The Slump Deepens (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody knows how deep the present depression will go, how far it will spread and how long it will last, but there are plenty of ominous signs. At first, some two years ago, the British Press had its eyes on growing trade and unemployment difficulties in America, then it became apparent that conditions were rapidly worsening in Britain. Now we read reports of troubles in Japan and the countries in the Common Market. The Observer (7 November) under the heading “Fear and Depression hits Europe” reported:

Western Europe has been seized by recession jitters. The economics of the main industrial returns are still far from a crisis situation, but bankers and industrialists in France, West Germany and Italy are intensely alarmed by the outlook for 1972.

The government here tries to stimulate optimism by declaring that we are on the verge of big expansion, but, as the Times recalls in its issue of 5 November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was making the same kind of hopeful forecast exactly a year earlier. This is the common pattern of all the recessions capitalism has ever had. Nixon’s government was also a case in point. First the promise that there would be no recession, then the denial that it had begun, then the late admission that it was a little one and would soon be over and finally the complete reversal of policy by his government in August last—a clear confession that the policy that was to have solved the problem had in fact not worked.

The First National City Bank of New York, in their monthly Economic Letter, were caught napping by this. They were so impressed by an article written by Paul W. McCracken, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in which he explained “clearly and persuasively” why the Nixon government would not adopt the Galbraith policy of imposing controls on prices and wages that they re-published the article in their August issue; only to find that by the time it was in print the Nixon government had imposed a 90 day freeze on prices and wages, to be followed by a policy of “guide lines”.

This policy of controls was reported to have been well received, apart from a certain amount of trade union mistrust, just as the Heath promise to curb price rises helped him to win the Election in June 1970.

Most people believe that things would be better and life would be easier if only prices were stabilised or reduced. This is a complete illusion, a failure to understand how capitalism works. To start with nobody actually wants all prices to be reduced: what they all want is that the prices of the things they buy should be reduced and the prices of the things they sell kept as they are or increased. This includes the workers, none of whom want to see a reduction of their wages —which also are prices, the prices at which they sell their mental and physical energies (their labour power) to the employers. The workers also want “full employment”.

Here they come up against the cruel truth about capitalism. The employers have paid off hundreds of thousands of workers because at present selling prices and costs of production (including wages) they cannot make a profit. If they saw the prospect of a profit they would re-engage them to-morrow. From the employers’ point of view the solution lies in raising their selling prices, or reducing costs, including wages, or cutting their total costs by getting the same amount of work out of fewer workers. All of this is subject to the overriding condition that the goods produced can be sold, and at the present time world markets are shrinking and competitors abroad are also trying to cut their costs.

Though it had not attracted much general attention some prices have been falling, notably the metals copper, aluminium, antimony, silver. The price of copper has fallen from about £700 a ton early in 1970 to about £400—due to overproduction. It is being met by agreement to curtail production, with a consequent increase in unemployment. If the depression deepens and extends generally to other countries all prices could be stabilised or actually fall. Capitalism is behaving normally, going through its phases of expansion, boom, crisis and stagnation just as Marx depicted it a century ago. What has obscured the effect of these phases is that governments have superimposed on the normal workings of capitalism a steady depreciation of money itself.

This has led monetary economists such as Milton Friedman to offer as a remedy a curtailment of the increase of the money supply and a consequent restriction on the general rise of prices. It would not solve the problem of capitalism’s alternating expansion and contraction. Capitalism works like this at any price level, high or low. In the years 1920-1924 prices fell by a third and wages by rather more, with unemployment reaching peaks of over 2½ million in 1921 and 1933 and never falling below a million.

Would any of the various forms of controls of prices and wages avoid depressions? The answer is that every possible variety has been tried and failed. What is happening now is that the governments are shopping around, as is Nixon’s trying the cast-off methods which have been used elsewhere. All the short lived “miracle” countries are in the same situation. No longer do we hear about the Japanese miracle, the French miracle, the German miracle and so on.

The latest to start moving into depression is Sweden, just when John Davies, Secretary for Trade and Industry gave an interview in the Director (November) saying that he rather liked the Swedish version of incomes policy even though it wouldn’t be practicable in this country at present.

In this country some form of incomes policy has been tried half a dozen times by Labour and Tory governments since the war and all have failed and been abandoned.

The last was the Labour government’s imposition of a “standstill” for six months in 1966, followed by six months “severe restraint”. (This policy was imposed only four months after the General Election of March 1966 without any mention in the Labour Election Manifesto that it was intended). It completely failed to prevent prices and unemployment rising, and the Heath government have been even less successful.

It may be hard to accept but is nevertheless true that there are no ways, with or without an ‘incomes’ policy, to prevent capitalism from behaving in accordance with its own economic laws.

Edgar Hardcastle

Marx and Engels on Ireland (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx supported and advocated independence for Ireland, a fact which is sometimes used to try to justify Socialists today supporting the demand for the establishment of a united Irish Republic.

Two points can be made here. First, what Socialists should do in the 1970’s does not depend on what Marx may or may not have done in the 1860’s. And second, the circumstances which led Marx to support Irish independence no longer exist.

Marx did support Irish independence but he did so primarily because he thought it would hasten the completion of the democratisation of the British State.

After the failure of the insurrectionary war in Europe in 1848 Marx dropped out of active politics and devoted his time to the economic and historical studies which led to the publication of his Critique of Political Economy in 1859 and of the first volume of Capital in 1867.

In 1865, however, he again became actively involved in political struggle through the International Working Men’s Association, or First International. His general strategy was the long-term one of gradually preparing the working class to win political power for Socialism. This involved Marx not only in supporting trade unionism but also in advocating various democratic and social reforms.

Conquering Feudalism

At this time the bourgeois democratic victory over feudalism was far from complete even in Britain, then the most industrially developed country in the world, and on the continent of Europe what progress had been made was continually threatened by three great feudal powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia. In these circumstances Marx considered it necessary to support not only direct moves to extend political democracy but also moves which he felt would weaken the feudal powers of Europe. For instance, he supported Polish independence as a means of weakening Tsarist Russia. His support for Irish independence was for the same sort of reason: it would, he thought, weaken the position of the English landed aristocracy.

As he put it in a letter dated 9 April,1870:

Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of the aristocracy’s material welfare; it is its greatest moral strength. It, in fact, represents the domination of England over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the great means by which the English aristocracy maintains its domination in England itself. If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to withdraw from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution there. But the overthrow of the English aristocracy in Ireland involves as a necessary consequence its overthrow in England. And this would fulfil the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England (Marx and Engels on Ireland, 1971, pp. 292-3).

At the time Marx wrote the English landed aristocracy still enjoyed considerable political power. The franchise had only been extended to the better-off urban workers a few years previously, and the majority of the working class were still voteless; there were not yet secret ballots; Oxford and Cambridge universities had only just been opened to non-members of the Church of England; the House of Lords could still reject any Bill it objected to as long as it was not financial.

