The Case Against The 'Living Wage'. (1931)

From the March 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maxton's Curious Mixture.

On February 6th, Mr. Maxton, on behalf of the Independent Labour Party, introduced into the House of Commons a Living Wage Bill. -

The Living Wage, as defined in the Bill, "means a wage at least sufficient to meet the normal needs of the average worker regarded as a human being living in a civilised community, including the satisfaction of reasonable minimum requirements of health and efficiency and of cultural life and the provision of reasonable rest and recreation."

The amount of this living wage is to be determined by a Committee, appointed by the Board of Trade, "and which shall include among its members at least three working housewives, three representatives of trade unions, and three representatives of co-operative societies.”

The Committee is to take into account "actual retail prices and other costs of living,” in addition to various other factors, and is to review the wage at least once a year. 

The wage is then to be made obligatory on Government departments, local authorities, Government contractors, and finally on all industries. That is to say, no industry may pay less than this minimum. Should any industry not be able to afford the wage, a body called the "National Industrial Reorganisation Commission” is to have power to re-organise the industry.

The I.L.P.'s Main Plank.

Mr. Maxton explained in his House of Commons speech that the living wage proposals are the basis upon which the whole programme of the I.L.P. is built up. The programme includes many items, from increased pensions and increased unemployment pay, to nationalisation of the banks and the principal industries, and State control of the import and export trade; but "this proposal for a living wage is a pivotal proposal round which all the others are arranged.”

Miss Jennie Lee, M.P., whose name also appears on the Bill, went further and admitted that the "pivotal proposal” cannot be applied without the other proposals also being applied. She said :—

  I do not pretend that this Bill could be carried into effect without great stress and great difficulties in the country. I believe that it would mean that we should have to go in for controlled prices, and once we got on to controlled prices we shall have to control the banking system.

Let us now examine the theory behind the Living Wage Bill and ask ourselves whether its effects will be worth the time and trouble necessary to apply it. Is it worth the "great stress and great difficulties,” together with all the further measures which Miss Lee admits are necessary?

What is a Living Wage?

The backers of the Bill claim to have defined a living wage. But have they? What are "normal needs”? What is an "average worker regarded as a human being”? What are the "reasonable requirements of a civilised community”? What amount of rest and recreation are "reasonable”?

The employers regard as "reasonable” any wage which makes the worker an efficient producer of profits. Hundreds of thousands of workers in the cotton mills, on the railways, in the Civil Service and Post Office, on the land and in the mines, are getting well under 40s. for a full week's work. Miss Dorothy Evans, Secretary of the Association of Women Clerks, is reported in the Daily Herald (February 19th) as stating that women clerks in the Civil Service, 21 years of age, are paid as little as 24s. 7d. in the provinces and 31s. in London. The Daily Herald on February 17th reported that the pay of farm workers in Suffolk had just been reduced from 30s. to 28s. a week.

This last case is of special interest because agricultural workers already have their “living wage” fixed by law! The Agricultural Wages Act, 1924, passed by the Labour Government (which the I.L.P. claimed was an essentially I.L.P. Government) lays it down that the minimum wage paid to an able-bodied agricultural worker shall be

   adequate to promote efficiency and to enable a man in an ordinary case to maintain himself and his family in accordance with such standard of comfort as may be reasonable in relation to the nature of his occupation:

Translated into hard cash, this means 28s. or 30s. a week!

All Mr. Maxton proposes to do, in effect, is to substitute his nebulous phrase for the nebulous phrase in the above Act, and apply it all round.

Employers To Fix The Wage.

The Bill provides that the wage shall be fixed by a Committee including working women, trade unionists and co-operative society representatives.

The Bill does not say how many persons the Committee shall consist of, nor does it say what other interests are to be represented. It is, however, to include employers.

When the seconder, Mr. Kirkwood, M.P., was asked if employers are to be excluded, he replied, “They are not excluded ” (Hansard, February 6th, col. 2297).

So we have this extraordinary position put up by a so-called working-class party, the I.L.P., that they want the employing class to have a hand in fixing what is a living wage for the workers whom they exploit!

It will be noticed, also, that the co-operative societies are expressly brought in. Why? Does it need legislation to allow the co-operative societies to pay their own employees a living wage? The co-operative societies constantly have strikes and lockouts in their concerns, and have on several occasions been charged by their employees with paying less even than the standard rates of pay. Within the past few months there has been a strike of co-operative employees—the insurance agents. Yet the I.L.P. wants the co-operative societies, with their characteristic petty employer's outlook, to sit,with other employers on the Living Wage Committee. The extent to which the co-operative societies exploit the workers in their employ is shown by the amount of wages, and the amount of profits. The retail distributive societies in 1929 (see New Leader, February 6th) paid an average amount of £130 during the year to its wage-earning and salaried staff. The surplus left after meeting all trading expenses was over £22 million pounds, equal to a further £148 per head of the staff of 176,000. They could double the wages of their workers and still have a surplus. Why does not Mr. Maxton start his living wage campaign among his friends, the co-operators?

Another important point emerges from the composition of the Living Wage Committee. It is usual on committees of this kind for the Government to appoint equal numbers of workers’ and employers’ representatives, together with some so-called "neutral” members representing the Government. Seeing that the Labour Government during their present term of office have appointed at least two wage committees which have recommended lower wages, it certainly cannot be assumed that Labour Government representatives on a Living Wage Committee would press for a wage higher than present wages. On the other hand, the co-operators who would be there to look after their own interests as employers are regarded by Mr. Maxton as being on the workers’ side. So that in fact the Living Wage Committee will be dominated by employers.

Living Wage or Lower Wage?

How much will the minimum wage be? We are given some indication that it will actually be lower than the present average wage of industrial workers.

Miss Eleanor Rathbone, M.P., the enthusiast for lower wages by means of family allowances, gave her conditional blessing to the Bill, but wanted to be assured that the wage would not be enough to keep a family, but only enough to keep a man and wife. Miss Jennie Lee, M.P., gave the desired assurance (Hansard, February 6th, col. 2313). The effect of this is obvious, and it is the effect which Miss Rathbone makes no secret of desiring. It would mean that all unmarried and childless workers would be paid less than the standard rate of wages—to the benefit of the employing class, who would get a supply of cheaper labour. In view of the composition of the Committee, the “living wage” might well be below the present average wage of industrial workers.

The Australian Model.

A memorandum attached to the Bill refers to the Australian attempts to fix and apply a “living wage.” The reference is interesting, because it gives a practical illustration of the futility of the whole scheme. In Australia a “living wage” was fixed before the war, and the scheme has had a run of about twenty years.

Mr. Maxton claims for the living wage proposal that it would permanently raise the standard of living of the workers, and be a definite step towards Socialism. Australian experience shows that it does neither.

In the Australian Senate, on November 14th, 1930, Senator Daly, for the Government, gave the information that, after allowing for the increase in unemployment and the increase in prices, the average real wage in 1929-30 was almost exactly the same as it was in 1911-12. Then in January of this year the Arbitration Court ordered a reduction of 10 per cent. in the basic wage (see Daily Telegraph, January 23rd). This reduction is quite separate from the regular adjustments for alterations in the cost of living. So that after twenty years of “living wageism” the Australian workers are now 10 per cent. worse off than when they started, and are not one iota nearer to Socialism than they were then. That is how capitalism has worked havoc with all the pretty but false theories of the Australian reformers of capitalism. Capitalism here would quickly falsify every one of the flashy. promises of the I.L.P.

Capitalism and Wages.

The living wage scheme is as full of holes as a sieve. Every attempt to fix a statutory wage has run up against the snag of unemployment. If the living wage is not higher than the existing one, it is useless. If it is higher, it will give the employers an added inducement to instal labour-saving machinery and thus increase unemployment. This tendency to instal machines operates in agriculture to-day, in spite of the low level of wages fixed by the Wages Committees.

