Freedom — The Old and New Joke (1957)

From the July 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has been a rumpus in Parliament over the tapping of a barrister's telephone conversation with a solicitor and the passing on of the transcript to the Bar Council.

In defending the action the Home Secretary stated that this power is used "solely in cases involving the security of the State or for the purpose of detecting serious crime.” And who is the judge? The Home Secretary, of course, who has to give the permission. What a lot can be covered by “security of the State”! The opening of letters, for instance, for the alleged purpose of seeing if dollars are being smuggled, or tickets for the Irish Sweep.

But this is a “freedom-loving country,” as free as it always was. In the middle of last century the correspondence of Mazzini, the Italian patriot, was opened on the same plea. But we can go further back still.

On the 26th April, 1817, The Scotsman had an editorial article, from which we have extracted the following

"In this island, we have no inquisition to make out lists of books which it is unlawful to read. Our Ministry, although it seems to have the wish, has, fortunately, no power to imitate the example of these Holy Fathers and Familiars, with ropes about their waists. It has not yet got the stock of national reflection put under lock and key; nor can it take its stance before the storehouse of literature, and deal us out ideas and information by the ounce, and the drachm, and the scruple; or repulse with a tyrannical frown such as appear discontented with the small pittance of mental food allotted to them. Thought is here free, and has been so long free, that it can never be gathered in, or monopolised any more. The mind cannot be stripped of its acquirements, nor ideas prevented from generating other ideas, unless it was possible to blast the whole nation with a sudden stupidity.”

Now, that sounds good, doesn’t it? But wait a minute. In other columns of the same issue of the paper there were complaints about the incidence of the Seditious Meetings Bill, and a report of proceedings under this Bill, in which a debating society was refused a licence to hold debates, although it was pointed out that these debates on literature and philosophy had been carried on peaceably.

As a further instance of the freedom to put forward ideas the same paper for May 17th, 1817, is also interesting. Here is an extract:-

"On Thursday the important question was to be put to Ministers, whether it is their intention to move for the continuing the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The answer will produce the most lively sensation in the country; for, in comparison with this, all other topics are of little account. It is in vain to say that the country is disturbed. All pretences of a domestic nature are done away; for there are not signs of sedition, but clamorous beggary, the result of distress, or of pillage from despair. The Spencean system (by which is meant the division of lands and goods among all classes of the community) is rapidly taking place, by the reduction of the higher classes to the middle state, and the middle to pauperism. The process is gradual but unremitting. Every day brings us all nearer to one level; and if we continue in the blind policy of applying such remedies to the national evil as the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and enacting the gagging laws, the result cannot be mistaken.—We must sink into common ruin.”

The boasted freedom of thought seems to have been taking a walloping!

The latter part of the quotation is almost an echo of what we bear to-day. The rich are becoming poor—well, apart from its millionaires, the attenders of luxurious banquets and "coming-out" parties, the patrons of luxury cruises, and the like. After all, a Rothschild who has just died only left £11,000,000.

Gilmac.

Maggie and Mikhail: A meeting of minds? (1987)

From the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most political commentators, because they have for decades obstinately refused to see Russia as anything but "communist", now don't quite know what to make of what they themselves have dubbed the "Gorbachev revolution". Russia is still "communist" and intends to stay that way — we have Gorbachev's own word for that. So what are we to make of glasnost and perestroika — the Russian words for "openness" and "restructuring" that now trip off the tongues of TV news readers as easily as "communist threat" once did?

That there are reforms — both in the economic and political spheres — taking place in Russia at the moment is beyond question. In political terms, we are told that there is going to be "democratisation". This does not mean that Gorbachev and other members of the Politburo are going to stand for election or that rival political parties are going to be able to put forward candidates for election to political office. What it does mean, if Gorbachev gets his way, is that Party officials will have to compete for certain key posts and submit themselves for election to the next lowest tier. There may also be a requirement that industrial managers will have to be elected by their workforce (an introduction of an element of democracy to an area that has mostly been immune from it in the so-called democracies of the west).

There does appear to be some increase in the civil liberties enjoyed by Russian citizens. The more liberal political climate has meant that there is greater openness in the Russian media: criticism of certain aspects of Russian life is now not only permitted but officially encouraged. However it is important to notice that criticism is only tolerated when it is directed towards those areas which Gorbachev himself has indicated are legitimate targets — bureaucratic ineptitude, economic inefficiency, low productivity and corruption in particular. It is highly unlikely that political criticism of the system itself will be permitted. In the arts and cultural life there has been some liberalisation: literature, music, films and plays that were previously banned or at least heavily censored are to be made available, although "freedom of expression" still does not exist. Things are still under the watchful eye of the state censors; it is just that now they have widened the parameters of what is permissible.

Some political prisoners have been released, especially those like Sakharov, who have been the focus of western media attention. And while it is unlikely that there will be a general amnesty for political prisoners, there is an official commitment to release more. Similarly we are told that Jews wanting to leave Russia for Israel will have their cases reviewed but we are not likely to see much "freedom of movement" for Russian people in general.

In economic terms the reforms have mostly focused on two major problems the Russian leadership have been grappling with for decades: low productivity and the poor quality of the goods produced. In an attempt to revitalise the economy, Gorbachev has introduced greater private ownership and various incentive schemes. In an effort to overcome the problems of delay and inefficiency caused by the cumbersome, centralised, bureaucratic machine, managers of some factories are being given greater responsibility for decision-making so that all decisions are not automatically referred upwards to officials. In the service sector some small businesses are being reorganised as cooperatives. Managers are encouraged to run their businesses more cost-effectively by the state granting them a fixed wage fund. If they can then reduce their workforce and also maintain productivity then all will earn more money. There have been changes in rural areas too. Farmworkers have been organised into teams who are given responsibility for specific fields which they work in return for a guaranteed basic wage. When the crop is harvested they will then get a bonus which will be determined by the quantity and quality of their produce. In other words some Russian workers are being paid by results in an attempt to both increase quality and productivity. They will have to work harder in order to maintain or improve their living standards.

The media soap opera that was created around Thatcher's recent visit to Russia focussed on whether there had been a "meeting of minds" between the two leaders; whether Gorbachev really was a man who Thatcher could "do business with"; whether they could bridge the "ideological gulf" that separated them. Such questions were only possible because of the myth that the media has itself so long fostered. That myth is that the system in Russia is in some fundamental way different from that in the west; that Russia is "communist" and the west is "capitalist" — as different as chalk and cheese.

But the truth is that Russia and the west are not. and never have been "worlds apart" and so a "meeting of minds" between Gorbachev and Thatcher was not the quantum leap that it was made out to be. For Russia is a capitalist country: just like any other capitalist nation it produces for profit and not need; goods and services are exchanged on the market for a price; a minority control the wealth that is produced, while the majority sell their labour power in return for a wage or salary. The only significant difference between Russia and the west is that the state owns rather more of the wealth and means of production, distribution and exchange than do private entrepreneurs. And even this is not as significant a difference as it might first appear: many countries which would not be described as "communist" vest considerable ownership in the state and in Britain too there have been periods when there has been considerably more state ownership than is the case today.

So Gorbachev’s limited economic reforms — more private ownership and payment by results — do not mean that Russia is becoming "more capitalist". The current reforms represent no more of a fundamental change than does Thatcher's policy of privatisation of what were once state-owned industries.