Democracy and Socialism

Marx may well have been right about the effect of Irish independence in 1870. Since the English landlords only retained their power to exploit the Irish peasants by force of British arms, a British withdrawal from Ireland could well have led to their expropriation. But this was never put to the test and the Irish land question was solved in quite a different way even before Ireland got independence. The series of Land Purchase Acts introduced between 1885 and 1903 enabled the government to buy out the Anglo-Irish landowners and then lend the peasants the money to buy their farms. By 1921 Ireland was largely a country of peasant proprietors. In the meantime the political power of the English landed aristocracy had finally been broken by a series of measures culminating in the 1911 reform of the House of Lords.

What this meant was that by the time Ireland was about to get independence after the first world war, the changes Marx had expected it to bring—land reform in Ireland and a weakening of aristocratic power in England—had already been brought about by other means. His particular case for supporting Irish independence was thus no longer relevant. Besides, the first world war destroyed the three great European feudal powers—Russia, Austria and Prussia—so making it unnecessary for socialists to support moves to weaken them. In fact, once industrial capitalist powers had come to dominate the world, and once a workable political democracy had been established in those States, then the task of Socialists was to advocate Socialism alone, rather than democratic and social reforms that might make the establishment of Socialism easier. This is the position the Socialist Party of Great Britain adopted when it was founded in 1904 and endorsed by the World Socialist Party of Ireland in 1949, and it is the basic reason why we do not support Irish Nationalism and Republicanism.

Industry, Tariffs

It is important to note that Marx’s strategy on Ireland was concerned with furthering the establishment of political democracy in England. It was not an anticipation of the Leninist theory of imperialism according to which independence for colonies will help precipitate a socialist revolution in the imperialist countries, though it is sometimes misunderstood to be this. Marx clearly writes here of independence for Ireland helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism not capitalism itself in England. Marx clearly wrote of independence for Ireland helping to overthrow the remnants of feudalism not capitalism itself in England. Both he and Engels knew full well that, in the political conditions then existing, Socialism was not an immediate issue either in Ireland or in England.

Marx had a good sense of history and, though he himself never developed the theme, realised that the struggle of the Irish Nationalists for Home Rule was bound to help the evolution in Britain of political democracy because both struggles were directed against: the same class enemy: the English landed aristocracy. A good development of this theme, drawing on Marx, is E. Strauss’ work published in 1951 Irish Nationalism and English Democracy. Strauss, incidentally, also brings out a point neglected by Marx: the extent to which the area around Belfast was industrialized and had become an integral part of the industrial North of Britain. Marx tended to regard Ireland as a purely agricultural country and so failed to see that while Home Rule and tariff protection for infant industries might aid the development of capitalism in the agricultural South of Ireland, it would have been economically disastrous for industrial Belfast which depended on Britain for capital, raw materials and markets. But, to be fair, Marx died before Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill in 1886 revealed the determined opposition of the Belfast capitalists to the threat of being cut off from the rest of industrial Britain behind the tariff walls it feared a Home Rule parliament in Dublin would sooner or later erect. Engels should have known better, but he does have the excuse that although he twice visited Ireland he never went to Belfast. (Since he was there on holiday he can’t be blamed for this!) But if he had he would surely have recognised Belfast as a sister city to the Manchester of his youth.

Empty Conspiracy

Engels, however, did state clearly that Socialism was not an issue in the Irish question. In 1888 he gave an interview to an American German-language paper and answered one question as follows:

A purely socialist movement cannot be expected in Ireland for a considerable time.  People there want first  of all to become peasants owning a plot of land, and after they have achieved that mortgages will appear on the scene and they will be  ruined  once more. But this  should not prevent us from seeking to help them to get rid of their landlords, that is, to pass from semi-feudal conditions  to capitalist  conditions  (Interview,  20  September 1888,  New Yorker Volkszeitung, Marx  and  Engels on Ireland, p.343).

Marx and Engels were much more critical in private of the Irish Nationalists—including the Fenians whose unsuccessful 1867 uprising had re-opened the Irish question for English radicals—than they were in their public pronouncements on behalf of the First International. The Fenians were a secret society set up in 1858 dedicated to using physical force to overthrow British rule and establish an Irish Republic, the direct political ancestors of today's Provisional IRA. Marx and Engels were particularly critical of the conspiratorial and terrorist methods the Fenians employed to try to release their members from British prisons, one attempt at which — the blowing up of Clerkenwell jail in 1867 — killed 12 people and injured many more, most of them innocent members of the working class. But when two years later one Fenian prisoner, O’Donovan Rossa, a former editor of their paper The Irish People, stood for election to parliament at Tipperary and was elected (only to be disqualified), Engels wrote to Marx:

The election in Tipperary is an event. It forces the Fenians out of empty conspiracy and the fabrication of plots into a path of action, which, even if legal in appearance, is still far more revolutionary than what they have been doing since the failure of their insurrection (29 November, 1869, Marx-Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1941, p.274).

So, although Marx and Engels can be claimed as supporters of Irish independence, they certainly cannot be claimed as supporters of IRA-type terror to achieve it. But whatever Marx and Engels supported, we in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Party of Ireland do not agree that Socialists should support, or should have supported, Irish Nationalism any more than they should support nationalism anywhere else.

Adam Buick

Anti-Affluence: the Debt-Ridden Society (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing to the newspapers in protest against the receipt of unsolicited credit cards is an honourable as well as a popular occupation. Implicit in the nuisance is a degree of social flattery: those selected to be pestered in this way are the cream of shopping customers, whose bills are paid promptly and whose credit is worthy. There has been no stream of complaints and Questions in the House from the scores of thousands who, ask as they may, will get no credit cards or hire-purchase terms. These are the sometime defaulters whose failures, and a great deal more about them, are recorded in the finance companies’ registers of debtors.

Once in those files, you never come out. Capitalism drives and presses us all to buy to the limits of our means, and offers devices by which those limits may be apparently stretched. But the pressure must never be yielded-to by an inch beyond the limits. The point of marketing, after all, is not that goods shall be distributed but that they be paid for. He who, lured and compelled by deferred terms or slashed deposits or simple needs, fails to meet his money commitment is as far as possible prevented for the future from buying on those terms again. Morally condemned as well, for violating the golden capitalist rule that everything has its price.

Recording and Collecting
There are about 3 million registered defaulters in Britain. The most common ways of getting listed are by irregularity or failure in payments to one of the companies which finance trading credit, and through a County Court judgement. It does not follow, however, that the absence of such a record means credit granted automatically. An application for hire-purchase or the opening of an account always means an enquiry being made. One widespread practice is to send forms to local officials likely to know something about the applicant, asking for an estimate of what he is worth and any useful information regarding him. The car-finance companies keep detailed records in which procrastination over payments is noted for future reference, even if there is no actual failure to pay.

