Cooking the Books: Who invented money? (2021)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whenever goods are systematically exchanged and so become ‘commodities’, one commodity evolves as what Marx called the ‘universal equivalent’ that can be exchanged for any other commodity. So nobody invented money; it came into being spontaneously. At first this money-commodity was gold or silver measured by weight. The next stage in the evolution of money was coinage, where a state stamped an amount of metal to authenticate its weight. In the European tradition this is attributed to King Croesus of Lydia, an area now in western Turkey, in the sixth century BC.

Historical research now suggests that coins may have been invented in China and at a much earlier date, as pointed out by the Mises Institute in an email note of 15 March:

 ‘China was one of the first countries to develop a metallic money that was valued and exchanged by weight. Evidence suggests that this monetary regime originated during the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 BC) or the Zhou Dynasty (1122–221 BC). China was also one of the first countries to use precious metals as money and may have invented coined money.’

Also:

  ‘While ideas about the development of money were expressed as early as the seventh century BC, the most prevalent view of money’s origin is attributable to a politician of the sixth century BC. Shan Qi (b. 585 BC) contended that money was invented by one of the ancient philosopher-kings to measure the value of goods. However, several Chinese writers later disputed this story and argued that money originated as a market phenomenon. Sima Qian (104~91 BC) [sic: actually 145~86 BC], Luo Mi (1165~1173 AD) and Ye Shi (1150~223 AD)[sic: actually 1223] basically argued that money grew out of the trading of commodities and could not have emerged in the absence of commodity exchange. Money was only later adopted by kings as an aid in ruling their countries’ (bit.ly/3dc24Sm).

This same debate took place in Europe, with some arguing that coins were introduced by states to enable taxes to be paid in that form and others that they evolved out of commodity exchange. The debate is still ongoing with the proponents of so-called ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ and David Graeber in his book Debt arguing for the former, a position known in the literature as ‘Chartalism’. The other view is defended by Marxists and the Austrian school of economics as represented by the Mises Institute – strange bedfellows as Ludwig von Mises was an arch-enemy of socialism as well as of state capitalism (which he tended to confuse with socialism).

The case for the state being the inventor not just of coins but of money as a ‘universal equivalent’ is given some plausibility by the fact that today the currency – money as a means of exchange – is entirely the creation of the state, ‘fiat’ money as it is known. Gold and silver coins have long ceased to be used as a means of exchange; this is now made up of paper notes and metal discs issued by the state and which have no value in themselves. They are just tokens or counters that can be used to buy things.

However, the commodity-exchange origin of money is still there. Commodity production and exchange is basic to capitalism and the ratios in which they exchange for each other are still related to their labour content. The state issuing more money tokens than needed to carry out these exchanges does not increase the amount of values in existence or to be exchanged. What it changes is the unit in which the price of goods is expressed, reducing it and so raising the number of them to express prices, i.e., increasing prices all round. Which is why the ‘chartalists’ of MMT would come unstuck if ever their policy was to be implemented.

50 Years Ago: Another Anti-Strike Bill (2021)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bill also provides for the families of men on strike to be reduced below the government’s own poverty line, at the moment £8.50 plus rent a week for a married couple. (…) The extra suffering this will cause should please employers like Lord Stokes who from their well-upholstered boardrooms have been complaining of strikers being featherbedded. Extreme poverty will once again become an important factor in weakening the workers’ side in strikes. How useful financial hardship amongst the strikers can be to the employer was well shown during the Post Office strike and the postmen would undoubtedly have had to give in earlier had this new Bill been in operation.

The government’s Social Security Bill is a vicious anti-working class measure which is intended to hurt the wives and children of workers in order to discourage strikes and force strikers back to work. Like the Industrial Relations Bill, it will strengthen the overall position of the employing class in its struggle with the working class over wages and conditions. For this reason the Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to this Bill.

But in doing so, we have no illusions about the role of governments in capitalist society. We do not really expect them to subsidise strikes against their masters, the capitalist class, and are not surprised that the present government is taking advantage of working class apathy and ignorance to cut back on some social reforms which, however marginally, favour the working class. This apathy and ignorance is partly the result of the failure of reformist parties like Labour and of the propaganda of the capitalist press. The old socialist saying that the best way to get or defend reforms (if that is what you want) is to build up a strong revolutionary Socialist movement remains true. That is our policy for dealing with the current Tory attacks on long-standing social reforms.

(Socialist Standard, May 1971)

Humans Being Human (2021)

Editorial from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a terrifying time. This is truly the most cliff-edge, make-or-break moment in the history of the world, in the human story.

Since we first emerged as a species, many thousands of years ago, humans have done two things. We have invented and built more and more powerful tools with which to supply our needs. Technology is now developing exponentially, so that even in a matter of months, huge advances occur. Secondly, we have formed different social systems, each giving way to its successor every few hundred years or less.

From early ‘hunter gatherer’ societies, through ancient slavery, medieval feudalism, early mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism and today’s global, digital capitalism, the structure of society has changed dramatically. New technologies have made it necessary to revolutionise the way work (and every other aspect of society) is organised. Power struggles between different classes have been the mechanism of revolutionary change. Each new social system has had its own social relations, its norms, its priorities… and always at the heart of each system is the key working relationship which defines its way of providing for humanity’s survival.

Throughout the world today this defining feature is employment. Wage slavery. Salaried staff. Ninety-nine per cent of the population having to work in return for payment only meeting their most basic needs for the most part, whilst we devote our energies to creating far greater wealth for the shareholders and/or state plutocrats who own and control major capital resources.

Human behaviour is more diverse than that of other animals. As a species we are extremely adaptable, versatile, changeable – and able to co-operate with one another in highly complex and sophisticated ways – if we feel the need and if we so choose. Each of these successive social systems we see evolving through human history has made humans act in certain ways, has shaped our incredibly changeable human behaviour anew.

The reason we live in terrifying times is that the social system we live under now has reached breaking point. The tension is more than palpable. The way that society has been structured for the past few hundred years is no longer tenable. We have the technology and resources to feed, clothe, house and meet all the needs of several times the world’s population. But the social priority is still to generate financial profit for a tiny minority, and if production is not profitable, it gets closed down. Repeatedly. Even whilst people starve.

