Party News from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Recent Tapes Library additions (1975)
Party News from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard
An audio recording of Harry Young's meeting on Rosa Luxemburg is available on the SPGB website.
I wonder if any of the other meetings listed above are in the party archive?
Editorial: Manpower and the Crisis (1947)
Remedy the Labour Government Cannot Use
Capitalism breeds war, waste and want as a jungle swamp breeds pestilence. Practically every minister in the Labour Government has acknowledged the truth of this some time or other and has pointed the obvious moral that if you want to remove the pestilential effects you must remove the capitalist cause, and introduce Socialism in the place of Capitalism. They said this, but did any of them understand what they were saying? Probably not. If by chance some of them did then by taking office in the Labour Government they were acting a deliberate lie for they were promising something it was not in their power to do. There can be no Socialism until there are a majority of convinced Socialists in the electorate and even the most deluded of Labour leaders would surely not claim that the 12 million Labour voters were Socialists. A government cannot impose Socialism on an unwilling electorate. This should be obvious, but it took the recent crisis to jolt the “Daily Herald” into even a partial recognition of the facts. The “Herald’s” admission, a veritable masterpiece of understatement, was framed as a warning to Ministers not to entertain the “treacherous delusion” that would “regard the whole electorate as enthusiastic converts to Socialism” (February 8th, 1947). The same Editorial goes on to claim that “a peaceful revolution is being wrought in this land which will bring solid benefits within our lifetime, and will confer blessings untold on posterity.” We can leave posterity to speak for itself and content ourselves with foretelling a time when the electorate will count it an immediate blessing to be rid of the Labour Government.
The reader is of course entitled to ask us why we are sure that Labourism cannot succeed. The answer is to be found in the opening paragraph of this article. Capitalism we know; Socialism the workers can have when they are ready to grasp it; and there is no other choice. The root fallacy of Labourism is the belief that a Labour Government can administer capitalism in a non-capitalist way. With all the good intentions in the world it cannot be done” Labour Ministers may make election promises with perfect sincerity, but in office they learn day by day what it really means to keep this exploiting, profit-making system .going, in competition with the rest of the capitalist Powers. It means resisting wage claims so that the capitalists can go on making profit. It means perpetuating the vast gulf between rich and poor. It means maintaining the armed forces and struggling with rival Powers for trade, raw materials and colonies.
It is hardly necessary to say that it also involves swallowing past declarations of what ought to be done, such, for example, as Sir Stafford Cripps’ complete reversal of his views on trade rivalry. Now he is chief director of the export drive. Five years ago he declared, “If, after the coming of peace, we were to start once again the vicious circle of international trade competition, we should be lost, and in a few years would be confronting another war” (interview with a Brazilian newspaper—”Sunday Express” November 8th, 1942).
The recent crisis, forerunner of others, took on the appearance of a problem of fuel and manpower, brought to an acute phase by an “Act of God,” the British weather. It was, however, not a crisis of coal or of cold, but of capitalism. Let us examine this and see how capitalism, which caused the problem, prevents the Labour Government from solving it. The second World War (itself a product of capitalism) destroyed vast amounts of wealth and left a legacy of shortages of housing, food, fuel, clothing, transport, etc. Not that want was a new experience for the working class, but the war aggravated the problem by the immensity of the destruction it wrought all over-Europe and Asia. What would a sanely organised human society have done about this, assuming that such a form of society had to tackle the problem? It would have stopped all waste of labour and materials, halted the production of armaments, and of luxuries for the rich, and would have concentrated on producing the necessities of life in the quantities urgently needed by the population of the world. How did the Labour Government (and all the governments in all the countries) tackle it? They spoke the right words, but proceeded to apply fiddling half-measures. The British Labour Government said they needed man-power in production, but they found that British capitalism had a still more pressing need to keep 1,500,000 men in the armed forces and other hundreds of thousands supplying the needs of the forces and preparing for future wars. They said they needed more workers producing coal, food, houses, etc., for the millions who lacked bare necessities, but they left intact the class structure of capitalism, with its hundreds of thousands. of wealthy idlers consuming without producing, and its hundreds of thousands of workers engaged in banking, financial and other operations that only arise because of capitalism. There are over 700,000 non-industrial civil servants, about 350,000 of whom are Post Office workers. The great bulk of the remaining 350,000 are doing work rendered necessary only by capitalism, as is also much of the work of the Post Office. We are told that many civil servants are employed on insurance and similar work which the Labour Government regards as socially useful; but it is only the mind habituated to capitalism that cannot see what this work really is. Staffs handling unemployed and health. insurance are not there to see that the needy (needy because of capitalism) receive enough to satisfy their needs, but to protect capitalism against the needy receiving more than the niggardly amount allotted to keep them quiet.
