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Thursday, November 2, 2023

Letter: Booking the cooks (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

In the August Socialist Standard Pathfinders (Meat Into Veg) the author asks what will become of the meat and dairy industry in socialism and says: “If socialists expect a large-scale meat industry they will have to face the fact that there is no ‘ethical’ way to do this.” He or she cites in support an article in New Scientist which argues that free range farming is the most inefficient and intensive factory farming the only logical choice. But the New Scientist article assumes the continuation of capitalist society, with all the constraints and imperatives which it imposes on the sane use of resources when profit is the motive for production. The members of a socialist society would have vastly greater resources to employ – all the resources diverted from the obscene expenditure on arms, the bloated banking system and much, much more.

In an apposite metaphor Karl Marx warned against trying to write recipes for the cook shops of the future. I feel we should take that warning seriously. We don’t know what decisions would be taken about food production in socialism and we shouldn’t try to second guess them. Personally, I would vote for meat production. I might be on the losing side. A socialist who would vote against needs to recognise that they might be on the losing side instead. But all that should be left for another day, in the interest of creating the broadest base of support for socialism here and now.
Keith Graham, 
Bristol.


Reply: 
Fair comment but Pathfinders is a science column with a focus on the future and that is inevitably going to involve some speculation. In this context it is not unreasonable to say that, if the current evidence suggests that socialism cannot realistically provide a contemporary western meat-based lifestyle for its global population, then some level of meat-reduction would be inevitable – Editors.

Cooking the Books: Pocket money (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“TAXMAN WANTS ALL OUR WAGES. We would just get pocket money” screamed the front page headline in the Daily Express (22 September). As the Times had explained five days earlier:
“HM Revenue & Customs is considering plans to deduct tax directly from workers’ pay packets before salaries reach their bank accounts”.
So what’s new? Income tax is already deducted before wages reach workers’ bank accounts, only this is now done by employers not the government. This in fact is one reason why we have said that, as far as income tax on wages and salaries is concerned, workers don’t even pay it. They never see the money. It’s paid by employers.

PAYE (Pay As You Earn) was introduced as part of the war-time Beveridge Plan to “redistribute poverty”, i.e. to try to ensure that the total wages bill was distributed efficiently, from a capitalist point of view, amongst the working class, so that no worker got either too much or not enough to reproduce their working skills taking into account their family circumstances.

Basically, it involved cutting the take-home pay of single workers or workers whose wife worked as they didn’t need to be paid to maintain non-existent dependants. Employers couldn’t be expected to do this themselves as their only concern was the quality of the labour power they purchased, for which they paid the going rate irrespective of the family circumstances of its seller. So it was done through the tax system

The Marxian theory of taxes and the working class is one of the most difficult concepts to get over. Sometimes it’s mistakenly expressed as “the workers don’t pay taxes”. The accurate and scientifically correct way of expressing the concept is that “taxes are not a burden on the working class”.

Even if workers don’t pay the income tax that is deducted from their pay packets before any money reaches their bank accounts, workers do physically pay other taxes. For instance, workers in employment pay council tax in that they themselves have to pay this either in cash or by a cheque or transfer from their bank account.

Workers also pay indirect taxes such as excise duties on alcohol and tobacco and VAT on the goods and services subject to it. These, insofar as they increase prices, increase the cost of living and so the cost of reproducing labour power. This is passed on to employers as higher than otherwise money wages. It is in this sense that taxes on wages and on goods and services workers consume are ultimately a burden on employers.

We’re talking here about average expenditure. Only taxes included in expenditure on goods that enter into the general average cost of living are passed on to employers, not all the indirect taxes that an individual worker might pay. Just because a worker spends more than average on alcohol and cigarettes does not mean that economic forces will lead to their employer paying them a higher wage or salary.

So, yes, individual workers can be affected, adversely or favourably depending on their spending habits, by changes in the taxes they pay. Naturally those who end up worse off will complain, but this is not a class issue as an issue that concerns workers as a whole.

Whether income tax is deducted by employers or by the government is certainly of no concern to workers. What’s relevant is not the gross pre-tax figure that appears on their pay slip, but their take-home pay as that’s what they have to spend on reproducing their working skills. “Pocket money” is rather an apt

Spending challenge (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard
To prepare the cuts announced on 20 October the Treasury issued a “Spending Challenge” on its website for members of the public to suggest savings. Here’s a socialist reply.
The capitalist system has become obsolete for most purposes. It cannot prevent large numbers of the world’s population from experiencing worsening deprivation and misery. This includes Britain, where we face deteriorating living standards as the rich capitalist minority require governments to keep cracking down on the working class majority so that their pig troughs are kept as full as possible. The incomes of the many will keep being squeezed by whichever government is in office so that the incomes of the few on top can be protected and increased. Politicians will tell us all that is needed is better money management, and no doubt, some members of the public will fall for this, and go along with monetary cuts directed against others in their own (working) class.

In reality, what is needed is something that will strike most people as being bizarre and scary when they first hear it. A complete end to money, and the outdated capitalist system that requires it! Here’s a surprising fact. We, the working class majority, do NOT need money to produce all the goods and services that a modern society requires. Only capitalists need money to carry out their exploitation of those able to work and everyone else.

If we reject capitalism and money, and choose a new system (“moneyless real socialism”), how would the jobs that need doing get done? Well, when we are all the direct collective owners of the means of production and distribution (factories, farmland, power stations, rail systems, sources of raw materials etc) we will also collectively own everything that is produced and provided. The food produced in factories and on farms will be ours. The electricity from the power stations will be ours. The trains will be ours. Iron ore and all the other minerals mined from the planet will be ours. You do not have to buy what’s already your property, and therefore, everything that we have to pay for today will be freely available. Obviously, the work will still have to be done, but by doing so, everyone will have the right to a home of their own, the right to take whatever they need from shops (this will not result in blind greed because taking more than is needed will then be daft and pointless), everyone will be entitled to free travel, free medical care and education of the highest standard possible, and much more.

