Running Commentary: Myths of equality (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Myths of equality

Do not believe the common myth that we are no longer living in a class-divided society. Class is not about being “classy”. It is not something you can take on or reject. While there is still the institution of property in human society we are all born into families who either do or do not possess it. The Low Pay Unit has just produced Low Pay Review 4, which shows that the lowest paid workers today are relatively worse off than the lowest paid in 1886, when figures were first collected. More wealth is produced today than a century ago, but those who are born to no property and are therefore forced to go out and work, producing that wealth, now receive proportionately less of it.

Mr. Chris Pond, director of the Low Pay Unit, comments: “The government’s assertion that workers could protect their jobs by cutting wages is a cruel deception. It is in those industries in which wages have fallen furthest, precisely because of the reduction in demand for the goods and services produced, that have faced the biggest job losses” (Guardian, 2/6/81). And do not forget the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, which reported in 1979 (after five years of Labour government) that the richest one per cent in Britain own more wealth than the poorer eighty per cent.

Against this background, which is based on a minority class owning stocks and shares and other property, and deriving a vast unearned income from employing the rest of us, the “European Socialists” tell us to pull in our belts still further. On 28 April this year, an Amsterdam conference of the “Socialist International” agreed unanimously that “the time had come to promote wage controls firmly linked to economic democracy” (Guardian, 29/4/81).

Are you trying to escape from this wage-slavery which is imposed upon us? The Pearl Assurance Company has recently been advertising what they call the Capital Accumulator Plan. Basically, this means workers struggling to save up their hard-earned cash for them to spend on a few trinkets just before they die. We can be sure than Pearl shareholders, among others, will be profiting from the process.

But don’t they know there is a far more reliable “Capital Accumulator Plan”? It works like this. You inherit a few million pounds (be sure to choose the right parents) or, perhaps rob a few banks (be sure not to be caught and incarcerated). Then you employ (exploit) a few thousand workers (who chose the wrong parents) and accumulate a few million more. At the moment, there are dozens of annual Company reports being published which illustrate the process. Just take one example. Mothcrcare. Profit after tax: £8,634,000. Earnings per share: 13.39p. Dividends per share: 5p. Mr. S. Zilkha and Mr. E. Zilkha, both on the Board, have between them 11,478,776 shares. Their dividend will be £573,938.80. Their earnings will be £1,537,008. They are not employees, they are owners. They do not produce, they possess. “Profit per employee” is declared to be £4,422 for the year. Each worker, then, was paid just enough to keep them fit to work, and produced about as much again on top for the benefit of their masters. That is what is known as “Civilisation”.

Take power

The Child Poverty Action Group has produced a report. Poor and Powerless, showing how the gas or electricity is being cut off in more than 770 households each day because the families concerned cannot afford to pay the bills. This is in spite of the fuel industry’s Code of Practice introduced in 1976 supposedly to reduce the hardship of those very people. The reductions in the real value of child benefit, unemployment benefit, sickness and industrial injury, and maternity benefits together with cuts in the real value of wages, have contributed to worsen the situation since the onset of depression, For example, [ . . . ] disconnected 37,648 people last year, more than three times as many as in 1978. The report quotes particular cases, such as one low-paid family of six children, one of whom had just been discharged from hospital after a bone marrow operation, who were cut off for a gas debt of £17.

The piecemeal suggestions of the CPAG, such as forcing the fuel industries to obtain court orders for such cases, or raising benefits to low-income families, will not remove the problem. As long as people are dependent on employers or the state for a meagre income, poverty will remain an integral aspect of society. Only in a classless society, where everything is owned in common, and resources are freely available to all, will we be able to feel properly secure. As long as the profit system is retained, workers’ living standards will be cut down to the minimum that the employers can get away with it.

American fuel companies have a mechanism called a service limiter adapter. In most parts of America, it is illegal to cut off consumers’ power supplies, so they have found this simple way round it. The adapter can reduce the supply in varying degrees, so that particular appliances cease to function one by one. One New York official has said: “The great attraction is that defaulters face an uncomfortable time without lives being put at risk in freezing weather conditions”.

Sick society

The Office of Health Economics have reported that work days lost through sickness for March 1981 are 21 per cent below the average for the same month over the past four years. The drop coincides with a one million rise in unemployment and the report suggests that high unemployment has made people so afraid of losing their jobs that they may be going to work even when ill.

