormous power, inherent in the factory system, of expanding by jumps, and the dependence of that system on the markets of the world, necessarily beget feverish production, followed by over-filling of the markets, whereupon contraction of the markets brings on crippling of production. The life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation . . . Except in the periods of prosperity, there rages between the capitalists the most furious combat for the share of each in the markets. (Capital, Vol.1. chapter 15, section 7)

The present trade war cannot be ended by GATT, NAFTA or G7 summits. It will continue in one form or another as long as world production is organized to produce primarily for profit rather than use. The present mode of production can no more function without trade conflicts than it can without world slumps as we have today.

Terry Lawlor

Virtual reality (1993)

From the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Virtual reality won’t merely replace television. It will eat it alive”. That is the aggressive prediction of Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer. But what is virtual reality (VR) and why should we be concerned about it?

VR is in its infancy so there isn't any general agreement about what it consists of or how fast and in what ways it will grow. Historians of the technology trace its origins back a century or so, to the first explorations of the principle of stereoscopy, or three-dimensional vision. Some decades ago cinema audiences were introduced to 3-D viewing of films, but the novelty didn’t catch on and wasn't developed. In the last decade or so VR has come on the scene in the USA. It has done so in the form of a computer-generated apparent, or virtual, world.

Like many inventions developed in capitalist society, VR benefitted from its military applications. This is how a writer in Business Week (5 October 1992) described a simulation at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency:

 Instantly, you're transported inside a tank rolling across the Iraqi desert. You are performing the same maneuvers as a unit ... in the Persian Gulf war. The graphics on the screens are only video-game quality. Yet the illusion works. You duck as shells scream toward you and explode in ear-splitting fury.

That simulation was achieved by three five-foot screens. A more advanced form of VR is projections on stereoscopic lenses moulded inside helmets that participants wear. Multiple sensory information is conveyed. In some systems, a viewer wearing a sensor-laden glove manipulates objects in the computer. In others, images on the screen or a viewer’s perspective are manipulated with a mouse or joystick. Howard Rheingold, in his book Virtual Reality sums it up:

  A virtual world is a computer that you operate with natural gestures, not by composing computer programmes, but by walking around, looking around, and using your hands to manipulate objects.

VR is a technology, that is, an applied science or way of achieving certain physical ends. Socialists are interested in technology from three different perspectives: as part of a critique of capitalism, as part of the case for socialism, and (controversially) as a feature of socialist society. These three perspectives will be considered one by one. although over time they may be seen as making up a single socialist perspective on the world.

Distorted technology

Technology is used by capitalism mainly to make more profits for the few rather than to improve conditions of life for the many. The extraction of surplus value from workers has been possible since they were first compelled to sell their labour to owners of capital (employers). In the early days of capitalism, productivity was low because there were few machines, or only primitive machines, to make labour more productive. As capitalism developed, the process of exploitation remained essentially the same, but the means of wealth production and distribution became vastly more efficient. The wealth produced is grossly unequally distributed, both between nations and between rich and poor in each nation. And more goods and technological developments sometime have calamitous effects: cars and planes that crash, thalidomide children, nuclear power station disasters, oil tanker spillages, among many others.

VR is a typical example of the way capitalism distorts the development of a technology that has great potential for enhancing the quality of life. So far, most of the development has been for military purposes. Rheingold confidently predicts that “the two largest blocs of users of new information and communication technology in the 1990s will be the global finance and global entertainment industries”. VR might become as addictive, energy-sapping and intelligence-dulling as television, the “plug-in drug” which now requires the average abuser to consume seven hours a day.

Part of the case for socialism is that technology can be used directly for need—meeting and not profit—making purposes. Even with capitalism, technology can and is being used for life-enhancing as well as life-harming purposes—medical technology that saves lives (often after other technologies have imperilled them), environmental measures that increase crops rather than poison them, machines that reduce drudgery rather than killing or maiming workers. Socialism would mean using technology only for human purposes, not balancing those purposes against the pursuit of profit.

The electronic media—of which VR is the latest development—have been used thus far by a few to manipulate the desires of the many, resulting in huge profits for the successful entrepreneurs. With socialism, the really life-enhancing potentialities of VR can be developed, and the capitalist uses put in the history box alongside Cinerama.

