Action Replay: Your Name’s in the Book (2014)

The Action Replay Column from the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

What do you do if you are a top sportsperson and age or fitness lead you to retire? You could extend your career a little by moving to a country with a lower standard of play, or you could try to become a coach or manager or pundit. Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, you could write a book, or rather have one ghost-written for you (rather like the many memoirs by actors, musicians or TV ‘celebrities’). You could give your side of various arguments and settle some old scores, as well as making a few bob. There have been a couple of prominent examples in recent weeks.

Cricketer Kevin Pietersen has ‘written’ KP: My Autobiography: to a large extent it is built around his annoyance at being blamed for the fiasco of England’s Ashes tour to Australia in 2013–14, which the team lost 5-0. It accuses the team’s coach, Andy Flower, of being basically useless, and hints that captain Alastair Cook was too weak for the job. But in particular it singles out divisions in the dressing room and an alleged clique of three top bowlers and a wicket-keeper who could be very nasty to other players. Pietersen was England’s most prolific run-scorer of all time, but that is not the book’s focus.

Then there’s footballer Roy Keane’s The Second Half (ghosted by novelist Roddy Doyle). By the time the book was written, Keane had already had a bit of a dodgy post-playing career, as manager and then as pundit. Despite his success as a player with Manchester United (including seven Premier League titles), the book has a great negative deal to say about United manager Alex Ferguson, and in particular about the way Keane left the club. In a TV interview Keane criticised his teammates, and Ferguson basically tore up his contract (costing him a sizeable sum of money). There’s also material on his arguments with some of the other United players.

Many workers who aren’t top athletes will be accustomed to some form of office politics, with cliques and rivalry and people getting at each other. It seems that even at the top of the sporting tree, where the pay is beyond what most people dream of, similar things take place.

Paul Bennett

The Parade (1987)

From the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist

Swaying kilts and swinging arms,

Skirling bagpipes, Beating drums,

We're marching on parade.

With measured beat

Of soldiers feet,

Spit and polish and tunics neat,

We give the passers-by a treat

When we are on parade.

Swaying kilts and swinging arms,

We're marching on parade.

Our sweethearts wave,

The know we're brave,

We are the sons our mothers gave,

We do not think of soldiers graves,

When we are on parade.

Skirling bagpipes, beating drums,

At last we reach the church.

Thou shalt not kill,

Least not until,

The priest has blessed the guns.

Skirling bagpipes, beating drums, 

Mud and blood and battles won. 

It was kill him Jack - Bayonet or gun, 

We wondered what we've all become, 

The world's no different - just the same, 

So was the killing all in vain?

Sid Catt

Pathfinders: Watch This Space . . . (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Space flight dominated last month’s science reporting, with the embarrassment of an exploding Antares rocket and a crashed Virgin Galactic plane being rapidly pushed off the front page by the media hoo-ha over the Philae probe, which bounced around on a comet, sent back half a dozen pictures, drilled a hole then expired.

The Philae landing was undoubtedly quite a feat, like pinging a peanut across a continent and having it land in an eggcup. A tweet immediately went viral inviting cynics everywhere to complete the phrase ‘they can land on a comet but they can’t… (e.g. stop war, solve world hunger etc) but such cynics are missing the big picture. Drilling into a comet could tell us whether our water came from outer space, and even more importantly, whether life could have come from outer space, and even more importantly than that, whether humans can feasibly strip-mine speeding space rocks so that fat future profits can also come from outer space.

Now UK news services are abuzz with a new crowd-sourced bid to send a British probe to, er, the moon and drill a hole in that too (BBC Online, 19 November). The enthusiasm seems quite out of proportion to the aim, but it’s a chance to put one over on the Chinese and besides, space travel is a good deal more sexy than fixing Earth’s problems. Indeed it tends to bring out the silly or downright suicidal in some people, as witness last year’s Mars One project. Not a space probe but a Dutch company, Mars One sought volunteers for a one-way manned trip to Mars, the costs being recouped through TV coverage and sponsorship deals. Not one person in their right mind would go for this, you would think, especially as you had to pay a €30 deposit. Over 200,000 people signed up. Socialists might be desperate to escape the capitalist prison, but we’re not that desperate. The only red planet we want to live on is this one.

… Oddity

A cover version of David Bowie’s famous song Space Oddity, done by a Canadian astronaut in a very odd accent aboard the International Space Station, has been reposted to YouTube after having been taken down due to licensing restrictions (BBC Online, 4 November). Bowie himself had no objection to the cover, describing it as ‘poignant’. What stood in its way were the rules of terrestrial capitalism. As the singer, Chris Hadfield, explained: ‘The Space Station was built by 15 countries, and depending on where I floated while singing and playing, whose copyright laws applied? Which Space Agency owned the recording? Whose jurisdiction was I in?’

If aliens ever visit and like any of our pop music, let them beware. It’s a minefield down here.

Toys R Us(eless)

Continuing the space theme, the Telegraph was recently keen to report the apparently astounding fact that ‘There is more computer power in some of this year's top Christmas toys than the first moon mission’ (5 November). Big deal. There’s more computer power in your washing machine too, and your phone, and if you’re a true early adopter, your glasses.

At the risk of resorting to Christmas grumpy mode, what is all this computer power doing? Making crappy dolls to emulate babylike simpering tones while talking to your iPad, and plastic dayglo smart watches that store 900 photographs an inch wide. How cool, how awesome! What a load of utter rubbish, all designed to last two weeks and all designed to cost a fortune, paid out by overworked parents who can’t afford it but are trying to make up for ignoring the kids all the rest of the year.

What would children really want for Christmas, if they had the knowledge and imagination to ask for it, and any expectation whatsoever of getting it?

They might want their two front teeth, like the old song. More likely, they might want parents who aren’t permanently stressed out with bills, debts, overwork and each other. They might want siblings who can be friends instead of rivals. They might want to live in a house that it’s affordable to heat properly in winter, in an area where they won’t get beaten up by local gangs if they go to the shop. They might want a say about whether they have to go to school, about where they go, and what they do when they get there. They might want to feel safe, and secure, and understood, and cared about. They might want to feel that they have a future worth looking forward to, that strangers are just friends they haven’t met yet, that they are not too fat or too thin or too stupid but just right, that alive is a good thing to be.

But this year, if they’re lucky, they’ll just get capitalism rammed in their stocking, just like every other year. Ho ho ho.

The only way is ethics?