When a debt occurs, the usual first step is a warning letter—from the legal department if the firm is big enough, from a solicitor if it is not. Some traders employ debt-recovery agencies, which work on a percentage of money collected and aim, generally, to scare or embarrass the defaulter into paying up. One technique is to send a notice on blue paper, looking remarkably like a summons, with words like “Bailiff”, “Distrain on Your Goods”, “Appear in Court”, etc., printed in capitals and underlined. In other cases, collectors call on the debtor repeatedly and make themselves objectionable. No doubt there are laws against much of what goes on, but a debtor is likely to feel he is hardly in a position to shout. Car-finance firms, for instance, are known to employ men who stand on defaulters’ doorsteps jingling keys and announcing their intention to take the car away—despite the fact that this cannot be done without a court order.

Penalties
If all the threatening is ineffective, a summons follows. There are two kinds, the common one being the default summons. No-one goes to court over it: the defendant has ten days to settle his debt, dispute it, or offer to pay by instalments. If he fails to do any of those, a judgement summons (the other sort) is served; he must attend the court to answer questions about his means, and the normal outcome is an instalment order. And if the instalments are not paid, a “warrant of execution” is issued for each as its due date passes. This is simply a distraint order—the County Court bailiffs call and arrange to take enough belongings to cover the amount owed plus the Court costs. The costs are standard fees charged at each step in the proceedings, so that the repayment of a debt in these last-resort circumstances is itself an extra expense.

Until a year ago debtors could be imprisoned instead of distrained upon, by order of the court. The purpose of “committal orders” was to deal with people who supposedly could pay but were reluctant to do so. However, County Court judges were in the habit of making the orders almost automatically, and an impoverished defaulter was liable to be hauled to prison by the bailiff. What good was thought to be done by it, no-one knows; though its abolition aimed at reducing the pressures on prison resources, not at sense or humanity. Imprisonment orders are still made for one common class of debts, non-payment of rates to local councils. Since rates are levied under statute law, defaulters over them are summoned not to the civil courts but to magistrates’ courts which continue to make committal orders.

Hard Cash
One other course of action against a debtor is the High Court writ. This is more attractive to creditors than County Court proceedings because the outcome is swifter and more relentless. The debtor has ten days following the service of the writ to file an “appearance“. Unless he has (and is prepared to pay for) a defence, the plaintiff may then “take judgement”. The High Court does not deal in instalment plans, and very shortly after the judgement the debtor will be called-on by a Sheriff’s officer — i.e. a licenced bailiff—with a view to distraint on his possessions. However, High Court proceedings are for larger sums. The County Courts are intended to deal with actions for debts up to £700; though claims for smaller amounts can and do go to the High Court, they are not encouraged there.

It is true, of course, that proceedings for debt can be expensive to the plaintiff. The cost of solicitors’ letters, and representation in court for the hearing of a judgement summons, is not recoverable. Proceedings to get back, say, £50 can well cost that amount and so have their success nullified. Many traders acknowledge this, and either write off small debts when the threats have failed or try the percentage collecting companies. Larger firms can afford the proceedings, but the fact remains that much debt-recovery is sterile: the real object is to make default an unpleasant experience, to brand the defaulter and let it be known that this sort of thing will not be tolerated.

A Dirty War
“Unpleasant” is a mild word. For those who have got into debt through adversity, over-optimism or simple inadequacy in dealing with everyday matters, the consequences are harrowing and humiliating. Threats; the bailiff (or, for rates, a policeman) on the doorstep; the possibility of an auctioneer’s van come to take one’s belongings away, and even of being taken to prison. One wonders what future generations will think of a society in which such miseries were commonplace. There is the thought, too, what kind of people are prepared to treat other human beings like that. For judges, the question need hardly be asked. Bailiffs generally are either men who got into it through the accident of starting in associated employment when they were young, or retired policemen and the like. Loathsome as their functions are, it ought to be remembered that they are wage-workers—only daubed with more of capitalism’s dirt than most of us. Certainly they suffer a penalty in social isolation: it is not uncommon for bailiffs’ wives to have been in the same line of business, leaving one with the thought that most women draw the line at living with that.

Since debt is a struggle, it produces its own strategies. A debt is personal; the desperate defaulter becomes a dodger. A wife may stave off the pressures by saying her husband has gone away and left her, though bailiffs are likely to keep an eye on the house and make neighbourhood enquiries. A High Court writ has to be put actually in the defendant’s hand and proceedings can start only when this has happened, making elusiveness desirable (process-servers usually are young smart-alecs ready to find fun in the chase). Likewise, when distraint is proposed a husband may claim that all the household belongings are his wife’s or someone else’s and therefore not seizable for his debt. This can be challenged by a creditor—the action is called “interpleader”—but the difficulty of proof make the cases rare and seldom successful.

States of Mind
Whatever the reasons for which people get in debt, it is likely to become a spiral from which extrication is hard: continually half-robbing Peter to half-pay Paul, with the result that both remain hot-breathing creditors. One of the attractions of the “second mortgage” is that it offers the exchange of a lot of small debts for a single large one, an apparent fresh start which also can take a haunted person from the realm of County Courts to that of the High Court. But if an even keel is reached, the record of money troubles remains as a permanent disability. It is permissible for a small fee to have past judgements erased from the court registers, but they are never deleted from the credit companies’ records. Extenuating circumstances are not allowed: a defaulter is marked for the rest of his life. It is possible for defaulters to be victimized through their records. Two or three years ago someone circularized several thousand householders offering highly favourable mail-order terms. They were all in fact selected from registers of defaulters, their readiness to jump at the prospect of being allowed to buy on a credit system obscuring more rational doubts such as how the advertizer was financing his generous activities. Orders with deposits rolled in, for the money to be pocketed by an adventurer whose chief asset was a little comprehension of the states of mind that debt produces.

Must it Continue?
Looking at all this: what a way to live! Yet it is part of how a very large number of people do live. Statistics about it tend to appear unbelievable because people will admit to other problems but not this one—disgrace in money matters is the deepest kind of disgrace in a money-dominated society. Nor is it anything new. The 18th-century London Spy describes women in the debtors’ prisons through default to tallymen. Spike Mays account of pre-1920 village life, Reuben’s Corner, refers to the village postman “walking many miles round the scattered community pushing bills and debt-summonses into letterboxes” (a different picture from the romantic one of rosy-cheeked rural bliss).

Most people under capitalism exist in “quiet desperation”, hair-breadths away from this sort of calamity. To talk of the proliferation of debt as a consequence of irresponsibility, of failing to cut coats according to the cloth, is beside the point. For the great majority, there chronically isn’t enough cloth to keep out the cold. The respectable with credit cards and no histories of default are in debt just the same, paying monthly for what they cannot otherwise afford. Debt is a demonstration of the inescapable poverty problem of the working class. The slogan of the latest credit card is that it “takes the waiting out of wanting”; but the only way wanting and waiting will be ended is by the abolition of capitalism.

Robert Barltrop

Marx’s Conception of Socialism (1973)

From the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx usually referred to the society he aimed to see established by the working class as “communist society”. Precisely because he believed that “communist society” would be the outcome of the struggle and movement of the working class against its capitalist conditions of existence, Marx always refused to give any detailed picture of what he expected it to be like: that was something for the working class to work out for itself. Nevertheless scattered throughout his writings, published and unpublished, are references to what he believed would have to be the basic features of the new society the working class would establish in place of capitalism.

