War, Waste and Want (1966)

Report from the 26th October 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

S.P.G.B lecture at Hackney

"We live today in a world of potential abundance. Yet, while millions are in want and many starve, part of the world's resources are consumed in producing weapons of war and in training millions of men and women to use them. How can this terrible paradox be explained?" asked Mr. F. C. Manning, lecturing on "Waste amidst Want," recently, at Hackney Trades Hall to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney branch.

Modern society's technical basis, he said, is large-scale mass production, which by its nature can be operated only by the labour of millions of people all over the world. These millions do not work alone. They work together. No man makes anything by himself but only plays some part in the co-operative labour by which things are today produced. Factories and farms, mines, mills and docks, though spread throughout the world, technically depend upon each other like links in a chain. They are but parts of one world-wide productive unit. 

Commonsense would, therefore, suggest that to derive full benefit for all from this worldwide productive unit, it should be owned and controlled by all humanity; that it should belong in common to all mankind and be controlled by them to satisfy their own needs. In Capitalism, however, the means of production belong to a small section of the population: the capitalist class, and they are used by the working class to make things, not primarily to satisfy needs, but to be sold to realise a profit on the world market.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC COMPETITION

Those who own the world and its implements of production, continued Mr. Manning, compete against each other to buy raw materials and in selling finished products. But competition is not only economic; political means are also used. The competing capitalist groups have at their disposal massive armed forces which exist to protect and further their interests. Capitalist economic conditions make them necessary. Any owning group which controlled no armed forces would be in dire peril and would go under. Not only would it be unable to protect its own wealth, it would also be unable to take and hold sources of raw materials, keep others out of a market, and to control ports and trade routes around the world. The owners, therefore, compete politically and economically for raw materials, markets and trade routes. When other political means fail, all that is left is brute force—organised, scientific killing and destruction— War.

Owning groups are always under pressure to equip their armed forces with ever more destructive weapons. In this "arms race" enormous resources are now devoted to research into nuclear physics, biochemistry and space travel. In addition, millions throughout the world are conscripted or enticed into the armed forces and trained to kill, wound and destroy.

"This," declared the lecturer, "is what is behind the paradox of waste amidst want. The problem of war. militarism and armaments is one of the many which arise from Capitalism, from class ownership and production for profit."

" Militarism." he concluded. " is the inevitable outcome of commerce, of the buying and selling that goes with the private ownership of the world's resources. To abolish militarism we must abolish commerce. To abolish commerce we must replace private property by common property; that is, we must establish Socialism. This means a worldwide change which will harmonise social production with social needs. Only then will the resources of the world be able to provide the plenty they are capable of. instead of being wasted on such things as arms.”