In political terms the Gorbachev reforms are potentially more significant. But again they should not be misinterpreted as meaning that Russia is becoming less communist — it has never been communist. Capitalism — as an economic system — can contain a wide variety of very different political systems: the "liberal democracies" of western Europe, America, Australia and New Zealand; undemocratic and authoritarian systems such as that in South Africa; the fascist governments of Italy and Germany during the 1930s and 1940s; the one-party states common in parts of Africa; military dictatorships like those in some South American states; and the one-party states of Russia and eastern Europe.

In the political sphere as was the case in the economic, it is a question of degree. Just as there can be disagreements about the best proportions in the mix of state and private ownership without the fundamental nature of capitalism being affected, so too, exactly how coercive and repressive the state is, will vary. But in all capitalist countries the main function of the state machine is the same — to protect the interests of the owning class. How it goes about doing that is likely to depend on the economic and political conditions that exist in a particular country at a particular time — how secure the owning class feels its control to be and how divided it is. To maintain a highly coercive and repressive state machine, with all that entails for civil and political liberties, may be thought to be politically necessary but it can also have negative effects economically and politically.

In economic terms coercion is expensive: to maintain a large police force, internal security services, prisons and so on, is very costly. If the owning class can maintain its power by other, subtler and less expensive means then they may well decide to take the risk and loosen the reins a little. The risk, of course, is that workers may make use of their new-found political freedoms to press for more fundamental changes. On the other hand to maintain rigid, repressive state control is also risky: workers who are stamped on too hard are likely to feel disaffected, resentful and uncooperative. And. as Gorbachev has recognised, if workers feel that they have no stake in the system then they may well choose not to work very hard.

So what we are seeing in Russia at the moment is a regime that feels sufficiently secure politically to loosen the reins of state control and is aware of the economic benefits that can be won by conning workers that they are "free" and have a stake in the system. It's no wonder that Mikhail and Maggie got on so well — after all they have so much in common.

Janie Percy-Smith

Should the Film Industry be Nationalized? (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was sent by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the “Borehamwood Post”, stating the Socialist attitude to a question which appears from time to time.

Your correspondent, Mr. A. J. Carnall, in a letter to your paper of January 23rd 1975 makes a plea for the take-over, by the Government, of the Film Industry. His main argument in support of this seems to be his opinion that (contrary to the belief held by some people) the Government in this event would not dictate what kind of films would be produced and that creative and artistic freedom would not be restricted. He then goes on to give what he claims are examples of this in those areas where the Government are at the present time in control.

Under the conditions of the present-day capitalist society the principal object for the production of films or, for that matter, the production of almost everything else in other fields of human endeavour, is to make a profit for that group in society who own the means of production, the capitalist class. Mr. Carnall says that the entertainment industry is a necessary social service. With the same kind of logic so is every other industry including, for example, the arms manufacturing industry, which, although it performs a social service, does not produce anything useful to society, on the contrary it produces harmful weapons of destruction. It is, of course, a matter of personal opinion as to whether the Film Industry falls into this category.

The reason for government nationalization of certain industries in those countries like Britain where capitalism is operated under what is referred to as a mixed economy, is not for the purpose of providing a better social service, as such, but to ensure that the surplus-value-producing machinery of the whole national capitalist class continues to exploit the working class with the maximum possible efficiency.

The Labour Government of 1945 had this in mind when they nationalized the railways and mines etc. Whether or not they were successful depends upon the individual opinion and attitude of those who attempt to make an assessment. Most certainly it did nothing to fundamentally change the social position of the workers employed in those industries, or for the working class generally.

Mr. Carnall says that the Arts Council administers millions of pounds in subsidizing opera and ballet. Quite true; this is an area of human endeavour which the Government considers to be useful in creating a good international image, like the monarchial institution which is maintained for the same reason. However it does not alter the fact that the people who are engaged as dancers and singers who have to attain, over a period of intense training of about ten years, a very high degree of performance, receive wages which, apart from a few star performers, and in spite of the efforts of Equity, and the pretensions of the government-sponsored administrations, are abysmally low by any standards.

Mr. Carnall implies that the BBC exercises little or no discrimination in relation to programme content, strange implication to make when even the mighty leader of the Labour Party claimed that they did — in spite of the fact that the Labour, Tory and Liberal spokesmen were hardly ever off the BBC during the last election. The fact is that minority political parties get little, or no time, on the BBC even during election times.

In relation to the restriction, by governments, of artistic and creative freedom, the classic examples of this are to be found in those countries, like Russia, where state capitalism predominates. Some of us have read other literature besides Soviet Weekly, and most people are aware of the incidents of defection, and what led up to them, by the Nureyevs, Panovs, etc., from the state-controlled Kirov and Bolshoi ballet companies.

Mr. Carnall makes no mention of this, which is understandable, since he is a member of the Communist Party, an organisation which ever since they formed in 1920 has slavishly applauded and apologized for everything the Russian government did.

Of course sections of the capitalist class in Britain, and elsewhere, teetering on the edge of a possible world-wide stagnation, with some of them facing bankruptcy are only too pleased for the Government or the workers to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire” for them. Even the Tories, who over the years

have falsely claimed to have had some objection in principle to nationalization, would not be opposed to that.

Nationalization of the entertainments industry, or of any other industry, will do nothing to solve the problems engendered by capitalist society. If Mr. Carnall was really concerned about the problems created by capitalism, of which the crisis in the film industry is only a small part, then instead of making a plea for state capitalism he should be advocating the introduction of world-wide Socialism, a classless, moneyless system based upon common ownership and production for use, democratically controlled by the whole of the world’s population. But then this solution would be inimical to his Party line with its blind support of the Russian ruling class, and would necessitate him doing some real thinking on this matter for a change. This, however, would probably be too much to expect from a man of his generation.

H. D. Walters 

(Employed at E.M.I. Elstree Studios)

Note: The third and fourth paragraphs from the end were omitted when this appeared in the “Borehamwood Post”.

The Communist International (1939)

Front cover of the 1962 edition.

Book Review from the February 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Communist International," by F. Borkenau. Faber & Faber. 12/6. 442 pages

A by no means insignificant reason for the lamentable condition of the international working-class movement is to be sought in the baneful influence of events in Russia. Hypnotised by its mythical Socialist character, bull-dozed by its offspring, the Communist International, thousands of militant workers have fallen victims to its spell. Fortunately, numbers of workers everywhere, under the hard blows of reality, are beginning to come to their senses. Anything that tends to hasten this process can only be welcomed, and therein lies the importance of this book. Written by a former official of the German Communist Party, it is a painstaking and scrupulous attempt to reveal the origins of Russian Bolshevism and its influence, through the Comintern, on the world Labour movement.

Dr. Borkenau is of the opinion that the Communist International has served three main purposes during its history. In its first years it was “mainly an instrument to bring about revolution"; later it was “mainly an instrument in the Russian factional struggles”; and at the moment it is "mainly an instrument of Russian foreign policy." A safe generalisation, and one not necessarily conflicting with the author’s view, would be that the Comintern at all times was subordinated to the needs, either real or imagined, of the Russian State. For even during its early and "heroic” period, when, possibly, the Soviet leaders did sincerely desire and work for revolution elsewhere, attempts at revolution were always encouraged for the advantage it was thought they would bring to the newly- launched State.