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges recently produced a report arguing that doctors have an ethical duty to prevent waste in the NHS (BBC Online, 6 November). It’s not hard to understand the argument. Billions are wasted every year that could pay nurses more or buy extra equipment. Doctors of course being no strangers to ethical codes but frequently being utter strangers to budgets, the AMRC naturally thought a spot of moral arm-twisting was in order.

The idea of waste being ‘unethical’ is a fairly novel one, considering how profligate nature itself is. But it’s not the first thing to be morally stigmatised by a civil society anxious to change our behaviour – two recent examples being smoking and drink/driving.

Since socialists are anxious to change the behaviour of civil society, perhaps we ought to use ethical arguments more. The trouble is, the whole subject makes us slightly nervous, because of the problem of moral relativism.

What’s ethical to you isn’t necessarily ethical to him or her. And while ethics can be based on empirical reasoning, as with the doctors, it doesn’t have to be. It could be based on mystical dreams, or God’s word, or a Hollywood film script. Building a case primarily out of ethics is like building a shed primarily out of blancmange.

Some scientists think that moral relativism is a myth and that we are hard-wired to be moral, pointing to the activities of mirror neurons in the brain’s motor cortex, which fire off in sympathy at certain observed behaviours in others and trigger similar responses in us. The strongest of these effects is seen in yawning, however, an activity not normally related to questions of morality unless you’re intensely bored with the subject.

Still, there’s not much doubt that people are only motivated to act when they perceive that something is ethically ‘wrong’, not just scientifically ‘incorrect’.  The Proto-Indo-European root steig (prick or pointed) gives us stick, stigma and instigate. What other behaviours can we expect to see stigmatised in the future, with a view to changing behaviour? Using fossil fuels, probably. Eating fat or meat or sugar or being a couch potato, possibly. One key social norm which we would be in a hurry to see stigmatised is the ‘right’ of a small group of people to exist as a parasitical social elite at the expense of everyone else and the environment. It’s about time people realised that’s not just incorrect, it’s damn well wrong.

PJS

The People You Meet—Gilbert (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gilbert is a very bright young man. Religiously he studies the columns of the Times and the Guardian and shocked his father by ordering the Daily Worker. Regularly he subscribes to the Tribune and the Statesman, and of course was one of the first to buy "Orwell's 1984."

He had been a subaltern in some minor county regiment—though he is very much opposed to any future war. His check shirt, brown corduroys and meerschaum pipe can be seen at every so-called "peace rally" in Trafalgar Square and other places. For a short time he wore a big white badge—"Britain's Youth for Peace." Someone once suggested that on the reverse side it read "Strike Now in the West," but that's by the way.

Yes, Gilbert considered himself a progressive! When the dockers were on strike he organised (such a brilliant organiser, my dear!) a fête and jumble sale in aid of their funds. When the city recruiting campaign was at its peak he showered leaflets at a well-known general. He even scowled at the commissionaires outside the American Embassy.

But in spite of this bravado, Gilbert was really a sensitive lad. Lured into the East End one Saturday night by some of his venturesome comrades, he was really shocked at what he saw. Every pub was crowded with coarse, loud animals, singing, drinking and loudly laughing at crude jokes and indelicate gestures. On the pavements pommaded youths and powdered lasses jostled for each other's attentions. Thousands poured out of the dog tracks.

Thank God for people like Gilbert, thought Gilbert. "These people—wh'why, th'they're—er—indescribable—more like beasts." Then he was consoled. Once he and his friends had achieved the revolution they would soon straighten their ideas out. They would teach them culture and respect for the intellectuals.

Poor Gilbert—for he is more to be pitied than blamed. He, with his empty intellectual snobbery, is just as much a child of his environment as the workers he deplores.

But they are the workers. What if they are in a pub or at the dogs on a Saturday night? What if the pavement is their marriage market? On Monday mornings they are the dockers, the turners, the mechanics; they are the laundry workers, the factory hands, the shop assistants; in short they are the folk who run this system of society from top to bottom. True they are not fully class conscious; true they still vote for the Labour Party, but let any employer attempt to molest their individual wages or conditions and you'll seem fight like tigers.

These are the people who will achieve the social revolution. Each day brings fresh evidence of the anomalies of Capitalism: each day opens some worker's eyes. As the wheel of Capitalism with its  ever increasing slumps and wars accelerates, so their realisation grows. One day it will reach its crescendo and the revolution will take place—not because of or for Gilbert—but in spite of him.

RONALD.

Material World: Money – a waste of resources (2011)

The Material World Column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps you think that the money system is a necessary means of allocating scarce resources. In that case, you won’t regard the resources that society devotes to operating the money system as waste. But have you tried to assess the sheer scale of these resources? 

One approach is to see how many people are kept busy at tasks that would not exist in a society without money. I focus on the United States, but I don’t think the overall picture is much different in other countries. My figures come from the May 2010 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor (Link). 

The occupational classification used in US government statistics divides the employed workforce into 22 broad occupational groups, which are subdivided into specific occupations. When we search these groups for money-related occupations, here is what we find.

Group 11. Management occupations

There are 516,000 sales, marketing and advertising managers, plus 479,000 financial managers. At least a fifth of all managers manage monetary flows rather than material processes.

Group 13. Business and financial operations occupations

This group includes:

• 1,072,000 accountants and auditors
• 221,000 financial analysts
• 272,000 purchasing agents
• 63,000 claims adjusters, examiners and investigators
• 262,000 market research analysts and marketing specialists
• 184,000 cost estimators, etc.

Some of the market research analysts might still be needed in a socialist society for the non-manipulative analysis of consumer preferences.

Group 33. Protective service occupations

This group includes:

• 1,007,000 security guards
• 644,000 police officers
• 111,000 detectives and criminal investigators
• 458,000 jailers and correctional officers

As most crime consists of offences against property, few of the functions performed by these two million people will exist in a socialist society.

Group 41. Sales and related occupations

All of the 13,438,000 people in this group directly service the money system. Here we find: 4,155,000 retail sales workers; 1,172,000 supervisors of retail sales workers; 3,354,000 cashiers; 1,748,000 sales representatives; 415,000 counter and rental clerks; 319,000 insurance sales agents; 289,000 telemarketers, etc.

Group 43. Office and administrative support occupations

This group includes:

• 1,675,000 bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks
• 556,000 tellers
• 883,000 clerks processing and collecting bills
• 232,000 clerks processing insurance claims and policies
• 40,000 meter readers, etc.