How is the living wage to be enforced? Anyone who has seen at close hand the operation of the Agricultural Wages Act knows that in many districts the minimum rates are largely ignored. The men prefer to take less than the minimum rather than lose their employment. What remedy has the I.L.P. to offer for that? What will it do with the older men and, those not up to the average standard of fitness who will be sacked to make way for young and fit workers?

It is no answer to say that the I.L.P. also proposes to nationalise various industries. State capitalism, as applied in the Post Office, leaves the worker subject to practically all of the forces which face him in private capitalist concerns. The process of selection and throwing out the less fit men and women goes on in the Post Office as on the land and in the mines and elsewhere, although in the Post Office the method of securing the same end is slightly different. The workers in State industries suffer the additional disadvantage that they cannot seek similar employment with a different employer.

Patching Up Capitalism.

And what justification can the I.L.P. offer for a proposal which in effect is patching up the capitalist system? Mr. Maxton expected that criticism and tried to forestall it. In an interview given to the New Leader (February 6th) he said :—

  I admit that the old method of approaching the living wage problem would be correctly described as patching up capitalism. . . . Our approach is fundamentally different.

This, incidentally, is an admission that the I.L.P. ’s past policy for most of the period of the party’s existence has been a policy of patching up capitalism, as indeed was avowed by Mr. Wheatley in reference to the Housing Act he introduced as Minister of Health in the 1924 Labour Government.

The only difference Mr. Maxton could point to was that the present scheme is not based on what any particular industry can afford to pay, but on what the “nation” can afford. This is a distinction without a difference. The two schemes have precisely the same fundamental defect that they leave the capitalist system intact, and leave the capitalist class in ownership and control of the means of life. Does Mr. Maxton think that the capitalist class as a body will show a different attitude towards the wages question because they are approached nationally instead of industrially? He gives his own answer when he quotes Civil Servants as being people who are already “guaranteed a minimum wage” and whose good fortune he wishes to extend to other workers. Thousands of Civil Servants—adults working a full week —receive less than 40s. Yet influential bodies of employers constantly complain that the levels of pay in the Civil Service are too high and should be reduced. A demand has just been made to the Government by an employers' association, that Civil Service wages should be reduced to the level of the depressed export trades (see Times, February 20th). A postman, aged 32, charged with theft at Kingston, on February 21st, was receiving 49s. Id. per week. Out of this he had to keep a wife and two children and was paying 27s. 6d. a week rent (Evening News, February 21st). Mr. Maxton is a supporter of State capitalism as it exists in the Post Office, and wants to solve the workers' problems by extending that system.

Socialism The Only Remedy.

The only solution for the economic problems of the workers is Socialism. Chasing after the endless revivals of old fallacies evolved by the perverted ingenuity of the I.L.P. has brought them no lasting advantage. It has diverted their attention from things that really matter and has left them as far as ever from achieving Socialism.

Even as regards making the best of capitalism, the living wage scheme is an illusion. It is no substitute for trade unionism—Mr. Maxton admits that—it is not an improvement on trade unionism, and it is open to serious objections from which the former is free. In Australia the 10 per cent. reduction in the basic wage, referred to above, has taken place in spite of a Labour Federal Government. Resistance to the award of the Arbitration Court set up by the Australian Maxtons devolves upon the trade unions.

A measure of the irresponsibility of the I.L.P. is provided by the speech of Mr. David Kirkwood, seconding the Bill. He was asked from what source any higher wage would come. Instead of replying that an increase in the wages of the workers would be at the expense of the employers' profits, he informed an amused House of Commons that wealth can be created without limit merely by printing more bank notes.

It does not seem to have occurred to Messrs. Maxton and Kirkwood that if their money theory is sound, it is a sheer waste of time and trouble to print bank notes at all. Why not issue free blanks to the workers and let them write their own bank notes? Or, better still, solve the street litter problem by presenting used-up bus tickets over the counter in payment for goods ?

It was a curious but appropriate coincidence that on the day of Mr. Kirkwood's speech a very similar purveyor of quack nostrums—a German who collected money on the strength of a claim that he knew how to create gold out of base metals— was sentenced to a longish term of imprisonment. Political quacks who trade on the ignorance and trustfulness of the working class suffer no such penalties.

Edgar Hardcastle

Why Socialists Oppose Family Allowances (1931)

From the February 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The argument for family allowances is, at first sight, so plausible and attractive that those who oppose the whole scheme are liable to have their attitude misunderstood. Let there, then, be no misunderstanding about our attitude. We oppose family allowances because they would not be of any assistance to the working class.

The case for them is simple. Most, if not all, working class families have at some time or other realised that children are an expensive item. If they are to be decently provided for, then the parents must go short. And, however willing the parents may be to cut down their own expenditure for the sake of the children, a prolonged spell of unemployment will inevitably result in the children going short, too. The advocates of family allowances believe that they have discovered a simple remedy. Why not, they ask, introduce a system of allowances to be paid to the father or mother in respect of the children? Then the family income would be more nearly adjusted to the size of the family. Working class families with two or more children would be receiving a larger income than families with only one child. Single men and women would receive less still. Such systems have been introduced in France, Belgium, Austria, Germany, the Irish Free State, Australia, and elsewhere. Why not here also?

We oppose the proposal. Are we, then, opposed to the working class receiving more money? Do we object to workers’ children being better provided for? Our answer is that we are most strongly in favour of the working class being made better off, both parents and children. We oppose the family allowance scheme because we deny that it would produce any such result.

Wages are based, in the long run, on what it costs the workers to live. In different climates and for different trades this cost, which normally includes the expense of bringing up a family, differs. It includes certain items of expenditure based upon the traditional manner of living in the various countries. Thus, in France the workers’ cost of living includes the cost of cheap wines, because everyone drinks wine. In the U.S.A., at least where Prohibition is enforced, the cost of living of the workers will not have to include the cost of alcoholic drinks, although, doubtless, it will have to include some dearer or cheaper alternative. The existence of a permanent army of unemployed enables the employers to bring pressure to bear to cut into the traditional element and force the wages of all workers down towards the bare physical minimum.

On the other hand, Trade Unions can be useful centres of resistance to that pressure, but experience shows that the Trade Unions have not been able to overcome the pressure. When prices rise, it costs the workers more to live, and Trade Unions can usually secure some increase, if not a proportionate increase, in wages. When prices have fallen, wages have fallen also, sometimes ahead of the prices. We have seen these two processes at work since 1914. Up to 1920, prices and wages rose. Since 1920, prices and wages have fallen.

Our criticism of the advocates of family allowances can now be more clearly stated. Family allowances would cheapen the cost of living of working class families. The constant pressure would tend to force wages down correspondingly. Five shillings would come in to mother, and be knocked off father’s wages. There is the further objection that single men and single women would suffer also, with the result that the Employers would be in pocket.

This has actually happened. In the Irish Free State, when married Civil Servants were given family allowances, the pay of the single men was reduced to the level of the single women. In the book, “Family Allowances in Practice" (Vibart, published by P. S. King, 1926), it is stated, on the authority of a Dutch economist, De Walle, that in Holland “whenever central and municipal authorities have introduced family allowances it has been with a view to making economies in their wages bills.”

In Australia the pay of unmarried employees in the Post Office was reduced by £11 per head, which just covered the cost of the married men's allowances.

The Australian Worker (Sydney, October 28th, 1927) said that family allowances in New South Wales had been “manna from heaven—for the employers.” Instead of a 12s. cost of living increase all round, which would have cost the employers £13 million a year, and which was due under the existing wage arrangements, the employers "gave” family allowances to the married men. These cost £3 million, thus saving the employers £10 million a year.