Voluntary Association

It must be emphasised that nowhere did Marx distinguish between “socialist society” and “communist society”. As far as he, and Engels, were concerned these two words meant the same, being alternative names for the society they thought the working class would establish in place of capitalism, a practice which will be followed in this article. As a matter of fact besides communist Marx employed four other words to describe future society: associated, socialised, collective and co-operative. All these words convey a similar meaning and bring out the contrast with capitalist society where not only the ownership and control of production but life generally is private, isolated and atomized. Of these the word Marx used most frequently — almost more frequently than communist — was association. Marx wrote of future society as “an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism” (PP, p. 197) and as “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (CM, p. 82). In Volume III of Capital Marx writes three or four times of production in future society being controlled by the “associated producers” (pp. 428, 430-1 and 800). Association was a word used in working class circles in England to mean a voluntary union of workers to overcome the effects of competition. This was Marx’s sense too: in future society the producers would voluntarily co-operate to further their own common interest; they would cease to be “the working class” and become a classless community.

No Coercive State

In these circumstances the State as an instrument of political rule over people would have no place. Such a social organ of coercion was, in Marx’s view, only needed in class-divided societies as an instrument of class rule and to contain class struggles. As he put it, in socialist society “there will be no more political power properly so-called since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society” (PP, p. 197) and “the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another” (CM, p. 81).

Socialist society would indeed need a central administration but this would not be a “State” or “government” in that it would not have at its disposal any means of coercing people, but would be concerned purely with administering social affairs under democratic control. Marx endorsed the proposal of Saint Simon and other early critics of capitalism for “the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production” (CM, p. 98), and also declared that “freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it” (CGP, p. 32). In other words, once Socialism had been established and classes abolished, the coercive and undemocratic features of the State machine would have been removed, leaving only purely administrative functions mainly in the field of the planning and organization of production.

Common Ownership

Natural resources and the man-made instruments of production would be held in common: Marx speaks of “a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common” (Vol. I, p. 78) and, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, of “the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” (p. 22) and of “the material conditions of production” being “the cooperative property of the workers themselves” (p. 25). It is significant that Marx never defined communist society in terms of the ownership and control of the means of production by the State, but rather in terms of ownership and control by a voluntary association of the producers themselves. He did not equate what is now called “nationalisation” with Socialism.

Planned Production

Another feature of communist society, in Marx’s view, would be consciously planned production. He writes of a society “in which producers regulate their production according to a preconceived plan” (Vol. Ill, p. 256) and of “production by freely associated men . . . consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan” (Vol. I, p. 80).

Conscious planning, conscious control over the material conditions of life, was for Marx clearly the essence of Socialism. In the 1840’s, when he used to express himself philosophically, Marx was continually emphasising this point. This was what he meant when he said that real history would not begin till Socialism had been established; human beings were not behaving as human beings so long as they were controlled by blind historical and economic forces, ultimately of their own creation but unrecognized as such; Socialism would allow men to consciously regulate their relationship with Nature; only such a consciously planned society was a truly human society, a society compatible with human nature.

But Marx’s approach to planning in Socialism was not just philosophical. It was practical too. He was well aware that to regulate “production according to a preconceived plan” would be a huge organizational task. Indeed, that it would be, if you like, the economic problem of Socialism. Matching production with social wants would in the first instance be a huge statistical exercise. Marx emphasised that for this sort of reason “book-keeping” would be more necessary in Socialism than under capitalism — not that he envisages the books in socialist society being kept in money. Socialist society, he felt, would use some direct measure of labour-time for its statistics and planning (Vol. Ill, pp. 184 and 830). Calculations would have to be made of how much labour-time would be needed to produce particular items of wealth; the real social (as opposed to monetary market) demand for the various items of wealth would also have to be calculated; and all the figures put together to construct a definite plan for the allocation of resources and labour to the various different branches of production.

In a number of places Marx compares how capitalism and Socialism would tackle the same problems, for instance a long-term project which would not bear fruit in the form of finished products for some years but which in the meantime would have to be allocated labour and resources. Under capitalism, said Marx, this creates monetary problems and upsets; but in Socialism it is only a question of “preconceived” planning, of making allowances for this beforehand (Vol. II, pp. 315 and 358). Similarly with miscalculations, say overproducing: under capitalism (where overproduction means in relation to market demand) this causes a crisis and a drop in production; in Socialism (where overproduction would be in relation to real social demand) there would be no problem: it could be corrected in the next plan (Vol. II, pp. 468-9).

In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (p. 22) and in Volume III of Capital (p. 854) Marx lists the various major uses to which the social product would have to be put in a socialist society:

1. Replacing the means of production  (raw materials, wear and tear of machinery, etc.) used up in producing the social product.
2. Expanding the means of production so as to be able to produce a larger social product.
3. A small surplus as a reserve to provide against accidents and natural disasters (and planning miscalculations, we might add).
4. The individual consumption of the actual producers.
5. The individual consumption of those unable to work: the young, the old, the sick.
6. Social consumption: schools, hospitals, parks, libraries, etc.
7. Social administration not connected with production.

This is obvious of course but it is as well to spell it out so as to show that Marx did discuss some of the practical problems of totally planned production.

Abolition of the Market

Socialist society, as Marx repeatedly made clear, would be a non-market society, with all that that implied: no money, no buying and selling, no wages, etc. In fact it was his view that proper planning and the market are incompatible: either production is regulated by a conscious previously worked-out plan or it is regulated, directly or indirectly, by the market. When Marx talked about men under capitalism being dominated by blind forces, which were in the end their own creations, it was precisely blind market forces he mainly had in mind. For him capitalism was essentially a market economy in which the allocation of labour and resources to the various branches of production was determined by what he called “the law of value”.

Although production under capitalism was not consciously controlled, it was not completely anarchic: some sort of order was imposed by the fact that goods exchanged in definite proportions, related both to the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent in producing them and to the average rate of profit on invested capital. Under capitalism it was the averaging of the rate of profit on the capital invested in the different branches that regulated production. But this was an unplanned hit-and-miss process which was only accurate in the long run; in the short run it led to alternating periods of boom and slump, labour shortage and mass unemployment, high profits and low profits. The assertion by society of conscious control over production, and the allocation of resources to the various branches of production in accordance with a previously settled plan, necessarily meant for Marx the disappearance not only of production for profit, but also of the whole mechanism of the market (including the labour market, and so of the wages system), of production for the market (“commodity-production”), of buying and selling (“exchange”) and of money.