Won’t we have to work far harder? Absolutely not. The opposite, in fact. In Britain alone, there are millions of people doing fundamentally useless money-related jobs only necessary under capitalism (making money, manufacturing cash machines, sales, insurance, welfare benefits, banking, accountancy, debt recovery etc). When capitalism and money are dumped, all these millions of people will then become available to contribute something of real benefit to society. Furthermore, without money- related problems, arguments and crimes, many more people involved in policing, prison work, social work, solicitors, courts etc will also be freed up to contribute. All these millions of extra people, added to the millions of unemployed not wanted by capitalist employers, will mean that the average working week will be considerably shorter than it is now.

Money is not the answer. It, and the outdated system that requires it, is the problem. We need a new economic system, and moneyless real socialism is the only option.
Max Hess

Oil out, guns in (2010)

Book Review from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese and African Perspectives on China in Africa. Eds Axel Harneit-Sievers, Stephen Marks and Sanusha Naidu,  Pambazuka Press £16.95. (Also available as an e-book from www.fahamubooks.org)

There may be a prevalent view of Africa as a continent immersed in poverty, but in fact it is rich in many things, minerals and energy for instance. Efforts by the wealthiest and most powerful countries to exploit these resources have carried on since the end of classical colonialism and the coming of ‘independence’, and these have helped ensure the continuation of poverty for the vast majority of Africans. As China joins the club of developed capitalist states, it also sees Africa as a source of raw materials and a market for exports. This volume gives a wide-ranging overview of China’s activities in Africa, with chapters by activists and academics from both China and Africa. Almost without exception, the most interesting essays are those by African authors, with those by Chinese contributors being largely bland and uncritical.

Bilateral trade between China and Africa has increased over the last decade to more than $US100 billion. As Chinese capitalism expands, it needs to import raw materials of various kinds, and nearly 80 percent of China’s imports from Africa are oil and petroleum products. For instance, 500,000 barrels of oil are exported to China from Angola each day, and it is only Chinese companies, with mainly Chinese employees, who carry out this work, so Chinese industry benefits from both the oil and the extraction work. Furthermore, China is a major producer of wood and paper products, but has relatively little by way of forestry resources, hence Chinese companies undertake logging in Mozambique and Tanzania. Minerals such as iron ore, copper and uranium are imported to China from Liberia, Zambia and Niger.

At the same time, China exports finished goods to Africa. In Nigeria, for example, cheap Chinese textiles have undercut domestically-produced goods, increasing local unemployment. Chinese companies export cheap, and sometimes dangerous, goods aimed specifically at the African market, where consumers have little money to spend.  Arms sales from China to Africa are also an important source of profits, with Sudan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe among the purchasers.

The book contains a few pointless policy ideas, such as the African Union playing a larger role in supervising Sino-African relations. Its usefulness lies elsewhere, in showing the extent to which China is acting in essentially the same way as the other capitalist powers, and how the workers and peasants of Africa remain subject to the exploitation and oppression of both ‘home-grown’ and global rulers.
Paul Bennett

Tiny (URL) Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The anti-Semitic Jobbik party captured 16.7 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in Hungary, next to the Socialists. Unknown vandals defiled the Holocaust Memorial with bloody pigs’ feet. The television channel Echo TV showed an image of Nobel laureate and Auschwitz survivor Imre Kertész together with a voiceover about rats. Civil servants can now be fired without cause. Krisztina Morvai, a member of the European Parliament for Jobbik, suggested that “liberal-Bolshevik Zionists” should start thinking about “where to flee and where to hide.” http://tinyurl.com/36stz7e

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“These are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me,” said Riccardo De Corato, who is Milan’s vice mayor. He later added: “Our final goal is to have zero Gypsy camps in Milan.” The campaign here is part of the most intense wave of anti-immigration sentiment to wash over Western Europe in years": http://tinyurl.com/2vesbpq

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"Some 200 of France’s expelled Gypsies come from Barbulesti, said Ion Cutitaru, mayor of this town, 60 kilometers east of the capital Bucharest. Not all share the view that life is more bearable back home. Cutitaru, a Roma, said about half have already returned to France or other EU nations where begging brings in more money that the meager social benefits available in one of the EU’s poorest members. Long-term unemployed here receive the equivalent of just €10 a month for each child plus other monthly benefits of around €45". http://tinyurl.com/337eeww

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"Ricky Baking is hunched over a tomb with a hammer and chisel. After several determined blows, the lid cracks into three pieces. He opens the rotten coffin to reveal the skeleton of a 65-year-old man, dressed in his burial suit and shoes. Baking steps into the tomb with bare feet, and reaches for the bones.

This isn’t a grave robbery – it’s an eviction. Like everywhere else in Manila, the North Cemetery has run out of space. Up to 80 funerals take place here every day, and demand for plots is so high most people can only afford to rent tombs. If your relatives fail to keep up the payments, another body will take your place. It’s Baking’s job to clear this grave so another coffin can be lowered into it later this afternoon. He’s done this so often it’s almost mundane to him. Land is precious in Manila, and people are prepared to endure incredible circumstances to claim their own piece. Baking’s family is one of hundreds that have set up home in the cemetery, jostling for space with the dead. “It’s much better living here than in a shanty town,” he assures me…" http://tinyurl.com/3y9uzhr

Politics in Africa (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard
Political leaders in Africa are reluctant to relinquish power through the medium of the ballot box.
Africa is a vast continent comprised of nations which because of their colonial past have different histories, just as they have variegated geographical landmarks that distinguish them. Thus African nations do not share many things in common except the forcible grouping together of tribes regardless of the interaction that existed before colonialisation.

 In the attempt to create nations, different ethnic groups have been split between boundaries and the expression of nationalism has therefore not been through the medium of cultural or ethnic identity, but defined within the context of the country in which the language of the colonial master became the lingua franca.

 It is imperative to note, therefore, that such a situation in which countries find themselves has made nation building and African unity a difficult task.

 The political developments taking place in Zambia today are African in nature and therefore similar and comparable to political events taking place elsewhere. In Africa, parliamentary democracy defined through multi-party politics still remains a test case today. Political leaders in Africa are finding it hard to relinquish power through the medium of the ballot box. The current political scenario in Zambia may easily degenerate into political violence if left unabated. The Catholic church and some western NGOs have kept on to criticise the ruling MMD government both through the press and privately-owned radio stations. Radio ICENGELO – owned by the Catholic church has become the mouthpiece of the voiceless people on the Copperbelt.