L. Ross, of the Australian Labour Party, writing in the Socialist Review (December, 1928), said:—

   The New South Wales scheme, instead of redistributing wealth, actually meant a reshuffling of wages between single and married men.

Prominent advocates of family allowances make no bones about admitting this. They candidly confess that family allowances do not represent any addition to the income of the working class, and are not intended to.

Miss Eleanor Rathbone, M.P., is the best known of all the advocates of family allowances.

In a lecture which she gave to the Faculty of Insurance on April 2nd, 1927 (published in the Journal of the Faculty, July, 1927), she said that her object was not to raise wages or to secure an improvement in the conditions of the poor at the expense of the rich, but to re-distribute the workers' wages among themselves.

In other words, make the single men and women help to pay for the married men's children. Although Miss Rathbone's heart bleeds for the unfortunate children of the workers, her remedy was not to touch the superfluous wealth of her own class, but to lower thev standard of living of unmarried workers. Let the rich go on with their horse-racing, their cigars, and their expensive society functions, but “the young men and the young women . . . would be expected to be willing to make some sacrifice at the expense of their cigarettes, cinemas, and betting on football.”

Of course, we are told by the I.L.P. that their family allowance scheme is fundamentally different from Miss Rathbone’s. They want family allowances to be a real addition to wages. They want them paid by the State, not by the employer. The I.L.P. believe that, if paid by the State, they could not have the effect of lowering wages, and in any event the Trade Unions would prevent such action by the employers. Lastly, the I.L.P. believe that family allowances would be paid during strikes and would thus help the Trade Unions.

Not one of these arguments will hold water.

If the I.L.P. scheme is in intention fundamentally different from Miss Rathbone's, why is Mr. Brailsford, the prominent member of the I.L.P. who helped to prepare their scheme, allowed to be a member of the Family Endowment Council in association with Miss Rathbone? Why did Mr. Brailsford act as joint author, with her and others, of a book, “Equal Pay and the Family”?

It is reasonable to assume that Mr. Brailsford attaches more importance to getting any sort of scheme of family allowances, by associating with Miss Rathbone, than to trying to get the I.L.P. scheme in opposition to Miss Rathbone.

Whether the allowances are paid by the State or by the employer makes no difference at all; in both cases they would reduce the workers' cost of living. In New South Wales they are paid by the State, but the effect is the same. In this country we have already seen the Wool Trade Committee, under Lord MacMillan, recommending a wage reduction in 1930 and giving as one of its reasons the fact that the workers' cost of living had been lowered by unemployment pay, health insurance, old-age pensions, etc., all of them paid by the State.

When the I.L.P. fall back on the argument that the Trade Unions will resist such wage reductions, they are arguing with their tongue in their cheek, for their original reason for advocating family allowances was that the Unions were impotent. Here are Mr. Bradford's words, in an article published by the New Leader on January 4th, 1929 :—

  Plainly, with our appalling surplus of unemployed labour, the usual methods for raising mass-purchasing power are beyond our reach. The Trade Unions can hardly defend their standards; certainly they cannot at present raise them. That is our justification for demanding political action in the form, firstly, of family allowances, and then of the fixing by the State of a standard living wage. . . .

It will be seen that the I.L.P. are simply arguing in a circle. They say, in effect: “As the Trade Unions cannot resist the employers, let us ask for family allowances; and then ask the Trade Unions to resist the employers' attempts to reduce wages."

Lastly, there is the question of strikes. There was a strike of textile workers in France in August, 1930. The following is a report by the Paris correspondent of The Times (August 28th, 1930):—

  2,800 workmen are reported to have returned to work during the last two days, and an even larger number is expected to return on September 1st in order not to lose the marriage and family allowance for that month.

The whole scheme is a fraud from the workers’ standpoint. The bulk of its advocates never intended it to be anything else. The others, the I.L.P., find themselves in this anti-working-class camp for the same reasons as on many other occasions. The reasons are their own clear ignorance of economics and of Socialist principles generally, and their incurable weakness for what Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has called “flashy futilities.''

Edgar Hardcastle

The Economic Crisis and the Workers (1931)

From the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is one respect at least in which the “New Party” founded by Sir Oswald Mosley is exactly like all of the older non- Socialist parties. That is in its emphasis on the trade depression as a reason for putting, aside the question of Socialism. The argument is that capitalism's in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. Ruin stares not only the worker, but also the employers, in the face. Great Britain must either take some novel and drastic steps to escape from the threatening disaster, or grave decline will follow and this country will become a third-rate power. “Let us,” say the New Party leaders; “defer the consideration of Socialism until we have stabilised capitalism once more.”

This is a very old story—as old as capitalism. In the eyes of the defenders of capitalism no time is an opportune time for the workers to interest themselves in their class interests. And many organisations engaged nominally in protecting the workers have shared the views of the capitalists on this question.

There have been at least eleven marked industrial crises in the past 100 years. Every one of them has shown the same general characteristics. Every one of them has been viewed as a sign of irretrievable ruin, and every one has been used to dissuade the workers from looking towards Socialism.

There was one great crisis during 1829, at a time, that is, when this country was strongly Protectionist. Listen to the description given by William Huskisson in a letter dated December 30th, 1829 (published in the Huskfsson Papers, p. 310):—

   I consider the country to be in a most unsatisfactory state, that some great convulsion must soon take place. . . .  I hear of the distress of the agricultural, the manufactural, the commercial, the West Indian, and all trading interests.  . . . I am told land can neither pay rent nor taxes nor rates, that no merchant has any legitimate business. . . .  I am also told that the whole race of London shopkeepers are nearly ruined.

Huskisson, sometime President of the Board of Trade, was one of those who believed that England must go over to Free Trade. The Liberal manufacturers, who had an interest in Free Trade because it meant cheap food and therefore low wages, urged the workers to neglect their own class interests and to support the demand for the abolition of the Corn Laws, which restricted the import of corn from abroad. The workers did this. They listened to the specious argument that they should only concern themselves with so-called practical, bread-and-butter questions. And the result was the building up of fabulous fortunes for the manufacturers and the continuation of poverty for themselves.

After Free Trade was introduced, the crises recurred periodically as before, although it is often represented by present-day politicians that everything was satisfactory during this period when Britain was the “workshop of the world.”

The following is Lord Randolph Churchill’s account of the crisis of 1884, in a speech at Blackpool (published in The Times, June 10th, 1931):—

    We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874, ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful, either among our capitalists or our artisans, can discover no signs of a revival. Your iron industry is dead, dead as mutton. Your coal industries, which depend greatly on the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is in articulo mortis, gasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The shipbuilding industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease.

The difference between Huskisson and Churchill was that Churchill saw the remedy in a return to Protection! Large numbers of workers, seeing that Free Trade had not brought prosperity to them, were persuaded to assist this section of the employers in their campaign against Free Trade; while other workers sided with the Liberal Free Traders and supported their campaigns for the 1909 Land Tax and against the House of Lords. In the meantime working-class interests were neglected as usual.

After the War came the industrial crisis of 1921-22, which moved the Prime Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, to assert in a speech at Glasgow in December, 1922, that—

There is almost no business that is making  profits to-day.

In May, 1921, the percentage of insured workers unemployed rose to as much as 23 per cent.—higher than it has been in any subsequent month, including 1930, and 1931 to date. There were, in May, 1921, 2½ million unemployed.

The present crisis, which follows 10 years of unemployment never appreciably below the million line, is similar to the others and will take the same general course.

