Homes for wage slaves (1963)

From the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working class housing is a sore that has festered on the body of capitalism right from the beginning. Workers all over the world live in squalid and inferior conditions.

Following the lines of class division, every city and town has its contrasts. Spacious, comfortable houses for those who can afford them, and cramped and shoddy ones for those who cannot. Let’s take one example to show the poverty and insecurity that lies behind the so-called housing problem. When the L.C.C. announced recently that the sum of £3 million had been set aside for loans of up to £5,000 with no deposits, they were swamped with thousands of enquiries. This paltry sum might house something like a thousand working class families. On the other hand, one building, the new Hilton Hotel, cost £8 million; there were no workers enquiring for rooms at up to £40r per day.

While massive blocks of office buildings are appearing everywhere, people walk the streets of London looking for shelter or join those staying in rest centres. Such is the order of priorities under capitalism.

Labour-Liberal and Conservative governments in succession have promised to deal with the problem, but have left it much the same as when they first took office. Workers have been fed on such promises as “ homes for heroes,” only to find they need to be heroes to live in some of the homes. Because of the low standards of working class dwellings, made necessary by the need to keep them within rents workers can afford, their new homes soon begin to look drab and to blend with the old eyesores around them. The best that capitalism’s parties can do is to try to outbid one another in promising to build more cheap and nasty dwellings for workers. But, even then, the rate at which old property deteriorates and needs to be pulled down, is higher than the rate of building.

When the Tories came back in 1951, there was a lot of talk about a “ property owning democracy,” but housing, like the rest of wealth under capitalism, is produced for profit. Six years of Labour Government and nearly 30 years of Labour control on the L.C.C., have done nothing to solve the problem. In 1934, the housing problem and slum clearing was the major issue at County Hall. It still is today; as in all other fields, the reformists are ignorant of the true nature of the forces against which they pit their puny efforts. How many more years of capitalism run by the Labour Party must we endure before workers realise that reformism has no answer?

In an article in the old Sunday Pictorial last October there was a lot of factual information about the squalor and decay that millions of workers live in. We were told of a family of four living in an old car parked m a London street. We were given the contrast of London’s most luxurious penthouse at a rent of £12,500 a year, and of places in Earls Court for £9,500. There are plenty of flats at £60 a week, but few at 60s. The article goes on to enlighten us with the fact that in Manchester there are 68,000 slums and 13,677 people on the waiting list. In Leeds, where the Housing Minister is an M.P., there are 11,000 slums and 18,071 on the waiting list, while in Glasgow a thousand homes are closed each year by the city medical officer; 600 more are so rotten, they fall down unaided. There are 77,000 people on the Glasgow waiting list. This sort of article is fairly common in newspapers, but the press is just as helpless as the politicians when it comes to effective answers. This is what Mr. Michael Stewart, a Labour Party housing spokesman, wants, “Restore rent control; keep a check, or if necessary ban, new office building, and build more homes for rent—at least 300,000 a year.” Rent control did nothing to alleviate the present slum conditions and acted as a weight to keep wages down. Surely the Labour Party knows that office building is more profitable than building homes for workers who can only afford low rents. The Sunday Pictorial should know all about the benefits of new office buildings, the newspaper is printed in one of them. As for 300,000 houses a year, this is the exact figure the Tories promised in 1951. To carry on building places cheaply for workers only perpetuates the problem.

The housing problem is merely one symptom of a sickness that runs right through capitalism, the sickness of riches and poverty. None of the politicians who come vote-catching to the workers ever promise to build them mansions with expensive chandeliers and swimming pools. The life of yachts and sun-following is deemed to be unfit for the class that produces it all. When we arc told that 15 million people have no baths in their homes, swimming pools sound as though they belong to another world and in a way they do—the world of the capitalist.

When wars come along and workers are invited to fight for “their” country, they would do well to look at some of the places they live in and ask themselves what country they own. The Church of England, which always blesses workers in uniform, is one of Britain’s biggest landowners and has £69,000,000 invested in property, not to mention £132,000,000 in stocks and shares.

