War and Work (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

In one respect this war is just like the last. It has shown once more the simple truth that the maintenance of life depends on production, and that production depends on human labour. To most of the men and women who normally get their living by expending energy in mental and physical work—the miners, landworkers, railwaymen, clerks, organisers of industrial processes, etc.,—this is a truism but there have been many people who have been misled by surface appearances into believing that human society can be carried on by other less practical and more mystical notions. From Robert Owen to our own day there have been dreamers (and some otherwise level-headed men) who have been dazzled with the vision of a world already within reach in which machines would be almost self-operating and in which the human race would just toy with a few knobs and levers and have little else to do but enjoy continuous leisure. Others, including most of the orthodox economists and city editors, have depreciated production and enormously magnified the importance of trade, especially foreign trade, and with it the investment of capital abroad. At the same time they turned much of their attention to financial institutions and to problems of gold and currency. With superb inconsistency they explained the manifest poverty of large numbers of the world’s population alternately by the alleged over-production and alleged under-production of gold. Needless to say, their expert and authoritative forecasts a few years ago of the amount of gold that would be produced have been utterly falsified. The Bolshevists, showing themselves in this respect as orthodox as Montague Norman, have concentrated vast efforts on putting Russia second only to South Africa in quantity of yearly gold production; they no longer share Lenin’s early view that gold would be so useless to a properly organised society that it would probably be used for the construction of street lavatories.

Along with these groups have been those modern magicians, the followers of Major Douglas and his various predecessors during the past 150 years, who have believed that the production of wealth is no more than the simple act of writing figures in a book, the so-called “credit creation” of the bankers.

War shows more strikingly than any other event that the basic factor in the production of food (and armaments), and the carrying on of land, sea and air transport, is human labour, the expenditure of the physical and mental energies of men and women. No longer does anyone but the last-ditcher Douglasite believe that bombers and tanks and the necessities of life for the population can be produced by means of the operation of banks, Treasury officials, trade experts and so on; at most their efforts have meaning only to the extent that they promote the hard labour of field, factory, and workshop.

The Other Side of the Picture

These observations may help to clear the ground, but it would only be half-true if we did not go on to consider another aspect of the question of work and wealth. War means a vast destruction of armaments and munitions which have to be produced by workers who are consequently prevented from carrying on their peace-time work. It also means the withdrawal of millions of men and women for service in the Armed Forces and Civil Defence Forces. This is partly, but only partly, compensated by bringing into activity large numbers of men and women who in peace-time were not at work or were working at what are now regarded as non-essential activities. A factor of more importance is that the workers are now working longer hours and with greater intensity than they were in peace-time—they are expending more energy on production and have less energy and less time for leisure activities.

Yet it is probably true that as regards the strict necessities of life, most of the population are no worse off than they were before the war, and a large proportion—those who were worst fed and clothed in peace-time—are better off than they were. It is one of the curiosities of war-time that all sorts of things that “can’t be done” are done. This war has seen old-age pensions increased, as also the allowances of the dependents of men in the Forces, agricultural workers’ wages have been raised to a level their union would hardly have considered practical politics twelve months ago, at a cost estimated to be £15,000,000 a year. And at a time when the Ministry of Food can say that no matter how long the war may last there will be sufficient food “to maintain life in all its vigour.” (Daily Telegraph, March 30th, 1940.) Sir John Orr and other influential people are pressing on the Government as feasible the idea of “strengthening the home front” by improving the standard of living of the third of the population who in peace-time could not afford a diet adequate for health.

The key to the problem is that Capitalism is for most of the population always a failure. Because the purpose behind Capitalist production is profit, all kinds of activities go on which from the point of view of the non-Capitalist majority are sheer waste and inefficiency, although highly desirable to the minority who benefit from them and indispensable to Capitalist, financial and other operations. Under the stress of war the State steps in and curtails many of these activities. It cuts off luxury consumption and also takes the power to enforce drastic industrial reorganisation.

We now see The Times, which ordinarily echoes the inanities of economic text-books about Capitalism efficiently organising production and distribution in the interests of all consumers, awakening to the discovery that industry is full of waste and inefficiency when viewed from a standpoint not concerned solely with the profits of shareholders. The following words come not from our pamphlet, “Socialism,” though the fact is there pointed out, but from The Times (May 28th, 1940):-

 “One instance of wasted effort and transport is to be seen daily all over the country. Perhaps as many as six different milkmen will call each at one or two houses in a short street. There will be a similar abundance of bakers, greengrocers, coalmen, and other tradesmen, and some will be consuming valuable petrol. A pooling of effort seems to be an urgent need here.”

But do not be misled into thinking that the enforcement of economy of production means a change of heart on the part of The Times and those whose views it reflects. Even if, after the war, they decide to retain some of the war-time practices, they will still have no appreciation of the possibility of a system of society in which production is carried on solely for the use and enjoyment of the whole population without privilege or distinction. Mr. Richard Coppock, General Secretary of the National Federation of Building Trades Operatives, who is now a Director of Supply at the Ministry of Labour, certainly did give expression to a revolutionary view when he suggested at the conference of the Federation that “it might be a wise thing, instead of giving people wages and profits, to see that they were fed, housed and clothed” (Daily Herald, June 8th, 1940), but he showed his appreciation of reality when he made it clear that he was not speaking for the Government but “in his personal capacity.” War may show up the deficiencies of industrial and social organisation, but only understanding on the part of the majority of the population will ever make it possible to translate that realisation into constructive work for a new social order.

Edgar Hardcastle