The same contradiction between proclaimed aims and practical activities can be found in every sphere. The luxury needs of the wealthy have not been sacrificed to speed up the provision of necessities. On the contrary, the Government has encouraged the planning of luxury liners, luxury air travel, and luxury goods for export. These schemes are defended with the plea that luxury exports make it possible to import necessities unobtainable in other ways. The curious thing is that the governments of other war-damaged countries (France, for example) are doing the same and on the same plea, so that some luxury goods are being imported by all the countries which declare their inability to supply enough necessities for their populations. What it shows is that, despite Labour Party talk about a “new world,” the British and other Labour Governments are basing their plans for the future on the continuance of the same old capitalism, with its extremes of wealth and poverty. They are all catering for the needs of the wealthy.
Here then is the simple problem and the simple solution. On a conservative estimate the production of useful goods could easily be doubled in short time if the armed forces and propertied idlers and the workers doing work necessitated only by capitalism, were brought into production. Why doesn’t the Labour Government even attempt to do it? They don’t do it because even if they wanted to they dare not. They were put into power by an electorate that does not understand or want Socialism and which therefore gave the Labour Government nothing more than a man¬ date to go on administering capitalism.
The recent crisis arose because the capitalist state needs to have millions of people taken from production for the armed forces and other non-productive activities and therefore cannot take simple straightforward measures to make good the destruction of war. It led to great suffering and to the increase of unemployed to about 2,500,000 at the peak. In due course another and more usual type of capitalist crisis will blow up. Goods will be produced in excess of what can be sold at a profit, then unemployment will soar again. Then the Labour Government will be looking for other excuses than the cold weather to explain the failure of its plans. The “New Statesman,” which shared all of the foolish Labour Party beliefs in the possibility of applying so-called Socialist policies to capitalism, has in anticipation already coined the appropriate face-saving formula for the next crisis: “… the Government is confronted with the certainty, now that the illusions about a liberalisation of America’s trade policy have finally been dispelled, that a Socialist experiment confined only to this country is bound to fail” (February 8th, 1947). So the “New Statesman,” shedding one illusion, grasps at another equally absurd. It proposes that Britain cut adrift from trade and financial ties with U.S.A. and collaborate instead “with other countries which are experimenting with planned economies.” If it is a fallacy, as it certainly is, that a Labour Government can apply Socialist plans to capitalism, common sense should make it clear that you do not escape from the dilemma by linking up with other countries in which similar governments are trying to perform the same impossible feat. Capitalist crises know no frontiers, and Labour Governments here and elsewhere will no more escape the next crisis than they did the “economic blizzard” that blew down the British Labour Government in 1931 and simultaneously toppled over the Labour Government in Australia.
For the world’s workers there is no escape from the problems and crises caused by capitalism except by introducing Socialism.
Delay in publication (1947)
From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
Like other periodicals, the Socialist Standard was barred from being published on the usual date through the suspension order issued by the Government during the fuel crisis.
The consequent delay was aggravated by continuing difficulties arising out of the stoppage of power. Readers will appreciate that the delay has been unavoidable.
New Zealand—A socialist country? (1947)
The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that Socialism involves a complete sweeping away of the prevailing system of society which is known as capitalism and the introduction of a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of life. The introduction of reforms which occur in the normal evolution of capitalism and are necessary to its more effective working, do not constitute socialism though the reforms may be put through by politicians calling themselves Socialists as in New Zealand to-day.
New Zealand was opened up :by the New Zealand Company, and not by independent settlers as took place in America, hence its particular evolution. The dominant figure of the company and the man who defined its policy was Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He looked at the American colonists’ progress in the early days, and from his capitalist’s outlook found it unsatisfactory, because each ‘settler was virtually independent, making their own clothes, candles, soap, etc., in addition to growing their own food. That was not Wakefield’s idea. Where all are independent, as were the early American colonists, there is little capital accumulated, as there are few, if any, labourers to exploit.
Wakefield saw that if many workers could be attracted to New Zealand they would require the products of manufacturing industries in order to support life, thus creating more employment with resultant profits to the capitalist class.
Primarily employment was to be in the form of work on the land and steps were to be taken by the company to see that the ownership of the land was concentrated in a few hands, thus preventing the workers from becoming smallholders and achieving a measure of independence.
England in 1840 was, for the labouring masses, a country best left behind. The history of 1830-1840 is of revolts by agricultural workers, miners and iron workers against their appalling conditions: revolts which were ruthlessly put down. The French revolution was too recent for clemency, which might he mistaken for weakness. With the industrial revolution accomplished, there was unemployed capital as well as labour; Wakefleld believed that both could be profitably employed in New Zealand.
Alas, his hopes were doomed to failure for many years. The New Zealand Company bought up land from the Maoris at less than the proverbial song and sold it in large lots to those who were to become capitalist farmers and would, it was hoped, employ and exploit the labourers which the New Zealand Company intended to persuade to emigrate.
In order to induce workers to go out to New Zealand the Company gave free steerage passages and undertook to give paid employment in the service of the company if the workers could not at once find masters. The company did not bargain with having to redeem this pledge; they made the fatal mistake of not ensuring that buyers of land went to the colony in order to employ labour to work it. With promises of employment, hundreds of working people emigrated from England. The rough sea journey was a smooth passage compared with their sufferings when they arrived and found none of the promised jobs, and were forced to take employment with the New Zealand Company at less than a subsistence wage.
