Routine and complex labour (2007)

Book Review from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

How to make opportunity equal: race and contributive justice. By Paul Gomberg. Blackwell, 2007.

The author of this slimmish book is a black American philosophy professor. He discusses race or racism on nearly every page, at one point making the extreme claim that “Race is class made visible and vicious.” But race is arguably not the main theme of the book. Gomberg believes that “we need to share labor, including the boring work most of us like to avoid, if everyone is to have an opportunity to develop all of their abilities.”

The good news is that the author knows something about socialism and appears to like the prospect: “Imagine a society without markets and their insistence on productive efficiency. Production may be oriented toward meeting needs, not producing whatever can be sold profitably to those with money.” And “We each benefit from the production of needed things because we each receive from the common stock.”

But the bad news is that other passages in the book reveal his confusion about what socialism means: “Market socialism does not abolish this norm [that each advances economically by their own efforts] but shifts the locus of responsibility from the individual to the worker-run firm.” And Gomberg writes about “large working-class socialist and communist parties” in Europe, parties that may be given those labels but actually support some form of capitalism.

Gomberg writes much about what he sees as the division between routine and complex labour, but leaves us unclear about what this distinction is and how it affects society. At one point he says the “division between the organization of labor tasks and the execution of those tasks is the division of society into a class society of laborers and those for whom they labor.” – in short, a society divided into workers and capitalists. But elsewhere he claims that “the division between complex and routine labor is primarily a division within the working class.”

This contradiction can be resolved only if we accept that within capitalism there are two kinds of distinction: between the owners and non-owners of capital and a distinction (perhaps better described as a gradation) between those who supply routine or complex labour, unskilled or skilled, at lower or higher rates of pay, giving orders to other workers or not doing so.

Gomberg’s front cover features a black worker sweeping the stairs. Socialists living in the capitalist world often have to do unpleasant work in oppressive conditions to get money to live. When work is done to meet the needs of people not capital there may be some horse-trading about who does what and for how long. But sociable volunteering, not monetary compulsion, will be the name of the game.

Stan Parker

Popular change (2007)

Pamphlet Review from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thinking Allowed. A Manifesto for Successful Political Change in Britain and the World. By Sarah Young. Northern Sky, PO Box 21548, Stirling FK8 1YY.

This short, 30-page pamphlet criticises capitalism for treating us as passive consumers, denying us any control of our lives. The author rejects us following any of the “revolutionary parties of the left” as a supposed way-out, precisely because they too are organised on a top-down basis and only seek passive followers, discouraging popular participation.

She sees the embryo of a popular, participatory revolutionary movement in the voluntary activities, “vocational work” (people seeking “to serve the common good by taking on jobs in education, health or other socially related work, and often on low pay”) and single issue campaigns that thousands are already engaged in.

While accepting that these show that people are capable of organising (and should organise) themselves without leaders (whether career politicians or professional revolutionaries), we have to say that she exaggerates the potential of such activities and seriously underestimates the need for any do-it-yourself revolutionary movement such as we favour too to be consciously revolutionary.

Adam Buick

News in Review: By-elections (1962)

The News in Review column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

By-elections

As we go to press it is too early to comment in detail upon the results of the November spate of by-elections.

At the moment only a few facts are clear. Lord Sandwich is causing a stir in Dorset South by beating his own track through the Tory undergrowth there— something which is becoming a habit with this rich aristocrat. This has pained Tory candidate Angus Maude, who was once on the Sandwich (when he was Hinchingbrooke) coat-tails over Suez and perhaps looked for better reward than this.

We know that a number of servicemen are testifying to the delights of being part of capitalism’s military machine by working a legal fiddle to get out of the forces by having themselves nominated as candidates in the by-elections.

But most of all we know that for Socialists all over the world one of these contests is especially notable. For the first time—in Woodside, in Glasgow—a Socialist candidate has been nominated to fight in a Scottish Parliamentary constituency.

This news will hit no headlines in the capitalist press. We do not expect our candidate to receive many votes. But, as usual, we shall strive to make sure that whatever votes are cast for him come from people who want to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a world of peace and plenty which will be worth living in.