Democratic control

With the establishment of socialism, democratic decisions can be made about the appropriate levels and types of technology to meet different needs in different environments. It is utopian in the bad sense to try to predict the future in any detail, except perhaps for fun. But we do need some general principles, today, to help us move towards more detailed principles and their application tomorrow. Marx quite sensibly refused to “write recipes for future cookshops”, but Morris envisaged a basically simple, low technology socialist society in News From Nowhere. Socialists this century have from time to time shown interest in the subject. In the 1950s some Socialist Party members expressed views generally sympathetic to a Morris-type socialist future, though with a critical reaction from most other members who felt there were advantages in retaining at least some hi-tech methods of production and distribution.

At this stage we can only speculate on how and to what extent socialist society will use VR or whatever future refinements of it may be invented. We can say with certainty that, since there will be no buying and selling and no rival nation states to prepare for and engage in war, VR will not be used for business or military purposes.

Three probable areas of VR application may be summarized as medical, industrial and political. The minimal physical activity required to participate in VR may enable the minds of severely physically disabled people to be liberated from the prisons of their bodies. Much work that is now tedious could be made more interesting by simulated realities that enable technical problems to be solved more easily.

The political applications are perhaps the most challenging. Electronic media have so far been controlled by capitalist government and business, whose electors and customers have been mere listeners or viewers. VR experts like to talk of “participants”, and there is scope for interaction between the providers of the virtual worlds and those who experience them. The technology will be there for people in socialist society to use for democratically-decided purposes.

Stan Parker

European Elections Fund (1993)

Party News from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We would like to thank readers for contributing so far £1754 towards the cost of putting up two to three Socialist candidates in the elections to the European Parliament in June next year.

At this rate we should be able to meet our minimum target of at least £6000 well before the end of the year. So, if you want the Socialist message to be heard in these elections and you have yet to send in your contribution, it is not too late. All contributions, however small, will be gratefully acknowledged. Cheques should be made payable to "the Socialist Party of Great Britain” and sent to: Election Fund. The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Letters: Myth (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Myth

Dear Editors,

Watching a demonstration of predominantly young people parading a banner which reads ‘'Alexander the Great was Greek, not Slav!” I ask myself why it is that my own generation, the youth of today, are just as foolishly willing to throw away their lives for their various national masters as were those before them. It seems that whenever death is on the agenda there are always those to be found eager and willing. Hardly surprising, perhaps, when one considers what daily life under capitalism entails.

Of course, nationalism derives its energy not just from poverty, but from the ignorance that is engendered by the profit system, where most of us have no real stake in life and hence no incentive to dip into history and find out things which might strip our capitalist nation-state society of its pretended legitimacy.

In fact, Alexander “the Great” (the inverted commas to underline the fact that military heroes are not my heroes!) was neither Greek nor Slav, but if anything, he was definitely the enemy of the Greeks more than of anyone else.

Alexander was the son of Philip of Macedon, a kingdom to the north of the Greek city-states, and whose warriors had swept over Greece after the fratricidal war between Athens and Sparta. The oppression suffered by the Greek city-states at the hands of Philip and Alexander (Thebes was razed to the ground for daring to challenge Alexander’s tyranny) was such that the Greeks were eventually obliged to call on the Roman Republic for assistance in ousting the Macedonians.

What any schoolboy with the slightest classical education ought to know is apparently unknown to the nationalists who are only eager to die for what they call “Macedonia”, on one side or another, since the name hit the papers. But then, as nationalism is irrational in any case, historical awareness and understanding can only take cover when it is time for fools to start shooting:

   A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London— “Rubbish may be shot here." (definition of “flag” in The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce).

A .K .Walker 

Bournemouth

City violence

Dear Editors,

I thought double standards and muddled thinking were the prerogative of the press and media but Dave Clark of Class War appears even more muddle-headed with his references to “anti-fascist violence”. Presumably, by his reckoning. the bombing of Dresden and other German cities were acts of anti-fascist violence.

Some may recall the annual “Stop the City” campaign of a few years ago which of course did nothing of the sort as the City is still there if not flourishing. At the time of these demonstrations I was working in a stockbroker’s office when a bunch of mindless idiots lobbed a heavy lump of wood through a window, though luckily no-one was injured. I would ask Dave Clark what this or any other act of violence achieved. Violence of whatever kind has never solved anything witness two world wars and the mindless cold-blooded murder taking place almost daily in Northern Ireland.

Denham Ford 

Westcliffe-on-Sea, Essex

The second coming of Keynes (1993)

Book Review from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Fanning the flames of the current resurgence in Keynesian economic thought is the second and most relevant book in Lord Skidelsky’s three-part biography of John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes—The Economist As Saviour 1920-37 (MacMillan. 1992, £20) covers the period when Keynes's most influential and original work was undertaken.