Few landowners but many labourers continued to arrive, as having once been set in motion the recruitment did not cease. Agents in England continued to be paid at a fixed rate per emigrant, and news did not filter through to warn the prospective worker emigrants.
Finally, in 1844 matters had reached such a pass that the company ceased employment and payment altogether and distress was widespread. Here the lack of any elementary form of doles became evident. The destitute labourers in England had, meagre though it was, Parish relief or relief in the Poor House. In New Zealand, however, nothing of the kind existed and charity was most tardy.
As colonization continued the price of land increased still more and the land remained in the hands of the few. As the franchise had a property qualification the government represented the interests of these few. Legislation therefore, for the provision of hospitals, schools, and the relief of pauperism, was blocked in successive Parliaments. By 1853 only four hospitals had been built in the whole of New Zealand, and these left everything to be desired, but they became the beginning of relief, the Poor Law infirmary without the Poor House ! Another attempt to deal with pauperism was the setting up of Soup Kitchens in Auckland, and in 1865 a contributory form of health insurance was inaugurated among the road makers, on the basis that they paid the whole contribution.
The year 1865 also saw the passing of the repressive “Master and Apprentice Act,” which contained a clause stating that boys or girls refusing to serve their apprenticeship could be sent to jail for three month’s This related to children of twelve.
1868 saw the first attempt at unemployment insurance, which was a tax of 10s. a year on adult male^ to provide a fund for the destitute, the sick, orphans, etc.’
By 1898 it had become necessary to make some provision for the aged poor. These were the young labourers of the early immigration ; they had not grown rich or become landed proprietors, as some earlier colonists of other countries had done. In old age, after a life time of privation, they were awarded a pension of 6s. 11d. per week.
Meanwhile, industry was going forward in New Zealand, and the introduction of refrigerating ships made export of food a paying proposition to the big farmers. The workers learned that organisation on the industrial field was essential if their standard of living was to be maintained. The United Federation of Labour was formed in the teeth of opposition from the employers, who victimised the members at ever, conceivable opportunity. The climax came in October 1913, when the employers cancelled their contract wit: the Wellington Watersiders and staged a lockout During the bitter weeks which followed the workers were completely defeated. The Labour Disputes Investigation Act was passed making sudden strikes illegal, and the Federation of Labour lost most of its power as the unions became more and more concerned with arbitration.
The Social Democratic Party originally declared Socialism to be its aim deteriorated into reformism. like the British Party, and in 1916, the present Labour Party emerged from it, its avowed object, being simply the nationalisation, that is the taking over by the state of the means of production.
It was this Labour Party that took office in December, 1935, on a programme which included state control of currency and credit, guaranteed farm prices, i national health service, and a recognition of the “right to work” !
Whatever else it may be, it, is clear that a programme of this kind bears no relation to Socialism. When Socialism is established there will be no currency, no credit, no guaranteed farm prices, nor any of the provisions that capitalism is forced to make to try to combat the effects of slumps and booms. State intervention in these problems of capitalism is not Socialism.
The set-up in New Zealand is accurately described by R. S. Parker, a New Zealand political writer, in ” The Australian Quarterly ” (March, 1941, page 30) :—
”The Labour Government has simply continued in the New Zealand tradition of state control and regulation, private ownership and operation. The central feature of the present set-up is the survival of the spirit and content of an essentially capitalistic economy, upon which the state has imposed a far reaching, but largely negative system of regulations, controls, prohibitions."
The Labour Party has been in office for over ten years, yet in many aspects conditions in New Zealand are worse than those of Britain.
The latest report of the Director-General of Health for the year 1944-1945 proves Public Health and Industrial Hygiene to be worse than in the “old country.” As comment on all points is impracticable for reasons of space, only the most significant will be given.
The general health of the Maoris, who were in 1840, a healthy race, is poor. Tuberculosis is rampant, and the infant mortality rate very high (102.26 per 1,000 live births). Much ill-health is due to the notoriously bad state of Maori housing and no great improvement in health is possible whilst they are living under such overcrowded and insanitary conditions.
The report on Industrial Hygiene is very enlightening. Many of the comments of its author, Dr. Davidson, would fit any industrialised country: —
“… many thousands are employed in work which is hot, dusty, laborious, dirty or merely monotonous and uninteresting, and they, too, may be exposed to environmental dangers, the effects of which although less immediately disabling are none the less real” (page 20).
Continuing, Dr. Davidson holds up British Factory Legislation a-s a shining example to New Zealand, and advises those capitalists who are reluctant to spend money on amenities for their workers to think again. Covering the bitter pill of expenditure on nurses and doctors in the jam of future profits, he shows what skilled treatment of accidents, etc., may save in absenteeism, accident compensation, etc.
Dr. Davidson recognises the reasons why necessary reforms in industry are not carried out when he points out: —
”It is partly a matter of finance; merely to, keep a factory clean costs money” . . .“Good seating, too, is no mere philanthropy, its pays.”
To the ears of the capitalist class the words “it pays” are sweeter than the sweetest of music—perhaps they will be convinced!