Industrial depressions are not evidences of capitalist poverty or capitalist. weakness They will not of themselves result in the collapse of the capitalist system, and only a misunderstanding of the nature of crises leads the workers to slacken their efforts to maintain wages at those times. Trade depression arises simply from the over-production of goods in relation to the demands of the market. The world is overloaded with goods for which purchasers cannot be found. Purchasers cannot be found because the workers, who have unsatisfied needs, have only a limited amount of money with which to buy, and the wealthiest section of the propertied class, who have the bulk of the purchasing power, have no unsatisfied needs. Once depression begins, prices are forced down and every holder of goods seeks to realise them at all costs. The consequent feeling of insecurity causes the rich to curtail even their normal expenditure, thus aggravating the depression and adding to unemployment.

Many industrial capitalists suffer a decline in their profits owing to curtailed sales, while money-lending capitalists on the whole improve their position.

The crisis is overcome simply because the manufacturers close down their factories and turn the workers out to join the unemployed. Then, when the accumulations of goods have been slowly dissipated, production begins again in response to the newly evinced demand, and the crisis is, for the time being, over.

This is a process which is prolonged by wage reductions, and made more acute by the constant improvements in productivity of industry. which increase the volume of surplus goods.

All the parties which accept the popular view of crises necessarily find themselves pursuing courses contrary to working-class interests. The Communists believe, and indeed hope, that the crises will wreck capitalism, and they therefore propagate their dangerous doctrine of waiting fatalistically for the breaking-point of capitalism, at which point they will take to the streets and challenge the armed forces. The basis of the doctrine is unsound. Crises are not the ruin of capitalism, but merely correctives to its contradictions. Capitalism and its crises can, and will, go on indefinitely until the workers take conscious steps to end the system.

The other parties — Liberal, Tory, Labour and I.L.P., and the later rivals, the Empire Free Traders and the Mosley Party—all preach the doctrine that the workers must at times of crisis take joint action with the capitalists in order to save a desperate situation. As this usually means, in practice, taking lower wages and working harder, it is not only anti-working-class, but also has the effect of prolonging the crisis.

The Socialist Party tells the workers that Socialism is the only remedy for their troubles. There is no time which is not a proper time for them to work for Socialism. This is true whatever the excuse offered by defenders of capitalism. Whether the crisis is a war crisis or a trade crisis, the Socialist Party will continue to preach Socialism. Workers who understand the working of capitalism will see through the excuses to the capitalist interests behind them, and will help us with our task.

Edgar Hardcastle

Development: the shattered illusion (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The stereotype is that we live in a world of haves and have-nots: a prosperous "First World" alongside an impoverished "Third World".

The reality, however, is more complicated. For wherever you look you will find rich and poor people alike. Indeed, the growing disparity in GNP between rich and poor states in recent years has been matched by the growth of inequality within each. That said, there arc undeniably huge differences in material circumstances of the average worker in Britain and their counterparts in, say, Bangladesh. But how did this come about and what, if anything, can be done about it within global capitalism?

Modernisation
Since the Second World War there has been a concerted effort by national governments and international agencies to "develop" the so-called Third World. At the outset this was linked with de-colonisation; it would help make political independence more "meaningful". According to the prevailing "modernisation" theory, development meant less developed countries passing through a scries of stages mirroring the economic history of developed countries. But while favourable circumstances had allowed the latter to reach the final stage of "mass consumption", a number of internal factors prevented the former from progressing towards "take-off into self-sustaining growth”.

Most important was a supposed shortage of capital. This had to be tackled on two fronts. Firstly, savings as a proportion of GNP had to be increased. As the "propensity to save" was thought to be highest among the rich, gross inequalities were justified on the grounds that they facilitated savings. Secondly, as less developed countries were thought unlikely to generate sufficient capital internally, foreign capital needed to be mobilised for inward investment along the lines of the famous Marshall Plan which helped rebuild the war-torn economies of Western Europe.

For modernisation theorists, this shortage of capital necessitated a policy of "unbalanced growth": concentrating investment where it realised the greatest return and hence the most rapid accumulation of capital. Following the example of the First World countries, developing nations embarked on a programme of industrialisation. At a time when Keynesian orthodoxy still held sway with its implicit distrust of unfettered markets, a policy of import-substitution was pursued to protect budding industries from foreign competition behind a wall of tariffs.

As well as promoting rapid growth, industrialisation was supposed to assist the structural transformation of these countries’ economies. Typically, these were thought to exhibit an essentially dualistic structure: a small modern urban-industrial sector alongside a large traditional, mainly pre-capitalist, rural sector. The latter was supposedly characterised by low productivity and an abundance of surplus labour. Industrialisation would enable this surplus labour to find employment in the modern sector and indirectly help boost local agriculture: the exodus of labour from the rural areas would draw farmers into the emerging cash economy, compelling them to buy agricultural inputs, like machinery and fertilisers, to meet the growing demand for food in the towns. In due course, the benefits of economic growth hitherto confined to the modern sector would automatically "trickle-down" to the impoverished backwaters: the "dual economy” would be replaced by a structurally-integrated modern capitalist economy.

It was not long before cracks in this scenario began to appear. The prohibitive costs of agricultural inputs meant many small farmers were unable to increase output, while growing labour shortages caused by urban migration seriously impaired the productivity of traditional labour-intensive farming. As for the urban sector, modern methods of industrial production, being highly capital-intensive, required only a relatively small workforce. Thus, increasing urban migration in fact led to rising unemployment while the importation of these First World technologies imposed a growing debt burden.

Dependency

By the 1960s modernisation theory had reached an impasse. A new scenario of development emerged: dependency theory. Contrary to the previous conventional wisdom that the economic backwardness of less developed countries was attributable to their incomplete incorporation into global capitalism, it was portrayed instead as an inevitable consequence of capitalist penetration of the Third World which left it increasingly dependent on the First. This shifted attention from internal to external factors affecting the development of national economics.

For dependency theory, the "world trading system" was a hierarchical order in which the dominant or "core” countries with their technological, economic and political superiority, are able to impose their needs on the "peripheral" countries. These dictate that the latter should become markets for the products of industrial countries, not rival producers, supplying them with raw materials for processing into finished goods. In short, industrial development and economic diversification in the less developed countries became effectively blocked within an externally imposed global division of labour.

The basic mechanism that condemned them to a state of perpetual "underdevelopment" has been said to be the continual outflow of economic surpluses—notably in the form of debt repayments and expatriated profits. So, far from foreign aid and investment compensating for the lack of local capital, they caused this to happen. This had been compounded in recent years by the declining terms of trade with the value of Third World exports falling sharply against manufactured imports. Political independence made little difference to their plight: it simply enabled the First World to divest itself of the cost of administering these territories while co-opting an emergent class of "comprador bourgeoisie" into this process of neocolonial exploitation.

To break this stranglehold less developed countries would have to "delink" as far as possible from the international economy and pursue "self-reliance", while nationalising the economy to staunch the likely outflow of capital this would incur. In short, a marriage of convenience between Third World nationalism and Leninist state capitalism.

However such an approach has been problematic for several reasons. Firstly, the structure of production which many of these countries inherited was heavily oriented towards exportation of cash crops or minerals and could not easily be re-oriented towards local needs. Secondly, an autarkic policy favouring economic diversification has to contend with local markets being insufficiently large, particularly in small countries, to justify investment in certain lines of production where economies of scale may be critical. Thirdly, increasing state intervention is likely to lead to the growth of an unproductive bureaucracy, further impairing an already impoverished economy while increasing the scope for corruption.

Getting worse

The 1970s oil crisis made matters worse for the less developed countries by massively increasing import costs but in the short term it produced a flood of "petrodollars" loaned to them via western banks. Between 1973 and 1981 these loans increased nine-fold. The spending spree this unleashed helped maintain relatively high growth rates though much of this investment tended to be channelled into grandiose projects which did little to alleviate poverty.