Its subtitle is appropriate enough, for it was in this period that Keynes effectively manoeuvred himself into the dubious position of being seen as the saviour of capitalism. It was certainly a time in which capitalism seemed to need a new saviour, for as the economy dipped in the early 1930s, so did the reputations of the orthodox and dominant capitalist economists like Marshall and Pigou, who had thought a major world slump unlikely.

Law of markets

To these economists—dubbed the "classical school" by Keynes—"Say’s Law" that every seller brings a buyer to market largely held true. Unemployment in the capitalist economy was considered by them to be a essentially transient phenomenon caused principally by temporary and isolated overproduction in certain spheres of industry that did not become generalized, or by wage inflexibility promoted by trade union power. Any long-term unemployment. they thought, could be eradicated through adjustments to real wages.

Keynes, in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), was the first capitalist economist to mount a serious challenge to these views and in so doing developed a theory which he claimed could save capitalism from itself and from the economists who had failed to understand it. As Skidelsky puts it:

  All these (economists], Keynes said, lacked a theory of effective demand, the fatal flaw in the system, he pointed out. lay in the variability of spending relative to earnings; and this was rooted in the use, and purposes, of money. The result was that the market system was liable to collapse into prolonged depression. If the logical flaw in classical reasoning which "proved” this was impossible could be corrected. and communities induced by policy to consume what they can produce, the existing system could be saved, (p. 484)

Keynes’s discovery of the "logical flaw" in the classical economists’ arguments—Say’s Law of markets—was not, however, as revolutionary as Keynes and many of his followers contended. Seventy years earlier Marx had commented that:

  Nothing could be more foolish than the dogma that because every sale is a purchase, and every purchase a sale, the circulation of commodities necessarily implies an equilibrium between sales and purchases . . . its real intention is to show that every seller brings its own buyer to market with him . . . But no-one directly needs to purchase because they have just sold. (Capital, Vol. 1, chapter 3, section 2a).

Moreover, the theory of effective aggregate demand developed by Keynes was itself deficient and led his own key arguments against Say's Law being rooted in under-consumptionist economic thought. Keynes argued that saving constitutes a subtraction from aggregate demand, and that as capitalism proceeds to concentrate more and more wealth into fewer hands, it would be imperiled by the increasing inability of the rich to consume or directly invest all of their wealth.

A good deal of the policy carried out in Keynes’s name by governments wishing to avert slumps has centered on attempts to revive aggregate demand by reducing the incentive to hoard and save wealth and by redistributing income to those sectors of society most likely to spend it. It has never worked, precisely because serious attempts at doing this imperil the very profit-accruing sectors which the capitalist economy finds necessary for its further expansion. This was classically the case with the last British Labour government from 1974-6 when unemployment more than doubled despite concerted intervention on Keynesian lines.

Currency crank

If Keynes’s legacy on the trade cycle and the nature of effective demand in the capitalist economy has been, at best, mixed, much of Skidelsky’s book is spent outlining the genesis of his thought on the one area where he was more muddled still—monetary matters. In his Tract On Monetary Reform (1923) and in the Report of the MacMillan Committee on Finance and Industry (1931) which he helped draft, Keynes outlined the spurious "credit creation" theory which can even now be found in most modern economics textbooks. Keynes's argument was that banks could create multiples of credit, and hence new deposits, from a given initial deposit base, and by so doing, add to purchasing power.

The justifications advanced by Keynes and the MacMillan Committee for the credit creationist view were entirely bogus and rested on an ideal model of a banking system that was very far removed from actual banking practice. In their simple model of a banking system only one bank existed. Into this bank a depositor came along and deposited £1,000 in cash. Operating with a ten percent cash reserve ratio, the bank then lent out £900 which was withdrawn by cheque, only to come back to the same bank as a new deposit. After this transaction. the deposits in the bank totalled £1,900 made up of the initial £1,000 plus the later cheque deposit of £900. Against this liability, the bank had assets of £1,000 cash and £900 owed to it by customers.

Keynes and the MacMillan Committee alleged that this process could be repeated nine more times with a ten percent cash reserve, so that the bank’s books would eventually show £10.000 in deposits balanced by the £1,000 cash together with £9.000 in loans owed by borrowers. Therefore, from an initial £1,000 cash deposit base, the bank had "created" £9,000 of credit. granted as new deposits.

Keynes's theory was entirely spurious because in the real world of capitalism this cannot happen. The assumption of a one-bank financial system is totally unrealistic, as is the assumption that the only money to be withdrawn from the bank’s accounts would be by cheque. Although Keynes and the MacMillan Committee assumed a ten percent cash reserve, they also assumed that in practice this cash reserve would never be called upon by depositors. They took it for granted that the initial £1,000 cash deposit remained entirely unchanged throughout the whole series of transactions. a totally unrealistic proposition by anybody’s standards.