We have seen how young children might be jailed for refusing to work, but Dr. Davidson was surprised to find them still working : —
“I have been surprised to find children under school leaving age working full time in various factories during school vacations and in isolated cases during school terms. Children of 13 and even 12 can be seen working whole time—and sometimes overtime—in factories which in many cases are very ill-kept and in some of which highly poisonous chemicals or dangerous machinery are in use ” (page 27).
After the above report was compiled the Statutes Amendment Act of 1944 prohibited the employment of children under 14 years. Such conditions had, however, prevailed for almost 10 years under the “Socialist” Government.
The workers of New Zealand have been taken in by the promises of their Labour Party as were the workers of Britain in 1945. Disillusionment must come when it is found that neither state control nor private ownership within the framework of capitalism will solve the ills thrown up by capitalism. Only when the workers of New Zealand, together with the workers of other lands, realise the reason for their exploitation and combine to overthrow it can Socialism be achieved.
W. P.
Nationalisation news (1947)
From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
“Cheques sent in bundles by the Bank of England to the clearing house are now tied with red tape instead of white.” (Daily Express, 13/1/47)
The Town and Country Planning Bill (1947)
From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
“A man will no longer be able to buy farmland at £200 an acre in the hope of reselling it as a factory site at £600 an acre. True, it will be worth more as a factory site—but the State, through a Central Land Board, will collect all or most of the difference” (Daily Herald, 8/1/47).
Thus the Labour Government carries out a longstanding demand made in the interests of the industrial capitalist. H. M. Hyndman, in his “Economics of Socialism,” dealt with this. After reviewing the Ricardian theory of rent and the many objections which present themselves to that theory, he wrote: —
“It seems, therefore, that a wider definition of the rent of land under Capitalism is needed than that, given by Ricardo, and the following is suggested: Rent of land is that portion of the total net revenue which is paid to the landlord for the use of plots of land after the average profit on the capital embarked in developing such land has been deducted.”
On the question of confiscating rent he pointed out that it “would not affect the position of the working portion of the community unless the money so obtained were devoted to giving them more amusement, to providing them with better surroundings and the like. . . . In fact, the attack upon competitive rents is merely a capitalist attack. That class sees a considerable income going off to a set of people who take no part in the direct exploitation of labour; and its representatives are naturally anxious to stop this leakage, as they consider it, and to reduce their own taxation for public purposes by appropriating rent to the service of the State. That is all very well for them.”
On this point Marx says: —
“We can understand such economists as Mill, Cherbulliez, Hilditch, and others, demanding that rent should be used for the remission of taxation. That is only the frank expression of the hate which the industrial capitalist feels for the landed proprietor, who appears to him as a useless incumbrance, a superfluity in the otherwise harmonious whole of bourgeois production.” (“Poverty of Philosophy,” Kerr edition, 1920. Page 176.)
“Rent,” says Marx, “results from the social relations in which exploitation is carried on. It cannot result from the nature, more or less fixed, more or less durable, of land. Rent proceeds from society and not from the soil.” (P. 180.)
(The above quotations are used by H. Quelch in his Introduction to Marx’s “Poverty of Philosophy,” Kerr edition, 1920.)
Horatio.
"St Moritz and Miners" (1947)
From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
The Observer of Sunday, Dec. 29th, 1946, describes the absence from work of Miners and Railway men, etc., on Friday and Saturday of Christmas week as “Shockingly anti-social.”
On the front page of the paper, and also in the Sunday Times, there was a photograph of the winter sports at St. Moritz (Switzerland), and many British holidaymakers are thus seen enjoying themselves there.
The Sunday Times (same date) tells us that between 13,000 and 14,000 holidaymakers travelled to the Continent during Christmas week. Considering that the workers in the main get two days’ holiday at Christmas, we are certain that a Continental trip for them is quite out of the question, apart from the expense. If that is so, then the lucky 13,000 must have both the time and the money.
The Observer, as a Capitalist organ, runs true to form in condemning the workers for absenteeism while wealthy idlers enjoy themselves in Swiss luxury hotels with the wealth created for them by their sweating wage-slaves.
J. D.
Peaceful Preparations (1947)
From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
The American Government is going ahead with plans to build up stocks of raw materials required for war. In two years the expenditure on purchases at home and abroad will amount to well over £100 million. Is this good news? The Manchester Guardian rather thinks it is: “This plan will incidentally provide other countries — in particular British Empire countries — with dollars to supplement those earned from normal exports to America.” (February 14th, 1947).
“This,” says the Guardian, “is particularly welcome now that the world banks lending plans are hanging fire” ; not to mention the fact that the “purchases made inside the United States will also help to ward off the much talked-of ‘business recession’ there.”
Thus in one short news item two war-time hopes, of no more war and no more trade depression, are forgotten and here we are back in the pre-war atmosphere of being glad that war preparations keep trade going !
