England’s Engineers. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engineers have recently fought for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill. For that particular purpose they fought solidly and well. The masters tried their damnedest to beat and overwhelm them with lies and conquer them with hunger. They placarded the Midland towns with crafty official notices. They tried to split the strike with lies and scorn and they tried to split it with bribes and threats. Yet the engineers ignored splendidly the Government promises, official and outside opinion, together with the cowardly threats.

For years the engineers were half-asleep. Hopefully, innocently, patriotically, they abandoned all those rules which they held to be valuable and precious in their union. Soon after the original sacrifice, as early in the war as the Autumn of 1914, they were bound to the benches and engines by sheaves of laws. Act after Act took away their strength as a fighting union. The men they trusted told them that the Allies could never win the war if the union remained as strong, or the men as free, as in the days of peace, so the engineers, like other large bodies, cheerfully gave over the ripest of their plans of advancement, the richest of their trade-union possessions. For it was promised by those they trusted that not a hair of their heads would be hurt through any concessions they made.

Then Acts were passed in a trice; rapidly passed, almost secretly passed, so that after a few months of warfare the workers of Britain had their customary weapons of defence broken or blunted and the finest of trade union safeguards cast into the official dust-bin. The engineers, like the rest, surrendered the trade-union defences of their personal welfare in what they considered to be the national interest. The unions were emasculated.

Then thought these men, surely there can be no harm in this. By the might of our numbers we can easily enough recover at our will what we give away freely. So they believed the finely-spun tales that were told. Yet still in their minds was a little nervous doubt which a generation of conflict had stamped there. Nevertheless the first months passed away silently enough. This and that call passed ringing through the land. At a word from some chief the munitions wheels went whirring on continuously through a lengthening day. What the engineers had to give they gave generously, without murmur or question. Then England became more deeply involved in the Continental struggle. Side by side with that new vast entanglement came the pinch of direct hardship in the engineers’ conditions. Then they first felt the discomforts and misery of the new laws, which were fashioned in the days they had almost forgotten. There was no relief from their insufferable toil. Holidays were stroked out. The intense strain, which commonly they experience, was increased. The Government pacified them with flattery and their trusted men lectured them on patience. Nevertheless the engineers began to regret the day when they broke their own weapons of defence and made their unions a dead letter.

At last the oppression became so unbearable, the injustice so apparent, that little scrappy revolts and outbreaks ensued. It was seen that trusted and prominent men, both Parliamentarians and trade union officials, were associated with every piece of legislation that fettered the workers more. As these outbreaks were only spasmodic they were easily over-ridden by the ruling class. The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local.

It is the mass of engineers only, and not a locality of engineers, who can successfully fight. Ten thousand engineers on strike in a town may gain something in a month for that town’s men—or they may not; fifty thousand spread over one industrial area may force amendments to an  objectionable Bill from a reluctant Cabinet, while one hundred and fifty thousand men who leave their engines, with all their force concentrated on one particular principle, striking at a vitally important time, stand a good chance of getting what they ask for.

Though at the time of writing there is still some doubt as to the issue, the men may get entirely or largely what they want. Their demands are small. Such a strike is just a little barrier raised against a perfidious and dangerous enemy, a little wall between the engineers and their life-long and inveterate foe, the master class. Soon there will be fights for different purposes, fights for higher principles, fights for nobler conditions, fights for a more peaceful and prosperous basis to life and what not.

The efforts of  the engineers are making for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Act, considering they have no strike pay, considering the domestic suffering, starvation almost, which must follow this state of things, is splendid. But if the strike shows how closely industrial slavery is allied to Parliamentary action, what trivial improvements reforms effect, how unreliable the labour leaders are, it will be invaluable as a practical lesson to the engineers and their kindred of other unions.

Let it be seen, too, that if all the things the engineers demand in this strike are conceded by the Government, still will these proven enemies of the workers be left in full command of the Parliamentary power, which they will use more craftily against the workers at a later date.

However, considering the difficulties in their way, the engineers’ struggle has been splendid. At this point our sympathy with them must stop. They have found no new key to the prevention of these periodic upheavals, in which they fight for ordinary human conditions. They must find other principles for which they can fight as solidly as they have done (up to the time of writing) for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill and the upholding of the Trade Card system.

Slowly, too slowly, the workers are finding out their true friends and true principles, their cunning enemies and their delusive ways. The change they make must be vaster than the repeal or modification of one Bill or the establishment of one unconnected wish. The thing that would bring them rest and peace can be done with one wish stroke. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.

Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting, you cannot help but win.

Read our Declaration of Principles on the back page of this paper; earnestly consider them; join with us and help to establish them. Then will slave and master be abolished, and a real peace come, to all, including England’s engineers.

