Law and Property. (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is often thought that the existence of the “law” is a providential thing, and that its maintenance (usually expressed in the term “preservation of law and order”) is an aim worthy of the greatest effort of every citizen.

But history proves that the law is closely linked with property, that is that the first exists for the protection of the latter.

Now does the working class possess property? If so, then to that extent the law protects the interests of the working class, even though that law is framed and exercised by the capitalist class. But such is not the case, for the proletariat is propertyless, and possesses but one commodity, viz., labour power.

But what about his clothes, his furniture, etc., do not these constitute the worker’s property ? The answer is, no. For by what are these necessities procured ?

They are procured with the wages of the worker, and if we read Karl Marx carefully, what do we find on this particular point ?

This—that wages (in the hands of the capitalist) are a part of capital, and that the capitalist ultimately receives again that particular portion known as wages.

By attending to his physical needs the labourer reproduces labour-power, which labour-power is given back to the capitalist for the accumulation of more capital—the production of surplus-value.

Therefore it is obvious that the working class have no property, and to speak of the “preservation of law and order” is synonymous with the phrase “perpetuation of capitalism.”

The law is the safeguard of the class in power; its function is the suppression of the voice and claims of the subordinate class and the monopoly of the means of life by the ruling class. The Socialist recognises that the economic basis of any society determines the nature and functions of the institutions built upon that basis. Law is a capitalist institution, and therefore works for the benefit of the capitalist class.

J. H. Lamb

Answers to Correspondents: The ‘Middle Class’. (1911)

Letters to the Editors from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

G. P. S. Bonner (Philadelphia).—Cutting received, but do not think same would interest our readers.

T. Downey (Plumstead).—Your score or so of questions received. Some of them are answered by others. We have dealt with many in this journal before, but you will find most of them answered in the articles on Anarchism now appearing in these pages. The words “middle class” should always be in quotes.

Second Edition of “Socialism and Religion”. (1911)

Party News from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Second Edition of “Socialism and Religion” contains a useful preface. All opponents of Socialism should read the brochure ; all workers for Socialism should have a supply at all times on hand. It is a splendid little worker for the cause, and does its business effectually, though silently.

Now Ready, A New Pamphlet. (1911)

Party News from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The text of this pamphlet is available at the following link.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October 1911. Johnny Holmes

Unlike the posts for A. Barker and Frederick S. Leigh, this October 1911 Socialist Standard adjacent post is not connected to Keith Scholey's founding members document.

Johnny Holmes was not a founding member of the SPGB. He first joined the SPGB via its short lived Earlsfield Branch in August 1909. A regular outdoor speaker for the Party in the period of 1910-1911, he primarily spoke at outdoor meetings in South and West London (Battersea, Tooting, Paddington and Peckham). There is no record of when he lapsed his membership, but we do know that he rejoined the Tooting Branch of the SPGB in April 1921. Sadly, there's no record of when he left the Party for the second time. 

'John Henry Holmes' is briefly mentioned in a couple of books I have encountered on my political reading travels. His son, Len Holmes, speaks of his father in the Hugh Jenkins' 1980 book, 'Rank and File'. Jenkins was the Labour MP for Putney from 1964 until 1979 (defeated by David Mellor at the 1979 General Election) and was firmly on the left-wing of the Labour Party. 

'Rank and File' was a collection of interviews with Labour Party members in his Putney Constituency Labour Party, and the purpose of the book was to give a human face to that much maligned figure in the 1970s and 1980s: the left-wing Labour Party activist. During this period of political history, the tabloid press had the scent of blood in its nostrils at the notion that student radicals and 'bedsit revolutionaries' were infiltrating the Labour Party up and down the country in order to deselect such sedate centrist characters as Reg Prentice and Bob Mellish. There's no denying that Trotskyists were sending their members into the Labour Party during this time - the Militant Tendency being the best known example - but Jenkins - and most of the people interviewed in his book - represented a longstanding Labour Left tradition rooted in left-wing reformism and such single issues as nuclear disarmament and anti-apartheid.

Len Holmes was one such left-wing local activist, and he said the following about his father:

". . . I was born in Wandsworth and my father, Johnny Holmes, was a well-known leader of the unemployed workers’ movement between the wars. He was a great character but no one would employ him and so with seven children and my mother dying of cancer we had hard times. My wife was born not far away in Wimbledon.

. . .  You mentioned your father?

"Yes, Johnny Holmes was well known as a pacifist in Wandsworth between the wars. During the First World War he drank a lot of water before medical examinations and was always rejected because this increased the pulse rate. He was a street-corner orator and he fought a parliamentary election in Wandsworth as an independent although he eventually joined the Labour Party. He was a friend of Saklatvala who held Battersea briefly for the Communist Party and at one time was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. He was put in Wandsworth Prison for six weeks after leading a demonstration against Wandsworth workhouse. He marched into the institution and demanded that the inmates be fed proper food instead of pigswill. Once he lead a 50,000 strong demonstration of the unemployed to the Cenotaph. He was stopped by the police because he had a banner which read: For those who are dead and not forgotten and for those who are here and are forgotten. My father brushed the police aside saying that they would fight their way there if necessary and he successfully led the demonstration to Whitehall. However the demonstration was broken up there by mounted police and my

father was kicked in the head. He was injured quite badly but eventually recovered and was soon attacking the Royal Family from a soapbox on the corner of Magdalen Road. My father wanted clean sheets and bed linen for the workhouse inmates and porridge and bacon and eggs for breakfast. When he was taken to Wandsworth Prison there were demonstrations outside every night with singing of the Red Flag until the authorities removed him to Brixton. When he came out there were several thousand unemployed to meet him and they marched all the way to our house in Wandsworth.