If not, however, perhaps they can become ill once they get there. The CBI, the Chemical Industries Association and the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries have mounted a vigorous campaign against proposed regulations to protect workers from dangerous chemicals. Section Six of the Health and Safety at Work Act, if it is passed, would prescribe the testing of certain chemicals used in industry, such as Dioxin, used in pesticides, which causes miscarriages and deformed births. “Tightening controls will involve the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in added cost, and this is the core of their objection” (Guardian, 10/8/81). In a confidential memo to members in June, the CBI stated: “CBI is likely to challenge the philosophy underlying the new controls . . . Industry has consistently opposed over-regulation and unnecessary bureaucratic controls by governments in the field of harmful substances”.

In a society of common ownership, production would be solely to satisfy human needs, and not for the profit of a minority. Under democratic control, work can become a pleasure in itself. But when it is owned and controlled by the likes of the CBI, the slogan is wealth before health.

Housing

Speaking of wealth, the Daily Mail did an interesting profile of Michael Heseltine on 17 July. It showed how the man who was sent to Liverpool to work out for his Prime Minister the puzzle of why people living in slums are frustrated, has four houses himself. One in Belgravia, worth £600,000, a country estate in Oxfordshire worth £750,000, a £100,000 “hideaway” in Exford, and a smaller place in Swansea, “not for personal occupation”.

He took some of his fellow capitalists on a bus-trip round Liverpool to see how the other sort live, and to work out how to buy off their discontent. The same issue of the Daily Mail reported on the court case involving Per Hegard, the “man who could buy everything”. His ownership of several companies allows him to live off the work of thousands, riding on their misery. He has six Rolls Royce cars, three yachts, two jet planes, half a dozen mansions and a £15,000 cigar bill.

Those who work to create Hegard wealth for him have least and suffer most, and it is in defence of the property of such people that millions die in wars fought over the control of markets; and his grasping need for profit causes pollution, industrial danger, poverty, destruction and waste.

The World Bank's World Development Report for 1981 refers to the millions living and dying in extreme poverty, and contains two predictions, one “optimistic” and the other less so. The optimistic forecast is that by the end of the century the number on the verge of starvation will fall from 750 million to 630 million. On the other hand, they say, it may rise to 850 million. But it is in our hands to make it fall to nought immediately, and to end all poverty and war, if we combine to end the profit system and create a community where wealth is produced freely for direct use according to needs.

Clifford Slapper

Reagan's new bomb and how to fight it (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a time when governments are pleading with unemployed youths not to commit acts of violence on the streets, President Reagan has announced that the United States government intends to proceed with the manufacture of the neutron bomb.

The new weapon (officially known as an Enhanced Radiation Warhead) has the unique capacity to kill people while leaving property intact. By emitting an intense lethal pulse of neutron radiation, the weapon has the necessary radio-active potentiality to destroy urban populations, but leave the surrounding cities standing. According to US army field manual 100-5, published in July 1976, the new bomb is an effective killer:

A one kiliton neutron artillery shell can release about 8.000 rads. An active soldier suddenly exposed to 3,000 rads could become incapacitated within 3 to 5 minutes. He may recover to some degree within 45 minutes, but, due to vomiting, diarrhoea, and other radiation sickness symptoms, he would only be partially effective until he dies within about a week.

It is a tragic symbol of the perverse use of modern technology, which could otherwise be applied to feed the thirty million people who die of starvation each year. But what else should we expect under a social system where life has always had to come second to the needs of capital? Labour is cheap and replaceable; not so factories and machinery.

If there is another world war—which is always a distinct possibility so long as society is organised on the basis of a mad race for profits—it is unlikely that modern nuclear weapons will remain unused. Of course, even a third world war involving the conventional military strategy employed in Dresden in 1945 (which killed more people than the Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki) would be far worse than anything experienced throughout most of the last two world wars. But in all probability; the next world war would involve the use of weapons of hundreds of times more destructive power than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many military strategists, especially the Chinese, regard such a war as being inevitable. It is easy to be emotional about this prospect, but by any objective reckoning millions of human beings would perish if nuclear weapons were used in a future war. And despite dishonest and hopelessly inadequate government plans for civil defence, it is very likely indeed that those who survive such a holocaust will envy the dead.