H. M. M.

The Other Side. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Distressing as the sight is, no one who visits the front should leave it without visiting one of these field hospitals, for otherwise he will see only the glorious and not the sad side of modern war.”—Col. A. M. Murray, C.B. in the “Daily News,” May 21st, 1917.

Correspondence. (1917)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

F. A. H. (Leicester.)—Taking your points in the order in which you give them we append our criticism.

“(1) That social development takes place through the action and reaction of economic and political power.”

This question assumes that there is an “economic” power apart from political power, but this assumption is incorrect. Actually “economic” power is a misnomer, and is merely a term for actions of an economic character which take place under the shelter and protection of the political power.

To take a well-known historical instance : It was not until the merchant class—the forerunners of the modern capitalists—had gained a large share of political power that they were able, effectively, to fight against and finally overthrow, the feudal rulers.

Fundamentally social development takes place because of the continued discoveries and inventions in the methods of producing and distributing wealth. When these changes reach a certain stage in their growth they come into conflict with the social arrangements and order that were made to suit the older methods. To continue in existence society must alter its form and order, that is, re-adapt itself to the new conditions. Obviously the class whose material interests are bound up with the old methods will endeavour to retain and preserve the old form and order of society, while the class whose interests are connected with the new method will endeavour to bring about a change. The power to make this change—since the institution of private property in the means of life—rests in the control of the political machinery, that is, the machinery under which laws are made and the force raised to carry them out. Hence as Marx says: “Every class struggle is a political struggle,” because it is only by obtaining possession of political power that the new rising class can establish the social forms in harmony with the economic changes. History shows this in every change that has taken place in the forms of society since private property was established.

“(2) That each developing class takes the line of least resistance, which is to say, of course, that it takes the one that is open to it.”

Not until a series of struggles and experience’s have shown them the error of various ways do the developing class find the right road—which is really the line of least resistance—for the object in view. Over and over again a developing class has been deceived and misled by the ruling class of its day into taking a road quite contrary to its (the developing class’s) own interests. How often have the modern working class been, misled in this way !

“(3) That the difference of the coming revolution from previous ones lies in this, that some measure of political power must first be acquired, and this results from the fact that in the movements which have previously led to revolutions it was not necessary at their inception to visibly deprive the then ruling classes of property, this being effected by the development of the means of production or the property forms themselves.”

As shown in the answer to No. 1, the idea in the first portion of the above statement is wholly incorrect, and the reason given in the second portion is equally erroneous. To go back no further than the French Revolution of 1789, the feudal owners were completely dispossessed of their property, which was handed over to the peasants under conditions laid down in the Code Napoleon. When chattel-slavery was abolished in America it meant the confiscation of a huge amount of property—for, of course, the chattel-slave was property in every sense of the word—from the slave owners. And this has been true of every revolution in history.

“(4) When the S.P.G.B. is attacked for not defining in detail the method of organisation and procedure, am I right in saying that if their general principles are correct efficient organisation will naturally follow; and to a certain extent the details must be dictated by circumstances yet to arise. Also that their organisation, will be, by its very nature, sufficiently pliable to meet all the needs of the revolution ?”

Your answer generally is right, but it may be noted that a real understanding of correct principles is necessary for sound and efficient organisation. Then the direction of such organisation will be retained in the hands of its members, who may vary its details to suit circumstances.

—Ed. Com.

What Shall We Do About the Falling Pound? (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before 1939 all schoolchildren, including the ragged and undernourished, had shown to them the vast pink-tinted areas on the map of the world that were “ours”. Every child knew also the price of the American dollar in English pounds. Immutably, there were four dollars to a pound. A dollar was five shillings; the English half-crown piece was called, in popular slang, “half-a-dollar”.

No doubt this recollection helps to produce a sense of calamity over the fall in the price of the pound. In June 1972, before the pound was "floated’ by the British government, the exchange rate was $2.60. This year it has gone below two dollars to about $1.80; on 14th May it was $1.8275. The use of the words “weakening” and "strengthening” implies further that these figures are the index of a frightful disease, caused — of course — by the sloth and greed of the working class, and remediable only by a prolonged fast. All of this is untrue. The progressive fall in the pound since the war has been the result solely of policies pursued by Labour and Conservative governments alike. As to how much difference it makes, workers should ask if they were better off when the pound was “strong” and the map was spread with pink.