Quite apart from the fact that there was no money for it, my father did not believe in paying rent to private landlords and was always being taken to court for non-payment. He accumulated £500 in arrears and never paid it. He argued his own case and the landlord said he wished my father was on his side. He was a very clever man. He studied what the magistrate had said on other occasions and quoted him. Once he was offered a job on condition that he changed his politics but he would have nothing to do with capitalism. He was an ardent socialist and knew all the leaders of those days, Lansbury, Greenwood and Bevin but he became a bit disillusioned with the Labour Party. They were not nearly socialist enough for him." (pages 54-56.)

I can't find any record of his father standing as an independent candidate in Wandsworth at a parliamentary election, and I have to wonder how plausible it could have been that a long term unemployed man could have raised the money for an election deposit in the interwar years. It would have been a substantial sum of money. Maybe Len Holmes misremembered. It happens.

The second mention of Johnny Holmes is in Harry Wicks' posthumous memoir 'Keeping My Head: The Memoirs of a British Bolshevik'. Published in 1992 by the independent Trotskyist publisher Socialist Platform, 'Keeping My Head' is a very readable account of Wicks political journey from his teenage political awakening in Battersea in South London just after the end of World War One to the YCL sending him to the Lenin School in Moscow in the 1920s to his central involvement in the earliest days of the British Trotskyist movement.

As a Battersea boy, Wicks encountered members and ex-members of the SPGB. One of those was Johnny Holmes. As he recalls:

Unemployed agitation in the years of 1918 and 1919 emphasised the indignation felt by the ex-servicemen at the conditions they met on their homecoming. The long dole queues and the paltry demobilisation payments never matched the politicians’ promises. The old comrades’ association was most vociferous in its demands for mass protest. When the short-lived postwar boom ended inSeptember 1920 the unemployed agitation discarded its ‘No charity, give us justice’ image, and took on amore aggressive tone. From all over the country, local unemployed committees and associations met in conference and launched the National Unemployed Workers Movement with the demand for ‘Work or Full Maintenance’.From the first, Battersea’s NUWM became widely known, a constituent part of the local labour movement. Hunger marches from all parts of the country found shelter and sustenance ready for them at Latchmere Baths. A Battersea contingent were always marching in the London demonstrations, which in those days all too frequently ended with a police baton charge. 

A host of speakers and agitators sustained the ceaseless campaign at the local guardians for outdoor relief. The memory of one or two is vivid to this day. Johnny Holmes was one such agitator. A short, rather tubby man with a sunshine face, he was on and off unemployed platforms for a decade. His early training as a speaker had been in the SPGB. In his pocket, he always carried a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings which functioned as his speaker’s notes. Many still remember the meetings he addressed during the 1921 miners’ lockout. Johnny talked on the income of the Duke of Northumberland, a big coal owner. Thirty bob a minute was his income, as much as a miner received for three days’ work at the coalface. He had an infectious smile, as though he was laughing at his own speech:

‘Imagine, 30 shillings each minute of the day. Whatever the Duke was doing, going to bed, eating his bread and cheese or sitting in his bathroom having a sh-sh-sh-shave.’

Each itemisation of the crowded minutes in the Duke’s life brought fresh convulsions of laughter from the crowd.

. . . Another outstanding unemployment speaker in the 1920s was Tom Waller, affectionately known as Workhouse Waller. He too had got his Socialist education from the SPGB. Like his voice, his speeches were strong and rasping. Wage slavery and capitalism were his enemy, a Socialist society his objective. When the local board of guardians said that there was to be no more poor law relief without task work — which meant the workhouse — he was ready with the answer: ‘We enter the workhouse all together.’ (pages 20-21)

Wicks' book also provides a brief biographical note of Holmes in the appendix to the book:

Holmes, Johnny. Ex-SPGB, Secretary of Wandsworth Unemployed Committee and member of Communist Party. Very active in 1921 and 22. See Michael Ward The Unemployed in South West London 1918-23 (draft manuscript), and Red Flag over the Workhouse, Labour and Social History Group, 1980. (page 199)

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October, 1911. Frederick S. Leigh

Following on from the standalone post for A. Barker, a similar style post for Fred Leigh, another founder member of the SPGB. Again, the details below are from Keith Scholey's unpublished document 'The Founding Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain'.

Leigh, Frederick S

         Paddington branch. Leigh was an Executive Committee member 1904-6 and spoke for the Party 1904-12. He seems to have had some theatrical aspirations (as would be implied by the somewhat eccentric garb he wore to the 1905 Conference), writing a small play “Wasted Lives” about the 1905 Russian Revolution, which was performed for the Battersea branch on 9 December 1906 (Socialist Standard January 1907). He was lapsed from membership on 28th January 1914.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October, 1911. A. Barker

In recent months, when I have posted details of the Pre-World War One monthly lecture list on the blog, I have tried where I can to give some extra information on the listed speakers. That only seems fair when covering a period in the SPGB's history when it was so active and visible in working class politics in London. For example, just looking at the lecture list for the October 1911 issue of the Standard, you have advertised over a hundred meetings in London alone listed with 20 plus speakers.

Sometimes, the added information on the listed speakers is only the basics gleaned from the early SPGB membership records: a speaker's full name; their branch; when they joined the SPGB; if and when (and why) they left the SPGB. Sometimes I'm more fortunate in that there might be a wiki page for a speaker (see R. M. Fox, Frank Dawkins and Tommy Jackson, for example). On other occasions - if a speaker has 'lasted the course' - it might be an obituary in the pages of the Socialist Standard (see J. E. Roe, Alex Anderson and Jack Fitzgerald, for example). Whatever the case - and wherever I can - I try to flesh out the bones of the early history of the SPGB and the Socialist Standard. It's important that that information is readily available for anyone interested in the history of our tradition.