And that’s just the start of it. The world-wide social system we live within also causes, as inevitable consequences of its in-built priorities: war, crime, poverty, climate crisis, homelessness, corruption, competition, global disharmony and conflict, failure to plan, failure to provide for emergencies…

There is a glaringly obvious solution to all of this, which we set out and explore in the pages of this magazine, and in all of our work as a democratic political movement for genuine socialism: a new, co-operative commonwealth in which we each contribute according to our abilities, and take according to our needs.

Some will object that this solution ‘goes against human nature’. They are wrong. It is human nature to solve problems through co-operation, intelligence, hard work and determination. What such opponents of social progress mean by ‘human nature’ is that positive solutions may challenge much of the human behaviour which has been fostered by the current, cut-throat, competitive system we struggle and suffer under. But even within this sick, rotten, outdated system there are constant, incessant reminders of the reality of human co-operation, intelligence, rationality, compassion and solidarity. It is today’s world capitalism which is the true enemy of our nature as humans, as it pits us against one another and causes endless unnecessary misery.

Produce more—children ! (1923)

Editorial from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool some of the scientists demonstrated once again that the payer of the piper calls the tune. Official science must give evidence, now and again, that it is a bulwark of capitalism, so that learned professors may obtain the wherewithal to live and carry on their studies.

Many years ago it was alleged that an important cause of the workers’ poverty was the largeness of the worker’s family. Since that time war has swept away a huge number of the pick of manhood. In spite of this latter fact, there are, at the present time, nearly two million workers wanting employment. One would imagine, therefore, that any present restrictions in the size of the worker’s family would be welcome, particularly as so much is made of the difficulty of handling the “unemployment problem.”

But the capitalist does not aim at solving unemployment. If he did solve this problem he would be placed in a similar position to that in which he found himself during the war—forced to pay comparatively high wages on account of the shortage of the labour supply. Since the war the labour supply has overflown the demand, and the capitalist has been able to press wages down.

Under capitalism business moves at varying rates of speed. At one time there is a rush of business ; at another time there is a slump. The employers require a supply of labour sufficient to meet the demands, of brisk business and still have a sufficient number of workers over to prevent those in work from demanding wages above the normal. In periods of slump the number of workers over during the busy time is swelled by the number the slump throws out of work, and the unemployment problem becomes acute.

The growing difficulty of sustaining life, even at the best of times, has a tendency in recent years to force the workers to limit the size of their families. The capitalist sees in this a dangerous symptom—a symptom that might reduce the industrial reserve army and limit the extent of his profits.

It is just here that the scientist can lend him some aid—and he does his “duty.”

The Special Correspondent of the Daily News, reporting the speech of Dr. Vaughan Cornish, President of the Geographical Section, writes :

  “In his opinion if you are to do your duty to the Empire you must have at least four children. He made it clear that you should not invite children into the world for their own pleasure or amusement, but should enlist them, as it were, in an army for home defence.

  “In his view it appeared children were merely potential soldiers.

   “In order to have strategic security in this, island,” he insisted, “we must be able to meet the air force of a European combination as well as to carry out our traditional plan of dispatching a powerful expeditionary force for the support of a friendly Power. This active defence requires a large population.”—(“Daily News,” 14/9/23.)

Imagine urging us to increase our families so that our children may provide food for guns ! And the monuments to the “glorious dead” are still being covered with wreaths, though their dependants cannot find the necessary covering to shelter them from the inclement weather.

But the patriotic plea put forward is only a cloak for the masters’ desire for cheap labour.

Not only do the masters require an industrial reserve army, but they also require a plentiful supply of youthful labour. Machines are taking a greater part in industry as time goes on, and the operation of these machines is becoming more and more the work of children. In spite of official regulations, the half-time system is growing. According to the Westminster Gazette (27/8/23), there are 3,437 children between the ages of 12 and 13 at work in Staffordshire alone. In Rochdale the number of half-timers increased from 871 in 1915 to 1,219 in 1920.

Therefore, workers, if you would raise-up multitudes of youthful competitors and provide the employers with cheaper labour, then heed the advice of the scientist—be fruitful and multiply.

Letter: The Socialist Party and Trade Unions. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manchester,

July 5th, 1923.

Comrades,

Your contention that the workers do not pay rates and taxes on the basis that what he hasn’t got he cannot part with has always seemed to me quite sound. But in this month’s Socialist Standard Comrade Reynolds declares, “For, bad as the condition of the working class is, only a fool would deny that it could be far worse.” This seems to me to contradict the above, for if his condition can be made worse, to say nothing of far worse, it surely can be made so by the capitalists collectively (taxation) as by the capitalists individually (wages).

The point I would wish to make is that, according to our friend Reynolds, the worker has a surplus or margin above the bare subsistence level, thus rendering him susceptible to taxation in his degree even as the man with £10,000 a year.

Yours fraternally,

Inquirer.

Reply:

Our contention that taxation does not affect the working class is in no way contradicted by the statement quoted from the July Socialist Standard. The statement is made to indicate the fact that the struggle of the workers on the economic field over the question of wages, hours, and the general conditions of employment does to some extent act as a brake upon the tendency of capitalism to worsen the condition of the working class. The writer does not imply that the workers have “a surplus or margin above the bare subsistence level, thus rendering them susceptible to taxation”; on the contrary, he implies that it is necessary for the workers to carry on the struggle in order that they should realise the value of their labour-power.

Of course, the workers have no surplus above the subsistence level, out of which to pay taxes. But it does not follow that because of that fact their condition could not be worse than it is at present. The social condition of the workers not only could be worse, but is actually becoming so as capitalism develops. For instance, as more efficient methods of wealth production are introduced, unemployment increases, and, with the consequent increase of competition for jobs, the workers are subject to a more intensive exploitation, their position is more insecure, and their poverty becomes greater than ever.