Price level

Keynes’s incorrect views on credit creationism led him to make a number of equally absurd contentions about other monetary matters. Foremost among these was the idea that the banks, because of their ability to create purchasing power, effectively determine the price level. This is what Keynes argued in his Tract On Monetary Reform:

  The initial price level is mainly determined by the amount of credit created by the banks . . . the amount of credit, so created, is in turn roughly measured by the volume of the banks' deposits, (p. 178).

In recent years this view has largely been taken up by the so-called “monetarists" and has periodically been the view held by Conservative governments since 1979. To them, as for Keynes, notes and coins are only the insignificant “small change of the monetary system", with the money supply consisting predominantly of bank deposits supposedly “created" by the actions of the banks themselves. Because of this view a smokescreen has arisen whereby the real cause of the persistent rise in prices since the beginning of the Second World War has been obscured—that is, the policy of successive governments of issuing an excess of inconvertible paper currency in the vain hope that its effects would be only beneficial to the economy as a whole.

In his book Skidelsky makes it clear that the principal opponent of credit creationism and its related fallacies within the realms of capitalist economics was Professor Edwin Cannan of the London School of Economics (who Skidelsky erroneously says regarded himself as a socialist). Cannan correctly contended that banks can “create" nothing and do not determine the price level, being only intermediaries in the financial process who lend out sums of money that have been deposited with them at higher rates of interest than they pay to depositors to attract money in.

Unfortunately, Skidelsky does not acknowledge the sustained opposition mounted by the Socialist Party to the credit creationist viewpoint—virtually alone among all the political parties in Britain and an opposition underpinned by the Marxian proposition that wealth can only arise through production and not via the process of circulation. Nor, in accepting the general Keynesian outlook on effective demand, unemployment, inflation and credit, does he show any awareness of why the “second coming" of Keynes is unlikely to be any more successful than the first. Skidelsky and others should note that the working class has experienced Keynesian failure before, and we don't want or need a repeat performance.

Dave Perrin

Between the Lines: Beyond the hype (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond the hype

It seemed almost impossible to switch on the TV without heating someone talking about Malcolm X. On Monday 1 March Channel 4 showed Seven Songs For Malcolm X: the same night Darcus Howe on Devil's Advocate examined the historical legacy of Malcolm X; on Thursday 4 March Oprah Winfrey interviewed Spike Lee, the director of Malcolm X, the three-and-a-half-hour. $35-million-dollar film; the same night The Late Show had one of its painfully pretentious studio discussions about Malcolm X; on Saturday, 6 March Moving Pictures considered Malcolm X. And the month was only a week old. Thirty-five million dollars evidently is enough to buy a man a place in history.

In all of the discussion one question remained unaddressed: Was Malcolm X a racist? Yes, he was. He was a mob orator who spoke about "the blue-eyed white devil" as "a race of two-legged white dogs". It was Malcolm X who said of whites. "We don't want to integrate with that old pale thing . . . The dog is their closest relative. They got the same kind of hair, the same kind of skin, and the same kind of smell". These views were never retracted, not once disowned. Spike Lee told Oprah Winfrey that in making the film he consulted closely with a man he called “Minister Farrakhan". Ironically. Farrakhan was one of the so-called Muslim Brothers who helped betray Malcolm X to his murderers, but. more importantly, this is the same anti-semitic. fascists black nationalist. Louis Farrakhan. whose speeches and writings have done so much to divert black anger towards hatred and violence.

The white liberal taboo against mentioning racism when it comes from a black rabble-rouser will not be accepted by socialists. Malcolm X was a racist whose main legacy is in the realm of Black Power separatism as preached by Farrakhan and other modern racists; as such he was nothing but an enemy of wage-slaves, both black and white (the labels are themselves racist).

We can recognize the appeal of anti-white racism amongst impoverished wage-slaves who lives were even more stunted than they might be by the prejudices of American racist culture—we recognize it but we are hostile to those who exploit such political appeal, just as we are hostile to the racism of the white supremacists. We recognize also that Malcolm X appeared to change his mind about some of his most venomous views in the last year of his life. But why did he change? Not because he came to reject the religious confusion of Islam or because he accepted class rather than race as the main social division. He changed because he was involved in a sordid leadership battle within The Nation of Islam movement and his one-time fellow leaders were trying to take his house away from him and eventually sought to kill him.

