Why Economise? (1940)

From the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The road which we have to tread is that of stern service and sacrifice.” Thus writes the Daily Telegraph leader writer (January 10th, 1940) in amplificatory approval of Chamberlain’s Mansion House speech. ChamberIain is further quoted as stating: “We have got to do without a lot of things we shall miss very much.” Less money must be spent on sugar and butter. Approval is also given to the statement of Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that “you can’t finance a great war by soaking the rich.” This prepares the way for what follows: “To tie wages to the cost of living so closely that spending can go on as in peace time will give us the vicious spiral of the last war, which ultimately benefited no-one.”

On the page following the above-mentioned article is a Harrods’ advertisement, which says: “Now, more than ever, you need bargains in wines and spirits.” You can get a dozen bottles of 1924 brandy for nine quid (usual price £9 12s.). Whisky is slightly cheaper at £8 5s., or you can get a dozen bottles of 1933 Barsac for as little as £2 16s. Cigars also are going cheap at £5 7s. 6d. the hundred.

You see, now there is a war on, even the poor rich have to economise and look around for bargains in wines and spirits.

It is possible, however, that a large number of the readers of the Daily Telegraph, in their hurry to get to the back pages, where cheap jobs are advertised, may have missed the foregoing advertisement, about which this much must be said—that experienced capitalist concerns do not spend large sums on advertising unless there is reasonable certainty of a substantial return. Hence we can well imagine Colonel Try-it-on and Major Soak-it-up over their whisky-and-splash approvingly endorsing the Chancellor’s remark that “you can’t finance a great war by soaking the rich.”

Of course, we admit that the capitalists have got a bit of a problem on in running this war. War, unfortunately for them, is an expensive business. But if the workers can be induced to lie low, and not be too troublesome about asking for more wages to meet a higher cost of living, cut down their butter and sugar, and so on, it might not prove so expensive after all. Hence the necessity of “stern service and sacrifice” in order that “freedom and justice and the dignity of human life shall not perish from the earth.” Need we say that included amongst those who share the “dignity of human life” are the “hard core”—the 240,000 workers who have been unemployed for over 12 months? The majority of these, needless to say, have been retaining their dignity, not on butter, but on margarine—and probably unvitaminised at that, as, for the information of the unsophisticated, unvitaminised marge is slightly cheaper than that containing the vital elements. The dignified “hard core,” however, are going to be looked after—”steps are to be taken by the Government to speed up their absorption into industry.”—(Daily Telegraph Industrial Correspondent, January 10th, 1940.)

Obviously, what is concerning the minds of the capitalists is that, with everybody employed, workers will be asking, insisting on, and succeeding in getting, higher wages. Hence the dim foreshadowing of some means or measure to arrest the process.

Whilst the sectional struggle between the capitalist Powers has taken on the form of armed warfare, the economic warfare between capitalists and workers, between rulers and ruled, continues from official peace time into official war time, with this difference, that when a war is on, owing to the elimination of the competition of the unemployed, the scales are weighted in favour of the workers. Hence the concern of our capitalist masters over the wages question and their attempt to drum into the ears of the workers the necessity of “doing without a lot of things they will miss very much,” and the statement that the “wealthier classes have had to make large reductions in standards of living.”

R. Milborne