 The widening gap between the rich and poor is something the ruling MMD government of President Rupiah Banda does not seem to be concerned about. Indeed, privatisation of the Zambian economic sector can only succeed by strengthening the private- and profit-making social sector, otherwise than defending and safeguarding the economic upkeep of the peasants and workers.

 Massive and periodic job losses in the formal and informal sectors of the economy have come to characterise the economic policy of Zambia’s economic liberation ever since the MMD came to power in 1991 to date.  During the leadership of Dr. Kenneth Kaunda education was subsidised by the state and every child had a right to free education from primary school to university level. Every year the UNIP government carried out massive recruitments of teachers, doctors, nurses, policemen and soldiers.

 The change from Kaunda’s “one-party participating democracy” to multi-party democracy saw the implementation of economic liberalism (defined as privatisation) under the MMD government of President Fredrick Chiluba. This entailed the liquidation of state-owned mining, industrial and financial companies. The privatisation of state-owned companies led to massive job losses – in most cases the retrenched workers have not yet received their retirement salaries.

 But we cannot mop up the fact that the UNIP government had experienced economic decline from 1980 to 1991 – the MMD inherited a bankrupt economy as the case may be. But it must be emphasised that the manner in which privatisation was carried out by the MMD was less than transparent.

 It was in an attempt to monopolise power that Kaunda introduced a one-party state in 1973 on the excuse that Zambia was facing tribalism under multi-party politics. He introduced the philosophy of humanism  in order to weld the different ethnic groups together under “One Zambia One Nation”. He declared a state of emergency – political detentions without trial (political criticism was banned). It is a fact that both the ruling MMD and political opposition have shown no restraint in manipulating the masses through feeding them with prejudices against other tribes in order to win their support. Thus tribalistic sentiments in Zambia originate from politicians or political parties. The voting patterns that emerged from the previous three general elections depict tribal and regional allegiances in the sense that people voted on the basis of ethnic patronage.

 Every economic gain achieved under the late President Levy Mwanawasa has been dissipated by the global economic downturn of 2009, making it possible for the PF leader Michael Sata to increase votes in the coming 2011 elections. General elections in urban areas of Zambia are determined by economic factors, especially for food prices, the cost of education and availability of employment. The ruling MMD has concentrated on building roads, hospitals, schools and subsiding peasant farmers in rural areas where the party received massive votes. Working class political consciousness is visibly absent in rural village communities. The failure of African leaders to relinquish power through the medium of the ballot box means that elections in Africa are conducted in a win-or-die situation. The experience of many African nations with regard to their armed forces have been sad in that they have stifled democracy with their intervention, purportedly in their attempt to correct the mistakes of  their political bosses also had failed to adhere to the principle of democracy through perceived violations of the constitution. When military leaders come into power, they not only breach the constitution, they become traitors to the oath of allegiance they swore to the nation.

The reluctance of the ruling MMD to accept the PF and UPND as viable future political options is a bad omen for multi-party politics in Zambia.

Socialism is the only practical political alternative to capitalism and our message to the workers of Zambia remains the same – the creation of a classless moneyless and stateless society.
Kephas Mulenga

50 Years ago: Right to strike (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patrick Neary has been released after spending six weeks in prison. He was the leader of the recent seamen’s strike, and was sent to jail because he did not comply with a court order which told him (in effect) to give up ail connection with the strike. Some newspapers have claimed that he was imprisoned not because he was a striker, but because he disobeyed the court order. This is to reject the substance and catch at the shadow. The reason Neary went to jail was because he had been elected chairman of the strike committee, and had therefore emerged as the figurehead of the strike. The shipping companies wanted to remind the seamen of the Merchant Shipping Act, under which any striking seaman can be sent to jail. As far as the mass of strikers were concerned, the companies were perhaps afraid of having them ail sent to jail, for fear of repercussions: and so decided to call in the state machine (which after all they maintain to look after their interests) only against one man, the figurehead, Neary. Therefore Neary has had to endure for six weeks the vile indignities which are the lot of anyone in jail, because he took part in a strike and was elected chairman of the committee which ran it.

And what happened to the protests which we might have expected? The last war (our leaders told us) was fought to defend democratic freedoms. The right to withhold labour is a central democratic freedom. The alternative— sending men to jail because they refuse to work on the terms offered them by the capitalists—is slavery. But our ruling class had no objection to Neary’s sentence. Their newspapers applauded it. Let us remember this the next time our rulers want our help to ” fight for freedom and democracy.”

(from News in Review, Socialist Standard, November 1960)

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Review November 1971

At Home

Emperor Hirohito of Japan has been in and out of favour with the British ruling class so much that his life has resembled that of the man and woman in the barometer. Before the last war he was awarded the Order of the Garter, which is supposed to be a recognition of a person’s “chivalry” but which is actually one of the gaudy medals our rulers exchange like little boys with cigarette cards. Then in 1941, as his country was fighting against the British ruling class, he was stripped of the order. In April he got it back—and the whole episode serves to underline the true purpose of these decorations and ceremonies which are thrown around and which the popular press make such a fuss about. Hirohito is now, of course, a friend of British capitalism, at any rate for the time being and his visit to this country was designed to ram the fact down the throats of the British workers. Some of them were unwise enough to protest, in memory of the atrocities which parts of the Japanese army were responsible for in the last war. Apart from the fact that these protests were not aimed at atrocities as such but only those committed by the enemy, there was also the fact that the protesters were acting in the customarily naive fashion of supporters of capitalism. The alliances of international capitalism change as the pattern of opposing interests change, so that yesterday’s enemy is the friend of today. It is not stretching matters too far to say that, had Hitler in some way survived the war and the trials which followed, he may have been paraded through the streets of London to display the new solidarity between the two capitalisms. For capitalism does not know principles other than its own sordid motives, which erect no obstacles in the way of one set of murdering bandits embracing another.