Then, as the long post-war boom petered out, the bubble burst. The 1980s in particular witnessed a steep decline in Third World incomes. Growing poverty led to eruptions of popular unrest to which governments responded with increased military repression. Yet ironically increased military spending only exacerbated the problem, diverting scarce resources away from development projects. In the 32 poorest countries in the world (apart from India and China) such expenditures amounted on average to twice what was spent on education and seven times that on health.

Global recession also signalled a profound change in the political climate. Growing disenchantment with Keynesian policies in the late 1970s and the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s ushered in an age of "market triumphalism". Blind faith in market forces replaced blind faith in the efficacy of state intervention.

The concept of development had by then already undergone a subtle mutation. No longer crudely equated with GNP growth it began to also incorporate notions of redistribution and empowerment. In this broader sense, development came to be increasingly linked with concern for the environment, following the emergence of the environmental movement in the early 1970s.

As the global economy went into recession interest in environmental issues diminished but it re-emerged in the late 1980s under the rubric of “sustainable development". Popularised by the 1987 Brundtland report Our Common Future, sustainable development meant a form of development that met "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Environmental deterioration and economic decline were perceived as being mutually reinforcing. Since poverty caused people to over-exploit their natural resources, a more equitable distribution of wealth would help ensure more sustainable use of those resources. Although this represented an advance on earlier environmental thinking, it failed to address the real problem: it is not the poor who are the main culprits of environmental vandalism: more often than not they are victims of destructive decisions made by remote governments and multinational corporations who in turn are driven by the logic of market competition.

Contradictions

Yet it was this self-same logic which the less developed countries were now being urged to apply. With the growing threat of debt defaults in the early 1980s, the IMF and World Bank took on a more aggressive role as watchdogs of international capitalism. Structural Adjustment Programmes were imposed in exchange for rescheduling debts and further aid. This involved privatisation of state enterprises, public spending cuts and price liberalisation. If the stated intention of such reforms was "economic stabilisation", their real purpose was to ensure that these countries were better able to fulfil their debt obligations. To that end, greater emphasis was placed on boosting exports with the less developed countries reverting to their traditional role as suppliers of raw materials as prescribed by the theory of comparative advantage within a global trading system progressively shorn of protectionist features.

Predictably, the results have been disappointing. But then that is the nature of reformism: “solving" one problem within capitalism only seems to generate another. For example, while the new GATT treaty prohibited developing countries from dumping subsidised food onto Third World markets, this meant the less developed countries having to pay more for food imports. More expensive imports means getting ever deeper into debt which in turn intensifies the drive towards export production at the expense of domestic food production. Furthermore, with many other producer countries in the same boat yet prevented by free trade agreements from forming cartels to bargain for higher prices, the markets for such exports are soon saturated. So, prices decline and hence also the capacity of less developed countries to service their debts. It's a case of protectionist swings or free market roundabouts.

Meanwhile, the problems of poverty and environmental destruction escalate in tandem. The same pressures that force governments to inflict austerity programmes on populations in the name of “structural adjustment” compel them to drastically cut their meagre environmental protection budgets—at a time when the drive to increase exports poses a growing threat to the environment. Similarly, the increasing mobility of international capital in an era of free markets has enhanced its bargaining position vis-a-vis labour in both developed and less developed countries alike while enabling it to circumvent even limited attempts by states to impose environmental cost constraints by relocating (or threatening to relocate) to countries where environmental standards may be lower.

Not that things could have turned out much different given the nature of capitalism. There can be no turning back to the discredited models of development of the past. State interventionism could never provide a solution to poverty and environmental destruction. Even if this were theoretically conceivable, capitalism's globalising tendencies have put paid to that option. Arguably, the neo-liberal order we now have is the irresistible outcome of such tendencies but in any event it too can offer no hope of real progress.

In short, the system has exhausted every possibility of meaningful development. To move forward the dispossessed majority across the world must now look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose. There is in reality only one world. It is high time we reclaimed it.

Robin Cox

Shame about the words (1997)

Book Review from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The People's Party. The History of the Labour Party by Tony Wright and Matt Carter. (Thames and Hudson. 1997.)

This purports to be a history of the Labour Party. As responsible history it bears about as much resemblance to the Labour Party as the notorious official history of the CPSU published in Moscow in 1939 did to the Communist Party of Russia. In short it is a propaganda blurb and hardly to be treated seriously by anyone who wishes to understand what the Labour Party is all about. Some examples of inaccuracies and convenient omissions are that the Socialist League disaffiliated in 1937, when it disbanded under threat of expulsion: no mention is made of Foot’s attack on Peter Tatchell, Kinnock’s attack on the miners’ pickets, the expulsion of MPs Nellist and Fields: the disbanding (several times) of the youth section; the block on Liz Davies as candidate in Leeds. One could go on.

However, it may be interesting to note the various ways in which the authors, one a Labour MP, the other a tutor in politics at York University, and prospective MP (a job for which he is more suited, judging by his efforts here) have glossed over the past embarrassing anti-working class actions of previous Labour governments.These include their use of troops to break strikes, the introduction of conscription in peace time, the record of wage freezes by several of their governments, all that to a genuine socialist are shameful acts have been turned into virtues.

Claims for Labour as a socialist party are numerously sprinkled throughout the book. They even have the cheek to lay claim to William Morris, and then call him a “Utopian Socialist". Nowhere is any attempt made to define what socialism is and a nationalist outlook is adopted throughout, with no conception that nationalism is of no interest to the working class and only operates for the benefit of the capitalists. When the word socialism is deployed it is used as meaning more government intervention in the running of capitalism and the lives of the people. Socialism of course means the end of government since there will be no minority class who need state power to maintain their dominance.

Throughout they casually mention reforms and socialism as though they were synonymous. When it comes to the famous Clause 4 on which the Labour Party staked its claim to stand for the interests of the working class, and which in practice has no other meaning than nationalisation, they are silent on the fact that nationalisation has proved to be an abject failure for the workers, especially the miners, and has been dropped by the Labour Party itself in favour of a hymn of praise to the capitalist market.

They scrupulously detail every piece of legislation ever carried out by Labour governments, from the Open University (possibly the best thing they have ever done, but was it designed for workers’ needs or for the needs of industry?) to Race Relations Acts and safety at work legislation.

Some of these are well-meaning reforms, but do the authors realise how the day-to- day operation of capitalism turns well meaning reforms into a nonsense? Employers will always find a way round legislation by introducing alternative working practices. Short contract labour as a way round pension schemes, or cheap illegal immigrant workers who are not covered by legislation are just two that spring to mind. Do they realise that mass unemployment which no capitalist government can prevent when there is a worldwide slump, favours the employer in reducing wage rates and worsening conditions of work? These things have been covered exhaustively in previous issues of this journal and do not need to be elaborated in a review, but suffice to say that such political naivety is bad enough in someone who teaches politics in a university, let alone someone who practices it at Westminster.

They follow the usual practice of capitalist political parties in crediting everything they deem to be "good", such as full employment, to their own polices, and everything that goes against them to the unpredictable workings of fate. They treat the EU as being of significance when of course it has no relevance to us as workers who have no country, and which is only meaningful to the various sections of the capitalist class who decide whether they will make more or less profit from being in or out.

Prominence is also given to another factor which should be of no interest to the workers—leadership. They have a morbid concern with the never-ending power struggles for the leadership of their party. The authors would no doubt claim this to be fair enough as history but they seem oblivious to the fact that battles for leadership are themselves a refutation of Labour as a socialist party.

There are some lovely photographs, quite a few oddly enough depicting activities the Labour Party has always been anxious to distance itself from. Shame about the words.

Cyril Evans

The Money Barrier (1997)

Book Review from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Universal Impediment. By “Chappie”, (Third Millennium Press, 51 Newton Rd, Bath BA2 1RW.)

The universal impediment is, of course, money. The author demolishes the arguments used by conventional economists to defend money, that it is a simple tool that facilitates in the most efficient way possible the production and exchange of goods and services.