In keeping with that 'mission', posted below is a potted political history of the Socialist Party member, A. Barker, who was a listed speaker in the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard. The words below are not mine. It's from an unpublished document entitled 'The Founding Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain', which was written by Keith Scholey a number of years ago. Keith was an excellent archivist and historian of the Party - he is no longer a member - and this document was an attempt to provide as much background as possible on the founding members of the SPGB. If I can get his permission, I may post the full document on the blog.

Barker, A

Tooting branch. Barker was very active for the Party before the First World War, being a public speaker in 1909-14 and serving on the 1906-7 and 1908-9 Executive Committees. At a local level he served as Tooting branch secretary in 1905-6 and was a local election candidate for Tooting Ward, Wandsworth in 1906 and again in 1909. He had previously been a local election candidate for the SDF in 1903. Barker probably left the Party during the First World War, rejoining on 16th June 1927. He was again most active, for example being nominated as the prospective Parliamentary candidate for North Battersea in the 1929 election (in the event however the deposit could not be raised to contest the seat). Barker finally lapsed on 25th June 1943.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October. (1911)

Party News from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Once again, I don't have enough room in the label section to include all the listed speakers, so some brief information on some of the speakers missing from the sidebar.

• A. Bays is possibly the member listed as W. Bays' in the early Party membership records, who was a member of the Stoke Newington Branch of the SPGB. He joined the SPGB in May 1910. No date is given for when - or why - he left.
• H. Cooper was H.J. Cooper. He joined Earlsfield Branch of the SPGB in September 1908, and his membership was lapsed in December 1915.
• F. Dawkins was a member of the Romford Branch of the SPGB, joining in August 1905. His wiki page goes into extensive detail on his background and on his political journey from Methodism (and the ILP) to Marxism (and the SPGB). Later in life he was a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in the Hampstead constituency at the 1929 General Election.
• R. Fox was R. M. Fox. He joined the SPGB in Tottenham in September 1906. Better known after he left the SPGB, his 1937 autobiography, Smoky Crusade, sticks the boot into his old SPGB comrades. He should the offending excerpts from his book on the blog some time.
• J. Halls was John H. Halls, who joined Paddington Branch of the SPGB in June 1907 (a Mrs Eleanor B. Halls joined Paddington Branch in July 1907). A regular writer and translator for the Socialist Standard in the Edwardian period, he eventually resigned his membership when he moved abroad (Paris).
• A. Hoskyns was Ambrose Hoskyns. He joined the Islington Branch of the SPGB in August 1910. He was an occasional writer for the Socialist Standard in the Pre-War 1914 period. There are no details of when he left the SPGB. A flavour of his writing (and the early history of the SPGB) is contained within his April 1911 article, 'The Attempted Suppression of Free Speech in Islington'.
• A. Jacobs was Alf Jacobs. There is more detailed background on him in this feature which appeared in the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• H. Joy was a member of the Tooting Branch of the SPGB. They joined the SPGB in October 1907.
• C. Parker was a member of West Ham Branch. Joined the SPGB in May 1906, and was lapsed from membership in October 1929.
• F. J. Rourke was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in June 1909. Their membership was lapsed in February 1914. ("Moved away".)
• F. W. Stearn was a member of the Tottenham Branch. There were actually two 'F. Stearn's in the branch at the time - possibly father and son - so I don't know which one was a listed speaker for this month.

The Crisis: Wilson's lame explanation (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 20th Harold Wilson made his long-awaited broadcast to the nation informing us of what his government proposed to do about the economic difficulties in which “our country” finds itself. It was an emotional appeal for us all to accept sacrifices, accompanied by the threat of what would happen if we did not. To be more specific, wage workers were told that they could no longer “get for themselves such a pay increase as to enable them to escape the rigours of inflation” and that “the limit on pay settlements is £6 a week”.

The whole harangue was preceded by what purported to be an explanation of the causes of our economic difficulties — an explanation which appeared to exonerate the government from all blame. No doubt, at the speed of the spoken word, the reasons given sounded plausible enough to most of those who listened.

Let us however examine more closely these “causes” which Wilson claimed to be known to us all. He gave three. First:

The whole industrial world faces the most virulent trade and employment depression since the thirties.

This is like saying that you are going to be out of work because there are not enough jobs to go round — and explains exactly nothing. It has, however, the built-in suggestion that trade depressions and unemployment are like cosmic disturbances, for which politicians cannot be held responsible. In fact later in his speech Wilson likened the situation to “the fact that the world has been knocked off its axis by a universal recession”. The second reason given was:

Industry’s failure over the past 20 years to invest in industry, new plant, machinery, factory buildings, industrial modernisation . . .

Presumably Wilson was referring to British industry : yet in West Germany where, due to war-time destruction of factories and plant, large investment and modernization were essential, there is more unemployment than in Britain. As a reason for our present difficulties this second cause seems suspect, to say the least — apart from the fact that every worker knows that more efficient production is aimed at reducing the labour force. And so we come to the third reason:

. . . the effect of inflation on industry’s ability to provide jobs for those established in industry, jobs for school-leavers . . . this year it has been almost entirely internal prices and costs, including pay, which have aggravated inflation . . .

Here the workers are intended to feel partly to blame for having “aggravated” inflation. But you cannot aggravate something which is not already there. So what causes inflation? We are not told.

So much for explanations which explain nothing. It is distressing that, as far as we can tell, such arguments can be accepted by the majority of the electorate. It is, however, understandable. Politicians have never informed the public of the true nature of the economic system which they try to administer. We do not learn about it at school or from the “mass media”. But at least we can take a hard look at what politicians such as Wilson tell us and see the worthlessness of their so-called explanations. It is then up to the workers to find their own explanations from an understanding of the nature of the capitalist economic system of production.