The bullet which murdered Malcolm X came from a gun which he had ideologically loaded. His legacy to black workers today is a force for reaction, not advance. Indeed, whatever criticisms socialists must express in relation to the Christianity of Martin Luther King, there is no doubt that his message of peaceful resistance to oppression and the necessity of gaining democratic opportunities was far more successful and interesting than anything which Malcolm X ever said. The X logos which have been so persistently upon our TV screens might well be seen as the symbols of the politically illiterate. It is to be hoped that Malcolm X's S35-million publicity hype will last no longer than last year's craze for turtles.

Who's being screwed?

Roger Graef’s three-part documentary series, Turning the Screws (C4. 9 pm. finished 4 March) was supposed to be about the lives of prison screws, but very rarely touched on the subject. Its main theme was the battle between the Prison Officers Association, the screws' union, at Wandsworth prison, and the extraordinarily disagreeable prison governor, a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to one of those Nazi POW camp commandants in an old black-and-white film.

The governor was determined to push through new employment conditions which would make life harder for the screws. The POA committee was determined to resist. This was a documentary about the class struggle. And the war-like character of that struggle became all too clear as we saw just how cunningly the two sides pursued the battle.

The ironies were inescapable. Firstly, here were prison guards being seen as militant trade unionists. So much for the left-wing nonsense about police and soldiers and screws being incapable of thinking about their class position. Secondly. as screws who spend much of their time doing some pretty nasty things to their fellow-workers, do we want to offer them our sympathy? Workers in their cells might think differently.

Thirdly, it was evident from the series just how much the life of the screws mirrored that of the inmates. They are both workers stuck in prisons, even though the screws are allowed out for a few hours a day. But most ironically of all. the series depicted with great clarity the economic prison of The Wages System. However well-organized workers are in the battle over wages and conditions (and the trade unionists in the series were no fools), the most that can be achieved is re-arrangement of the terms of exploitation, a re-shuffling of the furniture in the prison cell. Only the abolition of the wages system will bring about real liberation. That is something which the followers of Malcolm X and the militant screws have yet to learn.

Steve Coleman

Only sheep need leaders (1993)

From the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cartoon by the regular Socialist Standard cartoonist, George Meddemmen.

Letter: A Statement Challenged (1950)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from a correspondent:—

Leeds.

To Secretary, Socialist Party of G.B.

Dear Sir,

In your booklet on the Centenary of Communist Manifesto you state in the preface: That in the preface to the 1872 edition Marx and Engels say: “No special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at end of Section II.”

In a debate a speaker denied the accuracy of this, and produced a book which is supposed to contain all the prefaces. The above could not be found in it.

Can you enlighten me on this point? Thanking you in anticipation of your reply, for which I enclose stamped addressed envelope.

Yours faithfully,

L. Benjamin.

Reply.

The above letter relates to a passage on page 3 of the Preface to “The Communist Manifesto—and the Last Hundred Years,” published by the S.P.G.B.

In our Preface we drew attention to the statement made by Marx and Engels in their joint preface to the. 1872 edition of the Communist Manifesto. The whole statement that we quote from Marx and Engels is:

  “No special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded to-day.”

Sixteen years after Marx and Engels wrote that passage Engels, after the death of Marx in 1883, wrote

a new-preface to the 1888 edition of the Communist Manifesto, and in that 1888 preface he quoted again the words that he and Marx had written in 1872.

For confirmation of the above our correspondent can refer his critic to any of the following editions of the Communist Manifesto:—

• The edition published by W. Reeves, London, in 1888 (see page 6). This is the authorised English translation edited by Engels himself.
• “Modern Books” edition, London, 1929 (p. xv). “Lawrence and Wishart” Edition, London, 1939 (P. 8).
• The “Martin Lawrence” edition, London, 1930, with an Introduction and explanatory notes by D. Ryazanoff, Director of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow (p. 260).

This last-named edition does not contain the 1888 Preface by Engels, and its version of the 1872 Joint Preface by Marx and Engels is a translation from the Russian, which was itself a translation from the German. This is doubtless the explanation of the fact that it words the passage slightly differently, as follows:

  “We therefore do not lay any special stress upon the revolutionary measures suggested at the close of the second section. In many respects the passage would have to be differently worded to-day.”

It is clear that the critic who challenged the authenticity of the statement in the S.P.G.B. edition is mistaken. It would be interesting to know what is the book from which he obtained his erroneous information.

Editorial Committee.