What can be said for a social system that cannot even provide adequate shelter for the overwhelming majority of its citizens? While capitalism remains, the squalor that it breeds will be with us. Frederick Engels nearly a hundred years ago pointed out that all oppressed classes in history have been poorly housed and that the solution is to abolish the present form of society.

Socialism will lay the foundation for the final removal of the housing problem. Although there will be an ugly aftermath left over from capitalism, when the means of production are held in common and the madness of profit-motivation swept away, we can then set about the task of gearing production to human needs, which means housing of the finest possible standard will be produced, in abundance, to be freely used and enjoyed.

Harry Baldwin

The crusade for gold (1963)

Book Reviews from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conquest of New Spain. Bernel Diaz. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Penguin Books, 6s.

Chronicles of the Crusades. Villehardouin and Joinville. Translated by M. R. B. Shaw. Penguin Books, 5s.

Many books have been written about Hernando Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Many more still have been written about the Crusades. But very few books on either event came from those who were there at the time, and even of these only a handful have survived.

Penguin Books have recently had the happy idea of publishing translations of three of these personal histories. In the first, The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz, a humble soldier in the Cortes expedition, gives his account of how several hundred Spanish adventurers with a few dozen horses invaded the powerful Aztec empire, overthrew its ruler Montezuma, and conquered his capital of Mexico. The second book, Chronicles of the Crusades, combines two stories: of the Fourth Crusade seen through the eyes of a French feudal lord, Villehardouin, and of the Seventh by a later compatriot Joinville.

Roughly three hundred years separate these two periods, three hundred years which saw the final crumbling of feudalism before the forces of expansion in which the discovery of the New World played such an overwhelming part. The books reflect the deep gulf between the two societies, but even more interesting and striking is the way they reveal the factor common to both of them—the drive of economic interest.

All three histories purport to be written by religious men. Both the chroniclers of the Crusades tell us frequently of their Christian mission, of their joy at the “taking of the Cross" against the Saracen and the infidel. And throughout his story Diaz tells us again and again of the way he and his companions shattered the Mexicans’ “heathen idols” and of how they tried to get them to see the “true faith.” All their disasters (and they were many) were sent by God to punish them for their misdeeds, and their escapes and triumphs were due solely to his intervention.

But through all three stories comes the asides, the complaints, the intrigues, the reproaches, the admissions, that make it clear that whatever the ostensible reason for their campaigns, the real motive was wealth, land, booty, and loot.

Gold is the word that weaves its way into every thread of Diaz’s story. Gold was what he and his companions were after, the fabulous mines in the west which would make them rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Every settlement through which they passed on their long road to Mexico was assessed in terms of the gold it possessed; every present given by Montezuma in an effort to buy them off was meticulously valued in pesos. Gold was the prize for which they went through innumerable and fantastic hardships and for which so many of them died—to have their hearts torn from their still living bodies and their limbs thrown to their opponents to feast upon. And, supreme irony of all, and as so often happens, it was the leaders and rulers who got most of the spoil and Diaz and his fellows nothing.

Our two Crusaders tell the same story. It was the Venetian merchants who supplied the ships and provisions for the Fourth Crusade—at a good price, plus one-half “of everything we win." And whatever may have been the depth of religious conviction of the two authors, it is certain that most of their companions embarked on their adventure for the booty to be won and the lands to be conquered. The Fourth Crusade, in fact, never got further than Constantinople and ended in a bloody struggle between the French and Germans against the Greeks who were, incidentally, also Christians and whose lands bad been seized by the Crusaders. As for the Seventh Crusade, the feudal barons who left so eagerly in search of loot and land were soon tempted to leave their “saintly king Louis'’ in the lurch when they found the opposition keener than they had expected. Louis himself was captured and had to buy himself back to France at the cost of a heavy ransom. The whole campaign was in fact a fiasco, ruined by the greed of the big feudal lords and their primary concern for their own economic interests.

It should be remembered that the wealth to permit these feudal aristocrats to go out on their jaunts, either for religious or just for mercenary gain, was extracted from the vast inert, mass of Western European serfdom. Then, as now, a small minority of privileged lived on the backs of a majority who did all the useful work of society, pawns who were passed from one feudal lord to another as the tide of battle fluctuated between the various warring actions.