Abroad

A recent United Nations report has told us that unless a “mammoth” relief operation is mounted, there will be some 40 million starving in East Pakistan by Christmas. We have grown so familiar to this kind of warning that the report passed by almost unnoticed, as another example of the world’s inadequate resources or its inability to organise such an operation smoothly and in time. That has always been the official excuse, for tragedies such as in East Pakistan, or in natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, typhoons. Yet at the same time as the U.N. report came out, a comparatively short distance away from East Pakistan the evidence was accumulating, that the excuses for inaction are nothing more than lies. In the middle of a desert, among the ruins of the ancient city of Persepolis, the Shah of Persia briefly held court to a gathering of the representatives of world capitalism in conditions of unprecedented luxury. The assembled dignitaries camped out in tents as sumptuous as a palace. They ate food exotic into the realms of fantasy. The whole show, which lasted only a couple of days, cost some £40 million. To get all that stuff out to the ruins in the desert, convoys of lorries rolled out from the Continent every day for months. And the object of it all was simply to show the world that, among the minor powers of international capitalism, Persia has a place. Whether or not that point was made, what was clear was that it is possible to move vast amounts of supplies into difficult places—but that capitalism does not care to do so. When the deaths are counted up in East Pakistan, or in any other similarly needy place, nobody who remembers the junketings at Persepolis should be content with the excuse that it is all an unavoidable accident.


Politics

That strange, light headed feeling we always get at this time of year is relief at the end of the boredom of the party conferences. This year’s were splendid examples of the art of conference trickery. Labour desperately tried to paper over its splits, revealed briefly the flash of knives in the shadows and ended with a marvellously unrealistic list of industries to be nationalised by a future Labour government. Sometimes they mentioned the word Socialism but for all they understood it, or mentioned it in correct context, they might as well have said rhubarb.

The Tories were also in excellent form. This year, remember, they are in power, so the speeches have to be rather different in tone if not in basic content. When they were in opposition we were all being threatened with imminent disasters; now we are all being threatened with imminent prosperity. Barber and Heath both told us all about the golden future which is about to be served up to us and the Chancellor dug up an explanation for unemployment which has been out of use for long enough to sound really fresh. It was all, he said, due to wage demands. The Tories also had their customary hunt for the blood of the criminal, and of course the hats made a wonderful showing.

When capitalism is no more, there will be a good case for keeping these conferences going, for how else will we know what cynicism meant to the people it now deceives and suppresses?

Aspect: Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the failure of the European democratic revolutions of 1848 Marx, in exile in England, decided to improve his knowledge of economics or “political economy” as it was called at that time. The first result of this research, mainly at the British Museum was the publication in 1859 of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*. Marx had intended, as he said in the Preface, to examine various aspects of the capitalist economic system and he listed capital, landed property, wage-labour, the State, foreign trade and the world market. In fact before he died in 1883 he had only got as far as capital with the publication of the first volume of his main book in 1867.

The Critique itself only covered the commodity and money, and is much the same as the first three chapters of Capital (though “exchange value” in the one becomes “value” in the other). In fact it too begins, “The wealth of bourgeois society, at first sight, presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities . . .”, but is a good introduction to the labour-time theory of value, especially as applied to money.

Marx emphasises that money is not just a convenient device for facilitating the buying and selling of goods but is also, as he puts it, “an expression of a social relation of production”. Money, in other words, is a sign that the people who use it have a particular form of society; at the very least it tells us that the means for producing wealth are not owned in common and that production is not carried on according to some definite social plan. The regulation of production by money and the market disguises the domination of the means of production by a minority class.

Marx’s theory of money is that where wealth is exchanged one commodity (or, product of labour produced for sale) will eventually emerge as the one which can be exchanged for all other commodities. This commodity, which acts as a measure of the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent on producing all other commodities, is money. Being the measure of value is the money-commodity’s primary function, but it is a role which can only be played by something which itself has a labour-time value by virtue of being the product of socially-necessary labour. Say it takes the same amount of social labour-time to produce an overcoat as an ounce of gold, then we can say that the overcoat (or 4 chairs or 10 books, etc, etc) is worth 1 oz. of gold. This is its price, the expression of its exchange-value in units of the money-commodity. Being a standard of price and a unit of account like this is money’s second role. The units in which prices are expressed are purely conventional. In our example they are units of weight (which is what they originally were, a £ having once been a lb. of silver) but are now special money-units like cents and dollars or roubles and kopecks fixed by governments. These units can still be related, however indirectly, to weights of gold; the American dollar for instance was for a long time defined as l/35th oz. of gold. Finally, money serves as a means of settling debts, what Marx calls a means of payment.

Originally, the money-commodity itself, usually gold or silver, circulated as the currency in the form of coins. Where this is the case, said Marx, the amount of money that is needed depends on the total prices of all the goods and services to be bought and sold (and the total amount of debts to be settled) and, since coins can be used more than once, on how quickly the coins circulate. Marx rejected the Quantity Theory of Money, at least in the form put forward by Hume and Ricardo which made the price level depend on the quantity of the money-commodity rather than vice-versa.

But, Marx went on, “where paper notes are the sole medium of circulation”, i.e. where the currency is composed of paper notes circulating as tokens for the money-commodity, then the situation is reversed: the price level does depend on the quantity of (paper) money. This does not contradict the theory that the amount of real money is determined in the end by the price level. For the basis of the Quantity Theory of paper-money is that only a definite amount of real money is needed so that, if the amount of paper money issued exceeds this, then currency depreciation—and inflation—will result. This is because paper money is worthless in itself and only has value insofar as it represents gold or silver. If the amount of gold or silver to be represented is given, then obviously the more tokens are issued the less amount of gold or silver each will come to represent. Prices rise because in effect the whole standard of price has been altered.

As Marx put it:
Let us assume that £14 million is the amount of gold required for the circulation of commodities and that the State throws 210 million notes each called £1 into circulation: these 210 million would then stand for a total gold worth £14 million. The effect would be the same as if the notes issued by the State were to represent a metal whose value was one-fifteenth that of gold or that each note was intended to represent one-fifteenth of the previous weight of gold. This would have changed nothing but the nomenclature of the standard of prices, which is of course purely conventional, quite irrespective of whether it was brought about directly by a change in the monetary standard or indirectly by an increase in the number of paper notes issued in accordance with a new lower standard. As the name pound-sterling would now indicate one-fifteenth of the previous quantity of gold, all commodity-prices would be fifteen times higher and 210 million pound notes would now be indeed just as necessary as 14 million had previously been. The decrease in the quantity of gold which each individual token of value represented would be proportional to the increased aggregate value of these tokens. The rise of prices would be merely a reaction of the process of circulation, which forcibly placed the tokens of value on a par with the quantity of gold which they are supposed to replace in the sphere of circulation.
That inflation will be the inevitable result of issuing more paper currency that the amount of the money- commodity which would have to circulate if there were no (inconvertible) paper currency was once recognised even by bourgeois economists. It was forgotten under the influence of Keynesian economics and is only now, after over thirty years of non-stop currency depreciation and rising prices, being rediscovered.