Although the Communist International did not formally come into existence until March, 1919, the Germany of the January of that year was one of the countries where Russian influence first made itself felt. Under the influence of the Russian events and its chief protagonist in Germany, Radek, a small group of militant and romantically-minded workers, known as the Spartacists, rose in armed revolt. Rosa Luxemburg, a member of this group, and those closely associated with her, strongly advised against this senseless act. Inevitably, this heroic, but unbelievedly muddle-headed, attempt to seize power was drowned in blood. One of the tragic aspects of this pitiable farce was the death of Rosa Luxemburg, whose ghastly murder was a great loss to the German working-class movement  in particular, and to the international working class in general. Dr. Borkenau pays a moving tribute, marred only by a colossal piece of masculine conceit, to this truly remarkable woman. The sharp differences between Luxemburg and Lenin, particularly on the question of leadership, where Luxemburg, the Socialist, opposed the essentially bourgeois "Jacobin" revolutionary, Lenin; Luxemburg's critical attitude towards the Russian Revolution; her whole life and work, no less than the manner of her death, make the " Lenin-Liebknecht-Luxemburg” commemoration meetings, and the Communist claim that "Luxemburg" belongs to them, an insult to the memory of one of the finest individuals who ever championed the cause of the working class.

In Hungary, Finland, Germany in 1921 and 1923, and in China in 1927, the tale of intrigue, duplicity, treachery and disastrous incompetence of the Communist International unfolds itself. The description of the fantastic escapades fostered by the self-appointed "revolutionary general staff” would simply be unbelievable were it not for the factual evidence which Dr. Borkenau so abundantly provides. We must content ourselves with selecting as "high spots" the 1921 rising in Germany, and the catastrophe known as the Canton "Soviet" of 1927.

In 1921, Bela Kun, a leading Hungarian Communist, arrived from Russia, where he had witnessed at Kronstadt the bloody suppression by Lenin and Trotsky of the last remnants of Soviet democracy. Convinced of the desperate situation of the Soviet regime, he persuaded the Central Committee of the German Communist Party to stage a rising, the outcome of which he hoped would assist the Soviet Power to maintain itself. Completely isolated from the workers, the Communists sat down to work out the details of the "rising." As the German workers proved completely unresponsive to calls for an armed revolt, it was decided that a little "assistance" would not be misplaced. Hence we have, for example, the Communists of Breslau deciding to start the "Revolution" by blowing up their own party premises, to stage the explosion in the toilet, and, moreover, seriously debating whether to blow up the toilet when occupied or not! Fortunately, commonsense(!) prevailed. The toilet went up in the air without a victim. During this time the Communists also called for a General Strike. But the German workers didn’t want to strike! Were the Communists dismayed! Not a bit of it! They simply mobilised their unemployed members and set them to literally drag the employed workers out of the factories. Paul Levi, one of the few independent spirits connected with the German Communist movement, commenting in a pamphlet, Our Road, on the fist fights between Communist unemployed and the employed workers, stated that: "Even more pathetic reports arrived from Berlin. We learn that it was a terrible  thing to watch how the unemployed, crying loudly at the pain of the thrashings they had received, were thrown out of the factories." Levi was excluded from the party, and although the Communists were subsequently forced to admit the accuracy of his indictment—and this was upheld by Lenin—he was never reinstated.

Already before the senseless attempt to form a "Soviet" at Canton in December, 1927, the Chinese Communists had been bloodily defeated ; by Chiang-Kai-Shek. As Dr. Borkenau says:  "The root of the . . . catastrophe in China lies in this duplicity, in this child-like conviction that your adversary will not understand your intentions, though you express them quite openly, that he will continue to co-operate with you as long as you want it, and allow himself to be overthrown when it suits you." The Chinese Communists thought they could use Chiang; instead he used them, and then mercilessly destroyed them. Stalin, who was for the most part responsible for this disastrous policy of double-dealing, was faced with the criticism of the opposition in Russia. To retrieve his prestige, a German Communist, an unscrupulous, daring and irresponsible careerist by the name of Heinz Neumann, was sent to China, where, with the support of the remnants of armed Chinese Communists, he staged the Canton "Commune." Formed amidst the general indifference of the populace, this " Soviet" lasted 58 hours, important sections of the workers taking up arms against it. At the end of this adventure, a frightful massacre of Communists took place, involving the whole of the Chinese Communist leaders. Only Heinz Neumann escaped. It is perhaps one of the minor ironies of history that Neumann escaped death then, and later, at the hands of Hitler, only to be shot by his Russian "comrades" at Moscow in May, 1937.

Dr. Borkenau supplies what is to us one of the most convincing reasons for the never-ending purges, denunciations, jailings, shootings and persecutidns that have decimated the ranks of many Communist parties, in particular the Russian Party. The Communists, in spite of the lip-service they pay to "objective reality," are, in fact, incorrigible  "subjectivists." If social reality conflicts with what the latest dogma from Moscow says it ought to be—well, so much the worse for reality. Living in a world of their own, perhaps the most dangerous illusion ever held by them is that the working class is simply bursting with revolutionary ardour and only restrained by the nefarious tactics of treacherous Labour leaders. But if the workers do adopt a policy of which the Communists approve, and disaster, nevertheless, results, then the leaders have not fully understood, were not really " Bolshevised," or have misapplied, sabotaged or betrayed the infallible directives given by infallible people in Moscow. Therefore—off

with their heads! If the "workers’ State" has finally been achieved, as in Russia, and, nevertheless, paradise obstinately refuses to make an appearance, are the causes to be sought in a mistaken appraisal of social conditions? Of course not! It must lie the treachery of some of the leaders. Consequently, we have the spectacle of men who have grown old and broken in the services of the Revolution being dragged out from political obscurity and butchered to satisfy the need of a scapegoat.

Perhaps one of tlie most interesting and revealing chapters in this book is the one entitled "The Structure of the Communist Parties." The instability of the membership of the Communist parties is well known, and in Germany it reached such proportions as to justify the use of a technical term, "fluctuation," a term which was subsequently applied to all the non-Russian parties to describe the staggering influx and exit of members. Basing himself on a careful analysis of the available statistical material, Dr. Borkenau concludes that in the German party a nucleus of only five per cent. remained faithful, whatever happened. And since, as he says, "the Germans have a well-justified reputation for the stubbornness with which they stick to allegiances once established,” there is no reason to suppose that any other Communist Party is any better in this respect. The social composition of the parties varies as to the policy pursued, whether "right" or “left." It is a noticeable fact that, in Great Britain, the Communist Party has, at the moment, attracted many who formerly they would have dubbed "middle- class elements." In Spain the process has gone so far that the party there has almost lost its proletarian character.

Summing up, Dr. Borkenau reaches the scathing conclusion that "an iron guard, unshakable, integrating the experience of a generation of revolutionary fighters, is the official ideal of a Communist Party. Shifting masses, imbued with a deep hatred of the old mass organisations and their humdrum activities, but without any stability or fixed conviction of their own, are the reality."

Apart from the fact that the author talks of the specious economic arguments of Karl Marx without in any way attempting to justify such strictures, the book also contains one or two minor inaccuracies. That these latter have been seized on so avidly by Communist apologists, in an attempt to discredit the book as a whole, merely serves to demonstrate the weakness of the Communist case. Dr. Borkenau also asserts that the workers in the majority have hitherto shown no desire for Socialism: a statement with which every Socialist will readily agree. But when he goes on to conclude that they never will do, he assumes the role of a prophet, and we, as Socialists, will do our best to see that, in due course, experience will confound him.