Let us then go back to Wilson’s three "causes”. Why in fact is there a trade depression in the “whole industrial world”? What is immediately apparent is that these countries have produced more commodities than they can sell at a profit. This is what “trade depression” means. But why should this be so? Capitalists, whether they control private companies or nationalized industries, employ the physical and mental abilities of wage-workers to produce commodities (or processed materials). The primary aim is to sell such commodities at a profit. This profit represents the difference between the value of the work provided by wage-workers and the wages they are paid. Employers know this only too well. The effort to restrain wage increases, the introduction of better machinery, the stream-lining of production methods, are all intended to reduce the “wage bill” and increase the margin of profit.

It follows therefore that the working class as a whole are not paid enough to buy back the goods they have produced. The “export drives” typical of all industrialized countries are evidence of this need to sell abroad the surplus which workers in the country of origin cannot afford to purchase. Likewise, in spite of what Wilson says, the bulk of profits are reinvested in industry — to produce more and more commodities in the hope that by price undercutting such goods can be sold abroad. But, like taking in each other’s washing, it is a futile endeavour when all countries are trying to do the same thing. The surplus car production at the present time is perhaps the most evident example of this. America, Europe and Japan are all fighting to sell their cars to each other — to the extent of “dumping” cars abroad at less than their internal prices.

It is true that, in part, export of commodities is required to provide the money to purchase food and raw materials not sufficiently available in the exporting country. But, globally, there is an excess of commodities, including food, over and above the purchasing power of the working class. This is what shows a world-wide trade depression to have other causes than interference from outer space. It is due to, in Marx’s phrase, “disproportion of production” which is inherent in capitalism.

That is not the end of the story. The “crisis of over-production” leads to a slowing down, or even halting, of production. Capitalists will not for long continue production of what they cannot sell, even at a reduced margin of profit. Reduction of production means unemployment. The ability of workers to buy back what they have produced is further curtailed. Production is reduced still further and unemployment increases.

This is the explanation of the nature of “the virulent trade and employment depression” which Wilson might have given. But then, having promised to administer capitalism better than Heath, he can hardly be expected to tell the electorate that trade depressions are endemic in the capitalist system. The electorate might want to change the system for one which produces commodities for distribution rather than sale at a profit.

What is really behind Mr. Wilson’s second “reason” for our economic difficulties: British industrial inefficiency? The explanation is to be found in what has been written above. British capitalism can only survive if it can export wealth. To do this, foreign competitors must be under-cut, or better value for money offered. By the more efficient processes outlined by Wilson in his speech industrial wage bills can be reduced, goods can be exported at lower prices while still maintaining the previous margin of profit. Some countries can, however, compete more successfully because labour is cheaper, and this is why “wage restraint” is so important to the employer. This leads on to the third of Wilson’s “reasons” in his reference to pay aggravating inflation. Industry’s concern about pay increases is not that they aggravate inflation but because they make it more difficult to sell products at a competitive price while still maintaining the customary margin of profit.

But this still does not explain the inflation which is “aggravated” and which largely caused, in the first place, the demands for higher wages. This kind of inflation — the devaluation of the pound — has been caused by the excessive printing of paper money by the Bank of England on the authority of successive governments since the war. No mention of this was made in Mr. Wilson’s speech. But he is not the only one to keep quiet about the effects of government monetary policy, both here and abroad, on the rate of inflation. In November 1974 Enoch Powell was complaining that:

. . . little attention had been given (in the press) to the epoch-making conclusions of the European Economic Community Countries’ finance ministers on measures to tackle inflation. To restore the general stability in the value of money they agreed that they should follow the principle ‘that increases in the supply of money should be cut back to the same level as the real growth in gross national product’, plus whatever might be accepted for the time being as the permissible rate of inflation, namely 4 per cent next year.

(The Times, 4th November 1974)

Our economic difficulties are not, as Wilson implies, a “bolt from the blue” but a direct result of the operation of a capitalist economy. When the electorate understands this it may seriously examine the case for establishing an alternative economic system based on production for use rather than production for sale, that is, Socialism as we mean it and not as Labour politicians use the word to conceal state capitalism.

John Moore

Utopian & Scientific Socialism (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is essential for workers to have at least a basic understanding of capitalism before they can hope to become useful in the struggle for Socialism. Whilst one man cannot hope to know everything about society today, he can acquaint himself with the fundamentals. Unfortunately today most workers accept the prevailing ideas of the ruling class and the confused outlook that results from them. When many workers hear the Socialist case for the first time they are apt to dismiss it as utopian or an impossible dream. Socialism is however a materialist conception, that is an idea which has sprung directly from the real conditions and relations in society. Socialism as yet is an idea only but one which is based upon knowledge of the real world and not upon an ideal or religious feeling. The Christian ideas that “Christ died for our sins” or “Christ lives to save” are idealistic and have no basis in fact. (It would take a mist- enveloped religious mind to explain how Christ can be both dead and alive). The Socialist idea that capitalist society is divided into two different classes with mutually opposing interests is a fact. But it is one which the ruling class and their propagandists are always trying to obscure, talking instead of the “National Interest” and playing down class interests. Naturally the ruling class, being in a privileged position, want capitalism to continue ad infinitum, so that they can keep reaping-in the surplus-value produced for them by the working class.

Capitalism will remain as long as the majority of the working class want it to remain and allow it. Historically speaking capitalism is relatively new (about two hundred years) but already it has outlived its useful life. Whilst it was the necessary step for society to develop its productive forces and social production, it is essentially an anarchic and anti-social system. All past private-property societies have resulted in the exploitation of one class by another, but under capitalism it has taken a particular form, i.e. the wage-slave. The worker, owning virtually nothing of the means of life, must sell his abilities to the owners of capital for a wage. He is “free” to approach any potential employer for work, and the employer is free to employ him or not as the case may be.