Now “Inquirer” seems to be of the opinion that the level of subsistence is a fixed point. But that is not the case. The workers sell their energy to the capitalist at the cost of their subsistence, but the cost of subsistence depends upon, among other things, the standard of living which varies, in different trades and in different countries. The standard of living is a product of historical and social forces, and may be raised or lowered. As Marx puts it :

  “The value of labour is in every country determined by a traditional standard of life. It is not a mere physical life, but it is the satisfaction of certain wants springing from the social conditions in which people are placed and reared up. The English standard of life may be reduced to the Irish standard ; the standard of life of a German peasant to that of a Livonian peasant.”— (“Value, Price and Profit.”)

And, as the whole history of capitalism shows, the tendency is in the direction of lowering the standard of living of the workers, to the extent, to use the words of Marx, of reducing the whole working class to the “utmost state of degradation.” Around this question of the standard of living a constant struggle goes on between the workers and the capitalists. The former endeavouring to maintain it at a certain level, and the latter endeavouring to reduce it to its lowest point. It is precisely here where the organisation of the workers on the economic field functions. By means of withholding their labour-power, or threatening to do so, the workers do, to a certain extent, put a brake upon the encroachments of capital. In other words, whilst the workers by trade union action cannot altogether prevent the worsening of the social condition, they can slow down the worsening process.

To state such an obvious truth, namely, that the condition of the workers could be far worse, is something totally different from saying that the workers have a surplus above the subsistence level out of which to pay taxes. For the workers to be susceptible to taxation would necessitate their getting a surplus above the amount necessary for their subsistence as wealth producers for the capitalists, and this they do not get. Consequently, the capitalists cannot make the condition of the workers worse by means of taxation. They can and do, however, by means of reducing wages and intensifying exploitation, a fact with which we as workers are painfully acquainted.

Robert Reynolds

A professor on the equality of opportunity. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

  “What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne—we may stop there. Of these all but Keats, Browning and Rossetti were university men; and of these three Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well-to-do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say; but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact nine out of those twelve were university men, which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact of the remaining three you know that Browning was well-to-do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well-to-do, he would no more have attained to writing “Saul” or the “Ring and the Book,” than Ruskin would have attained to writing “Modern Painters,” if his father had not dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income ; and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats, whom Atropos slew young, as he slew John Clare in a madhouse, and James Thompson by the laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but let us face them. It is—however dishonouring to us as a nation—certain that by some fault in our commonwealth the poor poet has not in these days, nor has bad for two hundred years, a dog’s chance. Believe me—and I have spent a great part of the last ten years in watching some 320 Elementary Schools —we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.”

(Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, “On the Art of Writing,” page 33, 1923 Edition.)

£1000 Fund. (1923)

Party News from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Cooking the Books: Market failure (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Businesses never spontaneously take into account the interest of the capitalist class as a whole, let alone that of society in general. They have always acted on the basis that, as Thatcher put it, there is no such thing as society. One result has been the current global overwarming, which Nicholas Stern, in his report to the Labour government on the economics of climate change, described as the biggest market failure ever.

Businesses leave it to governments to represent the overall capitalist interest but, even here, they are reluctant to let governments interfere with their freedom to make profits in the way they want. Not that, these days, governments want to impose coercive restrictions on capitalist businesses. Environment minister David Miliband has openly declared:

“Climate change is, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, the greatest ever market failure, but the answer is not to replace markets. Instead, we need to price pollution into markets and extend market mechanisms so that they work more effectively” (Times, 12 February).

In other words, calling on Beelzebub to cast out Beelzebub. But some supporters of Beelzebub are not content even with this light touch. In an article entitled “A free market solution to global warming” the US business correspondent of the Times, Gerard Baker, put it ironically:

“Man-made global warming is, if the critics are correct, the biggest example of market failure in the history of the planet. It makes Marx’s critique of capitalism look like nitpicking. Inequality and labour alienation we can live with. Global warming is a bit harder” (20 February).

He then went on to point out that the sort of measures envisaged by Stern and Miliband wouldn’t be enough:

  “Despite reassuringly low-cost estimates from the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern, attempting to arrest and then roll back carbon emissions by relatively mild taxation and regulatory measures over decades looks a tall order. If you are really serious about it, you need to be thinking in terms of an internationally mandated programme of regulation and control over economic activity that will surpass anything ever seen in human history”.

Capitalism, he implies, just couldn’t afford this: “The real present-day cost of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere substantially below where they are now is almost certainly prohibitive and ruinous to economic growth”.

As an alternative to what he calls “the leap into the socialist abyss” he advocates “measures to limit the effects of global warming – improving sea defences for example”. One better than King Canute but likely to be just as ineffective in the long run.

Not that socialists advocate “an internationally mandated programme of regulation and control” over capitalist businesses. What we want is for the production of the useful things that people need to live and enjoy life to be taken out of the hands of profit-seeking enterprises altogether. We want the means of production to be owned in common by the whole community as the only basis on which production can be organised to take account of the overall interest of all the members of society.

In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to regulate; just democratically-run productive units producing, in an ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need.

Letters: Class War (2007)

Letters to the Editors from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class War

Dear Editors

I read the review of Ian Bone’s Bash the Rich (March Socialist Standard) with interest as a few years back I had a couple of pints with the author in a pub in Bristol. And until recently he could be found selling the excellent community news-and-scandal sheet The Bristolian in that same fair city.

Indeed, one of the most interesting sections in his “confessions” deals with his involvement in a similar publication in Swansea during the late 1970s called Alarm. Populist, pro-working class publications are evidently what he does best, and the mother of them all of course turned out to be Class War.

Here’s my “confession” . . . I always had a bit of a soft spot for CW. Their political positions (such as they were) were always closer to the Socialist Party’s than most anarchists and any lefties. And the paper in its heyday was something to behold. But – and it’s a big but – their avowed methods were, and are, different from ours in the extreme. Bone quotes a comrade of his criticising elitist violence (as opposed to political mob violence) by stating ‘petrol bombs are far more democratic than dynamite’. OK then, but isn’t democratic political action even more democratic still? And, of course, CW famously developed a veritable obsession with the “middle class” that they saw as standing between us and the ruling class.