Nevertheless, this remains an extremely valuable book, which all workers ought to read. Propagandists for Socialism will find it invaluable when faced with Communist opposition. As far as members of the Communist Party are concerned, if blind devotion to a myth has not entirely impaired what critical faculties they ever possessed, we can only implore them to get hold of it at all costs. We freely concede that in the ranks of the Communist Party are to be found many workers abounding in enthusiasm, energy, capacity for self-sacrifice, and devotion to a cause which they quite sincerely identify with the cause of the working class. But these very qualities, which could be of inestimable advantage to the working class, are transformed into a veritable curse because of the blind, uncritical, unquestioning devotion to an illusion. This book should go a long way towards dispelling that illusion.

Arthur Mertons

Karl Marx and his critics: Do profits grow on thistles? (1928)

Book Review from the January 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class," by N. Bukharin, (Martin Lawrence, 7/6 net.)

Since the days when Marx analysed the Capitalist system of producing and distributing wealth, laid bare the secret of value, and demonstrated how surplus value is obtained, the agents of the master class have been engaged in numberless attempts to “explain” why the Capitalist is entitled to his profits. A legion of Professors of Political Economy have entered the lists against Marx, with disastrous results to themselves. Journalists and publicity writers have tried their hands where the experts have failed, with even more lamentable results.

One of the most boomed of the Marxian critics, whose general work on Economics ranks, perhaps, higher in Capitalist estimation than that of any other economist of modern times, was Böhm-Bawerk, head of the “Austrian” School of Economics. He was not only a Professor of Economics, but also Austrian Minister of Finance for some time. Thus, to his theoretical knowledge lie added experience of practical affairs, and this would lead one to expect in him a most formidable opponent. Many years ago he loudly proclaimed the discovery of a “great contradiction” between the first and third volumes of “Capital," but the “discovery’" caused hardly more than a flutter before it died.

His two best-known works are his “Theories of Interest,” where he claims to show the failure of all the attempts to explain interest by previous economists, and his “Positive Theory of Capital,” in which he sets out to state the source and reason of interest.

To reach this explanation it was necessary to state a law of value which, incidentally, would expose the hollowness of Marx's theory on the same subject. Here, however, the famous Professor was unable to do anything better than come to England and borrow the late Stanley Jevons's theory of “Final Utility,” published in 1871. A few minor alterations were made, and the title changed to “Marginal Utility,” and then the theory was announced as a brand-new solution of the tantalising problem of value. It is this theory of value that Bukharin criticises in the volume under review.

According to the Marginal Utility theory, value is determined, not by the ordinary utility of any article, but by the utility of the article sold by ”marginal” pair of buyers and sellers that effect a sale in a given market. This is explained as follows. Sellers come into the market, each with a different price in his mind that he is prepared to accept rather than not sell at all. Buyers also come into the market, each with a different price in his mind that he will pay rather than go without the article. It is clear that if the highest price of the buyers is less than the lowest price of the sellers, no sale will take place. Also, if the highest price of the sellers is below the lowest price of the buyers, it is clear that all the articles will be sold. In practice, it is assumed that the lowest selling price will be below the highest buying price, and the actual point of contact will lie somewhere between these two figures. This point of contact forms the ”marginal” price and determines the price of all the other articles of the same kind and quality in that market. In this theory the different prices demanded are taken as representing the different degrees of utility the articles have for the different buyers. Therefore the price at which the actual sale takes place—the "marginal” price—expresses the "marginal” utility of the articles and so determines their value.

It is easy to see that here there is complete confusion between value and price, a confusion that runs throughout the whole of Böhm-Bawerk’s writings; whilst two other points in the theory strike the reader at a first glance. One is that we are here given our old friend, "Supply and Demand," in a slightly different dress, as the explanation of price, for the “marginal" pair are the same couple who effect a sale under the theory of Supply and Demand. The other point is that value, according to this theory, is entirely a question of individual estimates, or, to use the technical term, it is subjectively determined.

On the first point, it is plain as a pikestaff that this “marginal" theory has no connection with the facts. As far as the vast majority of the articles produced for sale are concerned, the prices are fixed beforehand and there is no question of bargaining at all. One does not go into a modern store and start arguing what price one shall pay for an article. The price is there already "marked in plain figures" for the customer to see. Moreover, it would be absurd to suppose that the “marginal” utility or "subjective valuation" of a given article will be alike at different places at the same time. But the prices are the same. And there still remains the criticism that was used against the older theory, namely: When Supply and Demand equal each other, what then determines the price? When the prices of the "marginal” buyer and seller are equal, what determines that price? This question is not even mentioned, let alone an answer attempted, by the Austrian School.

On the second point, that value is a “subjective" question, it is evident that as each individual’s “subjective" estimate will be different from the others, we have here no actual basis of general value at all. Such an “explanation" is a good illustration of the mental bankruptcy of the apologists of the Capitalist class. But it is on the question of interest that this bankruptcy is most clearly seen, and for good reasons.

Capitalists' profits form the danger zone of orthodox economics. It is useless to deny, however “subjectively,” that profits exist. So they must be "explained.” But how? Every apologist answers differently, until Böhm-Bawerk feels impelled to write a large volume to show that they all are wrong. Then what is his explanation? Truly wonderful.

The Capitalist has resources and can buy raw materials, machinery and other plant necessary for the production of articles for sale at some future time. The worker has only his labour-power to sell, and as he is without resources he cannot wait till that  "future time" when the articles will be sold. Moreover, in common with other people, the worker places a greater value upon a present satisfaction or utility than on a future one. The difference between the present and the future valuations is the source of the Capitalist’s interest, and the justification for that interest is found in the time the Capitalist waits before receiving it. An illustration may make this point clear. For the sake of simplicity we will only deal with the worker’s part in production, leaving on one side the question of raw material, plant, etc.

Let us assume that it takes a month from the beginning of the manufacture to the selling of a given article, and that the article sells for 20s. As the worker cannot wait for a month, he would consider the present value of a smaller sum—say 15s.—as equal to the future value (a month hence) of 20s. So the Capitalist, who is a thought-reader, advances the worker 15s. to-day for work that will produce 20s. a month after. There is, of course, no robbery, as the worker is quite ready—nay anxious—to take the 15s. to-day rather than wait a month for 20s. If the worker could wait the month, he would receive the 20s., and interest and profit would vanish!

Why does he not wait? Because he has no resources, says Böhm-Bawerk. Exactly. But why has he no resources? Here Böhm-Bawerk becomes suddenly shy and offers no explanation. The answer is simple. It is because he is forcibly prevented from obtaining any resources by the power in the hands of the Capitalist class.

It is not a question of the worker’s "subjective” valuation of either present or future utilities at all. It is the fact that the only alternative he has to accepting the Capitalist’s terms is starvation. As the worker is forcibly restrained from any access to raw materials or machinery and tools to work upon that material, he is unable to accumulate any resources and must therefore sell his services day by day. It is the difference between the value the worker produces and that value that he receives, that forms the source of surplus value. Interest and Profit are parts of this surplus value, and hence are the result of the robbery of the worker by the Capitalist.

These and several other questions, such as the “abstinence” of the Capitalist, and whether he “advances" the wages of the worker, are dealt with very fully by Bukharin in this volume. The book, however, is one for the student rather than for popular reading. German writers, as is well known, are very fond of cumbersome words and long and involved sentences. Böhm-Bawerk’s writings follow the national model, and Bukharin, apparently, enjoys using the same sort of phraseology, with the result that the book presents a somewhat fearsome appearance to the lay reader. As a technical criticism of the Austrian School, the book can be fully recommended to all who refuse to he frightened by the terminology used.