Capitalist industries are geared to produce vast numbers of commodities which must be sold at a profit if they are to remain in business. That great organ of capitalist ideology the Daily Telegraph (14th June 1975) summed up the purpose of capitalist production very neatly:

Offices and factories will not be built unless it pays people to do so. In the same way there will be no investment in industry unless it is expected to produce a reasonable profit.

The aforesaid profit of course comes from the unpaid labour extracted from the working class at the point of production, and not from the shifting of sums of money by financial wizards from one industry to the next. When the worker goes home at the end of the week he leaves behind him his labour, now embodied in commodities with a certain value. The value of the wage which he takes home is invariably less than the value of the labour he leaves with his employer. The “reasonable profit” of the Daily Telegraph is created by human labour applied to materials; and from the capitalist point of view the larger the profit, the more “reasonable” the investment.

The London Brick Company Ltd. recently announced half yearly profits of about £5m., £2m. higher than expected, and immediately became a more “reasonable” proposition. It is worth pointing out that the housing problem is no less severe because of the profits of the London Brick Company, and for certain types of bricks there is now a three-month waiting period. On the other hand the capitalists are steering well clear of the Norton-Villiers concern at the time of writing because it looks like folding or at least severely curtailing production. Slumps and booms are as natural to capitalism as waves on the sea. At the moment there is a worldwide recession affecting many industries (but not all), and this is because the workers as a class have produced too many commodities for the world market. Because it is no longer profitable to employ them many workers will be laid off or put on short time, and they must suffer the hardships. The very goods that they alone have produced are denied them because they have produced too many! Booms, slumps and unemployment are inherent characteristics of capitalist society because the purpose behind production is the accumulation of profit and not the satisfaction of human needs.

With the abolition of private property (either state or individually owned) there will no longer be any classes in society, and for the first time production can be geared to the needs of society generally and not to the profit motive. All the paraphernalia of capitalism, i.e. money, wages, banks, insurance, armies, police etc., will cease to exist as the reason for their existence disappears. In the opinion of the writer, the only conceivable use for money in Socialist society would be as museum-pieces to show how backward previous societies had been.

Tony D'Arcy

Blogger's Note:

The following quotation from Karl Marx accompanied this article:

". . .  a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the movement which is tending to overthrow it and the literary expression of this revolutionary movement".

Karl Marx, letter to P. V. Annekov, 28th December 1846.

Property and the Countryside (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A day in the countryside! Such a proposition is always attractive to the millions of urban dwellers who inhabit these islands. Escape from the polluted conurbations with their overcrowded thoroughfares, overwhelmingly tall buildings squeezed closely together and a pace of life which subtly imposes conformity upon the majority of people. Which human beings, even with only the slightest appreciation of aesthetics, would not want to free themselves, if only temporarily, from the grasp of our inhumanly large cities?

Since the majority of those in Britain do not live in the countryside but in towns, it is hardly surprising that there are many distorted views of what rural areas are actually like. Most town-dwellers have an absurdly romanticized impression of the countryside. They think of endless expanses of fields where one can wander about at will. Apparently, most of the restrictions of urban life are absent. Peacefulness and solitude are imagined, where there is a small population largely content with its supposedly idyllic surroundings.

However, anyone possessing just a superficial acquaintance with the countryside and having explored different parts of Britain, will rapidly realize the existence of large, wealthy landowners who have carved up such enormous slices of terrain. These individuals have always been able to hold much of the rural population, especially farm labourers, in servility. The cream of the bunch of these land-owners includes the Constable family, with its estates of many thousands of acres near Hull, the Countess of Sutherland who owns Dunrobin Castle together with 150,000 acres of land and the Cowder family who have grabbed 100,000 acres of Scotland. Of course, there is the fifth Duke of Westminster who is, according to Douglas Sutherland’s book The Landowners, one of the richest holders of land in the country. At the same time, on a smaller scale, we should not forget such individuals as the Hon. Michael Pearson, heir to the estates of the great industrial magnate, Lord Cowdray. He owns 4,400 acres of Gloucestershire.

These are just a few examples of those who make up the one per cent. of the population which owns more than twenty-five per cent of the wealth (Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, chaired by Lord Diamond, 1975). A Labour Research Department pamphlet entitled The 2 Nations — Inequality in Britain Today reveals the existence of Peter Cadbury, the chairman of Westward Television, who recently purchased a nine-hundred-acre estate in Hampshire, costing £2 million. He is just one of a number of multi-millionaire landowners in the south and west of England. Compare this with the weekly wage of the farm worker less than three years ago (£16.20p). The wage increase received since then has been relatively insignificant and the farm labourers remain poorly paid. Yet, on the other hand, we hear of the wealth of the estates owned by the Royal Family. These include the Windsor Estate which accounts for 13,500 acres of Berkshire, the Balmoral Estate which has gobbled up 40,000 acres of Aberdeenshire and the 7,000 acres of the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. In spite of this, together with all the other royal land which is spread over twenty-seven counties, we are assured by Douglas Sutherland that as a private landowner the Queen is not even in the first flight of those who hold their wealth in land. The Church of England, the preachers and followers of that pauper- carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, should not be overlooked. The value of the Church’s assets as a landowner stood at over £318 million, whilst its estates were valued at £80,600,000 in 1964/65.