As his memoirs end abruptly around 1985 we can presumably await further fond rememberings, no doubt featuring tales of the anti-Poll Tax conflict of the early 1990s. Until then, Ian, if you’re reading this, where on Earth did the bloody Bristolian vanish to?

Ben Malcolm, 

Bath.

Capitalism

Dear Editors

Thanks for the review of my book Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction (March Socialist Standard), which I appreciate. I introduce the notion of a stage of managed capitalism largely in order to contrast the tendencies of the period (roughly speaking) 1850-1970s with what has happened since the 1970s. I agree that there are continuities across this watershed – the concentration of capital has, for example, steadily increased – but I think we need some notion of a different stage since the 1980s in order to make sense of Thatcherism and New Labour, their similarities and their difference from old Conservatism and old Labour.

While it appeared to many in the 1970s that capitalism was collapsing, and there was plenty of evidence they could draw upon – notably the global decline in rates of profit – capitalism did seem to get a new lease of life in the 1980s.

On the issue of whether the Soviet Union was a form of state capitalism, I would argue that the institutional differences between the Soviet system and the capitalist countries are sufficiently great to warrant the treatment of the Soviet system as fundamentally different, though I would agree that the Soviet Union was a part of the capitalist world economy rather than distinct from it and that it was another means by which labour was systematically exploited. If one treats the Soviet system as a form of state capitalism it is also more difficult to make sense of the 1990s transformation of Russia and its consequences, which flowed from the introduction of capitalist mechanisms.

Perhaps you are too pessimistic on the possibility of changing capitalism, since there have been many important institutional changes in many different countries at many different times. By change you mean change from rather than change of! Are there any signs that a change from is going to happen?

James Fulcher 

War

Dear Editors

I agree with Bob Dixon (book of poems reviewed in the March Socialist Standard) that the working class do not give much thought to wars. Some regard them as part of life. You can see this from the way they buy poppies and the way they attend ceremonies which glorify wars. Although many join the forces for adventure and to escape poverty. But we must try to change this culture of war by any means we can including by poems like Bob Dixon’s. If you join the forces you will be expected to kill and be killed. All wars are illegal and you will be expected to fight for the ruling class. Who will put poppies on your grave? You will become part of the poppy day parade. No sympathy. No comment. Just silence. Like the dead.

Joe Boughey, 

Newton-le-willows.

Death penalty

Dear Editors

In his article (Socialist Standard, March) John Bissett explains some of the cruelties of the death penalty, and talks movingly of his own experience of trying to support someone on death row. As a constitutionally secular society that, ostensibly at least, champions the right of the individual, executions in America seem particularly perverse.

Of course, it’s unlikely that anyone reading this letter is likely to have any overly idealistic ideas about the American government (to say the least!) but couldn’t we at least hope for them to not engage in such a seemingly obvious contradiction of the values for which they claim to stand?

A real turning point for me, in my understanding of both the death penalty and my attitude towards it, came from reading the book ,Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment the American Conscience and the end of executions, by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. I really found this to be one of the cleverest and most illuminating books I’ve ever read. I was honestly bowled over by the skill with which the authors tackled this subject. Rather than dwelling exclusively on the point that executions aren’t terribly nice for the person getting killed in this manner, and then vilifying anyone who possessed the inhumanity to express even the slightest sympathy for it under any circumstances ever (as I might have been tempted to do) the authors adopt a diametrically different approach – seeking to understand, rather than pass judgment, on everyone in any way involved in the death penalty process or expressing an opinion on it.

The authors draw a distinction between personal emotions concerning violent crime, and government policy. As they put it: “we can well understand how a husband or sister of a murder victim might want to tear the killer limb from limb; we’d probably feel the same way, at least initially. Yet this does not provide a clear indication about what society should do with convicted killers.”

I’ve had a few conversations with people who regarded themselves as supporters of the death-penalty who I’ve managed to bring around to agreeing it wasn’t a good idea, by first expressing sympathy for their sense of indignation and wish for vengeance, and then gently asking them if they thought the death penalty would really help stop such things (i.e. violent murders) from happening.

The authors explain how the condemned man comes to serve a symbolic purpose – representing evil that needs to be purged, and, a “hard” attitude towards crime generally. This is of course relevant to other groups that can come to represent evil, and towards whom a similarly “hard” attitude is seen as appropriate, i.e. “Islamic terrorists”.

The death penalty is significant not just from the point of view of the suffering it causes to its victims (and everyone else involved in the death penalty process – a point explained by Lifton and Mitchell), but also because it is related to fundamental moral and psychological issues that are a part of everyone’s lives, to do with justice, vengeance, forgiveness, and the value we place on human life. By improving our understanding of these, and learning to ditch the attitude of considering people as “evil” in favour of recognizing them as flesh and blood humans like ourselves, erring and misguided though they may be, we can start to gain a recognition of our shared humanity that, when shared by enough of us, will help bring an end to all instances of inhumanity and neglect.

Adam Waterhouse, 

Bristol

Cooking the Books: A stroke of the pen (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is to revise the way Britain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is calculated. According to the Times (26 February) “from 2008 the ONS will also add into GDP an estimate of the output generated by banks related to the higher rates of interest they charge on loans compared with deposits”. Output generated by banks? What are they talking about? Banks don’t produce anything.

It is just that, given the way a country’s output is calculated, banks have to be assumed to produce something. The value of the new national output produced in a year has theoretically to equal the total annual income of the country’s inhabitants as wages, profits, rent, interest, fees, etc in that year (national income). One way new national output is calculated is to add up the monetary value of the goods and services on which the national income is spent (final consumption). To do this it is assumed that whatever a sum of moneyfor this purpose is spent on is an “output”.

Thus, interest paid to banks is assumed to be a payment for the bank’s “output” (the service of lending the money). Similarly, taxes are assumed to be a payment for the government’s output (the “service” of providing “defence” and “law and order” as well as health and education).

This is all right for statistical purposes, but wrong if this statistical device is taken for reality. In reality neither banks nor governments produce anything. They – or rather, the workers employed by them – do of course do something, but the activity of banks and governments is in the end paid for out of the surplus value produced in productive industry which transforms materials that originally came from nature. In the case of the government this is obtained through taxes. For banks, it’s through interest.