Jack Fitzgerald

Redundant directors (1981)

From the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Walter Goldsmith, Director General of the Institute of Directors, did not like the fact that the Thatcher government averted, at least for the time being, the threat of a countrywide coal strike. He commented (Guardian, 20/2/81): “The events of the last few days have reduced the . . . government’s economic policies to a shambles . . .They have caved in on all fronts . . .They are . . . reinforcing trade union power”. Well, isn’t this jolly hard cheese! Here are the directors, rubbing their hands gleefully in expectation of the miners being put in their place, only to find the contest called off at the last minute! Unfortunately for the directors, and those who think like them, the capitalists cannot live as capitalists without the workers, from whom they extract the surplus value from which their profits come. Consequently, when these confrontations arise, concessions sometimes have to be made if the cost to the capitalists is less than that of a stoppage of production.

At times indeed employers and governments can be faced by quite awkward decisions. This was recognised by the Daily Telegraph, in an editorial (20/2/81): “A strike would have been grievously harmful to the coal industry and to the nation.” (By “nation” they of course mean the capitalist class.) However the Telegraph also looked forward to a possible confrontation later, when the government might be better placed. As was pointed out in a letter to the same newspaper the following day, coal can stand up to even severe outdoor exposure. Capitalist priorities are the deciding factor. Food, fuel, transport and raw materials are all vital commodities and workers employed in their production usually have some bargaining power, particularly if stocks are low. On the other hand hospital workers, for example, have very little going for them.

As for the directors, their role in the capitalist economy is not so vital. They ought not to be surprised when, despite financial backing which they receive from ruling class quarters, governments ignore their opinions when it comes to the crunch.

E. C. Edge

The Changing Public House (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom drank twelve and a half gallons of beer, statistically speaking. In addition, we disposed of a pint and a half of spirits and a quart of wine each. The only thing to be said in our favour is that our fathers, 60 years ago, drank nearly three times as much on paper and, the child population being larger then, probably four times as much in practice.

Figures are hardly needed to show that people drink less nowadays. A drunk in the street or a man with a grog-blossom is a rare sight; the pubs are empty—not literally, of course, but certainly by comparison with other, quite recent times. The local that was once the Pantheon of the neighbourhood, with knees-up in the bar, a Saturday night overflow on the pavement and a fight now and again, is now a comparatively quiet place where people drop in for a glass and not much more. And in the more newly built suburban areas, pubs generally are few and far between. Today in Britain there is roughly one public house to every 600 people: 50 years ago it was one to 350, and a century ago one to every 100-odd.

It might look as if the two centuries campaign against the horrors of drink has worn resistance down. In fact, there is probably less “temperance’’—the word should mean moderation, but has come to stand for a dogmatic extreme—less temperance today than there was in the 19th century, when its disciples wore blue ribbons and had every child sign the pledge whom they could lay their hands on. Most men and women drink, but not so much and not so often, and they do quite a lot of it at home. Those who visit pubs daily—ask for “the usual” and call the barmaid by her first name—are mainly older men. People under 40 go to pubs, but not as a habit. Their lives have different rhythms. That is what really has happened. Public houses and peoples’ drinking habits have changed: the real change has been in the pattern of social life, to which institutions and attitudes are shaped and fused.

The true significance of the public house is a communal one. Every well-knit community has its centres, places where people of all sorts go to do business, hear news, form opinions and enjoy one another’s company: the market place, the church and, since the Middle Ages in Britain, the inn. There have been and are others, like the coffee-house in the 18th century and the caff in our own generation, but each of them limited to particular social groups (the cafes in fact have a stratification of their own from arty haunts to good pull-ups for carmen). The pub accommodates many groups. Public bar, saloon, private bar and lounge, separate only by wooden partitions, are distinct milieus under the same roof.

The fact of modern counter-attractions to public houses is obvious. Fifty years ago there were no pictures, no radio, no speedways and so on; a good many people nowadays drink bottled beer at home while they watch the television. Something more than mere counter-attraction has caused the decline in public house life, however. It is worth remembering that music halls, the great entertainment at the beginning of the centuty, were also places for drinking. Their successors, the cinemas, have no facilities for it.

A great deal of everyday social activity has taken place in pubs. Workmen ate and were paid in them— farther back, trade unions and friendly societies met in them. Shopkeepers and small businessmen went to private bars for transactions. Less obvious things, too: not so many years ago, housewives took bowls of vegetables into the locals and sat shelling peas or peeling potatoes with glasses of stout beside them. Public houses had their own football teams, with a pitch behind the premises and several hundred habituees to give support (the writer played for one, and a very good team it was). There are not many such teams now, simply because few pubs can raise them from the regulars.

Industrial and political developments have eliminated much of this activity. There usually is a canteen wherever more than a few people are employed, and a wages office as well. The late 19th-century war between the Conservative brewers and the temperance Liberals linked anti-Conservatism with disapproval of drink; the growing Labour movement set up Trades Halls and Committee Rooms, taking the meetings out of the pubs. The small tradesmen, forced into political participation by the near omnipotence of combines and multiple shops, met in Conservative Clubs instead of public houses. Both ways, political parties helped to clear the bars. It is true also that the quality and amenities of everyday life have altered since those days when the pub exuded, to quote Trevelyan, “ its promise of warmth and welcome on to the wet inhospitable street.”

More than anything, however, there has been a falling-off in communal living and thinking. In modern industrial society, any sort of local community is exceptional. Apart from the family, which has disintegrated visibly in this century, and such exceptional cases as racial and political minorities, the only coherent groups are occupational and technical ones; possibly that is why the cafe, the small-group meeting place, flourishes now instead of the pub. The division of labour and the growth of cities where functions must largely be delegated and depersonalized have taken away much of the basis for communal activity. Law and order, education, charitableness, recreation, all are in the hands of professional specialists. The variety of experience that urban civilization apparently offers is too often variety only of vicarious experience. A man who says he is keen on sport nowadays is quite likely to mean that he does the pools or watches all the Arsenal’s home matches.

One of the best literary pictures of the status of the pub in pre-urban communities is contained in George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Marner’s appearance in the “Rainbow” is dramatic because he has never been there before, and so—nothing else is needed—lived in isolation. Discovering the theft of his gold, there is nowhere else to announce it but in the inn. The incident is the real climax of the story, the point where the recluse enters and is accepted by the community, and the inn is its symbol. Nowadays, of course, he would go to the police station.

Certainly some unpleasant things have largely disappeared from social life with the decrease in drinking. Sottishness has not much charm; nor has the sight of children dawdling for hours on public-house doorsteps while their parents are inside. The fading of these unedifying spectacles is usually put down to a change in peoples’ outlook, as if outlook meant a kind of communal revelation. It is true that social attitudes about drinking have changed, but the change is effect, not cause. Given the growth of town life, the diminished need for community centres, and a hundred and one facilities for solving the “problem’’ of leisure, there is less drinking in public houses: consequently there are fewer drunkards and waiting children and, in time, a feeling that there is actually something disgraceful about both. Go to a village where life is still centred in the pub, and you will find the same attitude in reverse—i.e., that the amenities of town life are not just frivolous but wicked too. In this connection, it is worth mentioning that much of the anti-drink propaganda of a century or two ago was directed not against public houses but against gin shops. Hogarth’s “Gin Lane” and “Beer Alley” series, commonly supposed to depict the horrors of drink, in fact aimed to show that beer was better in every way than gin.

The modern public house is more and more a shop where beer is sold, with perhaps some provision for amusement. The only places, apart from rural areas, where it retains something of its former character, are where there is a single industry and so a community is formed by an occupational group—docklands, shipbuilding, mill and mining towns and so on. In those areas the pub has not changed very much, even in its architecture, fittings and compartments—figured glass, rococo partitions, horsehair settees and sporting prints, in contrast with the aseptic, tiles-and-chromium, one- or two-room buildings of the modern metropolis and its suburbs.