The Preface to the Critique contains Marx’s well-known account of his historical method—the materialist conception of history. The structure of a particular society, including the ideas predominant amongst its members, said Marx, was conditioned by how its members were organised with regard to the production of wealth. This, in its turn, was mainly dependent on technology and the level of productivity. As technology changed and productivity increased so social forces were set in motion which eventually led to a change of society. Marx mentioned four main stages through which human society has passed — later known as Asiatic society, chattel-slavery, feudalism and capitalism—and went on to say that the coming social revolution would end in the establishment of Socialism.

Also published with the Critique as with the original 1904 translation is a document called An Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy which is an unfinished and rough draft dealing mainly with the relationship between production, distribution (defined as a person’s share in what has been produced) and consumption. Though translated on its own into English in 1904 it is really the first part of a set of manuscripts known as “Marx’s Grundrisse," which are only now being translated. The Introduction is interesting in that it shows that Marx would have rejected the orthodox Trotskyist description of Russia as a “contradictory combination of a non-capitalist mode of production and a still basically bourgeois mode of distribution” (Mandel).

Actually, “non-capitalist” is too weak a term to convey what the Trotskyists really have in mind. For they consider that as far as the production of wealth is concerned Russia is a classless society. They do not deny that there is a privileged group in Russia but claim that this group is privileged only with regard to the distribution of wealth. To make this point Trotsky called it a “caste” to distinguish it from a class.

True, classes are defined by how groups are related to the use of the means of production rather than by how they stand in relation to the distribution of the products, but the real question is: Could a class-type mode of distribution exist alongside a classless mode of production?

Marx’s answer can be clearly inferred from the following:
The structure of distribution is entirely determined by the structure of production. Distribution itself is a product of production, not only with regard to the content, but also with regard to the form, since the particular mode of men’s participation in production determines the specific form of distribution, the form in which they share in distribution.
And how in fact could a group be privileged with regard to the distribution of the products without being at the same time privileged with regard to their production? For having the power to distribute products to your advantage amounts to being able to decide what should be produced and so to deciding how the means of production should be used — which is precisely what being privileged in relation to production means. The orthodox Trotskyist analysis of Russia is an absurdity and, as the Introduction shows, quite at variance with Marx’s theory of society.

An introduction by Maurice Dobb and two reviews of the work by Engels complete this edition. Dobb, by the way, seems to imply that commodity-production and money were not central to Marx’s conception of capitalism, but this is what you would expect from someone who mistakenly believes that, although money and commodities still exist there, Russia has abolished capitalism and established Socialism. As Marx always made clear, capitalism is the highest form of commodity-production and money-economy while Socialism by establishing democratic social control over production necessarily means the abolition of production for sale and of money.
Adam Buick

* Just republished by Lawrence and Wishart — £1.50.

The End of “Full Employment”? (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment has been increasing continuously for five years. It was increasing under the Wilson Labour government and the rate of increase has accelerated under the Tories. At first it was noticed that the monthly figures were higher than they had been a year earlier; then they had reached levels which were a record for seven, eight, nine and ten years; and when unemployment passed the 900,000 mark in August, this represented the highest total for thirty years—back  to the beginning of the war.

Normally unemployment is expected to rise in winter and fall in summer. This summer the fall did not take place. The September figure was 280,000 more than in January and about 560,000 above September 1966. It may well reach the million mark this winter.

Every industry has been affected—private and nationalised, old and new. No section of the workers has escaped and some of the most heavily hit have been the clerical, technical and managerial. Many who have lost their jobs have little prospect of ever getting work again at their old rates of pay.

This is not the first time since the war that unemployment has reached peak levels, but the peaks go higher. In the four years 1947, 1958, 1959 and 1962 the average for the whole year just exceeded 500,000. In 1963 and 1967-9 it was about 600,000. In 1970 640,000 and for 1971 it is likely to come out at 850,000.

Of course it will drop back again sometime as markets and production pick up but there are signs that it will run in future years at levels considerably higher than it was in the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, when the annual average was usually below 400,000 and often below 300,000.

One new factor is that employers’ expectations about quick recovery have been undermined by the long duration of the present recession. In earlier setbacks employers expected a quick recovery with a return of labour shortage, and were often prepared to keep surplus staff on in slack times; now it has become the practice to get rid of “redundant” workers immediately.

Why was unemployment relatively low in the early post-war years? Why is it rising now? and what will happen in the future?

Many politicians and economists have had a ready answer. They believed that governments have almost complete control of the situation and can make unemployment as high or low as they choose. This assumed control was not claimed to be total—it would not eliminate small up and down fluctuations and it might take a few months to be effective. In 1957 Professor A. C. L. Day in his The Economics of Money, discussing the pre-1914 ten year cycle of boom and depression, wrote:
“It may now have been mastered as a result of the insight into economic processes which has been acquired in the last generation.”
Even more confidence in what the government can do was expressed in the Sunday Times (24/5/70) when their contributor Malcolm Crawford wrote that American bankers “know that the government can stop a recession of any magnitude, nowadays, at about six months notice”, and that the steps already taken by the American government were “enough to stop the recession”. (Since then Nixon has had two or three more goes “to stop the recession”, but it still persists). The economic backwoodsmen of the TUC still firmly believe in this assumed power of governments.

Naturally, therefore, those economists and politicians regarded the low level of unemployment which lasted for about fifteen years after the war as proof positive that they were right in believing that Keynesian methods had changed the nature of capitalism and that serious unemployment need never be feared again.

The explanation was too simple. From the start it had one major flaw, for the same Keynesian methods were also supposed to keep prices more or less stable and not even the most zealous believer can regard the rise of prices since 1938 to a level four and a half times what it was as price stability. And now they have to explain why the Labour government before 1970 and the Tory government since 1970 could not prevent unemployment rising to levels both say are too high.