By Diaz's time this system had virtually broken up and a new one was evolving. He was only one of many who thought to get rich quick by volunteering for expeditions to open up new lands. The old order was disappearing and the world becoming bigger, but much of it was illusion. Most of them died, or came back crippled or broken with disease. Their leaders, true, often shared the same hardships but did have somewhat of a better chance of looking back and considering them worthwhile. But the real winners, as always, were the big men behind the scenes who financed the expeditions—and, of course, the rulers of the time who couldn't lose anyway because they were automatically entitled to a fifth of everything that was going.

Courage, adventure, cruelty, and privation—these two books recount such things on a scale to make us marvel. But, underlying everything, they confirm once more that then, as now, history was shaped by economic interest. The holy cross might have stood out brightly on the banners, but it was the urge for gold, land, booty, and profit, that burned in the breasts of most of those who fell in behind.

Stan Hampson

50 Years Ago: Vice - 1913 Version (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February of this year—within three months of the White Slave Bill being passed—Hull was excited about the arrest of “a leading citizen,” named Edward Buckton Cargill. He was the Chairman of the Hull Steam Trawlers Owners Company, of the Humber Conservancy Board, was chosen by the shipowners of Hull as a representative of the fishing trade of the port, and was appointed by the Board of Trade on the North Sea Fisheries Committee, besides holding many other leading positions in the property owning world.

He was charged with offences against several girls under 16 years of age. He obtained the services of several noted K.C.S and other lawyers and detectives to help him, and they scoured the cities to try and get matter whereby the girls could be seen in the worst light—morally. Needless to state, the girls belonged to the working class.

When the judge ordered him nine months hard labour the poor dupes of Liberalism and Toryism thought it showed the sincerity, and wisdom of our governors—But—wait and see!

He was sentenced at the end of February. At the beginning of May, or shortly after two months had elapsed, the Hull Press announced the release of Cargill on the ground of indisposition. He was removed to his home, prison life not agreeing with this tender plant. And a member of the town council ventured the opinion that if he had been a poor man he would have been in prison yet.

They were going to deal with “the great traffickers in human beings.” They were going to strike at “the international ring of procurers.” Ah, yes! a story of going to do. When, owing to an oversight, no doubt, a sumptuous flat in Piccadilly was raided, the flat keeper, calling herself Queenie Gerald, was charged with procuring girls. In the course of the evidence at Marlboro' Street, however, it transpired that prominent men were associated with the business—and the usual thing took place.

The case came on at the sessions watered down to one of "exercising influence over the movements of prostitutes for the purpose of gain.” At the police court she had pleaded not guilty, but now she answered: "Guilty!” the result being that no evidence was taken against her on the charges made, the jury were not sworn, all in spite of the fact that Mr. Travers Humphrey, the prosecuting counsel had at the Police Court stated that (vide "Daily Telegraph,” June 21st) “There were a large number of letters which made it quite clear that, apart from the prisoner's earnings herself, and apart from what she received from the girls, she was carrying on the trade of a procuress.”

The public were excluded from the Court and the Press representatives were told they were only there as a privilege, and were to report no names and be careful not to let much leak out. They were ordered not to divulge the real name of Queenie Gerald—and all for what reason!

BECAUSE LEADING MEMBERS OF MODERN SOCIETY WERE PATRONS OF THIS PICCADILLY FLAT.

Conclusive evidence of procuring was given earlier at the Police Court proceedings, but that didn't stop the charge being dropped at the Quarter Sessions. One of the letters written to “a gentleman at the Ritz Hotel” ran as follows:

“Your friend wishing to meet a few society ladies. I can arrange for three on Sunday. They are the real thing and frightfully expensive. Will you ask the Prince what he is prepared to give.”

From the Socialist Standard, September, 1913.

The high wage myth (1963)

From the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

For many years the Ministry of Labour has published figures showing the average earnings of industrial workers in a selection of industries. These have been supplemented recently by similar figures for salaried workers. The consequence is that we now have two images instead of one, the image of white collar workers’ pay added to that of the manual workers.