Food or Profit? (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again over-production and unmarketable supplies of food are the order of our day. In America food is being stored in barns, caves and even aeroplane hangars, at a cost of approximately £9,000 an hour to pay for storage and the rapid deterioration which is taking place in certain food commodities. Mr. Brannan, America's Secretary of State, says “the situation contains warnings that we cannot ignore, but there is no solution in sight to stop the surpluses piling up higher and higher.” (News Chronicle, 6/3/50.) What wonderful system is this—that brings about the position of food piling up and deteriorating when there is still poverty in our midst?

Why is it—that in Asia, there are millions of people living in poverty and in the main underfed (News Chronicle, 6/3/50), and yet at the same time the other half of the world are letting food rot?

Lord Boyd Orr said at a meeting of the Association of Scientific Workers held on March 5th, that he saw threats of the same vicious circle that contributed to the crisis of 1929-30. He went on to say : “There is already a fight for world markets and this would be intensified when Germany and Japan again entered the field and other countries became more industrialised" (Manchester Guardian, 6/3/50). Lord Boyd Orr thinks that the United Nations with its Agricultural Organisation and World Banks will somehow or the other solve this problem, but it is very noticeable that he does not say how.

Statisticians in the same category as himself miss one vital point, that Food, Clothing and Shelter, which are necessary to sustain human life, are produced, not because people need them, but for sale on a market with a view to profit. When goods cannot be sold, markets become glutted and there arises the position of commodities piling high in warehouses and the like, as already witnessed in America at the present time.

The only solution to any problem is to remove the cause, and until this is accomplished all the Lord Boyd Orr’s in the world will not be able to bring about a state of affairs where there is plenty for all.

Only Socialism can solve this problem, a system of society in which goods will be produced solely for use, where people will work according to their ability and take according to their needs.

J. P.

Our Birthright (1950)

 

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

All members of the working class who ever attended school will, no doubt, remember their mentors’ eulogistic references to the "birthright” which is the proud heritage of everybody who had the great good fortune and common sense to get themselves born in Great Britain. The meaning of this great blessing has somehow always managed to elude the writer—certainly, a "birthright” during the last three or four decades seemed a very obscure and intangible possession, except, of course, for the master class, who by reason of their ownership and control of the means whereby all goods are produced, enjoyed a very real "birthright” in the wealth accruing from the sale of those goods. The extravagant opulence of their lives was accepted as the natural order of things, as was the fact that the workers were poor, and therefore had to make the best of the meanest dwellings, shoddiest clothes and food of little or no nutritional value. An odd sort of “birthright” in the second case, you say? But, nevertheless, it is the only one the workers can expect under the present system, capitalism. And we are grateful to the editor of Reynolds News (8th January, 1950) for his magnanimity in publishing the fact. He begins an optimistic leading article on "Why Labour Will Win the Election” by asserting:—

  "Because Labour is the only Government in Britain's history that has accorded to every man his birthright of work and wages."

Thank you, Mr. Editor, for your information, but it may interest you to know that there are quite a number of workers who look forward to attaining a very different and more concrete birthright than Labour’s offering, i.e.. Socialism.

Inherent within the quotation there is the erroneous assumption that the interests of all men are identical. Socialists, however, realise that present-day society, not only in Great Britain but all over the world, is divided into two classes—the capitalists or owning class, controlling all the means of wealth production and distribution, and the workers who, by reason of their propertyless status in relation to the means of living, are compelled to spend the best part of their lives in their masters’ factories, mills, mines or shops, etc., producing and selling goods. In short, the whole complex business of present-day society is run from top to bottom by members of the working class who, in return for their services, receive wages. You, fellow worker, do not need us to tell you that whatever the amount in your wage-packet, it is never quite enough to, colloquially speaking, “make ends meet.” In fact, in a great number of cases, workers are born to and live a life of direst poverty.

If every man and woman should enjoy such a birthright as just described, the capitalists would not be at all anxious to claim it. We feel sure that they would not consider it worth while leaving their villas in Nice or hotels in the Bahamas to stake their claim. They know and like too well the luxuries which the working-class make possible for them. We seem to hear murmurs of: "How is this possible if we barely get along on a standard of living far below theirs?”

This, then, is where a little simple economic illustration is called for. It is known to Socialists as the theory of value and surplus value and can briefly be depicted thus: A worker is paid the rate for the job at which he is employed but that sum will be much smaller than the values he will create during working-hours. This difference is known as surplus-value, and is the source of the capitalists’ income. For an excellent insight into this aspect of Socialism we would recommend Karl Marx’s "Value, Price and Profit,” in which this question is ably dealt with in a very interesting discourse.