The odd thing is that though they claimed to be Keynesians they hadn’t even got Keynes on their side for he didn’t believe it possible to keep unemployment down to two per cent or less, which it was in those years. When Lord Beveridge hoped that, taking the good and bad years together, they could keep unemployment to an average of three per cent, Keynes dissented on the ground that Beveridge was too optimistic. Keynes did not state how much above three per cent he thought it should be but if we assume only three and a half per cent as an average, this would mean a range of, say, two and a half per cent to four and a half per cent. This would mean unemployment ranging from about 600,000 to 1,100,000. So present unemployment is Keynes’ “Full Employment”.

It is interesting to note that in America, where Democratic Presidents have from time to time been said to be operating on Keynesian lines (and Nixon suddenly announced in January that he too had been converted) unemployment in May was at a nine year record level of 6.2 per cent, and Nixon’s Chief Economic spokesman John Connally admitted in a moment of candour that, except in war-time, it has never been below four per cent (Financial Times, 8/7/71). In Britain four per cent would be about a million.

An examination of the causes of low post-war unemployment in Britain was made by Professor R. C. O. Matthews, himself broadly a supporter of Keynes, and published in the Economic Journal (September 1968). His conclusion was that, starting with the stimulus given by making good war damage of all kinds, a major cause was a prolonged investment boom and that “the decline of unemployment as compared with 1914 is to a large extent not a Keynesian phenomenon at all”.

On a comparative basis he estimated pre-1914 unemployment at 4.5 per cent and that from 1945 to 1967 at 1.8 per cent. He expected this situation to continue, but the doubling of unemployment since 1967 has already destroyed the basis for that optimism. On one point in particular Matthews has been proved wrong. He thought that the greater job-security of the post-war years, due to employers retaining surplus workers in slack periods, would continue, but this is no longer true as the hundreds of thousands of redundancies show.

The fact is that some British industries have been losing ground and failing to keep up with the expansion of world markets. Better equipped, more efficient rivals in Japan, Germany and elsewhere have been undercutting British (and latterly also American) companies. The two devaluations of 1949 and 1967 delayed, but did not stop, this drift.

Belief in the ability of any government to secure “full employment” at will soon came up against a complication. The 1945 Attlee government (followed by Tory governments) discovered, as Marx or even Keynes could have told them, that when unemployment is very low the workers are in a better position to push up wages and this combines with other boom developments to cut into profit margins; which in turn discourages capitalist plans to expand industry. So the governments applied their “incomes policies” to keep wages down. It never succeeded for long. The Heath government came in with its alternative, of encouraging employers to show tougher resistance to wage claims, and warning them that if they could not pay their way they must no longer count on the government bailing out “lame ducks”—which also adds to unemployment.

If we disregard the possibility of another world depression like that of the nineteen thirties, present indications are that the years ahead will see more unemployment in Britain, coming nearer to the pre-1914 average of four and a half per cent. But the myth of “full employment” will die hard. The Labour Party and trade unions will go on pursuing it, for—not being Socialist—what else have they to offer?
Edgar Hardcastle

Malicious Damage (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every working day, Bob drives down the long, straight arterial road to the big factory where he peels away from the rest of the swarming cars. He parks his new Escort in the car park which he is allowed to use by virtue of the small circular sticker on his windscreen which the firm give only to the staff. Sometimes the uniformed security man says “Good morning” or even salutes him, which makes Bob feel more like a member of the staff than ever. Through the side door of the huge building he climbs quickly up the stairs to the office which runs the entire length of the building and, although his desk and chair and filing cabinet are exactly identical to the hundreds of others, he finds his way unerringly to his place. He always arrives about ten minutes early so that by the official starting time his desk is perfectly prepared and he has actually started work.

From the filing cabinet he takes out a large bundle of invoices from other firms. Each invoice has an allocation tag stuck to its lower edge and Bob’s job is to sort them out into their various allocations. Some invoices are for production material; others for services like transport, maintenance and so on; some for customs duty or agency. Bob carefully sorts each invoice into its separate tray and every so often a girl comes up to his desk to clear out one of the trays and take away her share of the invoices for processing. And every so often another girl comes, from the mailing department, with another bundle of invoices to be sorted and labelled. The flow never stops and Bob often says, at lunch in the staff canteen which is separate from the works cafeteria where the factory workers and the lower office employees eat, that no matter how hard he goes at it he never goes home with an empty tray.

Sometimes there is a break in the routine; perhaps a question from another department about a missing invoice or a telephone call from a supplier about one which is unpaid. Bob is always meticulous in his investigations of such matters and if he finds that one of the girls has made a mistake he lets her know all about the trouble and extra work she has caused him.

At the end of the day he clears his desk into the filing cabinet and rejoins the swarm weaving down the big road. He is often very tired but usually finds the energy to do any gardening or decorating which is needed. He is an attentive husband and a caring father; a decent, dependable man who wastes the vast part of his waking life in thoroughly useless, monotonous, unproductive, degrading drudgery.

There are millions of others like him. They work in banks, insurance offices, merchant houses; they are salesmen, advertising men, accountants. Their job is to organise the commercial affairs of capitalism — its buying and selling, collecting and paying out money, processing its vast financial machine. To the capitalist system, which produces its wealth for sale, such jobs are very necessary but they contribute nothing to society’s wealth.

For capitalism, which claims to be the most rational social system known to man, wastes most of its productive resources in the field of human labour. Sometimes this takes the form of the slow, grinding waste, like Bob with his invoices. Sometimes it is more spectacular, even bizarre, as food is ploughed into the ground or burnt. For some time, governments have realised that, in the age of Oxfam, the open destruction of food can be politically unwise. From this realisation has sprung the better, more stealthy but equally wasteful, method of simply not producing the stuff.

From this it was only a small step for governments actually to pay food producers for not producing food. Of course this requires a certain amount of administration and somewhere there must be people like Bob who process paper showing how much each farmer who is in the great non-production scheme has not produced and how much he is to be paid for keeping his land idle. Then there must be some check on the few dishonest people (for this, remember, is capitalism) who are sufficiently mean and ungrateful to claim for not growing food when all the time they are growing it.