Money is certainly better than barter, the author concedes, but goes on to point out that the money system requires a large and wasteful bureaucracy to control its operation, from those involved in the production and control of the currency through those concerned with tracking down and trying to suppress financial fraud (indeed, 90 percent of all crimes) to all those whose job it is to take in or pay out or count or stand guard over money. All this wastes resources and distorts production. “Money is not", he concludes, "the catalyst essential to growth and progress or to the creation of wealth, it follows or impedes them. It is their wasteful and inefficient impediment".

The author looks forward to the time when the money system will have disappeared: "With lack of funding impeding progress no longer, and the complexities of the money system replaced by the simple manipulation of quantities, of production and distribution tailored to environmental and human needs, and with information, undistorted by advertising, freely available, the possibilities would be limitless".

The author doesn’t write as a Socialist. In fact he repudiates socialism which he sees as a project, not to abolish money, but to take money from the rich to give to the poor. To be honest, since most of those who have called (and call) themselves socialists have taken this position, it is an understandable enough mistake. It also needs to be underlined that the aim of Socialists is not to simply abolish money as such but to establish the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, which will have as one of its consequences the disappearance of money.

The great weakness of this book is how the author sees a world moneyless society coming into being. He repudiates the class struggle and the winning of political power by a socialist party and instead envisages money gradually falling out of use following the establishment of a single world currency (which, somewhat strangely, he sees as a step on the road to the eventual disappearance of money).

This process is to be initiated by the UN and its agencies. No doubt when socialism is established such administrative structures will play a key role in balancing production and needs but the UN is made up of capitalist states. For it to change, political power in those states will have to pass out of the hands of their capitalist ruling class and into the hands of the working class—the vast majority of their populations constrained to work for a wage or salary.

So it comes back to the need for a consciously socialist majority to win control of political power after all. This is an essential precondition for the establishment of a world socialist society, the only basis on which Chappie's vision of a world without money can come into being.

Adam Buick

Earth Summit II—Another UN Failure (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earth Summit ends in failure, ran a Guardian headline on 28 June this year—a headline any socialist could have written with prophetic accuracy weeks earlier.

Indeed, the failure of Earth Summit II which opened in New York on 23 June was only ever going to be a reenactment of a similar summit held in Rio five years previously.This much we could glean from the G7 gathering days earlier which closed with the heads of the world's leading nations failing to agree on new targets for carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions have been a core problem at both Earth Summits. Back in 1992, the 125 delegates at Rio agreed to return to pre-1990 C02 levels by the end of the decade. But in the past five years such emissions have in fact spiralled and are forecast to increase, with the industrialised nations—making up 15 percent of the world population, yet responsible for 50 percent of emissions—being the worst perpetrator. And China’s C02 emissions are expected to exceed those of the US within eight years.

Similarly, the Rio guidelines to protect the world’s forests have not been adhered to, with about 10 million hectares of forest vanishing every year—an area equivalent to the size of South Korea—with the loss of an estimated 130.000 species of life.

You name it and the delegates at Rio have reneged on it—climate, deserts, bio-diversity, even aid for the developing world.

At Rio it was agreed that the industrialised world should increase their portion of overseas aid to 0.7 percent of GDR. What happened was that aid fell by 20 percent between 1992 and 1995 (from 0.33 percent to 0.27 percent).And in that period global poverty has increased with the poorest 20 percent of the world's people sharing less than 1.1 percent of global income (compared with 2.3 percent in I960) with the richest 20 percent sharing over 85 percent.

Principle I of the Rio summit had been a pledge of $125 billion a year in aid initiatives and projects aimed at helping the environment. Few have been observed and many have resulted in misery. In Uganda, for instance. 35.000 inhabitants of the Kabale forest region were forcibly ejected from their homes in order that tourism could be encouraged and the forests protected. Those who resisted were either shot or burnt alive in their homes. In Kenya, a huge road project spewed up so much dust that thousands were left with irreparable lung damage.

Fishing around for profit
Were this not bad enough, in the past five years the world’s fishing grounds have become further depleted and whole eco-system faces an increased threat from oil and gas companies who are now exploiting the deeper oceans in their endless pursuit of profit.

This, then, had been the result of Rio in 1992, a summit that had taken 20 years and 30 million pieces of paper to get off the ground.

What added insult to injury at this year’s summit was that G7 scapegoating of the industrial world dominated so much of the meeting that constructive debate on saving the environment was precluded. Little wonder that the day after the summit closed the Guardian (28 June) could report of the summit ending "in a shambles with no clear agreements on its main goals of new aid for developing countries or protecting forests".

Talks on climate collapsed and have effectively been deferred until the Climatic Change Conference in Kyoto. Japan, this December. A text which highlighted targets to reduce C02 emissions had been agreed by a working group one evening, but came to nought when the group fell out over lunch some 12 hours later.

We may well ask that if the Rio summit resulted in a score of promises that were eventually broken, and if the latest summit ended in failure, then what future for planet Earth?

Commentators have tended to cite a growing governmental awareness of environmental issues as one positive spin-off of such summits.They point to the likes of Tony Blair, who believes C02 emissions should be reduced to below 15 percent of 1990 levels by 2010, as proof that governments are really beginning to care.

Like true apologists for capitalism, they continue to fail to locate global problems in a wider social and economic context, in capitalism itself, as if the profit motive was incidental to environmental concerns.

Profit is in fact the biggest stumbling block encountered by delegates at Earth summits and this journal has wasted no time in exposing similar summits in the past as the farces they are (see, for instance, our issues for June 1992 and July 1996). At Rio, evidence could be found during discussions on bio-diversity, with the US refusing to back an agreement to safeguard animal and plant diversity for no other reason than this would have curbed the excesses of the mainly US transnational corporations.

At the recent Earth Summit, a hoped-for agreement on a global tax on aviation fuel, aimed at improving engine efficiency and consequently reducing pollution, failed to materialise, with the US opposing new taxes. OPEC fearing a loss of revenue and developing nations fearful that increased prices would result in a drop in tourism.

You do not need a vivid imagination to envisage the environment and development report that will be prepared for the next Earth Summit in 2002. or indeed the outcome of the Conference on Climatic Change to be held later this year. If the past is anything to go on the delegates would be better advised to stay at home and plant saplings.

Their ideas of a world compatible with a profit-driven market economy are illusory and their prospects for reform in the interests of humans and the environment a fallacy.

Were they to take the idea of socialism with them to future summits, however, the world would stand a far better chance of survival in the 21st century.

John Bissett

Passage to Poverty (1997)

The TV Review column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Dimbleby’s India (BBC2. 12 July) should have been enough to remind anyone with any doubts why this planet needs a social revolution. Dimbleby himself—a pillar of the British establishment— ironically demonstrated how relatively little of real worth has changed in India since the days of the Raj. The social and economic movement that there has been has done little if anything to benefit the vast majority of India’s teeming population.

Dimbleby’s programme started with one or two "success’’ stories brought about by the intrusion of capitalism into India’s backward economic structure. The very fact that these were painted as examples of real progress told the viewer everything one needed to know, both about the programme’s general ideological thrust and the state of the rest of India. "Successful’’ young computer software executives were shown imbibing the dubious advantages of western-style wage-slavery, all for the princely sum of £40 per month. Interestingly, some other would-be wage-slaves showed themselves unconsciously sceptical of the benefits of capitalism, including the schoolgirl who stated when asked about her ambitions: "I want to be an accountant—and apart from that have an enjoyable life." Well, quite.

Where Dimbleby's programme was telling, however was in its portrayal of India’s traditionalist/ modernist dichotomy. The tension between the demands of capitalism and the stifling structure of the centuries-old caste system was brought out quite well and not even Dimbleby—skilled broadcaster that he is—could disguise the awful truth that in many respects Indians are experiencing not the best of both worlds but the worst of both.