An ONS paper explains how banks work, better in fact that most economics textbooks: “In essence, financial institutions provide services in two ways; by direct charging (overdraft fees, mortgage arrangement fee), and by an interest differential; that is paying depositors less than they charge borrowers . . . For example, current accounts are usually maintained free by financial institutions,

and the associated costs are met by the difference between the low interest payments awarded on credit balances maintained in such accounts whilst the bank lends funds from such accounts at a higher rate to borrowers”.

In other words, no nonsense about banks “creating” credit or deposits, but a recognition that they make their money by lending out money deposited with them at a higher rate of interest than that paid (if at all) to those who deposit money with them. Even so, this description is still tied to the concept that banks provide a service, i.e., that they are selling something. But what?

Because of the theoretical and practical problems involved in the idea of banks selling something, the national income statisticians have till now not included in GDP any value for the “output” of banks for the services they are regarded as providing – banking facilities for depositors – and for which they don’t charge. The solution they have come up with, and which will be applied in Britain as from 2008, is to regard the income of banks from “paying depositors less than interest than they charge borrowers” as a notional payment for these notional services.

It’s a bit of an artificial solution and it will increase GDP by a one-off 1.9 percent or so – which is more than normal growth in some years – by a mere stroke of the pen. But one held by statisticians rather than the bankers of currency crank myth.

Greasy Pole: The fall of the House of Lords (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The House of Commons has expressed a preference for turning the House of Lords into a wholly elected chamber. This is being touted as a great democratic advance: the final abolition of the hereditary principle in political decision-making, something that has been talked about and promised by Liberals and Labourites for well over a hundred years, and the end of the sale of peerages to jumped-up businessmen and their distribution to cronies and superannuated politicians.

A second chamber (such as the House of Lords evolved into) is an anti-democratic concept. Nearly all capitalist states have one and in all cases it was intended to be a check on the power of the more popularly elected first chamber. The US Constitution is a prime example. It was drawn up towards the end of the 18th century when the propertied class were still afraid – as they were to be for the whole of the following century – of what might happen if they gave the vote to all (male) adults, such as the taxing away or the dividing up of their property. They therefore provided for a Senate that was explicitly modelled on the British House of Lords except that it excluded the hereditary principle.

Feudal relic

Britain doesn’t have a formal constitution; only a set of constitutional practices that have evolved over the years. The House of Lords dates from feudal times when the Norman barons who had conquered England forced their leader, the King, to take their views into account. Originally it was the House of Lords that was the “first chamber”. The House of Commons was a body convoked to represent the non-noble elite in the towns whenever the king wanted to raise money by taxing them.

The House of Commons became the instrument which, from the 16th century onwards, the rising capitalist class of the towns used to win control of political power, first at the expense of the king and, later, at the expense of the House of Lords. Under Cromwell, not only was the king executed but the House of Lords was abolished. That proved to be an interlude only. Even so, Charles II, when his family was restored to the throne in 1660, did not undo the anti-feudal reforms carried through under Cromwell. But he did restore the House of Lords and made many more lords (some his illegitimate sons). When his successor, James II, tried to revive the “divine right of kings” to rule, both the Lords and the Commons united to boot him out in what they called the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 and replace him with a new king – William of Orange – and a new royal family chosen by them.

From that time on, the king’s chief – “prime” – minister and the “cabinet” of other ministers had to be able to command the support of a majority of members of the House of Commons. That body was elected, but not on any sort of democratic basis. Only a tiny minority of those living in a parliamentary constituency had the vote. In many cases, these depended on the local landowner who was thus in a position to choose the MP. All the same, parliament was able to reflect changes of opinion amongst the privileged class of landowners and merchant capitalists and there were changes of government even in the corrupt 18th century.

With the industrial revolution, the newly emerging propertied group of factory-owning capitalists agitated to share in the political decision-making process. The result was the Reform Act of 1832 which admitted the “middle class” – in the proper sense of the term as the propertied class between the upper class of landed aristocrats and the lower class of propertyless wage workers – to the franchise and so to a say in who got elected to parliament and who formed the government.

For the rest of the 19th century the British constitution was a compromise between the capitalist class and the landed aristocracy. The capitalists accepted that the top posts in the government should be in the hands of landed aristocrats as long as these governed in the capitalist interest. Thus, apart from the Gladstone/Disraeli double act, most of the other 19th century prime ministers were lords – the Duke of Wellington, Earl Grey, Lord Melbourne, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, Earl Russell, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Earl of Roseberry. But, by the 20th century this was no longer acceptable and when in 1963 the Tories, rather inexplicably, chose the 14th Earl of Home as their Leader he had to renounce his peerage and get elected to the House of Commons.

Lloyd George knew my father

In 1909 the Lords made the fatal mistake of putting their own sectional interest as landowners first by rejecting the budget drawn up by the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George, because it imposed death duties on landed estates. Nemesis was swift. The Liberal government called two general elections and won both. The Lords submitted and voted for the budget. In 1911 the powers of the House of Lords were restricted to only delaying for two years, not rejecting, any laws voted by the House of Commons and from then on they only second-guessed the Commons on minor matters of drafting detail. The British State had been made subject to complete capitalist control.

If the Lords hadn’t submitted in 1910 the Liberal government had been prepared to create enough new peers who supported them to obtain a majority for its budget in the House of Lords. The idea must have appealed to Lloyd George since, when he was the prime minister in a Liberal-Tory government after the first world war he earned a reputation for selling seats in the House of Lords. This led to the Act of Parliament banning this, under which the Blair government is now being investigated. But the practice of a peerage for jumped-up businessmen in return for donations to the Tory or Liberal or Labour parties continued, though more discreetly.

In 1948 the period by which the Lords could delay laws voted by the Commons was reduced to one year. The Labour Prime Minister of the time, Clement Attlee, had once declared that if offered a peerage he would call himself Lord Love-a-Duck of Limehouse. When he retired from politics in 1955 and was made an Earl he chose the rather more conventional title of Earl Attlee. Life peerages were introduced by the Tories in 1958 and in 1999 the Blair government limited to 90 the number of hereditary peers entitled to a seat in the House of Lords pending a final settlement of the question.

