Letters: Are Cheap Imports a Concern of the Workers? (1941)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from the Duke of Bedford criticising the article “A Few Words on the Atlantic Charter,” published in our October issue:

“Wigtownshire, Oct. 18th, 1941.

Sir,

In your October issue you raise the question of the threat to Agriculture provided by cheap foreign imports raised in a climate more favourable to agricultural production than our own. In view of the fact that we live in a labour-destroying age, I feel that we need to modify profoundly the whole of our thinking on the question of cheap imports, realising that the true purpose of both industry and commerce is not to provide work, but to provide real wealth in the form of desired goods and services. The close association of work with the right to receive an income has led us to attach too much importance to employment and far too little to the provision of adequate incomes for all citizens, whether they are employed, or, through no fault of their own, unemployed.

The policy of excluding cheap imports with the object of assisting a home industry inflicts an injury on three sets of people in the effort to help one, and is, therefore, not sound policy.

The restriction of imports of cheap goods is an injury to consumers; an injury to the men in our export trade whose goods indirectly “buy” the imports; and an injury to the foreigner who may need our exports but cannot obtain them if we refuse to buy his exports.

If imports are cheap, under a rational system which recognises that foreign trade should have the fundamental nature of barter, it simply means that the foreigner is able to send us a large quantity of goods in return for a comparatively small quantity of our own, and this, if we did not live under the economics of Bedlam, should be an advantage to us and not a drawback. Under the present system, the snag of course is that if cheap imports put people out of work in one of our home industries, the unemployed will not be able to buy the cheap imports— and other articles—low-priced though they be. But why should such a ridiculous state of affairs be tolerated ? If the goods are there for the unemployed to buy and the unemployed are out of work through no fault, or culpable indolence, of their own, why in the name of reason should new money not be created and given to them to enable them to buy the goods and enjoy a decent standard pf living ! Such money would not be inflationary because there would be the cheap imports behind it to back it and give it value and, seeing that it would be new money created not in the form of debt, and not existing money obtained by taxation, no one else’s standard of living would have been lowered in order to assist the unemployed.

Yours very truly,

Bedford.”

Reply.

It is obvious that our correspondent has not at all understood the article that he criticises. We are concerned with abolishing the Capitalist system and replacing it with Socialism, not with the question of solving the insoluble contradictions of Capitalism. The purpose of mentioning one of its contradictions, the conflict between the agricultural capitalist who wants protection and the industrial capitalist who wants cheap imported food because that means lower money wages, was to show the difficulty in which the Labour Party or any other party finds itself when it tries to administer capitalism.

There are many points in the letter deserving of reply. For reasons of space it is only possible to touch briefly on some of them.

Our correspondent writes of “the true purpose” of industry and commerce, implying that there is a true purpose which is not the actual purpose. This is a meaningless statement. The purpose that industry and commerce have can only be the purpose of those who own and control them, and as ownership and control are vested in a small part of the population, the owners of landed, industrial and commercial capital, their purpose is the only one and that purpose is not the provision of wealth for the population but the purpose of deriving an income from their ownership. Different sections of the propertied class have different interests in the question of cheap imported food, but the working class as a whole have no such interest. Broadly speaking, their money wages rise and fall with rises and falls in their cost of living. Their interest lies in abolishing the private ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Our correspondent sees a “close association of work with the right to receive an income.” This is only true of the working class. The propertied class do not enjoy their incomes because they work but because they own the means of production and distribution and own the whcle of the products of industry. The reason why the workers, employed and unemployed, cannot have and consume more of the goods that are produced is not the one given by our correspondent, that “cheap imports put people out of work,” but that the owners of the means of production and distribution are the owners of the products and are not primarily interested in any other question than selling them at a profit.

Like many other defenders of Capitalism who think they can solve Capitalism’s contradictions by currency juggling, our correspondent writes in amazement that his fellow property owners do not see what appears to him to be a solution. He is mistaken. They know at least a little better than he does what would be the consequences of his proposal of “creating” new money and giving it to the unemployed. If the penalty of semi-starvation through unemployment were to be removed, the workers would be in a position to wreck the wages system through which the propertied class are able to live on the backs of the wealth producers. Our correspondent may consider his fellow property owners are being ridiculous, but they know they are safeguarding their privileged position.

In conclusion, let us repeat that we are Socialists, and our purpose is to achieve Socialism, under which system goods will be produced solely for use and there will be no rent, interest or profit.

Editorial Committee.