Other money-related occupations lie scattered among various other groups. Actuaries, tax inspectors, teachers of business studies – the list goes on and on. Then, combining related occupations assigned to various groups, we discover 145,000 people working at casinos and other gambling joints and 519,000 people who do nothing but handle loans (interviewing and checking out loan applicants, processing repayments, pursuing defaulters, etc.).

There are many money-related jobs that the occupational classification does not allow us to count separately. Thus, Computer science occupations must include many people working with computer systems for storing and processing financial information, while Legal occupations includes many people working in areas like commercial law and inheritance.

Next there are all the people who design, manufacture, transport, install and repair money-related machinery and equipment, such as ATM machines, cash registers (for all those cashiers!), safes, slot machines, credit card verifiers, gambling machines, and those contraptions which prevent you from getting into the underground without a ticket. Not to mention the people who actually make coins, banknotes and gold bars!  

Then there are the workers who build, maintain and clean the premises used by banks, insurance companies and other money-handling offices, those who transport money handlers to and from work, and so on.

My best estimate is that about one fourth of employed Americans are engaged in tasks that would not exist in a moneyless society. To these people we must add members of the armed forces, workers in military industry, most non-working prisoners, the unemployed as usually understood, and the unemployed as unusually understood (otherwise known as the idle rich). All these people could be making a useful and productive contribution to society.

Let’s return now to the question of waste. The money system is commonly justified as a rational way of coping with scarcity of resources. And yet, as we see, the operation of the money system consumes enormous human and material resources. We should also take into account the resource costs of such capitalist practices as built-in obsolescence, the use of patents to suppress innovation (Socialist Standard, February 2007) and luxury production for the wealthy (Socialist Standard, June 2011).

So how serious would the problem of scarcity be if all these costs were eliminated together with capitalism and the money system? Can any reasonable person avoid concluding that money is itself largely responsible for the problem to which it is supposedly the solution?

Stefan

How Capitalist Dumb-ocracy Deals with Vital Questions (2014)

From the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Japanese government is keen to restart the country’s nuclear reactors without real public debate

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, like any great crisis in society, laid bare the half-hidden—or ‘half-forgotten’—truths of capitalism. People in Japan and around the world were reminded of how companies sacrifice safety in pursuit of profit; how politicians are bought off by those companies; and how capitalists treat the victims of disasters as so much collateral damage.

The aftermath of the disaster has also revealed just how narrow democracy is under capitalism. This has become clear in the way decisions are being made on whether to restart some of Japan’s 48 nuclear reactors. The question of whether the reactors are safe enough to be restarted is of great concern to people living in Japan, but, as is so often the case under capitalism, the decision is not really in their hands.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority, a new administrative body formed in 2012 by merging the Nuclear Safety Commission and Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, is tasked with the approval of the applications submitted by energy companies to restart reactors. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is quite happy to have the NRA take direct responsibility for the decision, not only to avoid blame in the case of another disaster but also to foster the impression that the decision is being made on a strictly scientific basis, in line with the stricter safety regulations introduced in June 2013.

The new rules call for the construction of sea walls to protect plants from the largest tsunami anticipated and the installation of filters to remove radioactive substances vented from reactor cores during an emergency. The rules also require the installation of a separate control room to operate the reactor in the event of a disaster. But certain ‘grace periods’ are allowed for companies to operate reactors before meeting some of these requirements.

In July, the NRA issued its preliminary approval for restarting the two reactors at the Sendai Nuclear Plant in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima, operated by Kyushu Electric Power Co. The final decision will be made by the NRA after verifying the required design changes at the plant and its operating structure.

The government recognizes, however, that a decision made by the NRA alone would lack credibility in the eyes of many, so the approval process also calls for a certain degree of consent among those living near the nuclear plant But that local approval (or disapproval) is not legally binding in any way—and it is limited to the city where the plant is located (Satsumasendai) and the Kagoshima prefectural assembly.

In essence, this ‘informal approval’ is just a fig leaf to cover the fact that the decision has been reached by the NRA commissioners (appointed by the Prime Minister) that the Sendai plant should be restarted.

As expected, the Kagoshima prefectural assembly approved the restarting of the reactors on 7 November (by a vote of 38 to 9). The same day, the governor of the prefecture, Yuichiro Ito, backed the decision—although he tried to sidestep his own responsibility by calling the decision ‘unavoidable’ and claiming that the central government would assume final responsibility in the case of an emergency.

Prior to that approval, the municipal assembly and the mayor of Satsumasendai approved the decision to restart the plant, on 27 October. It was a foregone conclusion that the city would approve the decision since it receives a massive annual subsidy of roughly \1.2 billion (£6.6m) a year, as well as another \400 million (£2.2m) for a nuclear fuel tax.

Of course, in the case of a disaster, the fallout would certainly not be limited to Satsumasendai. There are in fact eight other municipalities located within a 30km radius of the plant. But, unlike the host city, they receive few subsidies related to the nuclear plant.

The town of Ichikikushikino, with a population of 30,000, is as close as just 5km from the plant in some places, yet only receives a subsidy of \90 million a year (£495,000 - less than 1 percent of its annual income). Given the risks it faces, the town’s residents had asked to be included in the informal approval process. The request was turned down for fear of opposition; and in fact half of the residents later signed a petition opposing the restarting of the Sendai plant.

Along with the bogus ‘approval’ process at the local level, the NRA held a series of ‘town hall meetings’ in October to reassure residents in Kagoshima of the safety of the Sendai plant. But the number of participants at those meetings was limited and they were not allowed to record the proceedings or ask questions regarding evacuation plans.

The way the government has sought to limit public input and evade criticism extends to the choice of the Sendai nuclear plant to begin the safety screening process. The plant’s location in Kagoshima made it an obvious choice for a number of reasons, despite the fact that its reactors are 30 years old.

First of all, the prefecture is a long-standing stronghold of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Currently, 70 percent of the assembly members are LDP-affiliated. From a simple geographic perspective, the decision also made sense to the Abe administration, since Kagoshima is far removed from Fukushima and from Tokyo, which is the centre of a powerful anti-nuclear movement.

Another factor is that Kyushu Electric is one of the regional utility companies that is still in the red, with losses of \36.5 billion (£200m) in the first quarter of fiscal 2014 (compared to the \52.5 billion profit of Tokyo Electric posted for that same period). This means that the company plausibly can make the argument that the restarting of its nuclear plants is vital to its business.