It is by no means clear that the proposal for a wholly-elected House of Lords will go through, despite the vote for this in the House of Commons. The present members of the House of Lords – life peers just as much, if not more, than the dukes, earls and marquesses – don’t want to vote themselves out of existence. So, more negotiations and amendments can be expected as the saga continues.

Much time and energy will be wasted on this irrelevant side-issue which won’t affect the position of workers either way. Irrelevant because the point at issue is a detail of the structure of the capitalist state. Diverting because it sustains the impression that politics is about what goes on in parliament: the sham confrontations of Prime Minister’s Question Time, the ambitions of leaders and would be leaders, the squabbles of the professional politicians. Whereas politics is really about collective action to deal with the everyday problems that affect everyday people.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: £400 for a Slave (2007)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fairly recently King Saud of Saudi Arabia visited “the land of the free”—the United States of America, where he was feted by President Eisenhower, and other American politicians. Little is known of his country except that there is sand—and more important—oil, in Saudi Arabia. But a recent United Nations report (News Chronicle, 22/ 2/57) gives us some idea just how “free” and democratic King Saud’s oil-soaked land is.

According to the report Saudi Arabia has 450,000 slaves— just 20% of the population. Prices on the Jeddah slave market were said to be between £200 and £400 for a girl under 5; £150 for a man under 40 and £40 for an old woman. Like Christian Archbishops who also live quite well, Moslem Kings, such as King Saud, do not condemn slavery—chattel slavery in Arabia, and wage-slavery in Britain!

(from “Odds and Ends” by Peter E. Newell, Socialist Standard, April 1957)

The Capital Levy. (1923)

From the August 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent war caused an enormous increase in the National debts of most of the belligerent nations, and the burden of finding interest has helped to popularise an old bogey, trotted forward in a new disguise as the Capital Levy. It has been made one of the main planks in the Labour Party’s programme, and was presented in various lights and with varying degrees of warmth by Labour men at the General Election. In the main, it seems to have been useful to that party as a rallying cry for the more aggressive of the industrial workers; and in quarters where the votes were sought of the mentally more slavish section, which goes by the misleading name of the middle class, the local members did their best to explain that the levy really didn’t mean much. Most opponents relied chiefly upon the iniquity of robbing the capitalist of his savings, etc.

We, however, are not concerned with this purely superficial attitude towards the proposal. As Socialists, we are bent on discovering by what means the position of our class may be advanced. Our class consists of all those people who, not being owners of property, must sell their mental and physical energies to those who are owners. This proposal must stand the general test—Is it or is it not one which is useful to the workers?

In the “Forward” (Saturday, May 5th, 1923), Mr. F. W. Pethick Lawrence, a Labour candidate and prominent advocate, sets out what he calls “The Case for the Capital Levy,” with the sub-title, “Lift the Burden of Debt from Industry and Labour.”

Now, we are agreed that there is a burden ; and, further, that people who have burdens are naturally interested in having them lifted; but Mr. Lawrence makes the somewhat important omission of not troubling to prove that the debt is a burden on the workers. If it isn’t, why should the workers trouble to lift the burdens of the capitalist class? And, on the other hand, what are we to think of an organisation which asks them to do so?

Let us consider the matter in an elementary way. First, can Mr. Lawrence deny that a small class does own the bulk of the means of producing wealth in this and other capitalist countries? This is a matter of common knowledge, for which it is not necessary to quote statistics.

Owning the means, the capitalist class also own the products. If you are a boot operative, you know that all the boots, when they are finished, belong to your employer ; and so throughout the productive system in which we live. As a worker you receive wages or salary at certain intervals, the length of which is immaterial. Your wages are drawn from the store of wealth produced by you, but owned by your employer. The reason he gives you something he would willingly keep, is surely not that he loves you. It is a simple necessity that you must have the means of obtaining food, clothing, and shelter, recreation, etc., in order that you may continue alive and in a state of sufficient fitness.

Then, what is it that determines for the workers as a whole the amount given in return for services rendered? We contend that, broadly regarded, that amount is based for different sections of workers, under different climatic conditions and with different social standards and different lines of historical development, on their standard of living. This may change, and in an immediate sense it fluctuates up or down according as there is a comparatively large or small supply of labour, and according to the degree and method of organisation. Generally, however, the capitalist class must pay away so much wealth for the upkeep of the wealth producers, and the surplus is theirs.

But the matter doesn’t end there. The same class also controls the political machinery, the Government, in all these capitalist countries. It must control politically in order to safeguard its private ownership. But the great and growing State services cannot be run for nothing. The capitalists must dip into their surplus to find the necessary cash—a proceeding to which they all object very strongly.

Needless to say, sections among the owning class are always willing to hand over their share of the burden to their weaker brethren. Now, the top capitalist dogs and the weaker brethren are all alike dependent on the votes of the workers. Without your support they can do nothing.

And this is where we return to our Mr. Pethick Lawrence.

If the burden rested on the backs of the workers it might be worth while trying to throw it off. But if the workers have no surplus, then they cannot be robbed of what they don’t possess; and, in spite of apparent objections, the workers as a whole do not suffer from high, nor benefit from low taxation. They suffer because they are robbed, and they are robbed whether taxes are high or low, and the degree of the robbery has, over a period, no direct or indirect relation to taxation. As we have seen, the workers receive all the wealth they possess from the capitalist owners, and, further, these owners control at present the machinery by means of which taxes are levied.

Now, the workers either receive a surplus over their minimum needs or they do not. If they don’t, then they cannot be robbed of that non-existent surplus afterwards. If they do, then the capitalists will have given the surplus either because they are philanthropists or because they are compelled by economic forces. If they are philanthropists, then they will not take back the gift they gave; and if they were compelled to give, then the same forces will prevent them from taking it back.

The burden of taxation for the payment of interest or the National Debt is Not a burden on the workers.