Our society is less and less a community, more and more an agglomeration of individuals. Reference has already been made to the handing-over of former communal functions to trained, authority-bearing specialists: the more important point is that responsibility has been handed over too. It is not only that impersonal powers manage, instruct, entertain and generally provide for people—the more vital aspect is that people no longer have much to do in any of those matters. That is why a happening like a flood or a railway disaster makes news by bringing out men and women spontaneously to help, nurse and clothe the victims: ordinarily those are services provided by institutions. The war produced a good deal of such communality and showed that, far from being dead, it is always ready to come through the surface of urban civilization.

The public house is what its name implies—a house for the publicum, the community; and a community is no more to be found in it than a fifty-shilling suit in the Fifty Shilling Tailors’. Is that a bad thing? It is nice to feel superior and think that people nowadays have better things to do than go to pubs; balance the rise of aspirin-taking against the fall of beer-drinking, and you may wonder what the better things are. The pub in itself does not matter very much, but the social circumstances which have changed its character do. Historians of the future will record ours as an era of amenity and progress. Perhaps, too, they will record it as the age of insecurity, personal as well as economic: an age of crowded but lonely people, knowing little communal obligation or sanction for behaviour. Advice bureaux, help pages, marriage guidance councils, huge unseen audiences for the opinions on everything of petty oracles . . .  all these—and the aspirin-bottles—are the true monuments to today.

Robert Barltrop

Capitalism in Australia (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the end of the second world war two-and-a-half million workers from Europe, including a million from Britain, have gone to Australia. The majority go in the hope that they are going to make a fresh start and are leaving their problems behind them. They have been attracted by advertizing. (One slogan declares “We are making Australia a better place to live in”.) The emigrants are going there to work. To be more accurate they will be “getting a living”, but as they will be doing the bidding of some employer they are not free men and women.

Australia is a one-country Island-Continent. Its recorded history did not start until 1788 when the first Europeans arrived. Prior to that this huge land mass was an unknown land and, when discovered, was inhabited only by a handful of Aborigines. It was occupied without opposition, never knew feudalism, and has not known revolution or civil war. The early settlers “brought” capitalism with them and set in motion all the paraphernalia. The capitalist system was therefore imported into Australia.

Australia has vast prairies, formidable deserts, rich grazing lands, plentiful minerals, beautiful beaches. Its population has grown to 13,000,000, most of whom live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and small towns along the east coast. With Darwin, Adelaide and Perth, these cities are the major centres of commerce. World capitalism has booms and slumps, and Australia in its short history has experienced both. In the 19th century there were two slumps, in 1842 and 1892, but recovery was stimulated each time because of gold discoveries. Gold rushes always attract fresh emigrants with tradesmen, shopkeepers and so forth in their wake. By the turn of the century, capitalist development was again on the upgrade. After the first world war there was a boom which encouraged still more migrants but it was short-lived, for Australia did not escape the effects of the 1929 world depression. The older generation of the working class remember those years: the unemployment, the Labour Exchanges and the grinding poverty.

Today, Australia is called an “Awakening Giant”. It presents itself as an expanding capitalist country making the most of the “Winds of Change”. Its agricultural and mineral wealth are being exploited to the full. Exports in minerals alone (iron ore, zinc, lead, coal, copper) bring in millions of dollars annually. Vast amounts of capital, Australian and foreign, is invested to develop industry of every kind. The cities of Sydney and Melbourne with their teeming freeways, their busy dock areas and airports, their skyscraper office blocks, are the outward symbols of Australian capitalism. At the same time they testify where some of the surplus-value extracted by the exploitation of the working class has gone.

Propagandists describe Australia today as “the country of the future”, "young and vigorous”, and so on. But such words are idle chatter as far as workers are concerned. In Australia, as in all capitalist countries, the working class does not share in profits: those go to the capitalist class, the owners. During the boom period in Australia, for the capitalist it means full order-books, profit and prosperity. For the working class it means “full employment” and “regular wages” — which means rushing to and from work and the usual struggle to make ends meet.

In Australia wages appear to be high, but appearances are deceptive. The workers have to fight to maintain their wage levels in relation to increasing prices. A recent report in the Daily Mail said (9 May 1974):

A new campaign is being launched to lure Britons to well paid jobs in Australia. Miners will be offered about £100 per week and Electrical Fitters about £60 per week. The booming Kalgoorlie gold and nickel mines are hoping to take on 400 Britons in the next three years.

Like every other commodity, the price for labour-power fluctuates around its value according to supply and demand. There is an urgent demand for miners but in other trades £50 a week would be considered average. A trip around the shopping precincts, the big stores and the car showrooms makes clear the workers have access to little when the prices of goods are considered. Much in evidence are signs advertizing Easy Terms, Weekly Accounts and “Lay- By”, in other words workers have to mortgage their wages to get things they need. If they were receiving half as much as the propagandists imply, none of these tricks would have to be employed. In addition to food, clothing and the running of a car to get them to work, are their mortgages and rents. Many workers live out their lives in blocks of flats and others in Commission (Council) Houses. It is true they have access to the beautiful beaches and can go surfing or swimming. Sport is encouraged and Australian Rules football and cricket are popular, but what fundamental difference is there between the lives of the workers of Australia and those in Europe or USA? In the final analysis there is no difference. In the article in the Daily Mail appeared also the words of an Australian Government spokesman: “The money for Miners is good but it’s bloody hard work”.

About 2¼ million are organized in the trade-union movement; strikes are quite frequent. There is “National Arbitration Machinery” to cover the whole country in the event of strikes overlapping from one State to another. Each State has its own Industrial Tribune to intervene in strikes, make binding agreements and fix minimum wage rates. These bodies pretend the class struggle does not exist and are anti-working class as they uphold the whole structure of the wages system. Their existence and functions will end when the wages system itself is abolished by a Socialist working class.

To go to the polling booth in Australia is compulsory, but workers do not show much interest in politics. This is probably the result of conditions since the war for the younger generation especially. For 23 years there was a coalition Government of Liberals (read Tories) and Country Party but a year ago this was replaced by the Australian Labour Party. Not that it will make any difference. All are reformist parties. They act in the interest of the capitalist class, and the working class will have to learn this.

A small Socialist Party of Australia was formed nearly fifty years ago and groups exist in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. These groups are endeavouring, as do Socialists everywhere, to gain the ear of their fellow workers. The distances are vast, but nevertheless they keep in touch, distribute Socialist literature and use every opportunity to explain the cause of poverty, insecurity and war. The movement will grow. They are conscious of the fact that they are the only Party of Socialism and of the working class in Australia. They are indeed worthy of being one of the Companion Parties of Socialism. What more fitting phrase can be used to summarize their efforts other than “Good on You!”

J. C. Gormley

Making the grade (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In early summer notices appeared in schools, colleges, and universities reading: "Silence: Exams in Progress". Inside, rows of anxious students sat behind desks carefully arranged to prevent them "cheating". It was all part of the mysterious examination ritual, a competitive game which offers a bewildering assortment of GCEs, CSEs. BE-TECs and BAs to the "winners" and sweet FAs to the "losers". The belief that these certificates have some intrinsic educational value is of course a myth.