Other utility companies had been making that argument in trying to get their reactors back online, while also threatening consumers with higher rates and their own workers with lower wages (and making good on both threats), but now that these companies are profitable again despite the nuclear shutdown, their ‘good-for-business’ argument has become a bit harder to swallow.

Prime Minister Abe seems to hope that once the Sendai plant is approved, the decision can serve as the template for approving reactors in other prefectures, including those where the conditions are less favourable to his administration. In other words, the approval process is proceeding according to a political—not a scientific—logic, with more attention paid to massaging public opinion than ensuring public safety.

The basic argument of the government on the need for nuclear power comes down to profit- or ‘economic growth’, to use the favoured expression. The problem, though, is that the Japanese public is aware that even in the heyday of nuclear power, when most of the reactors were up and running, providing around 30 percent of Japan’s overall energy supplies, the economy was not exactly booming. And those who have reflected a bit more on their own life experiences, if they have lived long enough, would know that economic growth is no guarantee of better living conditions for workers.

It is true that Japan is a country that lacks energy resources, forcing it to import more oil and gas in the absence of nuclear power. This is a situation that would be faced even in a post-capitalist world. But under capitalism the objective or scientific aspect of the problem is intertwined with the question of profitability, so that the debate is always limited by that reality. This makes it hard to distinguish between the technically and the economically feasible.

Today, the debate over what safety measures are possible or whether more renewable energy can be generated come down to a question of money, not pure science. In a socialist world, people living in Japan could finally have a rational debate on how to generate enough energy for their own needs. The conclusion might be reached that the benefits of nuclear energy to Japan outweigh its obvious risks. But that would be a decision the community could reach democratically, weighing all of the evidence. No such democratic process exists in Japan or anywhere else today, nor could it exist under a system that revolves around profit.

Michael Schauerte

The Titanic Disaster 100 Years On (2012)

From the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

This April will witness the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Many words will be written in the capitalist media about the disaster, but what of the class aspects of the tragedy and has anything really changed in the last century?

The Titanic came into being purely for the speedy conveyance of the rich and wealthy classes between Britain and the US. Opulence and luxury were the watchwords of her design and construction, rather than safety. Designed around class division and reflecting the extremes of wealth and poverty in Edwardian Britain, the vessel featured Turkish baths, gymnasiums, electric lifts, ballrooms, dining rooms, a swimming pool and a library for the first class passengers – all designed to attract the wealthiest clients and secure the biggest returns for the investors in White Star Lines.

The now famous story of the Titanic's maiden voyage and her striking an iceberg off Newfoundland is too familiar to need repeating.  Also familiar is the often quoted lack of adequate lifeboat provision, although according to the maritime laws at the time, Titanic surprisingly carried more than she was legally required to. What is more interesting from a socialist's perspective is how the class divide, evident in the design of the vessel, continued to make itself felt throughout its operation and right on to the end of the disaster.

The ship carried a total of 2,224 people including crew, and 1,554 of these died on that fateful night, mostly from drowning and hypothermia in the near freezing waters. For the survivors, it is more than apparent that class was a survival factor. At the time, the standard procedure was for women and children to go first into the lifeboats, but significantly, aboard the Titanic, this meant first and second class women and children and not those in steerage. No second-class children and only one from first class died, but 52 children from steerage perished. Of the first-class female passengers, 97% survived, some with their lap-dogs, as did 86% of second-class women. By comparison, only 46% of third-class women made it off the ship. Men of all classes bore the brunt of the death toll, but again, significantly, 84% of third-class men died against 33% in first class. Overall, the third-class passengers and crew amounted to 80% of the total lives lost that night.

Various enquiries into the disaster inevitably focused the blame on members of the dead crew and the poor safety provisions. Whilst the latter criticism may be valid, no enquiry ever took into account the significance of a vessel such as Titanic in the first place, nor touched on the inherent class divisions on board which resulted in such tragedy for the 'lower orders'. To do so would have been to call into question capitalism itself. Titanic, for example,had sufficient lifeboats for first-class passengers only, not for third. Further, hardly any mention was made of the US immigration laws which required complete physical isolation of the third-class passengers from the rest of the ship. This alone meant that many steerage passengers never even knew of the existence of lifeboats, let alone where they might be found. Many were physically prevented from escaping from the vessel until it was too late.

The Socialist Standard of the time drew more incisive conclusions and made the comparison with other disasters to befall the working classes.  The May 1912 edition reported:

It must not be forgotten, however, that capitalist companies invariably choose for responsible positions those men to do what they are paid to do. It is all moonshine to talk of the captain being in command. They command who hold his livelihood in their hands. If he will not take risks and get the speed they want, then he must give place to one who will.

So at the bottom it is the greed for profit and the insatiable desire for speed on the part of the rich that is responsible for the disaster, whatever conclusion the Committee of Enquiry may come to.

“The actual details of the wreck afford a further opportunity of pressing home a lesson. The evidence of the survivors and the evidence of the official figures of the saved, show that even on the decks of the sinking liner, and to the very end, the class struggle was on. Those who had clamoured for speed were the first to monopolise the boats, and the way was kept open for them by the officers' revolvers. Even the capitalist newspapers are compelled to admit the significance of the figures. Of the first class men 34 per cent were saved: of the steerage men only 12 per cent. Figures like those are eloquent enough without the evidence of the officer who admitted that he kept steerage passengers from a half-filled boat with shots from his revolver.

Much has been made of the fact that the cry "Women and children first" was raised, and it is not necessary to cast aspersions on the courage of any man who survives. The salient fact is that it was not a question of courage but of class. "Women and children" meant women and children of the wealthy class. Of first class women and children practically all were saved, some even with their pet dogs. Of the steerage women and children more than half perished. The "chivalry" of the ruling class does not, save in very rare instances, extend itself to the class beneath them.

The awful loss of life has not prevented the Titanic from becoming a commodity along with everything else in capitalism. Apart from the massive profits made from two major films (A Night To Remember, 1958; andTitanic, 1997, which grossed $1.8 billion) and dozens of minor ones, the discovery of the wreck by Dr Robert Ballard in 1985 has spawned even more interest and bickering over the profits to be made from the disaster.