The Communist Manifesto specifically speaks of “the Communistic abolition of buying and selling” (p. 72) and of the abolition not only of capital (wealth used to produce other wealth with a view to profit) but of wage labour too (p. 73). In Volume I Marx speaks of “directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities . . .” (p. 94) and in Volume II of things being different “if production were collective and no longer possessed the form of commodity production . . .” (p. 451). Also, in Volume II, Marx in comparing how Socialism and capitalism would deal with a particular problem twice says there would be no money to complicate matters in socialist society: “If we conceive society as being not capitalistic but communistic, there will be no money-capital at all in the first place . . .” (p. 315) and “in the case of socialized production the money-capital is eliminated” (p. 358). In other words, in Socialism it is solely a question of planning and organisation. Marx also advised trade unionists to adopt the revolutionary watchword “Abolition of the Wages System” (VPP, p. 78) and, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, stated “within the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products” (pp. 22-3) for the simple reason that their work would then be social not individual and applied as part of a definite plan. What they produce belongs to them collectively, i.e. to society, as soon as it is produced; socialist society then allocates, again in accordance with a plan, the social product to various previously-agreed uses.

Distribution of Consumer Goods

One of these uses must be individual consumption. How did Marx think this would be organised? Here again Marx took a realistic view. Eventually, he said, the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would apply (CGP, p. 24). In other words, there would be no social restrictions on individual consumption, every member of society being free to take from the common stock of consumer goods according to their individual need. But Marx knew that this presupposed a higher level of productivity than prevailed in his day (he was writing in 1875). In the meantime, while the productive forces were being expanded, individual consumption would unavoidably have to be restricted. How? Marx made the simple point that how wealth would be allocated for individual consumption in communist society would depend on what and how much there was to allocate: “The mode of this distribution will vary with the productive organisation of the community, and the degree of historical development attained by the producers” (Vol. I, p. 78).

This was another obvious point, but on three or four occasions Marx went further and referred to a specific method of regulating distribution: by “labour-time vouchers”. The basic idea of such a system is that each producer would be given a certificate recording how much time he had spent at work; this would entitle him to draw from the common store of wealth set aside for individual consumption an equivalent amount of consumer goods, likewise measured in labour-time. This, as Marx himself recognised, was only one of many possible systems Socialist society could democratically agree on for allocating wealth for individual consumption in the temporary conditions of relative scarcity here assumed — realistically for 1875 — to exist. As long as the total number of vouchers issued matched the total amount of wealth set aside for individual consumption, society could adopt any criteria it chose for deciding how many vouchers particular individuals, or groups of individuals, should have; this need bear no relationship at all to how many hours an individual may or may not have worked. Similarly, the “pseudo-prices” given to particular goods to be distributed need bear no relation to the amount of labour-time spent on producing them. Marx himself described some of the defects of the labour-time voucher system, but also made the point that any voucher system of allocating goods for individual consumption would surfer from anomalies, being forced on socialist society by the not-yet-developed-enough productive forces in what he called “the first phase of communist society”.

When Marx mentions labour-time vouchers in Capital he always made it quite clear that he was only assuming such a system as an example: “merely for the sake of a parallel with the production of commodities” (Vol I, p. 78) or that the producers “may, for all it matters, …” (Vol. II, p. 358) receive labour-time vouchers. He also emphasised that these vouchers would not be money in its proper sense: “Owen’s ‘labour-money’ … is no more ‘money’ than a ticket to the theatre” (Vol. I, p. 94) and “these vouchers are not money. They do not circulate” (Vol. II, p.358). (See also his discussion of so called “labour-money” in The Critique of Political Economy, pp. 83-6.)

Marx’s point here is that the vouchers would merely be pieces of paper entitling people to take such and such an amount of consumer goods; they would not be tokens for gold like today’s paper money; once handed over they would be cancelled and so could not circulate. Besides, they would be issued as part of the overall plan for the production and distribution of wealth. Finally, we repeat, any voucher system, whether on a labour-time or some other basis, was seen by Marx only as a temporary measure while the productive forces were developed as rapidly as possible to the level where they would permit socialist society to go over to free access according to individual need.

This is why this is now only an academic problem. The further development of the forces of production since Marx’s day has meant that the system he always said was the final aim of Socialism — free access to consumer goods according to individual need — could now be introduced almost immediately Socialism was established. The problem Marx envisaged labour-time vouchers as a possible solution to no longer really exists.

Conclusion

We have seen, then, that Marx held that future communist society would be a classless community, without any coercive State machine, based on the common ownership of the means of production, with planning to serve human welfare completely replacing production for profit, the market economy, money and the wages system — even in the early stages when it might not prove possible to implement the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, which, however, always remained for Marx the aim. Marx, and Engels, never drew any distinction between “socialist” and “communist” society, using these (and other) terms interchangeably. He did, however, believe that this society would only be established after a “period of … revolutionary transformation” (CGP, p. 32) of a number of years duration during which the working class would be using its control of political power to dispossess the capitalists and bring all the means of production under democratic social control — but, here again, the further development of the productive forces since Marx’s day means that the socialist revolution can now be carried through very quickly with no need for any lengthy period between the capture of political power by the working class and the establishment of socialism.

Adam Buick

References:

CGP.  Critique of the Gotha Programme. Marx-Engels, Selected Works, Vol II Moscow, 1958.

CM.  Communist Manifesto, Moscow, 1954.

PP.  Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1956.

Vol I.   Capital, Vol I, Moscow, 1961.

Vol. II. Capital, Vol II, Moscow, 1957.

Vol III. Capital, Vol III, Moscow, 1959.

VPP. Wages, Price and Profit, Peking, 1969.

Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971.

Exhibition Review: Lion Salt Works (2016)

Salt Workers  © Cheshire West and Chester

Exhibition Review from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cheshire salt towns lie near the valley of the River Weaver, on two bands of salt laid down over two hundred million years ago. Brine had been extracted by evaporation from them since the Iron Age, and rock salt mining began in 1670. Only in the nineteenth century did the salt industry become really large, though, as exports via Liverpool increased and the chemical industry needed more supplies. By the end of that century, open-pan salt making was in decline, as the modern method of vacuum evaporation took over. Large companies now produce salt cheaply and with far fewer workers. The 125 employees of British Salt at Middlewich (owned by the Tata Group) produce about 800,000 tonnes of salt a year.

Traditional salt production was environmentally very unfriendly. In addition to air pollution, with the nearby towns covered in soot, one consequence was subsidence, as land was undermined by the removal of salt below and gave way, sometimes resulting in lakes known as flashes. A special method of building houses with timber frames so they could be lifted up after subsidence was developed.

The work of producing salt was extremely physically demanding, largely because of the excessive heat and humidity required in the pan houses. Clothes, and even clogs, rotted very quickly. There were complaints of scandals when women in shifts and petticoats worked alongside men stripped to the waist, which happened down to the 1870s. Salt workers worked long hours and the work was seasonal. Unions did their best to ensure that in slack periods work was shared round, rather than workers being laid off. A strike in 1889 led to some workers having more say about their hours but less overall control of their work.