Capitalist education is dominated by exams, grades and assessment for two main reasons. Firstly, they are a mechanism for selecting and grading the future workforce — employers need an efficient and standardised method of finding the right person for the right job. Some people are trained as accountants and doctors, while others are required for the docks and cash registers. Schools are rather like factories which process both people and knowledge: children are fed in at one end and come out the other neatly packaged, assessed and labelled, ready for wage slavery. This is why money is spent each year on setting, marking and administering exams.

Sir Keith Joseph, the Education Secretary, plans to "improve" school standards and introduce yet another exam, the General Certificate of Secondary Education, to be taken at the age of sixteen. This shake-up is partly explained by the fact that only 25 per cent of school leavers achieve what many employers consider the bare minimum of five ‘O' levels. Presented as a new way of broadening children's education and helping the less academic pupil, the ideas have rather more to do with the interests of the British capitalist class and their need to compete internationally for profits. Keith Joseph could not be unaware of the 1983 report of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which showed that West German school leavers achieve much higher standards than the British, especially in maths.

Secondly, exams create the illusion of equality of opportunity. According to popular myth, people generally get what they deserve in life. So if you work hard at school, keep out of trouble and pass your exams, the world is your oyster. Were this the case, you would expect someone like the Duke of Westminster, who owns 200,000 acres of land across the world, and has a reported income of £10,800 an hour, to have been very successful at school. In fact, he left Harrow with only two 'O' levels. Any feelings of anxiety he may have felt about his future were eased when he inherited 500 million pounds on his twenty-first birthday.

The sons and daughters of the capitalist class do not have to worry about poor exam results and career prospects as their future is comfortable and secure. These sorts of problems are reserved exclusively for the working class, who are forced by economic necessity to compete with each other in the humiliating examination race. Their prize—a college place, a dead end job. a place in the dole queue. This is something they do not teach you in school.

Brian Rubin

Questions from a reader (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I have read the literature you sent me, after my response to your advert in the New Musical Express, and have a few questions to ask. It would be helpful if your answers were numbered as I have listed them.

        Thank you.

Nicky Wiy

Slough, Berks

If world socialism is to come about democratically, must you wait until every country allows the vote?

If you mean literally "every country", then the answer is "no". We certainly don't envisage waiting about for the very last person to catch up. Since the impetus towards socialism would already be having a tremendous impact on the world political stage and, in particular, in countries still without the necessary democratic processes (if any), we don't think there will be anything causing us to wait around. The rapid and widespread adoption of socialist ideas would alter fundamentally the nature and quality of world politics and impart the necessary impetus towards the transformation. The wheel of history would then rotate to the critical point-of-no-return. A socialist majority of the world's population would have sufficient confidence and political power to be able to announce the count down of the lift-off for socialist revolution.

The needs and inner dynamics of modem capitalism, whether the free enterprise or state capitalist kind, make unavoidable the eventual global extension of the limited forms of political democracy sufficient for our purpose. The real problem is here and now — how best to reach the point at which we who have access to the seats of power start exercising this enormous influence around the world. And that requires all of us to work unstintingly to achieve socialist majorities whenever we can — right now!

If there is no police force after socialism is established, who will enforce any laws that remain after those relating to property are repealed — e.g. those relating to assault, GBH, murder, etc?

There will be no laws remaining to deal with socially unacceptable acts of violence such as those to which you refer. All law and jurisprudence now arise from, and are geared to. the needs of the present acquisitive, aggressive, anxiety-ridden system; they are primarily protective of property. "Good public order" serves to keep the dispossessed in their place, their hands off the property of the owning class and their understandable outbursts of anger, violence and frustration under control by the state.

There may be anti-social acts of violence after the establishment of socialism; neither we nor future communities would want to shirk the issue. But each will have to be considered on its merits (or demerits) by each community — no longer motivated by concepts of retribution, revenge or fear of a break down of "law and order". There may well be cases where society's expressed revulsion may not be enough or appropriate — in which case the democratically arrived at decision to apply the ultimate sanction of the minimum necessary restraint, or enforced isolation from those thought to be at risk, may have to be made by that community.

Although the fundamental changes in relationships and attitudes and the quite different social milieu of free access and equality will remove the cause of most violent acts, the members of a community could not be expected to stand idly by on the rare occasions when a member of that community behaves irresponsibly. Socialist mores, common sense and self-discipline would determine what was acceptable and what was unacceptable, rather than invoking the concept of laws, crimes and punishments or commanding obedience by coercion.

When socialism is established, will those people who are in prison as a result of breaking property laws during capitalism be released?

Yes.

On the back page of the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard, the article gives me the impression that examinations have no value. If doctors, medical students, etc. were not tested theoretically and practically, how would we know if they were competent enough to do operations or to carry out experiments which would yield meaningful results?

This article. "Making the grade", was not intended to give the impression that all examinations are valueless and would be dispensed with in socialism. But certainly the experience of most people would suggest that, though the possession of an educational or professional certificate may serve as an entree to some jobs, it alone is not necessarily an indicator of real ability or comprehension. Indeed the concentration of tunnel-visioned parents, pupils and teachers on "achievement" —memorising fragmented, unrelated facts to meet the challenge of the exam paper — can lead to bizarre, not to say horrifying results.

The author was also emphasising the nature of the examination rat-race (Japan provides a good example) and the need for schooling to be tailored to meet employers' demands for efficient, standardised workers, graded appropriately to ensure value for money.

Within socialism aptitudes, mental and physical dexterity, skills, courage, ingenuity and inventiveness will be encouraged and developed in all. Of course, if someone is called on to perform a complicated operation on a patient or on a computer. there will be experienced persons in attendance who will have been delegated to ensure that all goes well. Those individuals will be the contemporary beneficiaries of socially transmitted knowledge and experience — none of whom would think of themself as exalted, as some consultants do today. In socialism no one could be motivated by the prospect of status or material advantage.

In your yellow leaflet Questions and Answers about Socialism, you say that thousands of people in this country die each winter of hypothermia. I would like to know from what source you obtained these vague statistics. In the book Consuming Secrets (page 224) there is listed official Government figures on deaths from hypothermia. They are: for 1970 - 16 deaths; 1971 - 15; 1972 - 21; 1973 - 22; and for 1974 - 17. I admit these are old figures and give no indication of those who suffer from hypothermia but do not die. The number who so suffer is about 5 per 1.000 OAPs. However, I do not see how the number of deaths has risen by approximately 8,000 per cent in eleven years.

Government figures on the number of people dying of cold each year in Britain are not dependable. But even if their very low figures are accepted. that still leaves large numbers of people (hundreds) dying of cold every winter. That would be bad enough, but there are reasons for believing that the real figure is in thousands rather than hundreds.

Each year tens of thousands more people die in the winter than in the summer; 80 per cent of these are over 65. In the ten years before 1980 the death rate was 17 per cent higher in winter than in summer for those aged 60-69; 20 per cent higher for those aged in their 70s and 25 per cent higher for those over 80. On average, approximately 45,000 more old people died each winter than each summer. In 1982, when government figures put the number of deaths from the cold in the 600s. 42,500 more people aged over 65 died in the winter months than the summer ones. We accept that not all of them died of hypothermia (some died of other conditions made worse by the cold) but it is highly unlikely that of 40,000 plus extra deaths, less than 1.000 can be attributable to lack of protection against the cold. In Sweden, where the sharp contrasts between summer and winter temperatures do not affect some areas, there is no equivalent rise in winter deaths among the old.

Many old people are not found until some time after they die. As a result, doctors do not know their body temperatures near to the time of death and hypothermia can neither be proved nor disproved. Geriatric specialists do not give a figure, but suggest that large numbers of deaths caused by the cold are undiagnosed because of this delay in examining the body.