In 1994, RMS Titanic Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions Inc., was awarded ownership and salvaging rights by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. On 24 March, 2009, it was revealed that the fate of 5,900 artefacts retrieved from the wreck would rest with a U.S. District Judge's decision. On 12 August, 2010, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith granted RMS Titanic Inc. fair market value for the artefacts but deferred ruling on their ownership, and the conditions for their preservation, possible disposition and exhibition until a further decision could be reached. On 15 August, 2011, under a French court decision, Judge Smith granted RMS Titanic Inc. title to thousands of artefacts from the Titanic that it did not already own. The grant of title was subject to a lengthy list of conditions relating to the preservation and disposition of the items. The artefacts can be sold only to a company that will abide by the conditions and restrictions as set out. RMS Titanic Inc. can profit from the artefacts through exhibiting them.

In addition, the current anniversary will see the re-release of the 1997 movie Titanic in 3D, at least two new mini-TV series and a £77million exhibition at the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. One can expect a rake off from other merchandise.  But more macabre (and indicative of the profiteering nature of capitalism), is the offer by a UK travel company of a full transatlantic cruise which will follow the exact route of the Titanic.   The cruise will keep the exact timings and pause over the spot of the sinking. This dubious event also offers its patrons the opportunity to dress up in period costume and 'enjoy' themed entertainment and food from the era.

The sinking of the Titanic and the interest in it will continue for some time yet, but it is sad that the same conditions which brought about her very existence 100 years ago are still prevalent today. The widening wealth gap; the vastly different treatment of people based purely on their income; and the poor treatment of workers in the rush for speed and profit are all hallmarks of the system that was in place in 1912 and is still with us today. Disasters on the same scale as the Titanic are still happening and for the same basic reasons.  Despite the massive loss of lives throughout the past century, the working classes are still not learning from the lessons once experienced by their forefathers. The class divide apparent in Edwardian Britain and reflected in the Titanic disaster, still exists in modern-day Britain and the answers offered by socialists then apply just as clearly today. As the Socialist Standard concluded at the time:

We are not of those who expect any great results from this ocean tragedy. Working-class lives are very cheap, and the age that abolishes the Plimsoll Line at the demand of those greedy for profit is hardly likely to insist upon the provision of proper means of life-saving or the careful navigation of passenger vessels. Murder by wholesale may be committed without doing violence to "law and order," so long as it is committed by the capitalist class in the "legitimate" scramble for profits.

David Humphries

An Open Letter to Russell Brand (2014)

From the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

On his book, “Revolution”, Century, 2014

First, how do I come to be reading your book, Revolution? I have spent the past thirty years arguing the point whenever and however I could, that world capitalism has to be ended. Not just in its most excessive manifestations, not just when it is run for private corporations and shareholders as opposed to state bureaucracies, but in every conceivable form it might take. How can you tell if the system in operation is capitalism? With a simple check-list. Employment – the exploitation of employees (French for the ‘used’) by employers (users) via the legalised robbery of the wages system. The market; in other words, the buying and selling of things which could instead now be created in such abundance that they could be taken freely by anyone in the global population, without the need for any system of money, vouchers, tokens, barter or trade of any kind whatsoever. Also, state power: governments, armies, police, who enforce the class rule by a tiny fraction of the population who own and control all productive resources.

Your book is disarmingly honest about your past, your faults, your flaws, thought processes, previous ambitions and resulting disillusion, the sources of your unhappiness, your latest hopes and desires, your continuing self-doubt, your determination to continue speaking and writing uncompromisingly and unashamedly what you believe to be true, and your refusal to give in to the pressure from snobs and hypocrites. These are people who have often attempted to silence your expression by mocking almost everything about you from your accent to your origins, your supposed lack of education, your poverty, your wealth, your hair, your profession – and, when all else fails, by misquoting, misrepresenting and distorting the ideas you express.

I hope it will make a refreshing change to have it suggested that, far from advocating the impossible or going beyond the thinkable, rather that you need to go one step further by demanding the so-called ‘impossible’. Your book is a brave step in promoting discussion of revolution to end the capitalist system we have throughout the world today. You make several cogent and absolutely essential points which are not only true, they cry out to be endorsed and adopted by the thousands who have already read your book – and the millions of others who would relate to so much of it. Points such as:

1. Do not vote – IF there is nothing worth voting for. Do not feel obliged to give moral and practical consent to the status quo by endorsing it, through voting into power one of several parties, each of which are openly pledged to defending, running and upholding that status quo in one form or another. Most of your opponents in the wake of that Paxman interview conveniently ignored the second half of this proposition, pretending that you had some kind of bizarre antipathy to the concept of voting, under any circumstances. More heinous still was their subtle exclusion of even the possibility of allowing a different way of running society: ‘you have Labour, Tory, Liberals. Lots of ways of running Capitalism. What more do you want? Now get out there and vote for one of those! And be damn grateful for having this wonderful choice once every five years!’ runs their mantra.

2.  Global society is currently organised in a way which is designed purely to benefit a tiny (even less than one percent) minority, who have unfathomable wealth and power, who own and control the Earth and its resources – and who in doing so are depriving the 99 percent of access to the riches and comforts those resources have to offer us all. This is an insane, anti-social, irrational, illogical, unacceptable premise and starting point on which to found our global society. It is therefore urgently in our interests as that majority to end that regime completely and utterly, now. Another word for such a huge and urgent change in the way society is run is revolution, so clearly the fact that this is needed is beyond dispute.

3. There are many ways in which the present organisation of society like a vast prison camp (disguised as a holiday camp) causes unhappiness, suffering and distress – way beyond the crudely economic aspects of poverty, crucial and painful though those are too. Terms like alienation, epidemics like addiction are easy to dismiss as in the first case abstract waffle and in the second a poor choice made by (millions of) individuals. However, these are in fact very real, almost universal side-effects of the global social system we have. Indeed, for many people in the huge cities of the more ’developed’ parts of the world – like London or New York – these are some of the most powerful prompts which drive many of us to question the way society is currently structured. The one percent are devoted to maximising the surplus they extract from the work of the rest of us, and this in turn depends on them maintaining a certain social landscape, the consumer culture, the stifling of true dissent, the separation of people from one another and from themselves.

As your book progresses, you draw on input from a variety of activists and social thinkers. Some are more credible than others. One of the more compelling is Naomi Klein, with her brilliant expose of the stark choice now forced on us, between saving capitalism and saving the planet as a viable ecosystem or human habitat, and she shows incontrovertibly how incompatible the two are.

In eventually sketching a plurality of ‘alternatives’ , however, you may be unwittingly over-complicating the situation. There are not ‘loads’ of alternatives; the one key issue causing all significant social problems is the way we organise society – the system of minority ownership and production for profit. The solution, the one solution, to this is therefore common ownership and production for use. That means no money, banks, finance  – and no ‘co-operatives’ selling goods in the market. Free access to all, for all! From each according to ability, to each according to need  – one worldwide co-operative society, no buying and selling.