In contrast the Labour Party Deputy-Leader, George Brown, has promised that his party will make their campaign “as exciting and lighthearted as possible . . . in an attempt to stimulate the interest of young people.” He added (as he had to) that this would be “short of gimmicks.”

This is typical of the hard-headed vote-catching of the parties of capitalism. Yet it will be uphill work to persuade anyone to be lighthearted over Cuba, say, or the current figures of London homeless and Scottish unemployed. And hasn’t capitalism got enough excitement already? Nothing gets us more het up than a narrow escape from nuclear war.

Mr. Brown will have his gaiety and his excitement and he will get his votes as well. The Socialist in Woodside will get none of these, but for all that his is the only significant and worthwhile campaign among them all. 

More unemployed

Obstinately, the unemployed figures creep upwards. The October total of over half a million was the highest since April, 1959, and represented 2.2 per cent, of the total working population. Scotland is the hardest hit and after that the North West is the worst sufferer.

At the same time the number of available and vacant jobs has decreased, and at a faster rate than is usual at this time of the year.

The immediate reasons for this situation are simple enough. Firms all over the country are finding it harder than ever to sell their goods, at home and abroad. Profit margins are under strong pressure because, at the same time as selling is getting more difficult many costs of production are going up. Competition in some markets is keen to the point of cut-throat.

Many industries are in considerable uncertainty. Others, like the mines and the railways, have an air of doom as the efficiency experts and the accountants move in and redundancy spreads.

Yet uncertainty was one of the things which capitalism’s experts are supposed to have banished for ever. Are not they all dedicated Keynesians, who can revitalise an economy by the simple process of manufacturing bootstraps for it to lift itself up by?

Have they not assured us, many times in recent years, that they had at last solved the problem of boom and slump and unemployment? Was it not all something to do with planning the economy?

Countries abroad, like Canada and Italy, have already shown up the fallacy of the experts’ claims for themselves. Now our own lengthening dole queues mock the helpless experts and the promises which they have made.

None of this, of course, will prevent them making similar promises in the future. Neither will it prevent the working class falling for the facile assurance from the expert. But some, at any rate, of the workers will get the point

However much capitalism is meddled with, and whatever promises are made for it, it cannot help but remain the same uncontrollable mess it has always been.

China and India

As India has emerged into the family of capitalist nations it has often suited her government to pose as an honest broker in the disputes between both sides in the Cold War.

This has gone home with a lot of workers, who now imagine India as a perpetual peacemaker, always willing to send her men into the Congo or Suez to sort out the mess left by the more ambitious disputants of international capitalism.

Even more confusingly, the government in Delhi is expected to behave like the pacifist which Gandhi is mistakenly thought to have been.

In fact, Ghandi was simply an exponent of the technique of passive resistance to the presence of British rule in India. Had he lived to lead a government, he would soon have had to discard the surface idealism so necessary to any aspiring leader's days of struggle.

So there was nothing inconsistent in the Indian adventures in Kashmir and the annexation of Portuguese Goa. The Indian ruling class has shown that, when its interests demand it, it can be as belligerent and as ruthless as any of the old colonial powers.

Now that India herself is under attack, her government has run true to form. Passive resistance? Not likely. Mr. Nehru has called for the “Dunkirk spirit” and those of us who can remember what that meant for the British working class can shiver for our Indian brothers.

The Chinese in India have suffered in the way of all such people in an enemy country in wartime. If they own shops, these have been attacked by mobs. By government decree, they have been stripped of their Indian citizenship—a move obviously designed to play up to popular nationalist sentiment.

This is particularly dirty work. The harshness of British rule, boosted as it was by racial theories which went against the Indian, should have taught the Indian worker that such theories are pernicious and inhuman. But he has shown himself as ignorant, as ready to be deceived by his leaders and as .proudly nationalist as any Empire builder of the old days.

Just another job

Boy, are you looking for a job?

Listen, stop worrying. I’ve found one.

It’s great. Nothing to do with good works or anything like that. It’s so easy.

Listen, there’s this female and she's at Oxford, at the University, I mean, and she’s a research worker.

Sounds good, you say.

Now she’s been finding out something about how people live. Nothing to do with how well we could live. It’s all about how little we could live on.

