So They Say: People in Glass Houses (1977)

The So They Say Column from the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

People in Glass Houses

When a leading authority on a subject makes a judgement, it is an important one. On February 28th Mr. Eric Heffer described the entire Conservative Party as hypocrites. He was taking part in a mutual exchange of hot air in Westminster Palace on the question of the British Leyland toolmakers’ strike.

It was hypocrisy for the Conservatives to say there should be higher incentives for the higher paid but when workers sought incentives they were accused of being disruptive.

Daily Telegraph. 1st March 77

This is a part of what is romantically referred to as the cut and thrust of debate, which in reality resembles nothing so much as the moronic lowing of cattle. It does not strike Labour MPs as odd that their own Minister for Industry, Mr. Kaufman, advances the argument that the Leyland strikers have brought the company into “danger of bleeding to death”, while two days later their Industry Secretary, Mr. Varley, was informing his cronies that “the effect on profits was critical.”

How is it possible for workers to bleed a company to death by withholding their labour-power? That is putting the cart before the horse. One certain effect a strike will have is to prevent the workers’ own life-blood being pumped in to emerge later as the profits so dearly sought by the Labour Party. Where has the accumulation of capital now vested in British Leyland come from, if not from the “bleeding” of surplus-value from previous generations of workers? That is the process which the Labour Party wishes to continue.

Marx, out of date ?

As Heffer pointed out, the Conservative backwoodsmen have emerged wanting to back it both ways by condemning Leyland workers on the one hand, while claiming that the “erosion of pay differentials” is to blame on the other. Mr. George Gardiner, Conservative MP for Reigate, added his tuppence worth in a Sunday Express article of March 13th. “There is nothing praiseworthy about suicide”, he decided in reference to the strike. With a little twisting and turning, two paragraphs further on he is commenting on the size of wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers. On behalf of the toolmakers he asks: “Was all that early training worth it?” 

Aware of the fact that he has to produce something more “praiseworthy" than this, he goes on to argue that “squeezed differentials” have taken the edge off what he calls "our national competitive ability”. The Conservatives will change all that.

More powerful influences than Mr. Gardiner or his Party however will determine the levels of differentials, and the Labour government will be unable to keep the lid down for long as the laws applying to the value of labour-power begin to be felt. No doubt the Conservatives would be horrified to think that something which they are now promoting as a policy, was outlined by Karl Marx as one of capitalism’s economic laws, more than 100 years ago.

Upon the basis of the wages system the value of labouring power is settled like that of every other commodity; and as different kinds of labouring power have different values, or require different quantities of labour for their production, they must fetch different prices in the labour market.

Wages, Price and Profit, Chapter 7.

It is doubtful that the Conservatives will refer to this passage when proclaiming their “policy”, but then they would happily take the credit for restoring the law of gravity should the Labour Party try to ignore it.

More from Mr. Gardiner

Once warmed to his theme, the MP for Reigate is a hard man to stop. He gushes: “Let us not only recognise differentials, but positively welcome them.”

For virtue lies not in enforced equality, but inequality, provided it is founded on merit and not on privilege.

Sunday Express, 13th March 77 (His emphasis)

From a working-class point of view the above is pure humbug. The ownership and control of the world's resources, the means of life, rest in the hands of a privileged minority of men and women. They have taken the inequality which Mr. Gardiner sees as so desirable to its logical conclusion—they have left the members of the working class with nothing except the ability to work. If Mr. Gardiner seriously wishes to question the “virtue” of the situation, the first thing he must do is to leave the Conservative Party and look around him.

The News of the World of the same date published their “Wills of the Week” column—their equivalent of the last rites—and the gross value of tho three wills reported came to just under £l.5m. The three deceased must have indeed been meritorious workers by any standard to have accumulated an average of £500,000 each. The answer is that all the talk of merit is a carrot (or a stick) and applies only to members of the working class. The answer to workers’ problems does not revolve round the question of pay differentials within capitalism, but on a clear understanding of the need to abolish the wages system itself.

Higher productivity would help solve some of our problems, but it will only help employment if it is reflected in higher profitability. The union leaders can be forgiven for not knowing this, for it is a branch of economics outside the mainstream of thinking on which British economic management has been based.

Sunday Times, 13th March 77

And he has proved it all with the help of “coefficients of determination of a regression equation”, so it must be official. Union members previously labouring under the misapprehension that employers were in business primarily to provide employment will now see that there is something in it for the governors after all.

There's no fool  . . .

Now that Harold Wilson is trying to assume the mantle of “an elder statesman” he feels at liberty to speak with even more ambiguity than we had previously thought possible. Addressing the Financial Times conference on the future of Europe on 11th March, he discussed political problems in Britain.

The Communists presented no political problem apart from marches and demonstrations. Britain’s problems were on the one hand Fascists and the National Front, and on the other the various kinds of what were usually lumped together as Trotskyists, the International Socialists, the Workers Revolutionary party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and various others.

Daily Telegraph, 12th March 77

Wilson does not say that he is doing the lumping together, but as he is the only one in sight it is difficult to avoid the conclusion. However, be he as pure as the driven snow in the matter, we have some useful advice for him so that he may not compound the error. Read our Object and Declaration of Principles published on all our literature. They will appear unfamiliar at first and that is because they are Socialist principles. Pay especial note to principle number 7—that applies to the Labour Party and all the other non-Socialist organizations referred to.

Alan D'Arcy