Some notes you quote about the virtues of co-ops mention ‘raising capital’, ‘job opportunities’ and making agreements with governments. But the revolution to get rid of capitalism has to mean getting rid of capital, government, finance, money, ‘jobs’ – all parts of the capitalist way of running world society. Of course, on paper, the idea of having thousands of autonomous co-operatives, each run democratically within itself, and engaging fairly with all the other units sounds a lot more just and pleasant than the current control of the world, its resources and its population by a tiny, powerful minority of less than one percent of the population. But if we are talking about ending that, then let’s end it. All these models and reforms are variations on the market system which, if ever pursued, would inevitably lead us eventually back to where we started. The solution is for us to withdraw our consent from capitalism, as you say – but to create instead a society without ownership, in which the whole world and all its resources becomes the common heritage of all humanity.

Of course, this necessitates all of the democratic aspects of administration which you touch on, local, regional and continental, but the key point is that these are ways for the world’s population to run a planet no longer divided into owners and non-owners. In the model of separate co-ops which you settle on at the end of the journey in your book, you do not go far enough – after all, if each co-op autonomously owns its resources then those outside that co-op are still alienated from the resources in it. You still then have money, trade, competition, separation  – and the certainty of corruption, accumulation and minority power again flourishing.

You emphasise your belief in God. Connecting with our true selves and connecting with one another are positive parts of the revolutionary ending of property-based society. Belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent force outside of ourselves is significantly less helpful in creating the freedom from oppression to which we aspire. On this I would be more inclined toward the healthy cynicism of the late, great American comedian George Carlin:

‘I've begun worshipping the Sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the Sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to God are all answered at about the same 50-percent rate.’

You rightly describe as mere ‘pipsqueak reformism’ the Swedish workers’ shares schemes (which in fact are a means of co-opting the impoverished majority into supervising our own exploitation). In one of your final chapters, you then make a list of demands which includes, for example, ‘State power to dissolve wherever possible to empower autonomous, democratic communities.’ Wherever possible? Although I have no doubt of your sincerity in sketching possibilities for what we construct in place of the wretched system we currently have, I would strongly urge you to reconsider the wisdom of listing multiple ‘realistic’ steps as the culmination of a book so rich in its often poetic damning of current social relations. The biggest tragedy in history, already played out myriad times, is this lowering of expectations as the first slippery slope back to cynicism and misery.

I recognise the courage and honesty with which you have put yourself on the line, derided your own celebrity status, taken on Paxman and others and often left them in gibbering defensiveness. Your regular podcasts, “The Trews” are a welcome window into reality without the twisting and obfuscation, the bullshit mediation of the media. In many ways it has been a breath of fresh air to see those hilarious and perceptive insights into the madness of capitalism viewed regularly by hundreds of thousands of people.

Let’s now take the next logical step and build a majority movement committed to the complete ending of capitalism, in all of its forms, with all of its trappings, and nothing less. On page 297 of your book you slightly misquote Marx in a way which could be significant. You say ‘From each according to his means, to each according to his needs’. On Twitter last year, however, you correctly quoted it as ‘from each according to ability, to each according to needs’. It was never about redistributing money, but abolishing it – and Marx’s slogan is even more relevant today than it was 150 years ago.

Clifford Slapper

Mixed Media: British Folk Art (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the December 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

British Folk Art at Tate Britain, London this year was a rare exhibition of working class and artisan art from the mid-seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth century when folk art would become a commodity, and too self-conscious. Jane Kallir in 1982 defined folk art as 'everything that everybody always thought was not art before the modernist revolution at the turn of the century.' Bourgeois condescension labelled such art as 'peasant art' or 'vernacular creativity', and it was such art and crafts that were deliberately excluded from the Royal Academy of Art when it was established in 1769.

The exhibition includes giant trade signs when shops and businesses hung painted or carved signs in the street outside to advertise their goods or services at the time of the 'golden age of trade signs' which lasted from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Notable examples are Scotsman tobacconist shop figure (1812) in a 1934 photograph of 37 London Street, Norwich, and Highlander tobacconist shop figure (c. 1866-1900). The rise of Glasgow as Britain's leading port dealing with tobacco in the mid 1700s explains the association with a highlander. There are examples of the Blackamoor tobacconist shop figure (1700s) which signified exoticism and cultural difference. 'Blackamoor' was a variant on 'Black Moor', a dark-skinned African from North Africa.

These artisan trade signs are from the early days of capitalism when a shop had a merchant's counter, and there was social interaction between the merchant and the customer. This was the time of the Petty Bourgeoisie, the owners of small stores, 'the small trades-people, shopkeepers' who worked alongside their employees. The Petty Bourgeois 'as owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as a labourer he is his own wage-labourer' (Marx). This was the early days of retailing before bourgeois notions of refinement and good taste, mass production and supermarkets and 'the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois.' During the 1871 Paris Commune the shopkeepers set a good example by siding with the working class.

Rural Art is represented by The Four Alls, a popular pub sign found particularly in the West Country and Wales which was described as 'a country sign' in 1785. This example is from Caernarvonshire c. 1850 with the four figures representing 'I Govern All, I Pray For All, I Fight For All, I Pay For All', the last a John Bull character of yeoman country stock, stolid, stocky, the heroic archetype of the freeborn Englishman. George Smart was a tailor in Frant near Tunbridge Wells who painted The Earth Stopper c. 1835. In this a male figure jumps in fright from his horse at night in a country lane by the shock of what he takes to be the Devil, who is in fact the Earth Stopper having stopped up the fox's earth while he is out feeding prior to the next day's hunt. The Rampton 1800s painted wood 'All vagrants who are seen begging in this town will be apprehended and punished as the laws directs' is a salutary reminder that the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. This was remedied by the consolidation of the institution of the Workhouse ('bastilles of the proletariat') in the 1834 Poor Law Act. The triumph of the bourgeois class in 1846 with the repeal of the Corn Laws would mean small, under-capitalised farmers were squeezed out by low prices and inability to increase production.