Prices at a Stroke

A drop in the exchange rate has the same effect as devaluation of the pound. Devaluation was carried out officially, as part of economic policies, by Labour governments in 1949 and 1967. The 1949 devaluation from $4.03 to $2.80 was in fact proportionally greater than the total fall since. At the time, Conservative spokesmen said any more devaluation would reduce the status of sterling “to that of one of the untrustworthy currencies of Europe or South America” and “indeed there would be nothing for this country to look forward to” (David Eccles and Oliver Stanley, House of Sommons, September 1949). Nevertheless, the Conservatives’ floating of the pound in 1972 was done in the knowledge that it could only move downwards, and the result was a further devaluation.

The necessity for devaluation by governments is caused by rising prices. If prices go up markedly in Britain it means that British exports also become dearer and therefore less competitive in world markets; while ether countries’ goods are rendered relatively cheaper, so that imports increase. The result is an adverse balance of payments. In 1948 the dollar deficit ranged from £93 million to £147 million a quarter, and in the quarter before the decision to devalue it was £157 million.

The aim of devaluation is to move towards a reversal of the position. The prices of British commodities abroad are immediately reduced, and foreign ones are made dearer in Britain: exports increase, imports decrease. However, the simplicity of this is countered in several ways. First, because it is a nationalist solution in a world of international competition, ether countries take similar steps. Second, it means that more goods are sold abroad but at lower prices. As Anthony Bambridge wrote in The Observer on 9th May: “Equally, although our exports are much cheaper and more attractive in world markets, we have to sell many more Marks and Spencer pullovers for every ton of iron ore we import.”

Third, the higher price of imports means further general price rises in Britain. It is calculated that every 1 per cent, drop in the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar adds 0.25 per cent, to retail prices in the shops, which gives an addition since the beginning of this year of 2½p. in the pound. Thus, rising prices are by no means cured by devaluation. A company report in The Times on 10th May observed this:

Mr. Tapscott [chairman of Lesney Products] voices a timely warning for exporters about the “dangerous drug” of cheap sterling. As a result of the new collapse in the pound, he declares, it will not be long before the company is paying much more for its imported raw materials and a further twist to the spiral of inflation is begun.

The additional fall of the pound in recent months has not been directly due to government action, of course. The price on the foreign exchange market is affected by companies’ efforts to anticipate developments and secure advantages in trading. The “loss of confidence” in the pound resulted chiefly from commercial selling by firms buying foreign currency for future import orders, and holding it for as long as possible in hopes of a profitable exchange. In this situation, news of the policies of the British government and other governments causes further ups and downs on the exchange market.

Paper Promises

Fundamentally, the depreciation of the pound is due to inflation. Because of the over-issue of paper currency, the amount of gold represented by a pound note has been reduced. This is the sole cause of the massive rises in prices since the war. Before the adoption of Keynesian policies by the governing parties, the issue of paper money was strictly controlled and prices remained stable apart from normal fluctuations. In the last thirty years this long-standing practice has been discarded. Governments have financed their expenditure by borrowing from the Bank of England and allowing more notes to be printed to maintain bank reserves of cash. The result is continuing depreciation of the currency, and inflation: which in turn has led to the devaluation of the pound, whether by government action or “loss of confidence”.

In a recent speech Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Tories’ “shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer”, appeared to know the answer: "Strict control of the money supply had to be an essential foundation of economic policy” (The Times, 13th May). However, he said the control would be restored gradually, and linked with a reduction in public spending and a wages policy. In effect, the Conservatives would follow those aims as far as capitalism allowed. The reducing of public — i.e. government — expenditure is an obvious necessity for dealing with inflation, but to contemplate it puts the Conservatives in the same dilemma as Labour: it means the cutting of education and other services, and the risk of losing electoral support.

Workers should beware of the statements made about inflation and the pound. Don’t accept the glib assumption that “the country” is the people as a whole, that the problems of “Britain” are theirs to overcome. These are the problems of capitalist commerce, whose vision of prosperity is limited to itself just as much as its cries of plight seek to embody everyone. Don’t accept either that inflation prices are caused by “excessive” wage increases. Wages are prices, produced and conditioned by the same factors as the prices of all other commodities.

Still more important, workers should not swallow the idea that if the pound were made strong and inflation overcome they would be far better off. A “strong” pound means a balance of payments surplus and the exchange rate restored to a level of former years, with British goods selling abroad not only plentifully but at higher prices. Imports would be cheaper, and the cost of living relatively lower. Given those circumstances, is it seriously imagined that the capitalist class and its governments would declare the time come for high living? On the contrary, if inflation is halted the present period will provide a myth of the awful consequences of letting workers have wage increases, and a standing argument against such profligacy in the future.