But, say these levy advocates, food prices will be lowered. Possibly this is true, but are you certain you will benefit? Is a railwayman, for instance, worse off on 60s. when it costs 60s. to live, than on 30s. when it costs 30s. to live? And although all workers’ wages do not vary automatically on a sliding-scale basis, is there any grade or industry in which wages are not very closely dependent on the general level of prices?

Mr. Lawrence, with unconscious humour, writes: “The workers out of their poverty are paying for all their old-age pensions, all the soldiers’ and widows’ pensions, the State’s contribution to Health and Unemployment Insurance, etc., etc.”

The pertinent question Lawrence might answer is this : Would the capitalists, if there were no taxation at all, give the workers a larger share of the wealth produced, and, if so, why?

Mr. Lawrence says : “The main principle of the levy is simplicity itself. It is to pay off debt out of wealth. The wealth of the country as a whole is the wealth of its citizens.” This, as I have already explained, is quite untrue. The wealth of the country as a whole is the private property of the capitalist class. Only the owners of property can suffer the burden of taxation, and only the owners do suffer. Some of them want you, the propertyless workers, to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, and Mr. Lawrence and the Labour Party are making a bid for office on the strength of offering to do the necessary publicity work.

Mr. Lawrence admits our charge in full. He writes, “Payment of the levy will, in effect, be carried out by means of a reshuffling of the title-deeds of wealth among wealthy persons, and the actual cancellation of a large amount of war debt.”

This is of vital concern to those who hope to get some good cards out of the re-shuffle, but does it matter the least little bit to us whether Mr. Capitalist A. or Mr. Capitalist B. gets the aces? Perhaps Mr. Lawrence and a few others may be suitably rewarded; and perhaps not, for the master class are notoriously ungrateful where there are so many willing servants.

The fact of the matter is that the capital levy, like any other mere juggling with figures, will not alter the amount of real wealth, land, factories, railways, etc. ; it will not alter the worker’s position in relation to the owners, and, finally, it will not affect the capitalist class except to the extent that it leads to some redistribution of wealth among themselves.

While the capitalists will on the one hand be relieved from the burden of paying the debt interest, they will also, on the other hand, be deprived of the present means of paying that interest. Some will gain by reduced taxation what others lose by the paying off by the State of their quota of the debt and their consequent loss of interest on their bonds. The money paid out will, in its turn, be reinvested in industry, and we shall be as we were.

Funnily enough, while the Labour Party wants the Capital Levy in order to stop paying “a vast tribute to the nation’s bond¬holders” (Mr. Lawrence), this same Labour Party wants to create more bondholders to “draw vast tribute” by nationalising the land and compensating the present owners with 5 per cent. bonds redeemable in 30 years (Mr. Snowden’s Land Nationalisation Bill now before the House).

The National Debt, too, was produced by wars, chiefly the last war. The Labour Party opposed that one up to the 30th July, 1914, and then vigorously supported it until such time as the capitalists thought it wise to call a halt in 1918. The apologists assure us that next time the Labour Party will act differently, and in conference they carried unanimously a resolution “calling upon the Government to summon an International Conference, and propose thereat immediate and universal disarmament” (Daily Herald, 29th June). It was then moved that “The Labour Party in Parliament should vote against all military and naval estimates,” and surely a No-More-War Party could do no less. But, as Mr. Henderson pointed out, “It was absurd . . . we could not do without a Navy. If France continued in her present frame of mind, were we to neglect the possibilities of defence?” Mr. Brownlie (A.E.U.) thought it might “embarrass candidates at a future election,” and it would throw out of work his members engaged on building battleships !

So it seems that all Mr. Lawrence’s work trying to wipe out the last war’s debts is going to be rendered vain by Mr. Henderson’s next war. Incidentally, how could Mr. Henderson advocate the use of the armed forces against strikers if there were no armed forces?

After wiping out this war debt Mr. Lawrence says “there will probably be a balance of over £100,000,000 a year on the right side,” and then he adds, “Great things can be done with this sum.” Glorious ! But who is going to decide what “great things” are to be done? Surely the owners ; and the capitalists don’t voluntarily do great things for the workers. On the other hand, if the workers are of a mind to do so, great things, even greater things, might be done now.

And the workers would stand a better chance of making up their minds if shoddy economists like Mr. Lawrence ceased propagating among them quack nostrums conceived for the salvation of the small fry of the capitalist class. The levy is not to affect owners of £5,000 or less.

Lawrence is aware that “some Socialists contend that it (the Capital Levy) is not Socialism, but only a palliative to buttress up the capitalist system,” and he agrees that “it will leave heaps of evils untouched, and it will not take the place of the Socialist remedy for the reconstruction of society.” He carefully omits to answer the charge that it will bolster up capitalism, and makes the lame excuse that in meeting “the one purpose for which it is designed, viz., that of cancelling a great part of the debt,” it will also remove “some of the worst evils of the present maldistribution of wealth.” He does not say it will remedy the maldistribution, and war could equally be commended, on the same ground as the policy of battleship building, i.e., that it removes unemployment. Lawrence doesn’t even say what those evils are which the Levy will remove.

In short, as cannot be too often repeated, the workers are poor because they arc robbed. They are robbed just the same, high taxes or low taxes or no taxes ; big National Debt or no National Debt; great foreign trade or no foreign trade. At present the workers are often worse off when unemployment is widespread than when trade is booming, but is this not simply because they accept the position? However bad trade depressions may be, do the capitalists go without, and, if not, why not?

While there is wealth in existence not being used to maintain the workers who produced it, those people are deliberately or unwittingly playing the capitalist game, who talk about measures to revive “our trade,” whether they be Labour, Liberal, or Communists.

We are Socialists, and do not ask you to seek salvation by reviving capitalist trade. We tell you there is only one solution to your problems.

Lawrence says there are four alternatives before you :—

1. Repudiation.
2. Inflation.
3. A Sinking Fund.
4. Capital Levy.

We say that each and every one of these is a question of no interest or use whatever to the workers. We add a fifth alternative—SOCIALISM. This is the only remedy for present or future working-class ills, and one that can be applied as soon as the workers choose to apply it.