This is exactly what has happened in the case of the potato growers, who are proving so dishonest that a number of quite advanced checking methods have had to be applied against them. Now potatoes are a popular, nutritious food which might do something towards feeding people, even these like old age pensioners who can’t afford to spend too much on the tiresome business of keeping alive. But when potatoes are produced in plenty they come pouring onto the market, which causes their price to fall and, instead of making things easier for the pensioner, this only makes them harder for the farmer because his produce can’t be sold profitably. The government at present try to protect the farmers from too catastrophic a loss by guaranteeing a price of about £15 a ton but this does not prevent the kind of situation we had in August, when something like half a million tons were destroyed because the market could not absorb them profitably.

This guarantee comes into operation if another scheme, run by the Potato Marketing Board, fails. Under this scheme, growers are supposed to register with the Board the land they want to use for growing potatoes and the Board then decides how much acreage they can each be allowed for this production. In deciding on the land quotas, of course, human needs are not an influence; the size of the market and the expectations of profit are what count. A grower who exceeds his quota can be fined by the Board, who now have a light aircraft equipped with long range cameras spying out the countryside for pirate potato growers. Presumably, if the spying succeeds the price of potatoes will be kept stable — and profitable.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, people are dying of starvation and declining through malnutrition. The effects of the restriction of food production upon them are all too obvious; but what about the effect upon those, better fed, who do the restricting? In the case of the potatoes, for example, the aircraft brings back its photographs which are then marked with potato growing areas and compared with maps showing the areas covered by growing quotas. If the two don’t coincide, a pirate has been caught. What is the effect upon the people who process the photographs and compare them with the maps, who are doing a good job when they catch out a farmer who is producing food, who write up the reports for his prosecution?

Human behaviour is a matter of learning; we take in experiences and sensations which, provided we are capable of absorbing and processing them, modify and fashion our attitudes and our behaviour. This can, and ideally should, be a maturing process in which we acquire knowledge and skills but it can also be inhibiting, for example in the case of the battered baby who as a result of the cruelty it has experienced is withdrawn and mistrustful.

Extending this reasoning, we can ask what effect their work has upon people like Bob and those who work for organisations like the Potato Marketing Board. Is it maturing or inhibiting? Do they flourish or wither, under the burden of their socially useless drudgery? In many cases they respond with a fervent support for the capitalist society which condemns them to their drudgery. In the dormitory area where Bob lives the poor old Labour Party is regarded as dangerously revolutionary. These intelligent people take this unreasoned attitude not entirely in the conviction that in their semi, their insurance policy and their Escort they have something worth defending. Like the beaten child, Bob reacts with a defence mechanism; he denies his problems, denies that his job is useless and boring. He has to believe that he contributes something significant to the social wellbeing because the alternative is too horrible to face.

The erection of this defence may serve its immediate purpose but, again like the child, this is achieved only at some cost. Bob is a damaged person who can be absorbed, even obsessed, with trivia — the hunt for a missing invoice, the tidiness of his desk, the gleaming newness of his car. He is not fulfilling his potential as a person; indeed he would even deny that he had any and adapts himself to wasting his abilities and his very life seated between the in tray and the out tray. A decent man, rather than lower his defences he will accept and defend the obscenities which capitalism perpetrates in the name of profit — starvation, poverty, murder, repression, deceit.

The depressing fact about Bob is that he is representative of his kind; in one way or another capitalism damages all its people and one of the great advances which will come when the system is swept away will be their release. This will not be only a matter of them realising their potential to produce wealth, to design and to beautify. It is also a matter of their development as human personalities, as people. Under capitalism we can hardly guess at what a human being is really like and the world has yet to experience what we are capable of, in terms of co-operation and caring, when we are free.
Ivan

Moneyless or not (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard
“While there is money, there is scarcity”. “. . . Work itself becomes voluntary. The new incentives will be pleasure, pride and social responsibility”
These are among the ideas expressed in the final chapter of the book Play-power by Richard Neville, one of the editors of OZ convicted of producing what the Law regards as an obscene publication.

Quite true; men could use modern technology to design and construct machines to do the boring and repetitive jobs involved in the production of wealth, thus freeing human beings to engage in interesting, creative work of their choice. Employment could be abolished and work become voluntary.

But before this could be done the machines and the other means of production must have ceased to be the property of a privileged minority and have come instead under the democratic control of all the people. Only then could they be used to turn out an abundance of good-quality consumer goods and services which people could use to satisfy their needs. Money would become redundant.

There is no doubt at all that in writing about “a moneyless society” Neville was directly influenced by the ideas of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. For he was quoting with approval from one of a number of articles that have appeared in OZ written by a Socialist (‘The Food Explosion” OZ 19 and 26. See also “Smash Cash” OZ 17).

The only trouble is that Neville isn’t consistent and so gives the impression of having used our arguments merely to justify shoplifting and fare-dodging. People who do this, he says “are training themselves for a moneyless society”. There is of course nothing “immoral” in these practices but they have nothing to do with a moneyless, socialist society, and are practised by many others besides Socialists and those Neville calls “drop-outs”.

Neville’s inconsistency comes out on the very next page where he uses a quite different argument to justify the practice of non-employment (what is sometimes called “refusing to work”). He conjures up the vision of a society where, in order to maintain consumer demand in the face of growing unemployment caused by automation, the State pays everybody a guaranteed income. This would presumably be paid in money, so what became of the moneyless society Neville was supposed to be training for?

We can only say that, if Neville really does believe in a State guaranteed income, he is way behind the times. In this age of potential abundance nothing short of free access to wealth will do. He was right the first time: future society will have no need for money. Today’s notes and coins—dollars and cents, pounds and pence, roubles and kopecks—can be relegated to the museums alongside the Romans’ coins and the South Sea Islanders' cowrie shells.

Socialism and Work (1971)

Book Review from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Future of Work and Leisure, by Stanley Parker. MacGibbon and Kee. £2.25.