Many doctors are reluctant to write on a death certificate that a person has died of the cold because of the stigma attached to this way of dying. Pressure is put on doctors by families, anxious to hide the fact that they have neglected an elderly relative and by local authorities, whose Social Service Departments fear that a large number of deaths in their area caused by the cold will reflect on them. Doctors involved in the study of death resulting from the cold acknowledge the existence of these strong pressures.

A very important reason for the false picture given by the government figures is that the BMA has quite arbitrarily fixed a body temperature above which a person is said not to be suffering from hypothermia - 95°F. The official measurement of normal body temperature is 98.4°F. So, according to the BMA. a person in their 70s, 80s or 90s can be found dead with an internal body temperature which is 3.8°F lower than that considered healthy for an active, young person and a doctor is not permitted to state that they have died of the cold.

In a survey carried out by the Medical Research Council in 1972 (findings published in the British Medical Journal, January 1973) it was discovered that one in ten old people examined were suffering discomfort or illness as a result of their body temperatures being under 98.4°F. If that figure is applied to the 65+ population in 1986 we can say that 900,000 old people are now living in what the MRC defined as hypothermic conditions. Of course, not all of these will die of the cold, but it is probable that tens of thousands will and likely that hundreds of thousands will die earlier than they might due to the cold. Clearly, the energy exists to provide warmth for all of these people.

Malcolm Wicks, one of the researchers involved in the above-mentioned MRC survey and report, has stated that "We know that there are tens of thousands of deaths each winter caused by the cold". Most medical and geriatric specialists accept Wicks as the leading authority on this subject (see his book. Old and Cold). The question is,  do we believe Wicks and the medical profession or the government?

Please also see the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard for the article "Hypothermia in the old".

How seriously does the SPGB take conservation?

The Socialist Party has frequently expressed its anger at the waste and the despoliation which capitalism generates. We are fully aware that the profit system poses a serious threat to the environment and have been sounding the alarm about the state and future of the world's ecology for decades. We contend that it demonstrates the urgent need to establish world-wide socialism. Then, attention to need would take its proper place alongside unjaundiced consideration of the health of the world's population, biosphere and resources. The conservation lobby, though deserving credit for exposing the details of this threat, would do well to bear in mind that what enrages them are symptoms of a sick world economic system; a cure can only be obtained by removing the cause of the sickness.

I have only been eligible to vote since last March, but I have never seen any candidates for the SPGB. If socialism is to be brought about democratically, candidates should be in every constituency in the country. This does not seem to be happening and I wonder how high this issue is on the Party's list of priorities?

The Socialist Party gives electoral activity a high priority and seeks to put up candidates in every constituency, national and local, whenever it can. That we at present only manage to contest a few constituencies is simply a reflection of lack of financial and political support. Meanwhile, we work energetically in all avenues open to us to inform and persuade workers as to what is in their best interests.

Editors.

Of every colour and country (1982)

From the July 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nine-tenths of the people in this and other industrialised countries are workers, in possession of less than half of the wealth we produce. The international capitalist class, on the other hand, own most of the land, factories and other resources. They receive an unearned income of rent, interest or profit and do not have to work for a living. The struggle between these two main classes, over ownership and control, carries on regardless of race or sex. In every country, including Russia and China, production takes place for the profit of a minority. Capitalists of every religion and nationality invest in whatever areas they find most profitable. Capitalism can only be run in their interest. They take the fruits of our labour and pay us wages and salaries to keep us in working order, fit for further use. This system of legalised robbery continues whether the government is Tory, Labour or Liberal-SDP. Workers are forced to compete over jobs and the limited housing and services available to us. This has led to racial hatred as well as prejudice about sex or age. Division between workers has so far prevented our class from taking political power to end capitalism. The British ruling class has been prepared to use racism to strengthen its position ever since slavery was justified by referring to the Africans as “subhuman”.

Racist theories

Capitalism is a system of competition rather than co-operation. The world is divided into rival nations. Through education and the media, those who own and control the capital persuade their workers to be loyal to “the nation” (its owners) in war and “peace”. Racist theories have supported this blind loyalty to our masters’ interests. But there is no “British race”. All humans belong to one species: we have the same blood, and we can interbreed to produce offspring. Those who have tried to divide the species into races, based on inherited physical features, have disagreed about how many races there are. But their scientific investigations have shown that there are no “pure” races and no inherently “superior” races. The advances made by humanity in organising society have depended on increased intermingling and co-operation rather than division and competition among people. Even if there were separate races it would not affect the case for socialism. Some racial theorists have spread the myth that workers are biologically inferior to their capitalist rulers and unable to work together, without leaders, to create a democratic society. But the special feature of humans compared to other animals is our great adaptability. If there is a need to cooperate to change society, we can do so. A United Nations statement on race drawn up in 1950 by professors from across the world, concludes that all humans “are capable of learning to share in a common life, to understand the nature of mutual service and reciprocity, and to respect social obligations and contracts”.

The roots of racism

Capitalism is based on profits made by exploiting the labour power of wage and salary-earners, realised by selling their produce on the market. Because the competition of the market place is anarchic and chaotic, the number of people who can be profitably employed fluctuates unpredictably. In the boom of the 1950s, there was a labour shortage in Britain and workers were recruited from India, Pakistan and the West Indies. When the recession set in, they were the first to lose their jobs, which were in any case the lowest paid. Black workers suffer discrimination in jobs and housing, and are then accused by racists of causing those problems. But areas like Northern Ireland, with the highest unemployment, have the lowest immigration rates. Capitalists are pleased to see the newspapers which they own blaming such problems on sections of the working class. The result is to divide workers against one another and hide the real cause of the problems. Racist organisations like the National Front and the British Movement (and racists in the Tory and Labour Parties) want “white Britons” to defend “their” nation. But the people in Britain do not share a common interest. One percent of the British people own four-fifths of the stocks and shares. An English-speaking carpenter, designer or doctor has more in common with a Russian or African accountant or engineer than with the Duke of Westminster or “Tiny” Rowland. Those without substantial property are forced to work for its owners, and suffer the insecurity this causes, regardless of the skin-colour of worker or capitalist.

The political response 

The parties which offer to run capitalism are all racist, including the Labour Party, which, despite its rhetoric about “brotherhood”, passed the racist Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968. The 1977 Labour Government Green Paper on Nationality competed with the overt racism of the Tories in its pleas for tighter control. Meanwhile, the so-called Communist Party has supported nationalist import controls, also supported by the National Front. And Roy Jenkins of the SDP has spoken of the need for “a strict limit on the amount and rate of inward immigration for settlement” (House of Commons, 5 July 1976), encouraging the spread of the myth of “overcrowding”. (From 1968 to 1977 over half a million more people left than entered Britain, according to the Office of Population Census and Surveys, and the United Nations has shown that the world could support several times its present population.)

The way to defeat racism and fascism is not to “fight the fascists on the streets”, as some on the Left have suggested. You cannot clear up confused ideas by fighting confused people. The divisive lies of racism must be constantly exposed. Old ideas must be challenged by new realities. The only way to get rid of racism is to get rid of the out-dated social system which keeps producing it. A socialist society, based on common ownership and democratic control of all productive resources, must be established by democratic political action. One of the first steps in that direction Is to recognise the class struggle as a fact of life under capitalism. Workers of every colour and country can unite to establish a society where production will be for the needs of all, not for the profit of a few. Racism divides the working class; socialism will unite the human race.

Clifford Slapper