Voice From The Back: Prisoners of want (2002)
Prisoners of want
“One hundred thousand pensioners in old people’s homes are living on allowances of as little as £10 a week. Most are not even receiving the £16 weekly payment to which they are entitled, according to new research. The revelation that legions of old people live on less than many prison inmates will greatly embarrass Ministers, who have boasted of tackling pensioners’ poverty. “We were shocked when we discovered this,” said Lorna Easterbrook, who carried out the study for Help The Aged. “There’s a huge sense of humiliation among these old people. Some are getting £10 of their due allowances, but others are getting just £3 or £4 a week after relatives or homes make deductions.” Observer, 20 January.
The Observer journalist’s view that the Labour government ministers will be “greatly embarrassed” is probably wide of the mark. Nothing could embarrass these vile supporters of capitalism. Fellow workers, this could be your future inside capitalism. If you live beyond your ability to produce surplus value for the blood-sucking capitalist class. A bed pan and a tenner a week.
No cause for celebration
Twenty years ago a British Prime Minister told the Sun, and other slimy tabloid newspapers to “Rejoice” at the victory of the British capitalist class against the Argentine capitalist class. No mention was made at that time about the loss of working class life. We have no figures about the deaths of Argentine workers, but twenty years on, we have some about British workers. 255 British servicemen were killed, but even more awful since that madness, 264 British servicemen, who were involved have committed suicide. (Figures from the Guardian, 19 January.) Excuse us if we don’t rejoice, Thatcher, at the deaths of members of our class in the defence of your system. There are many orphans and widows of the working class today in both Argentine and Britain whose tears make joy impossible.
They like it, My Lord
“A Trade Union Congress report out today estimates that four million people, 16 percent of the workforce, work more than 48 hours a week, the limit set by the 1998 (European Union) directive. Men work the longest weeks with one in four clocking up more than 48 hours; one in ten working 55 hours; and one in 25 working more than 60 hours . . . John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, said: “Britain’s long-hour culture is a national disgrace. It leads to stress, ill-health and family strains.” Times, 4 February. Not everybody would agree with the TUC, though. John Crickland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI offers a defence of the long hours. “Workers want the right to make their own decisions about extra working hours. Managerial workers often work longer hours because they want to.” This defence is rather similar to the Fox Hunting Lobby’s – “The fox enjoys the hunt.”
Science and the profit motive
Inside socialist society the pursuit of knowledge will be free to all. There will be no restrictions on scientific investigation. This is impossible inside capitalism, with its copyright laws and its profit motive. Sir John Sulston, one of the leading researchers in the Human Genome Project has shown how powerful the profit motive is in science-based commerce. “We can’t possibly prohibit discovery. But on the other hand to imagine that we should always exploit, especially if it makes extra money, is insane. I think most reasonable people, including those who run companies, would agree. The trouble is, once people get into a company boardroom, they have no other choice. They have shareholders. I am afraid you have to leave your principles at the door of the boardroom”, he says.” Guardian, 2 February.
Blair, bombast and bombs
At the Labour Party conference last year Tony Blair said: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world”. Poverty, corruption, famine and war, he thundered like an Old Testament prophet, must be tackled. It went down big with the delegates. It is the sort of thing the Labour Party adore – talking about social problems in sanctimonious moral tones, and then doing nothing about it. But this time they were doing something about it – they were making it worse! “The government was facing condemnation from protesters against the arms trade last night after new figures revealed that the value of arms sales to Africa will more than quadruple by next year . . . High levels of spending on arms are seen as one of the main causes of poverty in Africa. A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that in 1999 African nations received £52 million worth of arms in deals with British firms. That figure rose to £125.5m in 2000 and is set to top £200m next year.” Observer, 3 February.
Post-combat syndrome
A report in the British Medical Journal claimed that post-conflict symptoms had been suffered long before the Gulf War and stretched back as far as the 1889 Boer War. “They concluded: “Post-combat syndromes have arisen in all major wars over the past century, and we can predict that will continue to appear after future conflicts” . . . The researchers said the best way to tackle the illnesses, which have cost subsequent governments considerable sums in financial assistance, was to better understand their characteristics.” Herald, 8 February. Surely, a much better way to deal with the problem is to abolish capitalism, the cause of modern warfare. No conflict = no post-conflict syndrome. You don’t need to be a trained medical researcher to work that one out.
America versus the World (2002)
George Bush’s State of the Union address at the end of January was a rhetorical declaration of war on the world; an assertion that US interests are now paramount and woe betide anyone foolish enough to think otherwise.
Bush boldly announced that the “war on terror” was “only beginning” and announced an enormous hike in military spending. This year’s military budget is up $36 bn to $379 bn and next year the US war machine will receive an extra $48 bn, with a further $120 bn promised over the next five years, bringing the total spent on the military by 2007 to $ 2 trillion. To get some estimate of this level of spending it is worth noting that this year’s increase alone is higher than the joint military spending of Europe, and larger than China’s existing military budget. Though just how such an awe-inspiring arsenal of state of the arts weaponry is to stop 11 September type attacks on the USA is yet to be explained.
America has at last declared that the “war on terror” has replaced the threat of the “international communist conspiracy” and found in this the pretext to set the agenda for the coming century. The Bush administration has embedded its flag in what it believes is the moral high ground. From now on it is a war of good against evil – evil being anyone standing directly in the way of the US and its aspirations of global domination, with the “war on terrorism” allowing it to intervene anywhere and whenever and to deem who it likes a terrorist. Clearly this new “war” will involve countless military interventions with no regard whatsoever for international sensibilities.