It is not that the Ministry of Labour figures are wrong or misleading but only that, in course of transmission to the columns of the newspapers and the speeches of politicians, the careful definitions and explanations are forgotten.

The latest figure for the industrial workers shows that the average wage is over £16 a week. Its brother turns up in the Daily Mail on July 3rd like this: “ £21: The average White Collar workers’ pay.”

The Industrial workers’ £16 12s. 4d. is average earnings, including an average of over five hours overtime pay, plus all extras for output bonuses, profit sharing, etc., and before any deductions have been made for income tax, National Insurance contributions, and the like.

The figure applies only to men of 21 and over (the average for women, youths and girls ranges from £8 3s. 8d. down to £5 4s. 6d.), and applies only to the manufacturing industries, which are relatively highly paid.

The inclusion of some non-manufacturing industries lowers the average by about 10s. a week, and although some other "high wage” as well as “low wage " industries are outside the figures it is well-nigh certain that the inclusion of shop assistants, catering workers, agricultural workers, etc., would bring it down much more. On this basis it could well be less than £14 for an average of 48 hours a week or more, and before deductions.

The same and some additional qualifications apply to the myth of the £21 a week “white collar worker.” As defined by the Ministry of Labour for its enquiry this group includes all administrative, technical and clerical staff ”from managerial and administrative grades to junior clerks and typists” as well as technical and “professional" employees.

But as it happens the Ministry also publishes figures which exclude the more highly paid sections, the managers and administrators, and apply only to "clerical and analogous employees." The contrast is a striking one. We drop from the Daily Mail’s £21 to a figure only two-thirds as large, actually £14 2s. 5d. a week for male workers and £10 14s. 11d. for women and girls: and like all the other figures these include overtime and other extras and arc before deduction of tax and insurance contributions.

So much for the newspapers’ fairy tales about wages.

Edgar Hardcastle

Demonstration For Socialism (1963)

Party News from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The perils of fooling the people (2003)

From the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Iraq war has already left a significant mark on the British political scene. The Labour government, whilst floundering around trying to drum up support for its weak excuses for war, found itself obliged to submit a resolution authorising war to the House of Commons. Historically, the decision to commit troops has been the exclusive preserve of the executive branch of the British government, a hang-over of Crown prerogative, with the Monarch as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

In the Kosovan adventure in 1999, the government stoutly refused to permit a vote in the Commons, sure that it could use its authority to unilaterally commit the air-forces to the bombardment of Serbia. The argument runs that the Commons cannot have a vote, because before war the government requires the freedom to manoeuvre and negotiate and to use the threat of violence as a part of diplomacy; and when troops are committed, it would be stabbing them in the back, damaging to morale, were any MPs so villainous as to vote against the war.

Of course, what is an innovation in Britain has been long practice in other powers. The USA has it written into its constitution that declarations of war are the preserve of Congress, whereas control of the armed forces is the preserve of the President. The War Powers Act, further stipulates that the US cannot commit forces for more than sixty days to a war-zone, without the permission of Congress, to prevent Presidents engaging in the 19th century practice of in effect declaring war by invading a neighbouring country. Despite all this legal finagling, during the Kosovan business, the Congress managed to simultaneously refuse to give consent to war, and yet voted war credits. The pretence to respecting the law was only saved by the fact that the war only lasted sixty-three days.

The British government’s recent concession to parliamentary democracy, then, is hardly a leap into the democratic control of the armed forces. British MPs, concerned with keeping their government in place, with pleasing the leader that may prefer them, desperate to keep their jobs and places, sought around for reasons to support their government, for an apparently honourable excuse for supporting the executive’s war drive. These self-same MP’s are the ones now bleating that they were deceived by the “Dodgy Dossier” and trembling with fear lest they be implicated in the mendacity.

The significance lies in the breaking down of the secret preserve of government cliques over military policy. Whilst these still have absolute command over the deployment of murder as a tool of policy, increasingly, they have been compelled to submit to public opinion. Where before, the lies they told to justify war were mere bureaucratic formalities, blatant excuses for doing what those in power were going to do anyway, now they are the bedrock of mass politics for gaining the necessary public support for slaughter.