Workers and Wages

One of the purposes of the devaluation of the pound in 1949 was to avoid major struggles over wages between employers and workers. Though it had appealed for belt-tightening, the Labour government hardly dared to try to force down working-class living standards when the wartime and post-war “austerity” period had still not ended. The alternative was to cheapen prices abroad drastically, and hope that this would fill order-books and restore profitability for British manufacturers. In 1976, while the fall in the pound is having the same cheapening effect, the workers are having their wages held down too. Insofar as reductions in government expenditure are made, these can involve additional cuts in living standards, since subsidies and welfare service take the place of additions to wages.

The tragedy is that it is all for nothing. The economic crises of capitalism are not exceptional dire occasions, but its normal working. With or without inflation, and whatever the standing of the pound, the position of the workers is the same. Throughout the decades when there was no inflation and the map was pink, there were high unemployment and low living standards (the Daily Express in the nineteen-thirties advocated some inflation as a means of improving things). There is really no way out of the problems of the capitalist system — except to abolish it and have Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

Karl Marx on . . . (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . Prices

“If the quantity of paper money issued be double what it ought to be, then, as a matter of fact, £1 would be the money-name not of ¼ of an ounce, but of ⅛ of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.”

(Capital Vol. 1, p. 104, Unwin edn.)

. . . Inflation

“The state puts in circulation bits of paper on which their various denominations, say £1, £5, &c., are printed. In so far as they actually take the place of gold to the same amount, their movement is subject to the laws that regulate the currency of money itself. A law peculiar to the circulation of paper money represents gold. Such a law exists; stated simply, it is as follows: the issue of paper money must not exceed in amount the gold (or silver as the case may be) which would actually circulate if not replaced by symbols.”

(Capital Vol. 1, p. 103, Unwin edn.)

Is Money the Master? (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the fact that the great majority of people never manage to obtain very much of it, money is without doubt the dominant thing in the life of everybody.

Those who have little of it are usually those who work for wages producing the wealth of society. Those who have a lot of it are usually those who produce nothing, but who own means of wealth production. Right away a contradiction presents itself. Those who spend their lives working, carrying out all the multifarious tasks in the world, when they come to the end of their working lives have accumulated precious little. Productiveness and possession are polar opposites.

Money is to the system we live under what oxygen is to organic life, the essence of existence. To most people’s minds, money is part of the natural order of things without which continued existence would be impossible. Money, or considerations resting on money, forms the basis of nearly everything we say and do. It is the centre of most everyday conversation. The theme and plot of most of what is euphemistically called entertainment on TV etc. The politician of the system would be speechless if he could not refer to money. Every promise and reform scheme from pensions to pollution and from H-bombs to education is argued in money terms. The reason given for promoting many reforms is to save money. The excuse for not pursuing others is that they haven’t got the money. Which is shadow and which is substance is a question most would find hard to answer. Such reverence is felt for money that its complete artificiality is rarely noticed.

Exchange & Incentive

To establish, as Marx did, that money is a means of exchange, a standard of price and a measure of value, is to raise the question as to why such a medium is needed. Again, most people and certainly the politicians would not answer the question. The working class need money to obtain life’s essentials, food, clothing and shelter. People have to buy and sell in order to live. It is accepted that access to life’s needs is possible only through money. So money is all-powerful. The legal machinery of the state stands ready to punish anyone found trying to obtain goods without money. Another contradiction. If money is there to circulate goods, why is it a barrier standing between you and what you cannot afford—even though you helped produce it?

If audiences in Hyde Park are anything to go by (they must represent a cross-section of the working class) money is the only conceivable incentive for doing anything in the minds of most people. That such a distorted view of life can prevail as popular opinion underscores the fact that the dominant ideas in society are those of the ruling class. (No, this does not rule out Socialism, because ruling-class ideas will cease to dominate when the workers have had enough of capitalism.) The idea that money is the real incentive for doing anything is part of the wider ideology of capitalism, an attempt to justify the profit motive.

The capitalist only risks his money in investments because he hopes profit will be forthcoming. This keeps him on his toes because he has to compete, and profit is his just reward for the service he provides for society. The workers, of course, should be grateful because he provides them with work. So monetary gain, in one form or another, is normal and natural. After all, nobody does anything for nothing. Simple, isn’t it? You must be a crank or a utopian dreamer to advocate a world without money.

Social Relations

The pundits of capitalism can avoid the really awkward questions, because their crude rationalization— the three-card trick—is accepted. Where did the capitalist get the money which he seeks to reinvest for further profit? How did a minority come to own and control the means of wealth production in the first place? Does not man’s development stretch back over many hundreds of thousands of years of communal existence without money, and without private property in the means of production? Were the first class systems (the beginnings of recorded history) not built upon the violent theft of common land and the ownership of slaves? Is the wages system operating throughout the world today anything more than a form of slavery?