To conclude—Socialists do not want the birthright which the Labour Party acting for capitalism offers. Instead, we want our children, and children’s children to know and accept the birthright of a world wherein labour and wages will not exist. Work will then be the happy performance of some task which will benefit the community—when "Each for all and all for each” will become a fact instead of the pious and hypocritical utterance it is to-day. Wages will be an anachronism in a community where "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is the maxim, and with the existence of common ownership in the means of wealth production and distribution which Socialism presupposes, there cannot be use for either masters or money.

Even to-day, productive powers have reached a level where it would be possible for everybody to have enough—even to-day, it would be possible were it not for the capitalist class who control not only their factories, mines, etc,, but our very lives as well.

Are you going to allow this state of affairs to continue?

Are you going to vote once again for the system which enslaves you?

Or are you, fellow worker, going to join our ranks and help in the historic mission of the working-class —the overthrow of capitalism and the realisation of our real birthright—Socialism?

D. E. A.

William Thompson (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Westdene,” 3, Charteris Road,

Woodford Green, Essex.

The Editor.

Dear Sir,—May I through your valuable columns enquire whether any reader has information about the Irishman William Thompson (1775-1833), Socialist, co-operator, economist, and writer on social questions.

Though largely forgotten to-day, Thompson, who was a friend of Robert Owen, Jeremy Bentham, William Pare, and others, played an important role in his day.

I am engaged in writing a life of Thompson and would be extremely grateful to know if any reader knows of manuscripts, letters or other writings of Thompson.

Yours sincerely,

Richard K. P. Pankhurst, B.Sc. (Econ.).

Blogger's Note:

Pankhurst's biography of William Thompson was reviewed in the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard by Bill Waters. 

Forecast for the future (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no doubt that for the majority of people in this and other lands the future does not offer very much. It is not necessary for us to turn the pages of the history books to see the horror and tragedy that Capitalism has produced. A glance at what has taken place during the life of any reader shows that Capitalism has so far not succeeded in making life the enjoyable adventure that it well might be. Poverty, unemployment, war and insecurity are the main features of which it can never rid itself. More and more wealth is produced, new methods of production discovered and yet millions of working men and women are insufficiently fed, clothed and housed. As more wealth is produced the greater becomes the gulf between worker and capitalist—for all wealth that is produced belongs to the capitalist class. No oppressed class has ever produced more wealth than that produced by the workers to-day and yet, in comparison with what is produced—no section of any community has ever been worse off.

It is only five years since the end of the last war and what do we see? Despite the promises of prosperity, despite the slogans “war to end war” and “peace in our time” which were so glibly given to us by the ruling class, one thing stands out a mile. All modern nations are preparing for war. However much we may desire peace, however sick we may be of the unending blood baths of capitalism, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that another war is on the way. As capitalism develops wars become greater, the weapons of destruction are more effective, new means of mass murder are discovered and periodically the world working class are hurled against each other in a disastrous struggle in order that the interests of the capitalist class may be preserved. The victory of war is never a victory for the workers. It is always a victory for a section of the ruling class.

Socialists are often dubbed pessimistic. Our policy is not one of pessimism or hopelessness, but we tell you to face up to the facts. The future lies before you and it is up to you to fashion it as you desire. Two roads are here—Capitalism or Socialism—which one are you going to take? Capitalism you know and if you are satisfied with it you will continue to give it your support. We Socialists are not satisfied and we have made an effort to understand the world in which we live. Our solution to the problems that confront us is simple—We stand for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism—a system based on common ownership of the means of wealth production. But we cannot establish Socialism until you and the majority of the working class desire it Capitalism with all its horrors will be your lot until you join with us to abolish it. If you are unconvinced have a look at the history of Capitalism and you will see what it has to offer you.

Are you content to make this your lot? At the end of your life will you be able to say you have enjoyed it to the full? Are you not sick of war, unemployment and misery? Do you want to pass this state of affairs on to posterity? The world is really a very beautiful place; life, too, could be beautiful, and yet the conditions of the majority of the people make it very ugly. If you desire something better why not study the case for Socialism? Once you start to do this it will not be long before we will have your agreement. Then you too can join with us in the work that will ultimately lead to the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. Only then will the working class put the past behind them and go forward to a future of peace and prosperity—that of Socialism.

Joan Lestor

It’s an ill wind (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many objectionable things during a war; property and homes are destroyed and lives are tortured and twisted in more ways than one. When peace is declared much remains for which the war must take and get the blame.

The late Robert Lynd had Saturday articles in the News-Chronicle showing the good side to many subjects which were generally accepted as unpleasant, but I never remember his praise of war.