The Lion Salt Works, at Marston near Northwich, alongside the Trent and Mersey Canal, opened in 1894. It closed in 1986, after the Nigerian Civil War had meant the loss of its main market. It is now preserved as one of only four open-pan salt works in the world, a museum with original buildings, machinery (pumps, boilers and steam engines), exhibits and informative displays. Some of the galleries are in the former Red Lion Inn, built to quench the workers’ thirst. The Manager’s House was where the owners, the Thompson family, worked, taking orders and handing out wages. Recordings of workers talking about their labours are included, and there is information on how some of the flashes have become wildlife havens. There is an attempt by means of special effects to replicate the steam rising from the salt pans, but inevitably it is difficult to give any real impression of what the working conditions must have been like.

The Lion Works is a fitting tribute to the workers who toiled in a now-vanished method of labouring.

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: Fashion and Fighting (2016)

Exhibition Review from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

One First World War poster proclaimed that it was unpatriotic to dress extravagantly during wartime. This was mainly, if not exclusively, aimed at women, of course. Now an exhibition ‘Fashion and Freedom’ at Manchester Art Gallery looks at some of the ways that the war affected women’s clothes and other aspects of their lives.

As one and a half million women joined the industrial workforce, the need for looser clothing became clear, even though there had been plenty of women workers previously. The tight corsets of previous decades were hardly practical, though some changes along such lines were already taking place (and women cotton spinners had worn shifts at work anyway, because of the heat); the war accelerated these changes, rather than initiating them. By the 1920s more women were wearing make-up and sporting simpler dresses with hemlines up to the knee, as well as smoking cigarettes and being able to vote.

The exhibition consists of four sections. Examples of clothes from the first part of the last century are displayed, though one question not raised is whether most of these were the reserve of richer women. Some well-known modern women designers show pieces inspired by working women from the war period. A couple of these make use of the colour yellow, with reference to the way that working with chemicals such as TNT turned women’s skin yellow (the disease was known as toxic jaundice, and could be fatal). Also, some fashion students have produced designs of their own, and some short films reflect on changes brought about by the war.

A few miles away at Salford Quays, the Imperial War Museum North is staging a larger exhibition ‘Fashion on the Ration’, looking at the impact the Second World War had on fashion, primarily but not exclusively that for women. Many people on the home front, perhaps as many as ten million, wore uniforms, for instance for the Auxiliary Fire Service. In some cases these were the first set of new clothes they had ever had. The uniforms of sailors in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the ‘Wrens’) were apparently seen as particularly smart, though it must be debatable whether this really served to attract more recruits, as is suggested.

To avoid price rises and the poor being unable to afford them, clothes were rationed from June 1941. ‘Make-Do and Mend’, with clothes being repeatedly repaired and re-used, became official policy in 1942, but had been in fact practised for a couple of years before. ‘Utility’ clothing was produced the same year, with leading designers employed to make these standardised garments rather more stylish. Clothes had to be largely unadorned, with men’s jackets limited to three pockets and three buttons, and no turn-ups on trousers. Elastic was in short supply, but could be used in women’s knickers, and silk stockings were particularly missed. No coupons were needed, though, for the clogs often worn by munitions workers.

Cosmetics continued to be produced, though in smaller quantities, as a way of keeping up morale. Manufacturers and retailers managed to cash in on new kinds of demand such as handbags with room to keep a gas mask, and white hats and shawls to make the wearer visible in the blackout. As in the First World War, clothing became more relaxed and informal, a trend continued after the war with the ‘New Look’ from Paris, though clothes rationing continued till 1949 and the Utility scheme till 1952. Both exhibitions make it clear that even in times of extreme austerity, people will do their best to maintain some self-expression and individuality.

Alongside her design at the Manchester Art Gallery display, Vivienne Westwood writes, ‘Our rotten financial system creates poverty for the many, riches for the few. We have a war economy. … We now know that this system – and the arms trade – helps create climate change – we are facing mass extinction. Fight the system and replace it with a green economy.’ Westwood’s politics might be politely described as confused, but this at least shows some attempt to see through the standard view.  

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: Standedge Tunnel (2016)

Exhibition Review from the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Travel between Lancashire and Yorkshire generally requires crossing the Pennines, whether by road, rail or canal. Some routes follow the hills and valleys, and were much used by pack-horses carrying cotton, wool and other goods, but as transport and other technology improved it became more practical to dig tunnels. The tunnel at Summit (near Littleborough) was, when completed in 1841 and for some years, the longest railway tunnel in the world. But some of the most interesting tunnels are those at Standedge (don’t pronounce the first ‘d’), between Diggle and Marsden.

There are three rail tunnels, built at various dates between 1848 and 1894 as the rail network expanded enormously. Only the 1894 tunnel, which is just over three miles long, is still in use. Earlier than these is the canal tunnel, which after several abortive attempts, was completed in 1811: it is often described as ‘the longest, deepest and highest canal tunnel in Britain’. It carries the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and for financial reasons, like a number of other canal tunnels, was built without a towpath, so narrow boats could not be pulled through it by horses. Instead, men called leggers had to lie on their backs and push against the tunnel roof or walls to move the boats. Usually two leggers worked together, and it took on average four hours for a loaded boat to go through the tunnel. As with many others, the Huddersfield Narrow Canal fell into disuse as canals became less popular for transporting goods and so ceased to be profitable, and closed in 1943. It reopened in 2001 for recreational use, largely through the work of volunteers, and trips through the tunnel are now possible (not powered by leggers).

At Marsden on the Yorkshire side is the Tunnel Visitor Centre. This contains some helpful display boards and a few original bits of equipment. The hard work of the navvies who built the canal and tunnels is referred to, but there seems to be no mention of those who died building them, and to be honest the centre is rather underwhelming. However, some fine walks on Marsden Moor and surrounding areas do allow you to explore the industrial and transport history of the local area, and so of Britain more generally.    

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: Portraying a Nation – Germany 1919–1933 (2017)

Exhibition Review from the October 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Weimar Republic, from Germany’s defeat in the First World War to Hitler’s capture of power: a time of economic crisis, hyperinflation, massive unemployment, cultural innovation, increasing nationalism and repression. An exhibition at Tate Liverpool, on until the middle of October, attempts to capture some of these dramatic developments by exhibiting the work of photographer August Sander and painter Otto Dix.

Sander (1876–1964) is represented by photos from his project ‘People of the 20th Century’. In one sense these are straightforward depictions of people who are looking into the camera; they are nearly all anonymous and described in terms of their work (e.g. farmer, doctor, blacksmith). There are photos of blind people and others who are in some way ‘excluded’ from society, such as those with learning difficulties. As the years pass, there are photos of Nazis in uniform and, from 1938, of ‘victims of persecution’. In 1934 Sander’s son Erich was arrested and imprisoned for political activity; he died in prison in 1944. A few photos of political prisoners, taken by Erich, are included.