It is assumed by some people that a third world war will never happen because governments will not want to see the level of destruction to their own property which such devastation would cause. It is argued that by pressing the button on hundreds of thousands of profit-producing wage slaves the capitalists will be killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Such an argument fails to recognise the anarchy of the capitalist system. Capitalists do not want to fight expensive and damaging wars but, when economic rivalries within the capitalist class intensify, war is the only way open to them.

If there is a third world war, the main concern of the capitalist class will be to get their industries back on to a profitable basis as soon as hostilities are over. It is quite possible that a nuclear war could be fought without the majority of the world’s population being killed. A nuclear war might take place in Europe, with millions perishing either side of the Iron Curtain. Foreseeing such a situation the American and Russian imperialists, both equally concerned with expanding their areas of territorial domination, both want to ensure that the areas hit by their weapons will be industrially operable once the war is over. This is the great value of the neutron bomb: having killed enough people to assure surrender, the factories and machinery would remain intact.

Despite the fact that many people have fallen for the pernicious government lies that bombs are a means of preserving peace and that so-called civil defence will protect them in the event of a third world war, an increasing number of working class people are opposed to the ever-increasing weapons of destruction. It is a pity that so much energy is going in support of reform bodies like CND which are wholly bankrupt of any real policies which can avert the threat of war.

To eradicate war and all of its grotesque weaponry requires more than moral indignation. Modern wars are fought under particular economic conditions and it is only when we eradicate those conditions that we can live without fear of war. In the capitalist system which exists throughout the world today in the misnamed Communist countries as much as anywhere—the ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth is in the hands of a small minority. This minority—the capitalist class—is divided into competing blocs, each fighting one another over markets, raw materials and strategic positions. On the other hand the working class constitutes the vast majority of the population of the earth. Between us, we run society from top to bottom, but we do not own much of the social wealth. We do not have property to protect. We do not have overseas investments to fight about. We do not have working class enemies in Russia or China or America who we want to fight with. Fighting wars is never in the interest of the working class. It is a sacrifice of our own class interest for that of the owning class.

But CND, and all other bodies which urge us to protest about the symptoms of the system while leaving the disease intact, divert many well-intentioned workers from their real enemy which is not simply the existence of bombs, but the existence of the profit system. In The Guardian (5/8/81) a group of well-meaning reformists published a draft letter which all readers were asked to post to President Reagan. Its effective message was: ‘Please, Mr. Reagan, we don’t want to be blown up by nuclear weapons. Will you do something to make capitalism a bit safer for us?’ Such a futile plea leaves several questions unanswered: Who elected Reagan, Thatcher and the other leaders? Who is it that produces the armaments? Who provides the political consent which allows governments to pursue their militarist policies? The fact of the matter is that the working class does these things; the workers support capitalism every time there is an election; and bodies like CND openly claim that members of any party may join them because CND does not take a political stance. War will only be eradicated when the majority of the working class does take a political stance in favour of production for use and against the system which puts profits before need.

On the day BBC radio announced that Reagan had given the go-ahead to the neutron bomb, there was also a news item that bubonic plague had been detected in a wood rat in the vicinity of Reagan’s country retreat. The President’s men, it was reported, were out shooting wood rats in the area around the retreat so as to kill off the disease at its source. The working class can learn a lesson from this. The bubonic plague is a natural disease, but it can be eliminated by eliminating its source. Neutron bombs, nuclear fall-out and napalm are not natural diseases, but they too can only be remedied by removing the system which gives rise to them. Unless, of course, you are a skyscraper or a tank, in which case neutron bombs are not reported to be damaging to your health.

Steve Coleman

The Failure of Reformism (1981)

From the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

If, during an election, you sit back and analyse what the various rival candidates are really saying you will find that virtually all of them share the view that the government has the power both to control the economy and to solve social problems. The promises they make are based on this assumption; so are the criticisms they direct at each other, all of which boil down to “you are a bad government” or “you were a bad government” or “you would be a bad government”.

This illusion that governments can solve economic and social problems—because it is other governments that cause them—is not just shared by politicians and their parties but by the vast majority of ordinary men and women, as any conversation about politics quickly reveals. Even those who appear to be the most critical of politicians and governments share the illusion. “They’re all corrupt” suggests that if all politicians were honest then things might be different. “What we need is a government of experts” suggests that things might be different if those who run governments were more competent. “We need a strong government” suggests that the problems are caused by weak governments.