The redeeming feature of modern war is that in so-called civilised countries the great mass of the workers are able to “get by.” This solves their greatest problem. I well remember working as a collector in the 1930’s and being brought close to the problems of my clients, who could not find a few pence each week for me to record on their premium books.

Then came 1940 and the A.R.P., when people previously unemployable were in receipt of the princely sum of £3 5s. every week, without such things as short time or lost time.

What a blessing for “tally men” like us; we found life much easier. Thousands of people in war work who would have ended their days in penury if our generation had been blessed with peace.

Owing to the terrible devastation during the war we find that five years since it ended we are still blessed with full employment and the Labour Party using it as a main plank in their election programme.

Commercial cables received in this country are delivered by special messenger. Before the war this was done by young boys of 15 to 18 years of age, at a wage of about 20s.

Owing to the Greater Production drive and National Service at 18, this labour is now scarce and almost unobtainable at anything approaching an economic rate, and the cable company have been compelled to look to fresh fields. The only available labour is that of the type that in peace time would be on the scrap heap, men of 65/70, incapable of ordinary work but still able to hobble off and on buses. If you live in London and happen to be in the City, glance into Creechurch Lane, E.C. (Leadenhall Street), and you will see the grandfathers sitting in the waiting room of the Commercial Cable Company, and you will realise “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

Many casualties of the 1931 economic blizzard may still lose sleep at night, worrying about the future, but with the help of God, a bit of luck at the “pools” and two more major wars, he may finish up his days in a job. That is all that matters (perhaps), unless you can think of an alternative.

David Boyd

Another banker comes unstuck (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The assertion that higher productivity is the only solution to the problems facing the working class to-day has been repeated so often by the politician and his numerous henchmen that there is danger of the idea being accepted through the sheer force of constantly reiterated suggestion.

The latest interested party to lend the full weight of his personality as a “someone" in the financial world is Mr. H. Bibby, chairman of Martins Bank. Ltd., who was quoted in the Manchester Guardian of 13th January, 1950, as follows: “The truth is there is greater danger of unemployment if we do not use advanced mechanical aids." He also finds necessary “a willingness to work conscientiously when they [the workers] are at work. Any other course would lead to disaster. . . ."

So we are led to believe that increased efficiency is the all-important thing. Only through harder work and better machinery will we solve our problems.

In case you too have read this statement and are suffering from qualms of conscience, or developing a guilt complex over those stolen minutes in the only place where the foreman cannot follow, perhaps you will not feel too badly about it if you turn over the page of your newspaper and read the small item at the bottom of column three. For those who have mislaid their copies it reads as follows: —

“A further two hundred workers have been dismissed owing to redundancy in the engine division of the Bristol Aeroplane Company. This follows the dismissal of two hundred workers between July and November last year, and is described in an official statement issued by the company last night as ‘part of the normal continuous process of strengthening the efficiency of the company’s organisation.' "

And what is efficiency in industry but higher output per man, and how is this achieved but by Mr Bibby's advanced mechanical aids and harder work, and with the same inevitable results as those at the Bristol Aeroplane Company?

J.T.

Puzzle corner (1950)

From the April 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month we set you a different type of problem. This short item, outlining the problem, originally appeared in the Lansing Labor News, and was reprinted in The Western Socialist, organ of our companion party in the United States, in December, 1947. The solution of the problem is presented in the first column of the back page of this issue of The Socialist Standard : —

   “Man can circle the earth without touching the ground; man can kill other men many miles away; man can weigh the stars of heaven; man can drag oil from the bowels of the earth; man can compel an icy waterfall to cook his meals hundreds of miles from the stream; man can print a million newspapers in an hour; man can breed the seeds out of oranges; man can coax a hen to lay 365 eggs in a year; man can persuade dogs to smoke pipes and sea lions to play guitars. Man, in other words, is quite an ingenious and remarkable package of physical and mental machinery.

  “But when this astonishing person is confronted with one problem, he retires to his hut defeated. Show him six men without money and six loaves of bread belonging to men who cannot use it but who want money for it, and ask him how six hungry men can be put in possession of the six surplus loaves, and watch him then, it is then that man attends conferences and appoints committees and holds elections and cries out that a crisis is upon him. He does a score of useless things and then retires, leaving in the shivering twilight the tableau of six hungry men and the six unapproachable loaves.”

Get your pen, paper and envelopes ready; you may need them. When you have read the solution in column one, page 64, right through, from first word to last, from top to bottom, think it over. Then read the sentence in italics at the foot of the column. That’s when you may need the pen, paper and envelope. It’s a prize worth having.

W. Waters.