In 1936 the Nazi authorities had the plates of one of Sanders’ books destroyed and copies removed. A similar fate applied to the work of Dix (1891–1969), who had paintings confiscated and displayed in the exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’ from 1937 (though in truth it did not take much to be categorised in this way). Dix had fought in the First World War, and some of his depictions of fighting and the The Seven Deadly Sins’ (not included in this exhibition), which contains a caricature of Hitler embodying greed (or perhaps envy), is fairly easy to read nowadays, but Hitler’s moustache was only added after the war, so it was originally not so clear-cut.

trenches are extremely powerful. He painted some of the many women who had been widowed by the war, also prostitutes, beggars and the rich. Dix refused any political allegiance, and concentrated instead on showing what was going on around him, but, as with Sander, this was inevitably too much for the totalitarian regime he had to live under. His 1937 painting ‘

A photo of Dix by Sander links the two, but they are already connected in the visitor’s mind by their honest representation of a Germany that was on a path of suffering, from one traumatic war to another.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: The Douglas Scheme (1974)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the days of Marx and Engels, Socialists have pointed out that the improvements in the instruments of production, added to the continual increase in the applications of science and discoveries to industry, were resulting in the means of production out-running the effective demand for and consumption of markets. The periodical crises of the nineteenth century that resulted from these facts brought forward various “remedies”, many of a financial character . . . But the great favourite idea was the one of supplying “cheap” credit to the small producer or capitalist who was being beaten in competition by the large capitalist. As this "credit” could not—for obvious reasons—be obtained through the usual financial channels, the municipality or the State was called upon to supply it.

The work now under consideration is one of these attempts to save capitalism from catastrophe by means of “credit” manipulation. This statement may surprise those members of the ILP etc. who have been mystified by its confused exposition into supposing that its object was to provide a scheme to benefit or even to emancipate the workers. In fairness to the author it must be stated that he makes no such claim himself, for while he says capitalism is breaking down, he proposes the scheme to save society from crashing into chaos. The workers are to remain workers and the capitalists are to continue to be capitalists.

(From a review by J. Fitzgerald of Credit-Power and Democracy, Major C. H. Douglas, Socialist Standard, December 1924.)

The International Socialists and Parliamentary Action (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “International Socialists” and their journal Socialist Worker declare that “There is . . . no parliamentary road to Socialism”. (See “What We Stand For” in any issue of Socialist Worker.) They use several different arguments to support their position. One of them was put in an article by Paul Foot published in The Times of 14th August 1975.

Mr. Foot’s theme was that “the parliamentary road to Socialism has turned into another blind alley”. To support this argument all that he had to do was to give us his example of a socialist working class having tried to use the parliamentary road to achieve Socialism and having failed. But Mr. Foot and I.S. do not know of any such example. What he did give was the British Labour Government, that is to say a party which rejects Socialism and tries to run capitalism. In his typically confused way Mr. Foot is half aware of this, because his description of Labour ministers and their supporters is that they are people “who have imagined that capitalism could be reformed by the periodical election of Labour governments”. But what has reforming capitalism got to do with Socialism?

In another muddled passage Mr. Foot wrote that these are dreadful times “for socialists who put their trust in Labour governments”; but Socialists did not and do not put their trust in Labour governments. It isn’t Socialists who have been led “down another blind alley” but the unfortunate workers who are bamboozled by Foot and is into voting for the Labour Party at each General Election.

But I.S. has another case against the parliamentary road. It was set out in Socialist Worker (21st July 1973) in an attack on another organization which, like I.S., urges the workers to vote for the Labour Party — the Communist Party of Great Britain. There it was argued that the working class cannot gain control through parliamentary elections because the working class is only a minority.

A majority of workers may want a complete transformation of society . . . but in parliamentary elections, with the middle class and ruling class voting against them, they would lose.

This is of course a nonsensical statement. The working class consists of all who get their living by selling their mental and physical energies, their labour-power, for a wage or salary. With dependents and working-class pensioners they constitute at least 85 per cent. (34 million) out of the 40 million electors on the parliamentary register; and on the same percentage basis they constituted about 25 million out of the 29 million who used their votes at the last General Election. (The remaining 4 million voters consisted of capitalists, the “self-employed”, and their dependents.)

So how did 4 million outvote 25 million? Even if we assumed that all of the 11½  million electors who voted Labour were working-class (and that is certainly not true) it would mean that more working-class voters (over 13 million) voted Tory, or Liberal or for the Welsh, Scottish and Irish Nationalist parties, than voted for the Labour Party. (To avoid possible misunderstanding, all of these 29 million supported private capitalism or state capitalism.)

Ruling out the possibility that I.S. cannot count, the basis for their peculiar conclusion appears to be the probability that for them “working-class” means only those workers actually producing goods, to the exclusion of the big majority of workers not so employed. (On this basis of course Mr. Foot and many of the members of I.S. would not be working-class.)

However, what is of most importance is the conclusion that follows from the I.S. view of “working class”. It is that is I.S. consciously basing its case on minority action, the forcible imposition of the will of the minority on the majority. This is carried a stage further in the I.S. declaration “What We Stand For”, where it is stated that the achievement of Socialism is to be by the organization in a revolutionary socialist party of “the most militant sections of the working class” — in other words, a minority of a minority. It is significant that “What We Stand For” never once uses the words “democracy” or “democratic”.

I.S. has in fact largely taken over from the Communist Party what was that party’s position half a century ago. Like the Communist Party then and now, the objective of I.S. is not Socialism but a variety of state capitalism. It differs from traditional Labour Party ideas on state capitalism, the nationalized boards, in that I.S. lays emphasis on workers’ councils — capitalism run by shop stewards.

Edgar Hardcastle

Exhibition Review: Syria – Story of a Conflict (2018)

Sergey Ponomarev

Exhibition Review from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly half a million people have been killed in Syria since the current fighting began in  2011, and around 11 million forced from their homes. An exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in Salford Quays, on till the end of May, examines some of the history and issues involved. As noted, it is ‘a war of narratives’, with all sides competing to tell their own version of what is happening. Whether particular groups are described as rebels or terrorists can have a major impact on how other people see the conflict.

Western media coverage of the fighting and its consequences has tended to focus on the number of refugees who have come from Syria to Europe, especially Greece. But this applies only to a minority, as there are many internally-displaced people in Syria, and over four million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The fighting is complicated by the various forces ranged against the Assad government, from Kurds to ISIS to those who objected to Assad’s repressive rule. Some souvenir plates and mugs are displayed that show Assad and Putin together, in a reminder of how outside forces are playing a role in the conflict. Nearby is a gruesome replica of a barrel bomb.

Perhaps the highlight is two series of photos by the Russian photographer Sergey Ponomarev, ‘A Lens on Syria’. The first shows life in government-controlled areas, where things are supposedly ‘normal’ but clearly are not. Homs, for instance, has more or less become a ghost town: one unforgettable image shows a ruined shopping mall with a large election poster of a smiling Assad on it.

The other series shows the plight of refugees, especially those who have been refused entry to countries such as Macedonia. They wait in dreadful conditions in camps, often having risked crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats. The misery and hopelessness displayed in these photos show very clearly the human cost of this appalling conflict. 

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: The Sea Is the Limit (2018)

Exhibition Review from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

With a title that refers to the saying ‘The sky’s the limit’, York Art Gallery is currently running an exhibition dealing with issues of migration, refugees and borders, on until early September. It contains works by a number of artists from various countries, using several types of installation.