That governments—all governments—have failed cannot be denied. Over the years all sorts of policies and political combinations have been tried, yet the same problems remain. Unfortunately too, most people still seek explanations in the realm of capitalist politics—bad policies, bad politicians, bad political structures—rather than considering that some other factor, such as the way society is organised, might be responsible.

Economic Laws of Capitalism

Governments are not in fact free agents that can do what they want. They operate within a definite economic and social system which severely limits their field of action. Present-day society is capitalist, in which wealth is produced not to satisfy human needs but to be sold on a market with a view to profit. Under capitalism the means for producing wealth are not the common possession of the whole of society but are monopolised, either as individuals or through the state, by a minority who thereby form a privileged class. The rest of society, the vast majority, can only get a living by selling their ability to work (their skills and knowledge) for a wage or salary.

Capitalism is a class-divided and profit-oriented society. It is an economic and social system which works according to certain definite economic laws-governing the level of economic activity, what is produced, prices and so on-laws which can be studied and understood but which cannot be changed. Basically, capitalism works in such a way that priority has always to be given to profit-making over human needs. Of course human needs are met to some extent but, as far as the wage and salary earning majority are concerned, in a quite inadequate way, as is shown by the persistent problems over such basic needs as housing, health and education.

Because capitalism is a system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit, its whole economic mechanism is necessarily governed by the search for profits. Priority has to be given to profits as they are capitalism's life-blood. This is the system’s economic logic, which imposes itself on individuals and governments whether they like it or not. As long as capitalism lasts there is nothing that can be done to change this; governments must not only respect this logic but also apply it. They can try to avoid this—as some have done for a short while—but in the end they have to accept the logic of capitalism that profits must come first.

The “housing problem” could be solved tomorrow if production were allowed to be carried on simply to satisfy human needs. The building materials to provide a decent home for everybody exist; so do the building workers. What prevents this happening is the economic law of capitalism which says that profits must be made out of producing things; and there is no profit in producing decent homes for people who can’t afford them. It is the same story in other fields such as health, education and the environment. Human needs are taken into account only to the extent that people have the money to pay for their satisfaction. If they do, then they constitute a market, supplying which is a potential field for profit-making.

For people’s needs to be met they must have money, but the amount of money most of us have is limited by the size of our wage packet or salary cheque—by, in other words, the proceeds of the sale of our ability to work to some employer. But, once again, this is something that is strictly governed by the economic mechanism of capitalism. Prices—and a wage or a salary is a price, the price of a person’s skills and knowledge-are not fixed arbitrarily, but depend on the average amount of labour expended to produce the commodity in question. In the case of a person’s ability to work this is the average amount of labour needed to produce the food, clothing, shelter and so on that the worker and their family need to live, together with the labour cost of the particular trade or skill. This is why the consumption of the wage and salary earning majority is restricted to more or less what they need to keep themselves fit to work. It is an inevitable economic consequence of their mental and physical energies being, like everything else under capitalism, a commodity bought and sold on a market.

But there is a further reason why the consumption of wage and salary earners must be restricted under capitalism. Profits are realised (converted into money) when a commodity is sold, but they are created when the commodity is produced. The source of profits is the unpaid labour of wage and salary earners; it is that part of the new wealth they produce over and above what they are paid in wages and salaries. So the latter can never rise too high since, in doing so, they eat into profits—the life-blood of capitalism. If this happens in a particular industry or country then production is cut back, workers are laid off and unemployment grows. The larger pool of unemployed acts as a downward pressure on the wages of those still employed, so tending to restore the original wage level. For wage and salary earners there is no escape from this vicious circle.

The International Dimension

Governments are also compelled to restrain wages and salaries by international competition. Capitalism exists all over the world, in countries like Russia and China (in the form of state capitalism) as well as in admittedly capitalist countries like Britain and America. But it is not a collection of separate capitalist societies each existing within the frontiers of the more or less artificial states into which the world is divided. Capitalism exists as a single world economic and social system, of which “Britain”, “America”, “Russia” and so on are merely parts. So, even if governments had the power to control economic activities within their frontiers (which they don’t), this would still only give them control over a very limited part of the world economy. They would still be at the mercy of external economic forces.