The capitalist (state or private) is not saddled with direct personal responsibility for feeding, housing and maintaining his employees, as was the slaveowner. He pays them a wage out of the wealth they produce and which he owns, and they maintain themselves. Also, unlike the slaves of old who changed hands when they were bought or sold by their owners, the modern wage-slave is “free” to hire himself to any capitalist who is interested in his particular skills or abilities. This is what freedom amounts to for the working class.

But while a wage-worker can divorce himself from a particular capitalist, he cannot for long divorce himself from capital. Wage-labour is utterly dependent upon capital. Capital is utterly dependent upon wage-labour. They co-exist in mutual antagonism. Capital can live only on continuous supplies of fresh labour to reproduce it by the creation of new wealth, and labour submits to the draining away of its life- force, because in replenishing the vampire capital it is allowed to maintain and reproduce itself.

Those who believe the money system is natural and eternal have not begun to understand the world they live in, or the many phases of development through which human society has passed. Man did not descend from the trees clutching bundles of inflated dollars, roubles or pound-notes and head straight for the nearest supermarket. The nearest supermarket was about two million years away in the future. The universal rôle of money is a fairly recent development, historically speaking. For the far greater part of man’s existence he has produced the wherewithal of life without the use of money.

Attitudes

“Nobody does anything for nothing.” That is a glib piece of ignorance on the part of those who think money is the only possible incentive, but in another sense it is true. Man has always worked and produced to stay alive. That is not doing something for nothing. Even today, with the prevalence of the perverse attitudes ingrained by capitalism, people do a tremendous amount of work without receiving any money. The satisfaction gained by millions of people from the often back-breaking work of gardening, in many cases, simply to create a colourful display of flowers, is one of hundreds of possible examples.

Buried somewhere deep in the muddle-minds of the money-incentive school is the vague suspicion that work, as employment, lacks any satisfaction and sense of achievement. People only do it because they have to. Perhaps what they are really trying to say is that they can’t imagine any mentally healthy person doing many of the jobs done today, unless made to. Capitalism engenders many such tasks. Jobs that are monotonous, unfulfilling or socially destructive: we might instance banking, insurance, munitions-making and thinking-up fairy stories for TV commercials—there are many more. Work under capitalism means employment, working for wages. Work has lost much of its pleasure for most people. The idea of work (as employment) is not to produce clothing, food or furniture, but to obtain money. Surely this relegation of usefulness and the elevation of money to the supreme position in society, far from being a reason for the universal acclamation of money, is the strongest ground for condemning capitalism.

Very early in his life Marx understood and wrote about human alienation. Marx was a great admirer of the works of Shakespeare, and in 1844 he wrote an appreciation of Shakespeare’s grasp of the nature of money. Marx quotes from Timon of Athens:

Gold ! yellow, glittering, precious gold ! No gods,

I am no idle votarist: roots, you clear heavens !

Thus much of this will make black white; foul fair; 

Wrong right; base noble; old young; coward valiant. 

. . . Why, this

Will lug priests and servants from your sides;

Pluck stout men’s pillows from behind their head;

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed;

Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves,

And give them title, knee and approbation 

With senators on the bench: this is it T

hat makes the wappen’d widow wed again;

She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices 

To the April day again. Come, damned earth.

Thou common whore of mankind, that putt’st odds 

Among the rout of nations . . .

Image or Reality ?

Marx’s essay, where he also quotes from Goethe’s Faust, runs to five pages. Space prevents reproduction in full. It is a stirring piece of writing. A short excerpt might prompt another look at capitalism by some of those who too readily swallow its sales talk.

I am an evil, dishonest, unscrupulous, dull-witted man, but money is held in honour — hence so is its possessor. Money is the highest good, hence its possessor is good: money saves me the trouble of being dishonest, so I am assumed to be honest. I am dull-witted, but since money is the real spirit of all things, how can its possessor be lacking in spirit? More-over, he can buy the cleverest people; and if a man has power over the clever-minded, is he not cleverer than they? I who, through money, can do anything the human heart desires — do I not possess all human virtues? Does not my money therefore transform all my inabilities into their opposite?

Capitalism has the deceptive knack of turning things into their opposites. The imaginary has thus become the greatest reality. Man’s power does not derive from money. The power of money derives from man.

Socialism will end human alienation. In a world based upon common ownership, money will not exist. People will relate to each other purely as human beings. They will co-operate to produce life’s requirements and freely use or consume what they need. Under capitalism, need can only manifest itself through money; capitalism presumes that where money is lacking, no need exists.

Harry Baldwin