Although the powers that be feel confident about their capacity to deploy the mass media in order to dominate the ideas of the electorate, this capacity is not absolute. The machinery of ideology does not run smoothly, and different parts jar and clash; whatever Orwell thought, people do have memories and can spot a shift in the line. The ideas being broadcast by the power-mongers and the mass media have to conform with the expectations of their intended audience, or they won’t work. So, a party that has come to power trumpeting justice and freedom can only sell its wars to the consumers of the justice and freedom line, in those terms.

Hence why the government felt the BBC weren’t supportive enough (even though many outsiders felt that it was overwhelmingly broadcasting to a war agenda, without criticising the government). The relative independence of a media organisation from government means it has to act as the best interpreter of the information to hand, which may not be to the exact liking of state officialdom. If the government cannot give a resolutely clear line – as this one could not – then the media has to flail around in confusion. The biases and structures which help co-ordinate élite control of media are structural predispositions, rather than an automatic chain of command, and there is nothing to prevent one part from accidentally (or otherwise) undermining another.

This is further hampered by the relative freedom of information that the capitalist state requires to function, meaning that embarrassing documents and memos can be uncovered, dodgy deals unearthed. To keep the vast mechanism that is the modern state functioning requires massive flows of information to move around relatively easily. This means that it is difficult to keep the circle of knowledge tight, or to prevent media outlets (and others) from obtaining information from different sources and thus confusing the picture the executive clique want to project. Also, it may not be easy to obtain counter-facts, but they can be found by trying – particularly by determined opposition groups.

What this amounts to, is that to embark on a game of mass deception is becoming increasingly precarious for governments, and each time it is embarked upon, the power of its deception tools wears. People begin to see that they have been lied to, begin to mistrust decisions made by small groups of people in darkened rooms, and the mystique of rule by cabal begins to wane. Mass politics, in short, negates the old style government of the 19th century type that so many prominent politicians admire.

While mass politics – that is, small bands of leaders using the population as an undifferentiated lump to reflect their ideas and policies off – has seen tremendous concentrations of power into the hands of élites, it has also seen these leaders increasingly hamstrung by their need to keep their followers. It has meant moving more and more of politics into the open as the various factions appeal to “the mob” for support on which they can base their careers.

Thus, Blair and his cohorts could not quietly knife the BBC in some darkened room, but were forced into public to rebuke them and openly try and exert power upon them. That is, politics is moved into a level of public consciousness, where the people know what is going on, and feel moved to comment and act upon that knowledge. The old way was of an unconscious politics, where people were kept from power by simple ignorance. The more power is made conscious, the more it highlights those parts – such as the use of secret intelligence briefings by Blair and Co – that are secretive, of which we are kept unaware.

The goal of a genuine democracy would be to make all actions by the community and its bodies consciously controlled by the community as a whole. Our present society clearly falls short of this, with government manoeuvring in the hugger-mugger more appropriate to a military campaign than the life of a community; and unequal electors hiding their votes for fear of retaliation. There cannot be democracy where there is social inequality. Nor can there be democracy where some have access to information denied to others; and can make decisions based on that secret information – able to go on protesting the correctness of their decisions, despite evidence of false claims, because they have more secret knowledge, which they – alas – cannot share with us.

Socialism, as a society of equals involving a common knowledge of what resources are available and the clearly communicated opinions of the members of the community, would remove any possibility of such rule by mendacity. Genuine open democracy means the common voice will be heard, rather than passively echoing the principal characters like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. Taking the decisions away from cliques and into the hands of a community controlling its own world via commonly owned means of production, means we would finally move into a collectively conscious, democratic society.

Pik Smeet

Blogger's Note:

See also: Letter: BBC independence? (November 2003)

Major Douglas rides again (2003)

From the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of our nearly one hundred years of socialist activity, one of the ideas that we have had to deal with from time to time has been currency crankism – the idea that economic and social problems are caused by some flaw in the monetary system and that what is required to put things right is not to get rid of the profit system that is capitalism but mere monetary reform (of one kind or another, depending on which particular school the currency crank belongs to).