This short and (with the exception of chapter 7) readable book is a good discussion of the question of work and leisure. Many of Parker’s points have long been made by us: that work and employment must be distinguished; that working for wages is of comparatively recent origin; that in the sense of engaging in some socially useful activity men need to work; that work can be made pleasant and interesting; that the so-called problem of leisure cannot be solved in isolation from the problem of boring work (and that this cannot be solved within “our outmoded economic system”); that it is wrong to regard work and leisure as opposites since leisure as freely chosen activity can—and indeed should—overlap with work. As Parker says:
The weight of historical, anthropological and contemporary evidence is that, whatever their expressed desires, men in all societies need to have work as well as leisure. Further, in cases where their work embodied many of the values normally associated with leisure, a separate period of time labelled leisure appears to be necessary neither to their happiness nor to their creative function in society.
Actually, all this is no co-incidence. Parker learned most of these arguments while he was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. He himself has chosen not to acknowledge this, though it should be clear to those who know us who are the descendants of the “Marxist socialists” of a century ago who envisage a time “when production is carried on solely for use and not for profit”. So should the origins of the “Marxist phrase” about there being “two classes in society” and of the definition of capitalists as “those persons who possess capital the return on which enables them to live without the necessity of being employed”.

We would not want to pretend, however, that Parker here agrees with us entirely. He left the Socialist Party because he came to imagine that it was possible to transform capitalism gradually into Socialism, and this too comes out in the text.

Parker’s omission of any reference, even in a footnote, to William Morris is also peculiar since Morris’ criticism of those who regarded work even in Socialism as a necessary evil to be reduced to a minimum rather than as an important human activity is the basis of our views on the subject, and so also of those of Parker himself.
Adam Buick

Suez Intrigue (1971)

Book Review from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Suez Affair, by Hugh Thomas. Pelican. 30p.

Early in the morning of November 6, 1956, a combined Anglo-French expeditionary force landed at Port Said. It was preceded the previous day by the capture of various strategic points by British and French paratroops. The Suez war had begun.

The immediate background was about six months of intrigue and collusion between Britain, France and Israel, with the most elaborate attempts at deception which would have done justice to a comic opera, were it not so serious. The aftermath has been fifteen years long, so far, with the Israelis firmly ensconced in the Sinai Peninsula and talks dragging on endlessly about cease fire, future boundaries, etc.

Hugh Thomas in this book recently republished as a paper-back, deals in some detail with the British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt, but it really doesn’t add much more to our knowledge of the incident than was supplied by the Bromberger Brothers in their Secrets of Suez (Pan Books 1957)—incidentally a much more readable work. It is just that Thomas has the advantage of a great deal more hindsight than was available to the Brombergers. Nobody now denies that there was collusion between the Israeli and allied Governments; in fact Moshe Dayan has openly admitted it.

Nevertheless, Thomas has managed to unearth some interesting information on the rifts and dissensions among the various members of Anthony Eden’s cabinet, not to mention the double-talk and double-crossing between America and others. There is the rather surprising revelation however, that the American government were caught unawares by the allied action.

The story of the “police action”—as it was euphemistically styled at the time —is distressingly familiar. When the Egyptian rulers seized the Suez Canal, this was seen as a direct threat to British and French capitalist interests in the area. Indeed, so seriously did they view it, that they were prepared to go to war. As Eden said at the time: “Suez is a question of life or death for us”.

Additionally, the French were pre-occupied with their problems of rebellion in Algeria and suspected Nasser of sending help to the rebels. Those who recall the period, will remember the 24-nation conference and proposals for the international control of the canal, but all to no avail.

The Egyptian ruling class saw the canal as a rich and easy source of revenue and were not prepared to relinquish their hold. Perhaps their action in seizing the area was precipitated by the refusal of all the great powers at the time to help with the Aswan Dam project. The greater probability is that they would have nationalised the canal sooner or later anyway. This is a method of grabbing foreign capitalist assets, common enough among the newly formed states in recent years.

Incidentally, in the period that followed, it was Harold Wilson’s habit to refer contemptuously to the Tories as “Men of Suez”; this book is a timely reminder of the Labour Party stand over the whole Suez action. The parliamentary party, at least, was just as nationalistic as the Conservatives, and was certainly not opposed to the use of force in principle. As the author points out, what they wanted was “legalised” force. —prior United Nations sanction for any military action.

Hugh Thomas tells us of speeches in favour of this by Gaitskell, Bevan and other Labour leaders of the time. It was a pathetic and ineffective gesture and did nothing to halt the affair. In the event also, it seems they underrated the amount of popular support for the government’s action when it came to the crunch.

The establishment of Israel over twenty years ago was supposed to be an answer to the chronic problems of Middle East conflict, but the problems are there today as harrowing as ever, as the various capitalist powers jostle for elbow-room in the area. Ernest Bevin staked his political reputation on the post-war attempts at settlement. Perhaps it is a pity he is not with us today to read this book, and to see the bitter mockery capitalism has made of his efforts.
Eddie Critchfield

Communal Housing (1971)

Book Review from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communal Housing, from M. Braido, 34 Ennismore Gdns., S.W.7. (Duplicated 25p).

The report has been published by a small group of people who have formed a Housing Association to facilitate the provision of communal housing accommodation in the London area. It is well researched and written with plenty of references for those who want to study the matter in more detail. Part of the report contains useful information on the practical problems of finance, building conversion and legalities, but it is that part which argues the case for communal housing that is more interesting to read.

The report clearly shows just how restrictive, in comparison, is the typical family unit housed in a flat or semidetached, and puts forward very convincing evidence for the view that communal housing groups would provide a much more diverse and stimulating atmosphere for adults and children alike. The demoralising effect of most institutional housing for old people, those suffering from mental ill-health, and others is dealt with, and the superiority of mixed communal groups for such people illustrated. It is suggested that voluntary groups of this kind could re-create many of the benefits of the “extended family” whilst avoiding the problems that arose from its compulsory nature.

Communal housing groups are no cure-all. Their members still have to work for wages to secure the rent, and relationships within the group generally are most strongly affected by external factors, but the growth of interest in ventures of this kind indicates just how much the existing social relationships are being recognised as restrictive of further human advancement. We can only hope that those who read this report will apply some of the same thinking outside of the housing field to society as a whole.
M. B.

SPGB Lectures and Special Meetings (1971)

Party News from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard


Blogger's Note:
  • The first two issue of the Swedish Socialist journal can be read at the following link.
  • Mention of Harry Baldwin doing a meeting on the Oz magazine reminds me that David Ramsay Steele's article, 'Smash Cash', appeared in issue number 17 of Oz magazine in 1968.