Editorial: A budget secret revealed (1949)

Editorial from the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tories praised Sir Stafford Cripps for his “honest and courageous" budget. Loyal Labour M.P.’s rallied round but sadly thought of the awkward questions they would have to answer when next they addressed their constituents. Some blamed him and his budget for causing the Labour Party to lose control of Middlesex and London in the County Council elections. Other aggrieved Trade Union M.P’s, and of course the Communists, raged against Sir Stafford and demanded what they call a "Socialist” budget. Practically everyone assumed that Cripps is the man solely responsible for what the budget contained and it falls to us to reveal that this is far from the truth. But before we divulge our secret and lay the blame where it justly belongs let us glance at what the Cripps budget did. and at the critics who demand a “Socialist” one in its place.

The principal budget changes are the increased prices the workers will have to pay for butter, meat, cheese and margarine because the government will not increase the subsidies on these articles; a reduction of 1d. a pint on beer that the workers drink, and of 2s. a bottle on light wines that the workers don’t drink; an increase of telephone charges; an increase of death duties on the estates of the wealthy; a concession to companies that allows them an increase of the initial tax free amount they may set aside for the depreciation of plant and machinery. .

What particularly shocked the Labour Party rank and hie was that "their own government," while insisting still that workers ought to refrain from wage claims except on special grounds, should itself raise the cost of food by £70 million a year and add insult to injury by the 1d. a pint oil beer and by various concessions to companies in the matter of taxation; and all of this in face of the urgent pre-budget plea by the trade unions for the cost of living to be lowered by abolition of some of the purchase taxes.

Guns before butter.

Now why did the budget contain these things, and not others more to the liking of Sir Stafford Cripps’ critics in his own Party? His own explanation ran on familiar lines. The government, he says, has to meet increased expenditure on the social services (the National Health scheme, etc.), and on expanding armaments to meet the new threats to world peace, and it cannot do this if at the same time it reduces the workers’ cost of living. Or to put it another way, you cannot devote more men and materials to the production of food, and of exports to buy food, if you have decided to take more men and materials for the armed forces and the manufacture of armaments (as a deceased foreign politician once said, "Guns before butter”). Cripps forestalled another line of attack by insisting that it is not possible for his government to go any further in the direction of soaking the rich to help the poor. The rich must be left more or less with what they have and the poor must be patient until such time as they have greatly increased the amount of wealth produced and then some of it will come to them.

This argument fails to satisfy the critics;.they feel there is a catch in it Arithmetically considered, the critics obviously have an unanswerable case. If the rich were brought down to a common level the poor could have more. If armies and armaments were reduced or abolished more food, clothing and houses could be produced. If rent, interest and profits were reduced or eliminated wages could be raised. But we are not dealing with an arithmetical problem. What we are dealing with is the working of a social system—capitalism—and nobody has yet done these things with capitalism or shown how they can be. done.

There have been many Labour governments in different parts of the world but not one of them has ever done these things. They have all put forward the same excuses as Sir Stafford Cripps for not doing them.

Cant from the Communists.

The clearest example of all is that of Russia where a Communist government has had power uninterruptedly for over thirty years. Lenin promised that immediately they got power all managers, officials, etc., would be brought to approximately the workers’ wage. It has never been done. Instead there is the greatest inequality between the masses and the wealthy minority. The British Communists demand of the Labour government in Britain something that the Russian communist government has not done and has no intention of doing. Let the Communists explain why there are rich and poor in Russia—why not soak the Russian millionaires to help the Russian poor? And why not abolish the turnover tax (like the British purchase tax) so that prices paid by the Russian workers could be reduced? Russian State concerns have to make a profit and pay over part of it to the government; and the State concerns and the government pay out vast sums as interest to the bondholders. Why then does not the Russian government abolish profit and bondholding and use the proceeds to raise wages or reduce prices?

The answer to all these questions is that where you have production of commodities for sale and profit-making, where you have the wages system and property incomes, you have capitalism, and those who administer capitalism are forced within very narrow limits to do those things that capitalism requires, those things and no others. Where you have capitalism you nave rich and poor. Where you have capitalist competition for markets you have international tension and must maintain armaments.

It is not our purpose in this article to argue the practicability of Socialism but merely to hammer home the lesson that at present we (and the Russian and all other workers) live under capitalism and from that all else flows. Budgets are the financial arrangements made for the conduct of the Capitalist State and it is childish muddle-headedness to ask that they be transformed in “Socialist” budgets. It is equally unreal to ask that the British Labour government or the Russian Communist government should transform their respective forms of capitalism into Socialism. The great majority of the workers so far do not understand and therefore do not want Socialism and it cannot be imposed upon them against their will and understanding. 

Now we can reveal why the budget is as it is. Sir Stafford Cripps it was who put pen to paper after studying the problems before him, but capitalism and its forces dictated to him what the problems were and the shape his budget had to take. Beside him and backing him stand his fellow ministers, and behind them and sharing the responsibility are all those Labour Party propagandists, delegates and rank and file members who thought that they could run capitalism in a non-capitalist way. They are learning the hard way that they can’t, and are wasting precious years to do it. Any member of the S.P.G.B. could have told them what would happen to their attempt to run capitalism, as indeed we shall remind them again when eventually a disgruntled working class rejects them and they retire to hold a sad and angry inquest into the causes of their failure. They will probably blame Attlee and Sir Stafford Cripps as last time they blamed MacDonald and Snowden but the blame and responsibility will equally be their own.