And has she come up with the goods. Listen.

She says that a family with a mother and a father and three kids can live spending less than four pounds a week on food.

If they want to, that is. But, of course, they don’t, and this research worker, she sounds a bit cross about it.

She says—in high tone, of course, because after all she is at Oxford—that when a family’s wage goes down they sometimes cut out essential foods instead of buckling to and making the most of the cheaper stuff.

She thinks that we should teach kids in school to cook so that when the wage drops they’ll know just how to get food that a research worker approves of.

Now I wonder whether she worked all that out with those statistics things or whether she’s lived on low wages herself and eaten poor food with them.

Because k says nothing for the modern world that it has to present ordinary, useful human beings with problems of living which make subjects for nice lady research workers at Oxford to look into, does it?

And it isn’t so surprising that, when subsistence is a problem, these useful humans don’t act like the humming, foolproof computers that the lady might use in her researches for all I know, but like—well, like human beings.

Now you don’t need to be a university research worker to think that one out. I’m sure I could do that girl’s job for a lot less than she’s getting.

Think I’ll apply. Wonder how little she could live on?

On the brink (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has probably never held its breath so painfully hard as it did during the Cuba crisis. In some ways life went on as usual. Buses and trains ran, people went to work, played games, looked at television. A West End tobacco store announced that it had already imported its Havana cigars and that supplies would be undisturbed for Christmas. But it all happened under a cloud of unreality. Everyone knew that we stood on the edge of an overwhelming nightmare, perhaps the ultimate in capitalism’s upheavals. One newspaper published a cartoon in which a typist confided to her companion that she would scream if her boss, grinning, greeted them again in the morning with the observation that we were still here. Very funny. But a lot of people didn’t expect to be still here a few days after Kennedy’s broadcast and the point is that if the crisis had developed much further they might have be en proved right.

At the time, it seemed rather pointless to speculate upon the background of the affair. Now that the heat is somewhat off, we can take time to look around us.

Was it all a put-up job? Some of the missiles were carried quite openly on the decks of Soviet ships and their launching pads were put down in clearings with no attempt at camouflage. This seems to contradict Kennedy’s assertion that the missiles were sent clandestinely to Cuba. Because of this, and for other reasons, there was some speculation that the Russians were openly moving their rockets to Cuba so that they could use them to bargain with an alarmed American government.

Because (and who isn't relieved at this?) the two great powers of contemporary capitalism are still at the bargaining stage. The Russians might have wanted to use their Cuban bases to get the Americans out of Turkey and Iran. Or at least they might have been able to use them to force Washington to talk about the American bases and to discuss whether they should have them so near to Russia. This would have been a unique situation. Whoever heard of one capitalist power negotiating with its enemy over bases which are designed to attack them?

Another possibility which was bandied about was that the Russians were trying to persuade the Americans to accept the existence of an unfriendly Cuba. This would give the Soviet Union more than a toehold in the Caribbean. Kennedy has, of course, agreed that if the missiles and the nuclear bombers leave Cuba he will guarantee not to invade the island. This presumably means that he will leave it in the “imprisoned” condition which he ascribed to it in his broadcast. Or is that too risky a presumption? Capitalist politicians have broken promises before and there is no reason to think that they will not break them in the future.

Or was Cuba a blind? Was Kruschev trying to create a disturbance at one end of the world while the real dirty work was done at the other? Many eyes were turned to Berlin during the Cuban crisis and there was some fear that the Russians would at least make a definite hostile move there. If that had happened the propaganda machine of Western capitalism was ready. Kennedy mentioned in his broadcast that the Russians were not to interfere with the “brave people” of West Berlin.” How short a time ago was it that we were being encouraged to hope that the Russians would do just that, and with a vengeance ? Or does the world forget so easily the lies of yesterday, only remembering those of today?

All these speculations—and some of the others which were in the air at the time—must have a chance of being near the truth. It has been a feature of Russian tactics in the Cold War that they suddenly create a tremendous racket which convinces half the world that war has all but started. Each year, for example, Moscow seems determined to sign a treaty with East Germany and so provoke a really serious crisis over Berlin. Then just as suddenly they take the heat off and get everyone sighing with relief. But when the dust has cleared it can be perceived that the Russians have advanced their cause somewhat. Last year the Berlin Wall seemed a temporary irritant. Now it is permanent, well guarded. This could have been the tactic which Moscow were playing in Cuba.