This is a very powerful restricting influence on the freedom of action of governments. Though rarely mentioned by politicians and their parties when making election promises, it is sometimes invoked by them when it comes to finding excuses for failure. “We have been blown off course”, they often explain correctly as it happens, since the pressures exerted by the world market on governments are so immense that they virtually dictate what policies they should pursue, at home as well as abroad.

Profits, we saw, arise out of the unpaid labour of wage and salary earners and are realised only when the goods in which this unpaid labour is incorporated are converted into money; when, in other words, they are sold. Capitalist enterprises, including those owned by states, compete against each other to sell their goods so as to realise the profits incorporated in them. So competition on the world market is not just competition for sales; it is above all competition for profits.

Any national government has to respect this and to help the efforts of the enterprises within its frontiers to amass as much profit as they can. Indeed, this can be said to be the role of governments within the world capitalist economy, which prevents them ever solving the problems facing wage and salary earners. For to protect and enhance the competitive position of enterprises within their borders, governments must help to restrict the consumption of wage and salary earners to no more than is necessary to ensure their productive efficiency. But it is precisely this restricted consumption that is the social problem facing wage and salary earners, of which shortages and inadequacies in housing, schooling, health, the environment and so on are but aspects.

If wages and salaries rise too high, then the competitive position of enterprises is undermined through cost increases. Government spending on social reform measures—building more houses, increasing pensions and allowances, providing better health services, improving educational standards, cleaning up the environment and so on—is restricted by the same economic mechanism. Government spending is financed either by taxation or by inflating the currency. High taxation causes capitalist enterprises to suffer because all taxes fall in the end on profits. Inflation raises the internal price level above the world level, making exports less competitive.

So the economic laws of capitalism not only act against wages rising too high; they also prevent governments spending too much on social reforms. In fact, in the long run, only those social reform measures which pay their own way, in the sense of increasing the productive efficiency of the workforce, are passed and maintained. Examples are: education to ensure better trained and more skillful workers; a health service to patch them up quickly so that they can return to work; social security schemes to try to ensure that their working ability does not degenerate in periods of non-employment. And if a government has miscalculated and proved to be too generous—as over the National Health Service introduced in Britain after the last war—then the situation is sooner or later corrected by the reform either being drastically cut back or slowly whittled away.

We can now see why the needs of the majority are not adequately met under capitalism and, what is more, why they never can be. The problems wage and salary earners face in meeting their needs—in housing, health, education, transport and the like—are inherent in capitalism. They arise from its very basis as a class-divided, profit-oriented society and cannot be solved within its framework.

This is why politicians and governments fail. It is not because they are corrupt or incompetent or weak. It is not because outdated political institutions and structures impede them. In fact it has nothing to do with politics at all. In trying to make capitalism serve human needs (which is basically what they are doing when they try to solve social problems) they are attempting the impossible. Capitalism simply cannot be reformed so as to serve the interests of the majority of its members—those who work for wages and salaries.

Opposition to Reformism

Once it is realised that capitalism’s basic nature can never be changed by reforms, then the futility of reformist politics becomes obvious. Governments which pass reform measures to try to solve social problems are like a doctor applying ointment when a surgical operation is called for. They are dealing with effects while leaving the basic cause unchanged—a certain recipe for failure since the same cause is bound to go on producing the same effects.

The social and economic problems facing wage and salary earners can only be solved by the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by a new and basically different social system in which production will be carried on solely and directly to satisfy human needs. This is why socialists refuse to advocate or support reforms to be implemented within capitalism, which distinguishes us from all other parties and groups, even those claiming to be “revolutionary” and “anti-reformist”.

This does not mean an opposition to all reform measures being implemented. Some reforms can bring slight temporary relief to groups of wage and salary earners and, knowing the difficulties of living under capitalism, socialists don’t begrudge this. What we are opposed to is advocating and campaigning for reforms, since seeking reforms of capitalism is a misuse of time and energy which can at best result only in a temporary alleviation of the situation. Then there is the fact that most reform measures are passed to smooth out some problem of one or other section of the capitalist minority rather than to alleviate the lot of the wage and salary earning majority. If all the time and energy devoted over the years to trying to get reforms had been directed towards getting wage and salary earners to understand the need to replace capitalism by socialism, then socialism would have been established long ago; the housing problem, the education problem, the health problem, the environment problem and all the other problems we face today would be ancient history.

Adam Buick