Mid-nineteenth century working class sports are represented in several oils by anonymous worker-artists. Boxers (c 1850) portrays the pugilist world of the bare-knuckle London Prize Ring Rules, pre-Marquess of Queensbury, and is reminiscent of the boxing scene in Richard Lester's 1975 film of George MacDonald Fraser's Royal Flash with Henry Cooper as John Gully, prize fighter and MP. Bear Baiting (c.1830s) and Champion Ratcatcher (c.1840) portray the popular sports of the period. The 1835 and 1849 Cruelty to Animals Acts prohibited bear-baiting and cock-fighting but rat catching or 'ratting' was not enforced, and became a very popular sport (London had 70 ratting pits). A dog, usually a terrier would be let loose on a rabble of rats in a round or square pit set up at a pub. Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor (1851) described 'brightly lit ratting pits with high wooden rims' and 'that these vermin are becoming a trade commodity.'

A room is dominated by the HMS Calcutta figurehead from the Royal Navy ship launched in 1831 in Bombay. HMS Calcutta saw action in the blockade of Russian ports in the Gulf of Finland in the Crimean War, and in the Second Opium War against the Qing Dynasty of China when the British Empire sought to legalise the opium trade, expand 'coolie' (indentured labour) trade and open China to British capitalism.

British Folk Art is a refreshing working class antidote to bourgeois sycophancy such as the Queen's Gallery exhibition The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714-60 which 'explores royal patronage and taste.'

Steve Clayton

Too Many People or Not Enough Food Production? (2012)

From the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 31 October the world’s population was said to have reached 7 billion. Would this be a problem in socialism?

The Twentieth Century saw the biggest population increase in human history. This was due in some part to medical advances which lessened the death rate in many countries and to the increase in agricultural productivity attributed to the green revolution. However the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) considers the perceptions of a continuing population explosion to be false. World population is expected to go on rising but less rapidly than it has been. The birth rate even in poor countries has been falling (for example in Bangladesh where women are on average having three children where their mothers were having six). Annual births in the world have levelled at about 134 million per year since their peak at 163 million in the late 1990s. However, as births still outnumber deaths, the world’s population is expected to reach nine billion between 2040 and 2050. A UN projection suggests that after peaking in 2050 the figure for total population could start falling.

There are debates about the numbers of people the Earth could support. An extravagant example was given in 1967 by Professor Colin Clark who worked out each person’s land requirement for American-type food consumption.  Taking world resources of agricultural land at “10.7 billion hectares of standard land equivalent,” he concluded that this could feed 47 billion people at “maximum standards”. He also estimated a much higher level on a subsistence diet (Population Growth and Land Use, p. 153). The possibility of feeding an estimated figure of between 30 and 35 billion people “with existing technology, assuming it was properly deployed” was attributed to the FAO by Prof. Samuel Preston in a Horizon programme in June 1992 (transcript p.8)

While such projections may serve as a useful contribution to the argument that the size of the population is not the reason people are malnourished, we must not appear to be complacent as to how needs can be met: ‘We are already eating into our capital, collectively consuming the renewable resources of 1.5 planets’ (populationmatters.org).  The best prospects lie with a change to common ownership and democratic control but this also means making plausible suggestions which do not assume socialism as a magic panacea.

Enough
According to the FAO, detailed analysis shows that “globally, there is enough land, soil and water, and enough potential for further growth in yields, to make the necessary [increase in] production feasible.” However, the policy environment has to be favourable to agriculture to make “feasible” become “actual” (World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030 Summary Report 2003). The report also acknowledges that globally the likelihood is that producers will continue to satisfy “effective” market demand but that this does not help the millions of people who lack the money to buy or the resources to produce what they need for themselves.
 
The summary report also gives reasons for expecting the demand for agricultural products to continue to grow but more slowly. It attributes this to the less rapid rise of the world population, and to a rising proportion of the world population having reached “fairly high levels” of food consumption.

It gives the example of China where by 1997-99 the average daily food consumption had reached 3,040 kcal – only 10 percent short of the level in industrial countries. The aggregate food consumption is expected to grow in the next three decades but at only a quarter of the rate seen in the previous three decades, and though the population is also expected to grow during the same period this will be at only a third of the rate of the previous three decades. By contrast there is considerable scope for increase in food consumption in India but, unlike China where the demand for meat has been part of increased food consumption, the cultural traditions favour vegetable diet. A 2006 Interim Report based on UN data and projections also sees indications for a “rather drastic slowdown in world demographic growth” in prospect. The fact remains that in the coming decades food supplies must and will be increased. However, as the FAO admits, if it is within a system of market production, this will still leave millions of people too poor to have secure access to food. A different scenario emerges when market production is replaced with a system where food is grown and processed simply to be eaten.
 
More land resources are available. For example, Brazil has more spare farmland than any other country, at least 300million hectares. Since 1996 Brazilian farmers have increased the amount of land under cultivation by a third, not in Amazonia, but mostly in the cerrado, an area previously thought to be unfit for agriculture being too acidic. The various methods used have included adding up to five tonnes of lime per hectare, no-till agriculture, and growing soybeans - not formerly a tropical crop.  Cross breeding with a variety of grass brought from Africa has also been used to produce a new variety of higher-yielding grass feed so that the amount of pasture has been extended – likewise the beef herd. Needless to say, the main purpose of this increased production is sale and profit including the export of palm oil.

The success achieved in the savannah of the cerrado in Brazil and elsewhere has encouraged the investigation of land with similar problems in other regions. Attention is turning to Africa as having an “abundance of natural resources including water” but very unevenly distributed. The FAO estimates that there are more than 700 million hectares of potential additional land available for cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Guinea Savannah region – an area twice as large as that currently planted to wheat worldwide – only 10 percent of some 600 million hectares of potentially cultivatable land is currently farmed. (FAO Media Centre: 2050 2009)

Land grabs
In recent years a scramble for land has developed involving some 7.6 million hectares worldwide. This “agri-colonial” acquisition of land means an expansion in production and shows what could be done if the only intention were to feed people. However, the aim is profit and not the meeting of needs. Many hectares of the land acquired are not intended for growing food but crops for biofuel. It was reported in 2009 that a former Wall Street banker had acquired 400,000 hectares of fertile ground in Southern Sudan from a local war lord – with the aim of looking for oil and uranium. Local people lose out in these land deals.
 