Infanticide and gangsterism 
As the need to compete in the world economy pushes down the meagre income of millions of Indian workers so they find it increasingly difficult to meet the obligations demanded of them by their culture and traditions. In many instances this has led to some quite dreadful consequences. Parents with young girls, for instance, are less able to afford the dowry payments expected from them on their daughter’s marriage and so parents look upon the birth of baby girls as a financial disaster waiting to happen. Almost unbelievably, this has provoked the return of mass infanticide as poverty-stricken young Indians, particularly in the north of the country, feel that the only way they can ensure their own survival is by terminating the lives of their own children. Relatively few can bring themselves to do such a deed, so amazingly, they scrape together a few rupees to pay somebody else to take the children away and do it for them. In this way traditional Indian culture meets the joys of Western free enterprise with a vengeance.

The dangerous mix of traditional authoritarian and patriarchal cultures with the market economy has brutally given rise to other social problems too. Many of these are common to the majority of the "developing" world, but as is so often the case. India probably demonstrates them better than anywhere. As the poison of the market soaks in to infect an already cancerous organism, crime, corruption, gangsterism, violence and massacres are the order of the day across huge swathes of this beautiful country. Such is the level of patronage, ignorance and illiteracy that hundreds of thousands have been known to gather to defend those politicians and criminals (the dividing line is hazy) who have been systematically defrauding and robbing them. In these circumstances it has been left to other members of the capitalist class to take action against those—and there are plenty of them— who have been refusing to play the game according to Hoyle.

In several regions of India slavery still unofficially exists. Millions of children are “economically bonded" to shopkeepers, artisans and factory owners, working for nothing apart from enough food to ensure that they can put a bit of wealth into their masters’ pockets the next day. This—yet another happy victory for traditional values in a modern setting—shows no real sign of abating. Even under India’s old neo-state-capitalist economic arrangements child slavery was still rife: anyone who expects a great improvement since the recent move towards a more free market economy would be foolish indeed.

Given that India is in a number of respects so typical of much of the world it is astounding that people exist who still think that capitalism is the best of all worlds, a progressive social system that is the best on offer. If watching TV programmes about India is not enough perhaps they should visit it and open their eyes. Then they might know what socialists have learnt—that capitalism is now a planetary disaster.

Dave Perrin

Letter: Back to the land? (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

What would the members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain do with the money, if they unwittingly won (through a third party perhaps) millions of pounds on the Lottery. Pools or suchlike?

Would they (1) take large tracts of land out of conventional land ownership (and use), and live and share the resources of that land according to Socialist principles as much as is possible, in their own lives, more than they do at present, and amongst increasing numbers of new members further increasing their share of land, or (2) put the money towards doing what they do at present and that is to pay for the use of capitalist "machinery" to spread socialist knowledge and awareness, paying their members capitalist expenses, paying capitalist printing costs, hire of halls, and other capitalist expenses that it takes to run a political party and magazine, postage, telephone, stationery, etc.?

Personally speaking I would say (1) would be better and the most effective, because you could still do no. (2). i.e. spread awareness, but at increasingly less and less money cost because "true" socialists would begin to own collectively more and more socialist and not capitalist resources, such as their own energy supplies, wood, recycled paper, mills, etc. to use, as well as their own moneyless food supplies, etc. thus allowing more effective use of what money is available, and have a much greater impact on the increase of the present activities of the Socialist Party.

This land which would be the physical practical place of where socialists arc practising socialism (albeit constrained by the limits of capitalism that we are all forced to live under) and would be an interesting, inspiring enjoyable place to visit, and also given that you do stick to socialist principles, would not this land, lands, unlike Animal Farm stay socialist? And another thing—you have already spent the time and energy put in by your loyal members.You in fact could be doing two things at the same time—creating socialism and educating socialism.

Frank Bowman,

Flint

Reply:

If we were to obtain such a windfall, since we are a democratic organisation the decisions as to how to use it would be taken democratically by the membership. We can’t see our membership, however, deciding to spend it on the sort of land project you have in mind since that would be contrary to our conception of how socialism will come about.

We imagine the money would be spent on doing what we do now better and on a bigger scale. We could obtain our own printing press and perhaps bring out a weekly paper as well as a glossy monthly. We could pay socialists to work full-time as journalists, designers, printers and experts in distribution. We could put organisers in the field. We could start a publishing house to bring out books and pamphlets, both reprints and new material. We could contest more seats at elections and run a more high-profile campaign: if we put up more than 50 candidates we could have party election broadcasts which we would have the money to do well. We could help our companion parties and socialist groups in other parts of the world expand their activities too. We could step up our advertising and publicity.

Such a windfall would enable us to redress a bit the present imbalance in favour of pro-capitalist propaganda. It would enable us to convince more and more people that socialism is the only lasting solution to the problems they face and that socialism can only be established when a majority of people have come to want and understand it and organise to take democratic political action to achieve it.

That—democratic political action by a majority that wants and understands socialism—is the way we see socialism coming about, not by "socialistic land colonies gradually becoming more and more self-sufficient and eventually squeezing out entirely capitalist production for profit.

This argument amongst those who want a classless moneyless society of common ownership and democratic control goes back a long time, right back to the origins of the modern socialist movement in the first part of the last century. On the one side was Robert Owen, who spent (and lost) the fortune he had made as a textile capitalist on founding communistic colonics in Britain and America. On the other were the Chartists, whose position was later supported by Marx and Engels, who argued that political action for social change was the most effective way to achieve a co-operative commonwealth.

It might be more pleasant to live in the moneyless communistic community you envisage, at least to start with, but the trouble is they never last. Not because communism is against human nature as opponents claim, but because they can’t escape from the surrounding capitalist environment. Far from them overwhelming capitalism it’s been the other way round.

Either they isolate themselves as much as they can from capitalism, in which case they arc only able to offer a very frugal existence, or they engage with the surrounding capitalist economy, for instance by selling their products, in which case they get more and more sucked into capitalist ways of doing things.

The kibbutzim in Israel are a good example of this. Some of them did start out as communities which didn’t use money internally and in which affairs were run democratically with everyone having an equal say. But over the years they have not only competed successfully on the capitalist market as sellers; they have also taken to employing non-members as wage workers, i.e. become capitalist enterprises.

Two further points. First, we are not saying that people shouldn’t live in communistic communities if they want to—we are not in the business of telling people how they should live their lives under capitalism—only that it’s not the way socialism is going to come. Second, we can imagine that, when socialists are measured in millions rather than thousands so that it has become clear that sooner or later socialism will be established in the near future, people will be making all sorts of plans and experiments in anticipation of the coming of socialism and that this will include communal living in the countryside as well as in towns, but we are not there yet since this presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement which must come first. So at the moment we need to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas rather than promoting experiments in "socialist” living—Editors.

Greasy Pole: Video Nasty (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who enjoyed gloating over what happened to the Conservative Party on 1 May will want to get their hands on the BBC video Election 97, which describes itself as “the most memorable highlights of one of the most dramatic election nights ever."

Memorable indeed. Jeremy Paxman savaging Cecil Parkinson who, before he was able to compose himself to the reality of his party’s plight, looked as if—in John Major’s phrase—he was a sandwich short of a picnic. David Dimbleby brutally interrupting a glowering Michael Heseltine. to ask what he meant by “regrouping’’. David Mellor and James Goldsmith behaving, at the count at Putney, like children squabbling in the playground. Michael Portillo, as the voting figures were read out, trying desperately to smile. And at Tatton the odious Hamiltons. their anger held in check except in their eyes, where you could read an uncomprehending contempt for it all.