If one leaves a car and walks down almost any country lane, it will not be long before the inevitable barbed-wire fences, “Keep Out” and “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” notices appear. Few country ramblers have not been turned off estates, merely because they wanted to enjoy quite innocently the pleasures of the countryside. Anyone who has wandered deep into the countryside will recall the numerous restrictions which exist. Just think of the Fylingdale Moors Early-Warning Station and its Ministry of Defence area surrounded by barbed-wire which has seized a part of the North York Moors. In places such as Shiplake on the Thames, in Oxfordshire, one discovers electrified fences surrounding many of the fields, not to keep any cattle in, but to keep human beings out. “No Admission” and “Private Property” signs can be seen in innumerable rural areas such as at Kirkham Abbey in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The woods and fields of the Home Counties bear witness to the claims of the local landlords with their “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” signs.

How many of us, seeking a place for a picnic, have been compelled to sit down on a narrow piece of grass verge by the side of a busy road while “Private Property" notices stare menacingly at us from behind fences, hedgerows and barbed wire? How many footpaths have been ploughed over by farmers and land-owners determined to consolidate their estates? How many public rights of way and how much common land has been lost to the élite of the countryside?

River walks such as those by the Thames, upstream from London, have been decimated by the encroachment of local landlords on the public land immediately bordering the river. Many country walkers have found their strolls by the Thames ruinously interrupted by large estates such as those belonging to the Manor House at Shepperton in Surrey.

Marx was certainly right when he spoke of the “idiocy of rural life”. However, he was discussing the conditions in the countryside under feudalism and Capitalism. When the workers of both the towns and the countryside have realized that capitalism is a system of insanity and vileness, they will replace it by a form of society not only involving the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but also one which will give freedom of access, in the fullest possible meaning of these words. This will certainly apply to the countryside and man will be able to enjoy the beauties of nature to the full. The enormous distinctions between the town and the countryside will disappear, and Socialism will provide all the people with the genuine opportunity to experience and appreciate the delights of rural areas.

Vincent Otter

So They Say: Short Memory (1975)

The So They Say Column from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Short Memory

While a large number of Tory MPs are now reflecting on just how Mrs. Thatcher ever came to be elected as Conservative leader, the deposed Mr. Heath seems to be fostering the vision of a triumphant return. He has been making speeches. And he made one recently in Edinburgh which evoked from The Guardian the description “a fierce attack on Labour Ministers.” The form of attack was on orthodox lines — he chose a particularly glaring social problem and proceeded to lay the blame for it at the door of the Labour Party. He spoke of the Government’s attitude towards the current unemployment figure of one-and-a-quarter million in the following manner.

‘Where have all the Labour consciences gone ?’ he asked. 'Gone to graveyards every one.’ And with them had gone Labour’s care and compassion, to be replaced by what he described as ‘a cold stony callousness towards those whose lives had now lost all sense of purpose.’

(Guardian, 6th September, 1975)

The implication being that with a warm-hearted leadership in power (who does he have in mind?) things would be very different. To add point to the callousness of the Labour Party, he asked:

But have Labour Ministers been resigning in droves in protest? Hardly. Has any Labour Minister resigned because of this massive unemployment? Not a single solitary Minister.

That may be Mr. Heath’s idea of a solution, but only for preaching — not practising. Unemployment rose to one million in 1972. He was Prime Minister then — when exactly the same irrelevant gibes were directed at him from the Labour benches. Of course that was all of three years ago: Mr. Heath “did not intend to go back over the past in any detail.” Which is just as well for him — members of the working class might begin to suspect that unemployment is just one of the several cancers upon what was once described by someone as "the unacceptable face of capitalism.”

Woolly Waffle

The Labour party has never polled as much as 50 per cent. of the votes at any general election, says Mr. Bryan Magee, and having considered this point — goes on to pose the following question:

The truth only too clearly is that whatever the Labour Party may think, the masses do not, most of the time, regard it as representing them. And if that is the case, by what right can it claim to speak for them ?

(Guardian, 2nd September 1975)

Mr. Magee is clearly not inhibited himself — he is Labour MP for Waltham Forest. As a result of recent scares among Labour MPs that small “activist” groups within certain constituencies can shape so-called revolutionary policies, he feels free to criticize these rebellious reformers for being "quite untypical” of the Labour Party — which by his own token has only a dubious right to speak for "the masses.”

He describes these factions as "the left of the Left” which we understand he means to be a left-handed compliment. Magee feels that the “activists” adopt an intellectually pretentious stand — “élitist to the narrow of its bones”.

As his article attempts to provide an explanation for Labour’s failure to take as much as 50 per cent. of votes, we look to his own intellect for the answer:

The British people . . . are known throughout the world, and justly, for being tradition bound, past bound. They do not like change. Therefore they want it only when times are unusually bad. That is why it is usually in unusually bad times that Labour is elected to office.

This might be offered as a phoney excuse for Labour’s inability to deal with social problems — things were so bad when they were elected, that they were unable . . . etc. — but it doesn’t explain why they ever leave office. Or does Mr. Magee think that Labour, to use their phrase, gets things moving, and at the first sight of improvement the Conservatives are returned only to mess it all up again?

State Capitalism

The Russians are due to complete their Kama River industrial project (Kamaz) in March 1976. It is currently two years behind schedule, but when finished the complex will become the world’s largest truck-manufacturing centre. It is estimated that lorries of between 8 and 11 tons will be coming off the assembly line at the rate of one every 90 seconds. Although the Russians were unable to interest "western firms” in the construction, they have used a considerable amount of foreign assistance in design and the supply of machinery.

The dimensions of Kamaz are staggering: A $5 billions budget, three million square metres of factory space, a new city to house 250,000 workers and their families, 155 miles of highway, 75 miles of railroad tracks and 150 buildings. All this has been built on a 40 square mile tract of country side in the Tartar Republic, 600 miles east of Moscow.