Much of the land grab is taking place in Africa, in Ethiopia,, for example, where the process is encouraged by the government with advertising which includes, “vast fertile, irrigable land at low rent” and “cheap labour” (Irish Times 30 January 2010). Sai Karaturi, a Bangalore businessman and one of the world’s biggest private landowners, has acquired a 50-year lease for 300,000 hectares in Gambella – Ethiopia’s western tip – to farm crops of maize, wheat and rice. Though it was reported in May 2011 that the Ethiopian Government has now reduced the concession by two-thirds, partly to allow for the migration of antelope (Businessweek 18 May). The same report mentioned criticism of Ethiopia’s policy of renting land cheaply to foreign investors to grow cash crops while 13 percent of its 80 million people rely on food aid and domestic farmers are being dispossessed. Investors include companies from India, China, and Saudi Arabia as well as from Ethiopia.
 
Cash crops
Crops are grown for sale, but the term “cash crops” refers to the need of developing countries to export in order to get foreign exchange. Fresh and processed fruit, and vegetables, fish, spices, nuts and flowers account for half of farm exports from developing countries and are overtaking coffee, tea and rice. In 2003-4 these exports were worth $106 billion.

Perhaps the most obvious cash crop which could be abandoned in favour of food production and without affecting anyone’s diet is flowers. Bangalore businessman Sai Karaturi – through Karaturi Global, an Indian company and the world’s largest producer of roses – has flower farms in both Kenya and Ethiopia producing 1.5 million rose stems daily for European markets (The East African 14 July 2008). Only 40 percent of the flower farms in Ethiopia are owned by Ethiopians. Power cuts could be a problem for flower growers there, but power is guaranteed to flower farms, which are given priority over other businesses including manufacturers of porridge and feeding paste for malnourished children. In Kenya, ranks of greenhouses and fields are devoted to producing flowers as well as high value crops such as green beans and peas for European consumers. In Columbia, millions of roses are grown for Valentines Day bouquets. Drought and a drop in the market affected the flower growers in 2009 especially in Uganda.

So, while reports warning about food supplies continue, population growth is not the problem that it is suggested to be: the rate of population growth has slowed, and although there will still be a sizable increase in population in the coming decades and a need to increase food production, there is the potential to increase the amount of land under cultivation, which a socialist society freed from production for profit will permit.

Pat Deutz

Telling it like it wasn't (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strike Back by Ernie Roberts (Published by the author 1994)

The only thing of interest in this autobiography of a long-standing supporter of state-capitalist Russia who was an Assistant General Secretary of the AEU for twenty years and Labour MP for Hackney North from 1979 to 1987 is the following lying attack on the Socialist Party. It refers to an incident that allegedly took place in a Coventry factory about 1940:

"Armstrong-Whitworth had always been a well-organised factory, and as a result, wages and conditions there were among the best in the city. A small group of men - about ten in all - steadfastly refused to join the union. Not because they were anti-Socialist, but because they were members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was firmly anti-union. They claimed that trade union leaders were the lieutenants of capitalism - saddling the workers so that the boss could ride them better. Finally, the other workers decided to take some action against the SPGB members for breaking the closed shop, and they approached their shop stewards with the problem. The solution was a fairly amicable one: the non-union men agreed that they would pay a contribution equivalent to their union subscription to a charity of their choice, so that there could be no question of their opting out of membership for financial reasons, and the rest of the shop then let them hold on to their anti-union principles in peace" (pp. 32-33).

Anyone who knows anything about the SPGB knows this can't be true. The SPGB was founded by workers who were active members of their unions, particularly in the building trade. When the issue of the Party's attitude to the existing pure-and-simple, "reformist" trade unions came up soon after the Party was founded in 1904, the policy of opposing them by trying to set up rival "revolutionary" unions were rejected in favour of working within them to defend the workers' day-to-day interests at work within capitalism. Ever since Socialist Party members have been active in various trade unions, including the AEU.

It is possible that Roberts is referring to an incident, involving members of the old SLP, but the fact that he associates it with the SPGB reflects the influence of the now defunct Communist Party (of which he was first a member and then a fellow traveller) which always used to spread the lie that we were "anti-union".

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Value and Surplus Value (2012)

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

People write the strangest things. Here, for instance, is John Lanchester in an essay ‘Marx at 193’ in the London Review of Books (5 April):

“In Marx’s judgement surplus value is the entire basis of capitalism: all value in capitalism is the surplus value created by labour. That’s what makes up the cost of the thing.”

While Marx did say that the extraction of surplus value is the basis of capitalism and that all value is created by labour, he did not say that all value is “surplus value”. Only some value is.

In the process of capitalist production, according to Marx, the workers, through the exercise of their mental and physical energies (their ‘labour-power’), transfer to the product the previously existing value embodied in the raw materials, energy, wear and tear of machines and the like. At the same time they create new value. A part of this, corresponding to the value of their labour-power, returns to them as wages; the rest, over and above this, is appropriated by their employer as “surplus value”.

That Lanchester’s statement, “all value in capitalism is the surplus value created by labour” is not just bad wording becomes clear when he goes on to write of Marx’s “surplus theory of value” rather than of his “theory of surplus value”. This leads him to bandy about the term “surplus value” in bizarre ways. According to him, you can create surplus value for yourself, and, as a customer or client of a company, you create surplus value for that company when it makes you book online or deal with a phone menu. This has nothing to do with Marx’s use of the term.

While Marx thought that all value was created by labour, he did not think that all work created value. Products only acquire value when they are produced for sale on a market (as ‘commodities’). This was expressed, when they were bought and sold, as their ‘exchange value’ (in money terms, price). In fact, for Marx, it was only through exchange value that a commodity’s value can be expressed.

Products not produced for sale do not have a value even though they are products of work. They are simply products, useful things that people have made to use. Before capitalism, most products were produced to be used directly and not for sale. Even today under capitalism, there is work that does not produce value. Housework doesn’t, nor does DIY or gardening. To say that such work does not produce value is not to say that it is worthless. On the contrary, most of it is very worthwhile. It is just that it does not produce ‘value’. Work in socialism won’t either as it won‘t be producing things for sale.

Even when there is production for sale not all work produces value. According to Marx, only labour that is ‘socially necessary’ does that, by which he meant the time which it takes a worker of average skill to produce a particular product. Otherwise, the slower workers worked the more value they would create.

For Marx, the value of a commodity was determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour embodied in it from start to finish, i.e., not just the labour at the final stage, but also all the labour at previous stages right back to extracting the raw materials from nature.

Marx did not think that under capitalism commodities actually exchanged at their value. He explained in Volume III of Capital that, due to the averaging of the rate of profit, goods sold at what he called their ‘price of production’ (cost + the average rate of profit). So Marx’s theory of value is not a theory of price, but rather an explanatory tool to understand the working of the capitalist system as a whole.