Tony Blair was not—of course— supposed to be odious. He was on a platform assuring us how moved he was by the trust placed in him by all those votes and how he would not let us down. And just to show how sincere and trustworthy he is he had beside him his father, who was once a Tory but changed sides in time for his son to become a Labour prime minister. And Tony made a speech saying with a catch in his voice how much he wishes his mother could have been there that night, and all over the country thousands of people went "Ahhhhh ..." or at least were meant to.

The Morning After
Come the morning there were the comings and goings at the Palace with John Major being shown in by some uniformed flunky as Prime Minister and shown out as a man heading as fast as he could to obscurity. Then Blair accompanying the uniform through the door to kiss hands and walk out backwards and do all the things which are so necessary to let the Queen know that there had been this glorious revolution to give power and prosperity to all the people.

And the people showed what they thought of this by jamming the pavements around Downing Street to cheer themselves hoarse and sing Labour’s election anthem that Things Can Only Get Better. Except that there was something distinctly odd about those apparently ecstatic crowds-until it dawned that they were really Labour supporters who had made the long and perilous journey from party headquarters in Millbank to Whitehall, stopping on the way to equip themselves with thousands of conveniently available Union Jacks. Labour stage-managed things to the end.

In the City they were not quite so ecstatic because that is not how they do these things but neither was there a steady stream of fearful financiers taking the lift up to the 26th floor to throw themselves [out] of the window. At one stockbrokers the Labour victory was greeted nonchalantly:". . . Blair has come across quite well in the campaign. He seems sincere . . ." A trader at a German-owned investment house put it: "They have a massive majority, but they do not appear to have any radical motives.” The FTSE 100 index, which offers some kind of guide to the level of optimism or pessimism among investors, ended the day at an all-time closing high.

Tycoons 
Well it’s nice to see honest endeavour rewarded and endeavour is that the Labour Party have put into recruiting the support and co-operation of some of the stars of the business world and to reassuring them that a Labour government is not going to do anything nasty like dispossess the owning class or even try a little redistribution of wealth. It is not so long ago that Labour prime ministers were accustomed to sort out British industry's problems with union leaders over beer and sandwiches at Number Ten. It would be difficult now for the trade unionists of get through the door for the crush of tycoons quaffing champagne and smoked salmon.

David Simon, the million-pound-a-year chairman of BP. was invited to become Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe and a life peer into the bargain. Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, was put in charge of a task force which will advise on reforming the tax and benefits system. There is no evidence that Taylor has any experience of trying to live on benefit, or has any idea of the stress of doing so. In any case nobody in their right mind expects his Task Force to recommend an easier life for all those scroungers who could easily get a job but choose to undermine the fortunes of firms like BP and Barclays Bank by living in the lap of luxury on the Job Seekers Allowance or whatever.

It will be useful if all those people who gloated over Election 97 keep it and view it again in a year's time, when the cheering has finally died and Labour’s honeymoon is over and the businessmen are really making themselves felt in Downing Street.

Manifesto
What will it be like then? What was it like, the last time the Labour Party lost power? What effect had they had, on the problems of the working class which they had pledged themselves to ease or even eliminate? After five years of power the best they could claim for themselves, in their 1979 election manifesto was that “in an uncertain world, suffering the worst economic trouble for forty years, we have pointed the way forward . . . Our purpose is to overcome the evils of inequality, poverty, racial bigotry, and to make Britain truly one nation.”

There might then have been people who had voted Labour in 1974 to ask why Labour had not used their time in power to "overcome" those "evils” and why all they could offer was to point the way forward. Perhaps in the near future, if those ecstatic, flag-waving people are not too far gone in their delusions, we shall be hearing the same kinds of questions. And if we do hear them this time we shall not have, to use in reply, a boring manifesto but a real, live Technicolor, all-singing and cheering video to show how it was and how it was supposed to be—to match against how it really is.

Ivan

These Foolish Things: New Colonialism (1997)

The Scavenger column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

New colonialism

Since 1982, the level of debt in sub-Saharan Africa has doubled to more than 100 percent of GDP. The economic injustice represented by the debt mountain is a subject to which the Archbishop of Capetown, The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, will refer with particular force today. He will berate the countries of the First World for saddling poorer regions with crippling debt, punitive tariffs against exports and a restrictive macroeconomic stance. As a result, he will argue, that those bearing the debt burden are swamped by malnourishment. famine and disease and. in some cases, war. (Guardian, 24 April.)


Wasting brain power

Many banks have sophisticated operations in derivatives products, which were pioneered in the early Eighties. Derivatives are so called because they are contracts relating to underlying assets such as commodities, currencies or interest rates—they derive from those assets, such as dollars for delivery in three months’ time, or an option to buy or sell gilt-edged stock. As these contracts can often be combined with one another to create complex structures designed to meet the needs of client companies, they attract computer-literate people, preferably with mathematics-based degrees. (Financial Mail on Sunday. 15 June.)


The capitalist view

Fear. Greed. Sex. Psychologists say they make people tick. A Virgin Personal Pension can satisfy 2 out of 3 of them. The other's up to you. Advert by Virgin Direct Personal Financial Services Ltd.


Expediency rules

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, will be visiting South Africa next month. Nelson Mandela is familiar with the system of government in Malaysia . . .  its detention without trial, censorship and hostility towards trade unions. But, although the South African president has dedicated his life to freedom, he will reportedly be bestowing on Dr Mahathir one of the highest civilian awards in his gift, the Order of Good Hope. The explanation is not difficult to find. There were the contributions to the African National Congress’s war chest in the 1994 elections—estimated to be 33 million rand (£4.6 million); a recent RI.9 billion investment by the Malaysian state oil company; and Malaysian involvement in a $4 billion scheme to rejuvenate Johannesburg. Malaysia’s expected purchase of Rooivalk helicopters could boost the struggling South African arms industry. Malaysia wants these ’’attack" craft only for "defence”. Mr Mandela assured critics recently. (Guardian, 24 April.)


Feelbad factor

Poverty is rising faster in Britain than in any other major industrialised country, an authoritative new United Nations report reveals. The report also shows that the poor are poorer here than in any other western country for which figures have been collected and that a higher proportion of old people live in poverty than anywhere else in the West. Britain’s child poverty rate, moreover, is second only to the United States. This devastating indictment—which Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, describes as “worrying”—contrasts sharply with progress in the fight against poverty in much of the rest of the world. (Independent on Sunday, 16 June.)


Vested interest

Last year the Government scooped £610.2 million from the Lottery in taxes; 12 percent of every pound spent by the public. (Mail on Sunday, 1 June.)

The Scavenger

Gilded Socialism (2005)

Book Review from the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Hegemony by Darrow Schechter (Manchester University Press. £55.)

This turns out to be an attempt to work out a philosophical and sometimes nearly incomprehensible (at least outside the little world of academia) basis for an alternative to liberal democracy (free-market capitalism), social-democracy (regulated capitalism) and what Schechter calls “state socialism” (state capitalism).

Schechter identifies that what is wrong with these is that all three of them involve commodity production and consumption (“production for exchange and the generation of money and capital rather than direct use”), and that the alternative has to be a system where there is production directly for use. Unfortunately, he sees the answer in the Utopian scheme devised in the 1920s by the Labour historian (and Labour Party activist) G.D.H. Cole, which he called “Guild Socialism”. Although Cole’s blueprint did provide for close links between consumers and producers which could be interpreted as “production directly for use”, it still envisaged the continuation of finance, prices and incomes. And it was to come into being through the guilds eventually outcompeting capitalist industries in the marketplace (though, to be fair to Schechter, he doesn’t explicitly endorse this and may well not support it).

But if Schechter stands for “Guild Socialism” why doesn’t he just campaign for it? Does it really need the elaborate philosophical basis he has constructed for it? Perhaps it’s just that university lecturers have to publish to justify their jobs.

Adam Buick