(Guardian, 11th September 1975)

Such a development requires a large amount of capital to be fixed in it, but where has it come from? If we listened to Mr. Malik, the Russian delegate to the UN, the answer could be that it just dropped from the sky.

In a debate in which member countries attempted to find agreement on what was picturesquely described as “an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of the rich and poor nations by negotiation” Malik tried to wash his hands of the “greedy West.” He blamed

the capitalist states who plunder and exploit the developing nations for the disparities in world economic relation.

(Guardian, 4th September 1975)

But facts belie the jargon. Russia is not adverse to dealing with the “capitalist states,” of which it is one:

Nearly every advanced Western Country, as well as the Eastern European countries, has an interest in the Kamaz project. There are 40 US firms alone involved in the project, with contracts valued at $400 millions. To pay for all this the Russians looked to the West. The US Export-Import Bank (Eximbank) and Chase-Manhattan concluded in 1973-4 credit agreements with the Soviet Bank of Foreign Trade totalling $322.9 millions. Moscow is to pay 10 per cent down to US suppliers with the remaining 90 per cent financed by Eximbank and Chase. The latter says it is charging “market rates” while the Eximbank has set a fixed rate of 6 per cent interest.

Interest? We know the “capitalist states” derive their interest through surplus value. Have the Russians found a new source for it?

Daily Bread

A Paddington vicar, the Rev. Michael Stephenson, has been forced to make some less than Christian remarks concerning his governors, the Church Commissioners. That august body had set pay targets for vicars of £1800 for 1974, and £2100 for 1975. Being mere targets, and recalling the inaccuracy of the Church in other fields, it seems hardly surprising that they have been missed. An irate Rev. Stephenson disclosed that his income in the year ending May 1975 was, in fact, only £1487.

The Church Commissioners have agreed that he is “quite right” and will be recommending that Stephenson, and others in his position, should receive the Government maximum of £6 a week increase.

While we have a certain sympathy for Rev. Stephenson, our eyebrows were raised when he remarked:

It would have been far more honest of them to pledge themselves to meet a previous target which has not yet been met, than to set a new target which is sheer pie in the sky when compared to reality.

(Marylebone Mercury, 12th September 1975)

It may be “sheer pie in the sky,” but surely, Reverend, a classic case of “whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap.”

Students need Knowledge

Among a number of other proposals which it is fighting against, the National Union of Students now has a new one to oppose. A Commons Select Committee on science and technology has just recommended that postgraduate science students should receive bigger grants than students studying “arts” subjects. The NUS quite rightly saw this proposal as “divisive” but this is no secret. The committee is not in the least worried by some vague ideas of the unity of students — it has been examining the requirements of capitalism tomorrow. The committee gave their own points of reference used when drawing up their report:

We believe that a system of differential grants for science postgraduates would provide the research councils with a practical and valuable tool to assist in the encouragement of research in priority areas. We are aware that such a scheme may create jealousies between different groups. We believe however that this is a price which may have to be paid if national needs are to play any part in the manpower training functions of the universities.

(Daily Telegraph, 12th September 1975)

If the NUS thought that universities were for "education,” they may now see what “education” is for. But this is not to say that knowledge is an irrelevance. The study of Socialist knowledge is the task which students and workers must attend. When this is done the cries of “divisive” will end.

Alan D'Arcy

Whatever happened to the middle class? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most comical programme on the radio today, is, without a doubt, that uproarious piece of fatuous nonsense known as “Any Questions”.

Week after week a panel of so-called experts, or notorious personages, attempt to answer questions put by members of the audience.

Conversely the most profoundly philosophical item on the “box” is frequently the one professing to be ludicrous.

More often than not, the jokes of “the comedians” on TV are priceless little cameos highlighting the catastrophes and calamities of modern latter-day working-class life.

But on “Any Questions” we have the best humour of all, unconscious, unintended, spontaneous. A question was asked: “What is happening to the Middle Class and what should they (the Middle Class) do about it” The result was side-splitting, a smasher, especially since the “panel” consisted of those well- known knockabouts, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Hailsham and Lord George Brown, plus Lady Barnett. Muggeridge jumped in with a broadside: the middle class he said are licked, powerless, helpless, they are being wiped out, done down, and there is nothing they can do but put up with it.

Then there was comedian George Brown’s go. In that absurdly pompous manner which he fondly imagines is impressive, he proceeded to babble more self-contradictory nonsense in a few minutes than anyone would think possible. The audience quickly told him as much. The place of the Middle Class today, he squeaked, has been taken by the working class. The miners, dockers, and car workers get over one hundred pounds a week; redundancy pay, social security, free health benefits and other advantages. The middle class is now the inferior class and the working class better off (than the “middle” lot.) These statements were apparently based on what has happened to “his kids”. My kids, he wailed, are (or were) members of the middle class with (and here he was expressing a common-place fallacy) “professional training’' but now much worse off than the dockers or miners.

One is tempted to ask why, if dockers are doing so well, his kids didn’t go in for it; but this never came up.

People in the audience tried to tell George that if all that had happened was a change of the names and addresses (middle for working) then no social change had taken place, but he only lost his temper.

Then it was Hailsham’s turn. We are not licked, he raved and ranted, we shall fight: wherever these great juggernauts, the TUC and the unions, challenge us we shall join together, and we shall win. Fine fighting words, “Hoggy”!

Rather unkindly (impudent workers) the next question was: “What do the members of the panel think are the qualifications for being on it?” Predictably enough this produced dead silence from the usually loquacious professional windbags. So much so, that Jacobs the question-master had to prod them. After all, they do get about £85 for the half-hour job.

Mugg said he hadn’t got any. Brown said none whatever, Hogg that he’d answered before and always tried to do his best. Likewise Lady B.