There are now bogeymen under every rock and the world needs protecting from them. Bush identified an “axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address, pointing to the threat the world faced from North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Vice-President Dick Cheney would later remark that the US is considering military action against 50 countries and that this ongoing conflict could last 50 years, without seeming to question whether this would be sustainable.
Bush’s adviser Richard Perle commented:
“This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there . . . if we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”
All of this has naturally left political analysts wondering just who will be next. Somalia (on a key oil export route and with untapped oil deposits off its coast and with whom the US has a score to settle following the botched “Restore Hope” operation of a decade ago, which left thousands of innocents dead), or Yemen, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria or Libya? All harbour bogeymen whose existence sullies the notion of American hegemony. Any could be the next target for a war machine drunk with its recent victory in Afghanistan. And what a victory! – Osama bin Laden still not caught (the entire campaign was about catching him), 5 thousand civilians dead and 7 million facing starvation in refugee camps.
A key element in the US game plan for global hegemony is clearly control of the Caspian’s rich oil reserves – estimated to be able to produce 3.3 million gallons of crude oil per day and 4850 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year. Hence US military manoeuvring in the states surrounding Afghanistan and thus the attaching of the “bogeyman” label to any state perceived as standing in the way of these profits.
Already Kyrgistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are under US military domination and there are US military tent cities in 13 states surrounding Afghanistan, with the map of US bases mirroring the route of a possible oil pipeline which would take oil through Iran to the Indian ocean.
The pretext for the US invasion of Iraq would be Iraq’s refusal to agree to terms laid down by a US-led weapons inspectorate into the country, hence Bush’s assertion in his State of the Union Address that Iraq “continues to flaunt its hostility towards the US” and that “this is a regime that has something to hide from the civilised world.”
The above may sound like so much scare-mongering, but when it is considered the US now accounts for 40 percent of global military spending, that it spends more on its war machine than the next 19 states, that in the past year it has discarded numerous international treaties, including those pertaining to weapons control, that the space taken up by its military hardware covers an area the size of Sweden, that it has served notice on all countries opposing the notion of US hegemony that their days are numbered, we can’t but conclude that warfare will be as much a part of life in this century as the one we have just emerged from.
We have every reason to be fearful for the future of humanity. War is competition for profits (either via trade routes, mineral wealth, resources or areas of influence) writ large, and to safeguard its future profits, its control of world resources the world’s greatest and largest military power is accumulating an unimaginable array of weaponry, rolling up its sleeves and marching forward to stamp underfoot all it perceives as being a threat to its interests.
John Bissett
What right to housing? (2002)
Every week we are treated to the latest front-page-filling concern for the paid scribblers of the capitalist class. The current crisis is concern over the spiralling cost of housing. In recent weeks, we have had announcements by banks, such as the National Westminster, that they intend to withhold mortgages on houses in certain post-codes (mostly in London), for fear of a burst in the house-price bubble. Simultaneously, on 7 February, we were treated to a round of reports about the average house price exceeding £100,000 in Britain. At the root of all this is the continuing inability of the market system to provide for even this most basic need of a human being, a place to live.
Over the last century, the structures of home ownership in Britain changed dramatically, from a situation where most people rented their home (with an average of 4 people per household), to a situation where the majority of homes are privately owned by their occupiers, with the famous 2.4 people per household. As the population of the UK grew by some 50 percent in that century the number of houses tripled. Since the 1970s the numbers in rented accommodation has steadily fallen, and now represent only 8 million out of 25 million households. Over that century, we saw numerous initiatives from rents controls, to council houses and housing associations to try and ensure proper provision of housing, none of which worked over the long run.
In the aftermath of the Thatcher regime, housing has been left almost exclusively to the open market, with councils at best being able to cut deals with developers to build “social housing” in exchange for planning permission on lucrative projects. Between 1988 and 1996 production of new houses fell yearly (especially compared with the simultaneous clearance of slum housing stock). In 1988 a net gain to the housing stock of 234,500 houses was made, compared to net gain of only 178,000 in 1996. This fall can be seen more clearly in the general reduction in output (in terms of raw materials for houses) of building products over the same period, with bricks being the best example, falling from 4,654,000 tonnes in 1989 to 2,939,000 tonnes in 1999.
Much of this malaise will be due to the falling investment by the state. In 1988 the state (central and local governments) spent a total of £5,273 million on housing expenditure, this plummeted to £2,825 million in 1999. Some of that fall was achieved by transferring housing stock from the public to the private sector in 1999. As has been noted in the columns of this journal before, the state is currently in the processes of divesting itself of as much capital as possible, hoping to transfer it into the private sector where it can be both valorised for profit, and used in a capitalistically more “efficient” manner. This has obviously, though, had some knock-on in terms of building of new houses.