Between the wars the most popular school of currency crankism in Britain was Social Credit, based on the ideas of Major Douglas (as he was known). His explanation for the slump – of poverty amidst potential plenty, of unmet needs alongside idle factories and widespread unemployment, of piles of unsold goods being destroyed – was simple, not to say simplistic: it was due to a lack of purchasing power, to people not having enough money to buy what they needed or to constitute a market worth catering for. The solution, too, was simplistic: distribute purchasing power free to people in the form of a “social dividend” paid by the government.

Douglas believed that banks could “create credit” by the mere stroke of a pen, but that they deliberately kept money scarce so as to be able to charge a higher rate of interest. Hence his solution that the banks should be taken over by the government and their supposed power to create credit exercised but in the general interest, as “social credit”.

In fact, there is no chronic shortage of purchasing power. Sufficient to buy the product is generated as wages and profits in the course of production; slumps are not caused by an absolute shortage of purchasing power but arise when, because of falling profit prospects, capitalist firms choose not to spend all their profits on fully renewing or on expanding production. Nor can banks “create credit”; they are essentially only financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest from people with cash to spare and lending this at a higher rate to those needing money to spend or invest, their profits coming from the difference between the two interest rates.

This being the case, the main result of applying “social credit” would be roaring inflation. All the other problems of capitalism, including periodically re-occurring “poverty amidst plenty”, would continue unabated. They will only end when the means of production are brought into common ownership and democratic control so that they can be oriented towards directly satisfying people’s needs – when banks, money and all the rest of the buying and selling system will have become redundant.

Normally, lack-of-purchasing power currency crank theories flourish in times of slump. However, according to an article by Derek Wall, “Social Credit: The Ecosocialism of Fools”, in the September issue of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, the modern-day followers of Major Douglas are well ensconced in the Green Party:

“Brian Leslie, whose parents were members of the Social Credit Greenshirts during the 1930s, chairs the Green Party Economics Working Group. The newsletter, Sustainable Economics, is almost entirely concerned with social credit and Party economics speaker Molly Scott Cato advocates monetary reform . . . Frances Hutchinson, a former member of the Green Party left grouping, the Association of Socialist Greens, has revived the Douglas Social Credit Secretariat . . . Wilfred Price, a member of the Greenshirts in the 1930s, joined the Ecology Party (now the Green Party) in the early 1980s and powerfully spoke for social credit as a form of green politics.”

Currency cranks find it easy to infiltrate the Green Party because of the tendency amongst its members and supporters to blame “big banks” and international financial institutions for ecological problems and the ravages of capitalist globalisation. The Green Party has, for instance, lined up alongside the Tories, the UKIP and other reactionaries in the “defend the pound” camp because it sees the euro as an international (in the sense of anti-national) currency.

Derek Wall’s article concentrates on the political side of Social Credit rather than on its economic fallacies (though he recognises these), in particular on the anti-semitic position it took up between the wars. The title of his article is taken from August Bebel, a pre-WWI German Social Democrat, who once quipped that “anti-semitism is the socialism of the fool”, by which he meant the anti-capitalism of the fool. And it is, of course, a short step between denouncing “global finance” for causing problems to blaming “international Jewish bankers” or some other supposed international conspiracy or cabal. It was a step that Douglas himself took. Wall quotes him as writing in Social Credit (1933):

“In a remarkable document which received some publicity some years ago, under the title of ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’, a Machiavellian scheme for the enslavement of the world was outlined. The authenticity of this document is a matter of little importance; what is interesting about it, is the fidelity with which the methods by which such enslavement might be brought about can be seen reflected in the facts of everyday experience.”

Wall – a Green Party member who describes himself as an “eco-Marxist” – recognises that Social Credit doesn’t have to be anti-semitic and that its supporters in the Green movement (with one exception) are not. His concern is to warn the Green Party and the anti-globalisation movement against embracing monetary reform as a quick-fix solution but also of the dangerous company they risk falling into if they continue down the road of blaming “global finance” for ruining “national” – and local – economies.

Adam Buick