The sea can be both a barrier to travel but also a means of escape, and the works on display refer to both these concepts. Nidhal Chamekh (who is from Tunisia) emphasises the barrier aspect with drawings of the refugee camp in Calais, including tents and other self-built shelters. Nick Elwood depicts those who live or lived in this camp, focussing on them as individuals rather than just as part of the influx of migrants that so scares some people. As a reminder of what some people are escaping from, Brian Maguire displays paintings of ruined buildings in Syria, which show graphically the devastation caused there by many years of fighting.

Brian Maguire - Apartments Aleppo 2016

Halil Altındere offers a novel idea of a ‘Journey to Mars’, using a virtual reality headset to show a possible sanctuary for refugees in space: demonstrating perhaps how unrealistic some of the demands of those who want to clamp down on migration are.

It is not a large exhibition but it is a thought-provoking one. In the library at Manchester Metropolitan University is another small but informative display, ‘Oceans Apart’, dealing with transatlantic travel between 1870 and 1940. The direct link to the York exhibition is that of emigrants, many from Ireland, who travelled in crowded conditions in ‘steerage’. At one time such migrants were welcomed as a way of populating the unworked fertile lands of the so-called US cotton states, but later it was claimed that many of them lived in unhealthy conditions in the big cities.

In contrast were the grand tours for the wealthy, on liners run by companies such as Cunard and P&O, advertised on colourful posters, a variety of which are displayed here. The ultra-rich passengers enjoyed suites with their own bathrooms, a far cry from the crowded conditions endured by most travellers.

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: Women, Work and War (2016)

Exhibition Review from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cotton in Lancashire and wool in Yorkshire was the traditional division. What was once the world’s largest woollen mill, at Armley, is now the Leeds Industrial Museum, with the expected displays of machinery for weaving and so on, but also covering various other areas. Part of the site is still closed after the floods last Christmas.

An exhibition ‘Women, Work and War’ is currently running there, dealing with the impact that the First World War had on women’s working lives. It consists of a series of displays in various parts of the museum, rather than a single exhibition.

Many women had of course worked in wool and other textile industries before the war, but the need for men to fight, kill and be killed led to many women taking jobs in mills for the first time. They were generally less well-paid than men, but earned more than they had previously at cleaning and sewing. The need for uniforms for those in the armed services resulted in increased demand for clothing and so to an even larger workforce.

Leeds was also a centre of the printing industry, with many war propaganda posters produced there. Women came to take on a central role in this, for instance as keyboard operatives. They also worked on the railways, as porters, cleaners and guards, but not as drivers. They worked as conductors on the city’s trams, earning the same as men but required to wear long skirts rather than trousers.

From 1915, women working on the railways were allowed to join trade unions for the first time. The National Union of Railwaymen (sic) campaigned for women to receive the minimum wage for a man (presumably involving a pay rise). The number of women in the United Garment Workers’ Union also increased during the war, but the vast majority of women workers were not in a union.

Women in addition played a prominent role in the munitions industry. In 1915 the first National Shell Factory was established at Armley, but the biggest works was in the Leeds district of Barnbow, which produced over half a million tonnes of munitions. On 6 December 1915 there was an explosion at Barnbow that killed thirty-five women workers. Two further explosions there, in 1917 and 1918, killed five more workers, men and women. Guns and bombs did not kill just on the front line. 

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: The Return of Memory (2017)

Exhibition Review from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Outside the Home arts centre in Manchester stands an unsubtle statue of Frederick Engels, removed from Ukraine. Inside the centre is an exhibition ‘The Return of Memory’, of contemporary works from the ‘New East’, relating to the centenary of the Russian Revolution, and on till early January.

It includes a number of displays, from videos and murals to photographs and an installation that involves cabbages grown from one of the world’s oldest seed banks. Gluklya presents ‘Clothes for Demonstration Against False Election of Vladimir Putin’, which contains slogans relating to Putin’s re-election as president of Russia in 2012: for instance, ‘Two terms in office – make the next one in prison’, ‘Your election is a joke’ and simply ‘No’.

In ‘On Republic’s Monuments’, Yevgeni Nikiforov shows photos of the fate of statues and other monuments to Bolshevik rulers in Ukraine, a process known as ‘Leninfall’. Many were pulled down or otherwise vandalised; some were painted in the Ukrainian national colours of blue and yellow. ‘Freedom Village’, by Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho involves photos and a video relating to Taesung, a village isolated in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea: it is under UN control and has remained basically unchanged since 1953.

In ‘One Day the Sadness Will End’, Declan Clarke and Sarah Perks present names of people or places who were supposedly betrayed by revolution. Names are added to the list daily, but it seems odd to include Marx and the Luddites alongside Robespierre. The booklet accompanying the exhibition notes that ‘revolutions invariably turn on themselves’, though with no explanation of this.

In connection with the Engels statue, the same booklet continues these simplistic political views by claiming that the ideas of Marx and Engels ‘changed the course of history by inspiring the Russian revolution' . . . . 

Paul Bennett

Exhibition Review: Annie Swynnerton – Painting Light and Hope (2018)

The Young Mother (c 1887)

Exhibition Review from the December 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Painting was one of many cultural areas from which women were once all but prohibited. Training was difficult, and women were generally barred from classes with nude models, which were seen as an essential part of artistic education. A number of women who did succeed were born into artistic households, often the daughters of painters. Annie Swynnerton (1844–1933) was one of the few women who overcame these problems, and in 1922 she became the first female Associate Member of the Royal Academy, which had been founded in 1768. She attended the Manchester School of Art and in 1879 helped to found the Manchester Society of Women Painters. However, she has been relatively neglected and a fair number of her works are either lost or untraced. An exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, on until 6 January, is the first major display of her work in almost a century.

Swynnerton was also politically active, and joined the Manchester Society of Women’s Suffrage. The subjects of her portraits include prominent supporters of women’s suffrage, such as Millicent Garrett Fawcett, and also Swynnerton’s friend and fellow-artist Susan Dacre, who is in turn represented by a portrait of Lydia Becker, who had set up this society, the first of its kind. An early portrait by Swynnerton is of William Gaskell (widower of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell), where his face and hands and a newspaper are highlighted against his black suit and a dark background.

Swynnerton also painted many other depictions of women, from both Manchester and Italy, where she and her husband spent part of their time. Some of these were of poorer women, such as a young mother carrying her child while collecting water, and another of a convalescent. Her own nude studies can be quite powerful, as in one of Cupid and Psyche, which includes bodily features such as veins, so rejecting the conventional idealisation of the body. In Italy she also painted a number of landscapes and town scenes.

She was influenced by various artistic schools, including the Pre-Raphaelites and Impressionists, so her work can seem, as the accompanying catalogue notes, ‘perplexingly eclectic’. But the exhibition demonstrates both the merit of Swynnerton’s work and her role in increasing women’s presence in art.

Paul Bennett