In the ensuing “Any Answer” slot supplied by listeners, a bloke wrote what Jacobs said was the shortest letter they’d ever received in twenty years. It was one word: “Ego”. And it is right. All of them, Brown, Hogg, Mugg. have no more knowledge of the economics of capitalist society than a bright fifth form schoolboy.

The one attribute they all have is boundless, mindless self-conceit; and the presumptuous conviction that most ordinary quiet people must be congenial idiots. They were all mistakenly talking about something that does not exist any more; and practically saying so without even knowing it! Especially the rubbish about “professional training.” Many kinds of workers today handle complicated equipment and require to be highly trained. Soldiers, airmen, printers, steelworkers, even a London taxi-driver whose intimate detailed knowledge of the most complicated maze in the world takes a minimum of two years to acquire.

The so-called white collar workers have joined the TUC in hundreds and thousands because, like blue- collar workers and no-collar workers, they belong to the same class. What defines a class is its relationship to the productive apparatus. In general those that are NOT capitalists are workers; whether driving a .Jumbo jet at £400.00 a week or a bus at £50.00.

What bogs many workers down on this is a failure to understand the difference between a whole class, and individuals. True, we all know cases whom we cannot slot neatly in. They are borderline cases. Every branch of knowledge has these, science could not function without them.

In biology we have the platypus: half bird — half mammal. In chemistry we have isotopes — compounds of unstable elements. “Heavy Water”: H30 not H20. No chemist has yet declared that ordinary water does not exist. In atomic physics unstable radio-active particles and anti-matter.

All these are exceptions. No biologist claims that the platypus invalidates species. So with society; individual exceptions merely confirm the general rule. Capitalism drives all workers ultimately into recognizing their class position. Once the process starts, the spread of Socialist ideas is inevitable.

There were 4,000 small bankruptcies last year; not Rolls-Royce, Leyland, Court Line or British Rail, but members of the hypothetical “Middle class” driven back to the ranks.

Members of the panel were NOT among them. They are bankrupt only in knowledge.

Horatio.

The World's Starving Millions (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is estimated that the awesome number of 460 million of our fellow human beings are suffering from severe malnutrition. What is worse, this estimate is based on the peak level of per capita food supplies before the situation began to deteriorate so seriously in 1972; since then the number of severely malnourished people must have greatly increased. (Report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 1974.)

So the horrifying story continues. In space men link up, with machinery costing more than those 460 millions could ever dream of, whilst on earth hunger and famine spread inexorably. In a world of space link-ups is there any scientific reason why there should be starvation? The answer is a resounding “No!” 

Dr. Magnus Pyke (Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science) in an address published in New Scientist (10th July 1975) points out that scientific ability has more than kept pace with population expansion. “For the world as a whole,” he says “the production of food has — the figures show — outstripped the increase in population numbers.” It is estimated that whilst the world’s population over the next ten years can be anticipated to grow at the rate of 2.1 per cent, per year, the world’s food production will increase by 2.7 per cent, per year. And according to Dr. Pyke there is enough food around to feed the human race: “. . . food is available to prevent hunger world wide.”

So what’s the problem? Dr. Pyke argues that it is not know-how that is the difficulty:

The thesis I am propounding is that while the knowledge and power over events which science can provide can make great things possible, there are certain human problems in the solution of which science is incompetent.

Unfortunately Dr. Pyke does not tell us what are those “human problems”. Instead he gives us an idea as concrete as hot ice-cream. He says the starvation problem is basically the result of

. . . fundamental incapacity to deal with the relations between man and man, with human miscalculation and misfortune, and with Acts of God such as the failure of the monsoon two years running . . .

He has hopelessly contradicted himself. Having talked about “human problems” the solving of which are necessary, he is now talking about miscalculation, misfortune, and (spare us!) “Acts of God.” About

as scientific as dry rain. He ends up calling for the extension of the equivalent of the British Welfare State throughout the world.

As a scientific analysis of the ability of man to produce food, Dr. Pyke’s address clearly shows man’s capacity to produce an abundance of food. As an explanation of hunger alongside surpluses of food he takes the listener nowhere.

Two things are clear. One, there is the ability to produce a surplus of food; two, millions of people are starving (not just in “underdeveloped" countries either).

The reason for this conundrum is the economic system that man now uses. Instead of food production aiming to feed the people of the world, it is directed at one thing only, profit and accumulation of wealth for the owners. Although the scientists like Dr. Pyke often appear not to see this, the politicians who are elected to run capitalism can, when they choose to. For instance, Mrs. Judith Hart MP, former Minister of Overseas (Under) Development said that British farmers wanted to help towards solving the problems of shortage of food. But on what terms:

Our agricultural industry does not mind very much what it produces, as long as it gets a fair return.

(The Times, 21st July 1975)

And there is the difficulty in a nutshell. Producers don’t care what they make or how they make it. So long as it sells at a profit, capitalism will make it. The starving millions can’t “buy” food because they can’t fulfil that essential condition. So the capitalists invest in other things which bring a “fair” (i.e. profitable) return. Such as armaments for the governments of the starving.

The solution to the appalling problem lies in our hands now. But it demands, not as Dr. Pyke in childish simplicity suggests “a world welfare state” (isn’t the British one bad enough?), but a world working class, consciously determined to establish Socialism.

Ronnie Warrington

Both-ways Tories (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Conservatives will stand by the Government if its policy to beat inflation is challenged, Sir Geoffrey Howe, QC, Opposition spokesman on Treasury and economic affairs, said on Saturday.” 

(The Times, 1st September 1975) 

“Mrs. Thatcher gave a clear warning last night that the Labour Government cannot rely on unquestioning Conservative support for its anti-inflation policy.” 

(The Guardian, 9th September 1975)

The Liberals are believed to endorse their views.