This is particularly so with regards to being unable to manage the demand thrown up by the uneven nature of the market system. Given that workers must migrate to where they can find work, in some areas, such as London, the cost of houses is much higher than in areas of low employment, such as Hull. As the labour time that goes into their building and maintenance will be about the same, the difference is the price of the land on which they are built. What this illustrates is the difference between the cost of the house itself and the cost of the land it is on.
Land monopolists
In an agricultural economy, the rental value of the land would be derived from the differences in the quality of the soil. That is, land which could produce more, say, grain per hectare per hour of labour would give up a higher rental value than the least productive land (that is, land which could be exploited only for the given rate of profit in the economy). This remains partially true of land for industrial use. In the big cities, such as London, however, there is not the remotest chance of returning the land to agricultural use, and so it becomes human geography that provides land an income, from firms wanting office space, or volumes of people (with particular disposable wealth to hand) wanting housing.
Rent is derived not from any inherent feature or use of the soil, but solely through the titular owners’ parasitic capacity to prevent capital from being invested in an area without them being given a share of the surplus value generated (usually any in excess of the average rate of profit prevalent in the economy). This capacity is derived solely through their possessing property rights legally enforced upon others. The price of land itself, not being a product of labour, is calculated by taking the income it can generate and projecting it as a rate of return on capital over a number of years (so land that, say, generates £1 million rent per annum at a rate of 10 percent would have a nominal value of £10 million).
This is, in part, recognised in the national accounts, in that the “subsoil value” of land is now listed alongside computer software patents and electromagnetic spectrum rights as “non tangible fixed assets”. It is not the quality of these “things” that creates their rental/asset value, but merely proprietorship over them.
Pressure on wages
In recent years – as part of the “property owning democracy” gimmick – government policies have tended to encourage workers to buy houses and use them as a form of savings and investment to try to climb the property ladder. This increases the number of housing transactions (as some people speculate), and also means that the government is locked into policies which must attempt to ensure the continuing appreciation house prices (or which at least prevent negative equity).
According to the Office of National Statistics, in 1998 the average person was paying 17 percent of their gross income on housing costs. Obviously, that is a percentage of wildly differing incomes, so the top 10 percent of incomes would be paying £120.80 per week on housing, whilst the lowest would be paying £19.80. Even then these figures are somewhat deceptive, since many of the lower income households were only meeting their full housing cost of an average of £59.40 per week through housing benefit (which is tapered to achieve the 17 percent cost).
This means that any increase in demand for housing due to labour migration, or other events outside a general rise in wages, will increase the share of wages needing to go into housing, and thus create upwards wage pressure. An example of this is the current plan to raise the London weighting on salaries from £2500 to over £4000. This effectively means a potential transfer of wealth from productive capitalists to landholding ones (as well as some of the financial intermediaries involved). Given that the workers could press for higher wages (thus cutting profit rates), to off-set these rises in housing costs, unlike employers landowners have no direct interest in holding such costs down. Since the employers need their workers – and during periods of growth, more and more workers – they have to surrender this indirect tribute to the landowners.
This is why capital was once willing to accept rent and housing market controls to prevent the landowners taking its profit. Hence why, now, the state pays a portion of rent to smooth out the proportion of wages spent on housing. Given, though, the size of the housing benefit budget, and the notorious capacity of landlords and tenants to make “fraudulent” claims, the state is under pressure to curb even that mechanism for taming housing costs.
What all this means is that the anarchy of capitalist production – with its self-seeking economic agents, periods of boom and slump, its uneven migratory population pressures – creates a clear contradiction between profit seeking and providing for human needs. In a world in which everyone could be easily housed, even in a country like Britain we find millions leaving in what even the government classifies as housing unfit for human habitation and actual homelessness on the streets, while nearly everyone has financial worries over satisfying this basic human need.
Pik Smeet
Letter: Morality (2002)
Morality
Dear Editors,
In your response to J. Gleason (Socialist Standard January) you claim “our case against capitalism is not a moral one – morals are constantly changing – but putting the socialist alternative to workers and it being up to them to do something about it”. I believe this to be serious misconception; our case against capitalism is both a moral and an economic one.
What is morality? It is a set of precepts which give rise to rules about how individuals in a community ought to behave and, as such, reflect the underlying values of that community (which are internalised by its members). No human society can exist without some kind of moral code which is the inevitable expression of the values people hold. Social change involves inter alia the supplanting of some values by others and, hence, a change in the dominant moral code of society itself.
Socialism will have a moral code like every social system in history. However, the point you are making is that the case for establishing socialism (or abolishing capitalism) is not in itself a moral one. But you cannot separate the ends and the means. Wanting socialism is, in part, a moral statement because socialism is itself a moral construction. We are saying “this is how society ought to be” and “this is how people ought to behave”, and that is what makes our case for socialism a moral one.
Consider the implications of what you are saying if this were not so. If you argued that the case against capitalism was not a moral one how would you respond to the fact that, for example, millions of people go hungry while food is deliberately destroyed to keep up prices? If you yourself went to bed every night on a full stomach what grounds would you have for complaining? You regard such a fact as an intolerable obscenity – precisely because you empathise with those who are the victims, because it is an affront to your sense of justice. You are, in short, morally outraged by the kind of society that can allow this to happen and that is what prompts one to become a socialist in the end – not just by working out what is in one’s “material interests”.