Edgar Hardcastle

Whence ideas. (1923)

From the August 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is quite a common view that the events of life are governed by the ideas of certain “great” men, some of whom are “good” and some “bad.” If the “good” are in the majority then all is well; if the “bad” are in the majority then all is not well.

Ideas are supposed to be due to some peculiar quality that only exists in “great” men’s minds, and have no connection with the world around until forced upon a willing or unwilling people.

There are many who believe that Socialism is an idea of this nature, and hence Socialists are referred to as “dreamers” and “idealists.”

Socialism is an idea that is born out of the present condition of society. The conditions themselves force the idea into the minds of the workers and are the guarantee of its ultimate accomplishment.

A little thought will convince any average person that material is necessary in order to think at all—and that the material about which each thinks is that which he finds in the world around. This being so the ideas and outlook of people depend, as a rule, upon the way in which they live, or their method of obtaining a livelihood.

When we think, what do we think about? Where do we find our material? We cannot very successfully think about nothing ! A child opens its eyes to a certain set of surroundings, and these surroundings govern the child’s outlook on life, and provide it with ideas. As the child grows to the adult, practical life and books furnish matter for thought and shape the outlook of the grown-up.

For the average person the things that are nearest occupy the bulk of his thoughts. The nearest and most important thing of all for the majority is obtaining the necessaries of life. Where, as with the rich man, the means of life depend upon profit, so his thoughts turn upon methods of making profit. With the poor man, however, the means of living have to be obtained by working; consequently the poor man’s thoughts turn mainly upon work and the problems connected with work. The poor man is the working man. He belongs to a group that depends for a living upon wages. He is therefore a member of the working class. His outlook on life is a working-class outlook—the opposite to the outlook of the rich man, who is his master. The latter also has a class outlook—the outlook of the master class to which he belongs.

In the course of his occupation the worker tends more and more to observe that he is the backbone of society, that he, by applying his labour power to what the earth provides, produces all the wealth upon which the whole of society lives. Later he begins to wonder why it is that, although his class is the only class necessary to wealth production, yet it receives relatively the smallest share of the wealth produced, the rest going to support a group of idlers. By and by he realises that it is not necessary to support a group of idlers— that if the workers own the wealth they produce then there will be no need for idlers. He becomes a Socialist and takes part in the struggle for Socialism.

Gilmac.

“Harder Lying”. (1923)

From the August 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

To distinguish between counterfeit and genuine necessitates close examination. Experts can at a glance detect the spurious, while Socialists know what is and what is not Socialism. But to those whose contact with pseudo socialism is so close that it is accepted by them as “the goods,” Socialism, when expounded, seems a different philosophy. In a leader of the Daily Herald of Monday, June 25th, headed “Hard Lying,” the scribe writes in the following fashion :—

  “When Tories of the Banbury type inveigh against Socialism, they blunder into every kind of foolishness, because they take no intelligent interest in public affairs and have never troubled their heads to understand what Socialism means.”

Unfortunately there are many Banburys who, having control of political power, and possessing vast wealth, have no need to “trouble their heads,” as members of the working class (for a weekly wage or monthly salary) can always be hired to study or understand for them. But even so it cannot be said that they do not understand ; they do, and doing so, are always seeking means, by propaganda, misrepresentation and other methods, of diverting the minds of the workers from proper understanding of their class position and socialist knowledge. They, however, are not the only guilty ones, as the following extracts prove. The writer continues as follows :—

  “But when a man of the intellectual eminence of Sir John Simon misrepresents Socialism and solemnly warns people against a danger which he knows must be imaginary, it is necessary to nail his false coin to the counter. It is necessary to prove that he uttered it knowing it to be false.”

Why this particular lawyer politician should be expected to be exempt from capitalist propaganda it is hard to say, but let the writer continue :—

  “On Saturday, Sir John Simon told a gathering of the ‘Dubb’ family in Yorkshire that the Labour Party aimed at the suppression of private enterprise in all directions, intending to commit the fortunes of this country, the happiness of every man, woman and child, and the delicately poised mechanism of our international trade, to the crude untried experiment of vast Socialistic schemes.”

This indictment the writer disclaims, obviously meaning that the Labour Party are not out for the suppression of private enterprise, a disclaimer with which we are bound to agree.

The writer likens Simon to an utterer of base coin, a clear case of pot and kettle; listen to this :—

   “Let us first take the statement that Socialist schemes are crude and untried, would Sir J. apply those epithets to the London Water Board? Would he apply them to our municipal gas and electric light undertakings? Would he hurl them at the L.C.C. tramways, and all the other systems of road transport which are run by ratepayers, not for profits but for use? All these are Socialist schemes.” (Writer’s italics.)

First he naively states that things are run by ratepayers for use and not for profit ! and are socialist schemes. Reform or improvement is the utmost they can be labelled.

The writer continues :—

  “To say that the Labour Party aims at anything so nonsensical as a complete and simultaneous suppression of private enterprise is to charge it with lunacy.”

In other words, we are promised a social system which will allow private enterprise to operate, and it will be called “socialism,” and it will be the essence of sanity ! That being so, we shall earnestly hope that in the near future the predominating complaint of the workers will be “lunacy.” Could anti-socialist aims be clearer? Now, you workers, adjust your headphones and listen to us.

The common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by, and in the interest of, the whole community.

That is Socialism, and anything based differently is not Socialism. Government control or nationalisation of industries under the existing system does not comply with the demand of Socialists, nothing short of the complete overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of the co-operative commonwealth will suffice.

This is not the Labour Party’s aim; it only wishes to apply remedies that have commended themselves to a British Cabinet and a Royal Commission.

The writer concludes by stating :

  “It does equal discredit to Sir J. Simon’s reputation for honesty and to his political acumen.

  “No one can long believe such wild slanders, which merely prove that the Liberals admit the death of Liberalism, and have decided to join with the Tories in the effort to check social improvement by hard lying.”

If the writer hoped that the death of Liberalism would improve the vitality of Labour, and suffers disappointment, we would counsel him to hope on, perhaps Simon will see the error of his simple ways and join the Labour Party.

As for the “wild slander which no one can long believe,” we hope that the wilder slander here reproduced will also be not so long believed.

Griff.