Certainly, socialism would be in the material interests of the vast majority but to suggest that it is this alone is ironically to give succour to a narrow, selfish and atomistic bourgeois view of the world. After all, if morality is essentially the expression of our human solidarity, of our recognition of the needs of others then, if you took way this moral dimension from the case for socialism, all you would effectively be left with is the rational ego calculating what is in the interest of this ego alone. You might just as well become a businessperson, grab all you can while the going is good and be done with socialism!
One final thing. The fact that morals are “constantly changing” is no reason to suppose that morality can just be ignored. What is significant is not that morality is subject to change but that individuals should constantly feel the need to appeal to others on moral grounds, however variable these may be, in order to persuade them to their point of view. Socialists are no exception.
We, too, are human beings and, ipso facto, moral creatures – even if some of us like to pretend otherwise. To talk of morality—and, hence, the values that underpin it – is discomforting to those who delude themselves into thinking their analysis of society is totally “objective” and “value-free”. Such is the pervasive hold, even today, of the nineteenth century’s love affair with science as the answer to all our problems.
Moral concerns and economic concerns are not separate but inextricably intertwined. Bourgeois economics, with its quasi-religious belief in the benevolence of the markets’ “invisible hand” is what has sought to expel morality from the economic domain, thereby clothing it in the guise of religious “moralising”. It is this that you mistake for morality when you reject the latter. Such moralising does indeed smack of a kind of insidious hypocrisy; its claims to moral rectitude are constantly vitiated by the underlying conflict of interests endemic to capitalism
But take away that conflict of interests, give people a reason to recognise and acknowledge that we all depend upon each other and that our interests are convergent rather than divergent, then you will have the material basis for a truly moral economy in the proper sense of the term – socialism.
Robin Cox (by email)
Dyson discovers that the profit system sucks (2002)
It’s official – Dyson “bagless” vacuum cleaners suck, but capitalism sucks harder.
On 5 February 800 workers in Wiltshire found they would soon be jobless when the vacuum cleaner manufacturer Dyson announced that it intended to switch production to Malaysia. Few were surprised by the decision, which was motivated by economic considerations, primarily the high cost of labour in Britain compared to that in Malaysia. According to BBC Radio 4, the average cost of labour in Malaysia is just £1.50 an hour, compared to £11.50 in Britain. By transferring production, Dyson will be able to cut production costs by 30 percent.
A difficult decision?
If the newspapers are to be believed, this decision was not taken lightly. James Dyson, the millionaire inventor who owns the company which bears his name, is a self-appointed ‘champion of British industry.’ He claims to have a deep commitment to the cause of manufacturing in Britain, and insists that he fought hard to make remaining in the country a viable option. But staying in the country was not a viable option. If Dyson had not been prepared to cut costs he would soon have found himself forced out of the market by other companies which were prepared to take that step. Dyson would not be able to match the prices of his competitors without sacrificing his profit margin. It was not Dyson who decided that his firm must move to the Far East – it was the crazy economic system under which we live.
Profit comes first
As Dyson and the workers in his factory have discovered, under capitalism it is profit which must come first. In the whole affair there has been no mention of what anybody wants – not the workers, not the consumers and not even Dyson himself. The only consideration which matters is the need to make a profit.
Dyson: decision made
The whole Dyson affair highlights the fact that, in many ways, the profit system imprisons bosses and workers alike. The owners of companies, factories, services etc. can amass enormous amounts of wealth, but they cannot go against the demands of profit. They must do its bidding, whether they like it or not, as James Dyson has demonstrated. Capitalism does not run, and cannot run, on the basis of what people want. Dyson may want to stay in Britain, he may want not to have to lay off workers, but what he has to do is make a profit.
What about quality?
Another factor has been noticeably absent from discussion of the Dyson affair. There has been no question at all of how to make the best or most effective vacuum cleaner. Capitalism doesn’t care what you make or how you make it – as long as you sell it at a profit. On top of which, it must be admitted that vacuum cleaners ought to be a pretty low priority anyway in a world where most people don’t even have the necessities of life. That never enters into it, however, because the world is not run on the basis of what people want, it is run on the basis of making profit.
What about the workers?
Eight-hundred workers will find themselves jobless as a result of Dyson’s transfer to Malaysia. In this instance, many will probably find new jobs relatively quickly, since Wiltshire has fairly low unemployment.
The point, however, is that will only find work if someone can make a profit from their labour. The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of useful things that people could be doing makes no difference. They could, for example, manufacture basic medical supplies which could save the lives of millions in developing countries. That activity would be a major priority in any system based on meeting human needs. It isn’t going to happen under capitalism though, because it would not make a profit.
As long as we allow the resources of the world to remain in private hands, profit will continue to reign supreme. However, there is an alternative. The world’s resources could be owned and controlled by everyone, and run in the interests of society, not in the interests of profit. This is common ownership and democratic control, the object of the Socialist Party.
Dave Templar
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