Rocket bases

There might of course be a simpler explanation, one which does not rest on the assumption that capitalism's international dealings depend upon the suave, tricky diplomat who does his job as if he were a top-notch poker player. Perhaps the Cuban bases were a purely offensive move by the Russians, intended as a pistol pointing at America's heart. This would have put the Russians on something like an equal footing with the United States, whose overseas rocket bases are about as far from Moscow as Cuba is from Washington. The rockets in Cuba outflanked the elaborate and expensive early warning system which the Americans have built up. They reduced the time which a missile attack would give the American people to wind up their affairs, patch up their quarrels and kiss each other goodbye to the more hurried three or four minutes which we would have in England.

In at least two ways this was an ironical situation. Capitalist nations, whose experts assure us that they know what they are doing, have always spent a lot of effort in building a static defence system for use in wartime. In the days of more leisurely, more personal wars they built systems like the Hindenburg and Maginot Lines and the heavy fortifications at Singapore. Very often, these defences have been useless because the enemy has simply come in the other way—which is what the Russian missiles would have been able to do from Cuba. Which shows, once again, how fallible are the people whose reputation rests upon their being infallible.

There is irony, too, in the American refusal to accept parity with the Russians in missile and nuclear resources. Both sides in the Cold War argue that such things are necessary as a deterrent. But the most effective deterrent is surely one which is equally available to both sides, so that they can frighten each other equally. We need not point out—but we will—that neither America nor Russia ever takes the deterrent theory to these lengths. They are both too busy fighting out the race for bigger and more terrifying weapons. The fact is that the deterrent theory, just like the rest of capitalism's war propaganda, is a lie. Capitalist powers like the USA and the Soviet Union do not develop weapons to keep the peace. They make them so that they can wage war more effectively—more destructively—than their rivals.

If Kruschev was in fact trying to outflank the American defensive system, he has obviously failed. For him, personally, this could be a serious matter. There is ample evidence that the Russian government are deeply divided over the method of sparring out the Cold War and that Kruschev has had some narrow squeaks in these internal disputes. A diplomatic defeat in Cuba might mean the end of him—literally the end, because nobody can be sure that in Russia political defeat does not still mean execution.

These speculations are interesting, but that is as far as they can go. Only a very few people in the world know what was behind the Cuban affair. The international disputes which capitalism is always putting us on edge with do not lend themselves to open and honest dealing. Secrets must be kept and each side must try to hide its intentions from the other. Only now are we learning something of the truth about events which died fifty years ago. Only now are we beginning to learn some of the detail of what was behind the First World War. The 1939 war is still shrouded in official secrecy, although sometimes drops of horrible truth trickle out. Not for a long time will the facts on Cuba come out into the open. Not for a long time will the world know fully of the lies and double dealing, the threats and the power and the fearful, insane risks that were taken.

Secrets

Because in these disputes ordinary people do not seem to count. They are only the people who run capitalism, who keep the system working and who design, make, transport and finally fire off the missiles which all the fuss was about. They are only the people who are essential to the war effort which rounds off the fuss. For who was it who Kennedy and Kruschev called upon at the height of the crisis? Who did they mobilise into their armed forces? Who did they try to persuade, with their propaganda? The ordinary people. The working class.

The working class do not share in the secrets which pass between their leaders. Kennedy refused to publish the vital part of the correspondence between himself and Kruschev—the part which possibly explains the whole thing—for the reason that it was a letter which was addressed to him personally. But that is too transparently fatuous to need further comment. The working class are not asked for their opinion in these matters. Krushchev did not ask the Russian working class whether he should risk all their lives by sending missiles to Cuba and Kennedy did not consult the American workers about starting a war over those missiles. Neither, for that matter, did Macmillan ask English workers whether they agreed that they were behind America—to the death, if need be.

Conditioning

The working class are not asked—and do not expect to be asked—about these matters. They only expect to work, to fight and if necessary to die for capitalism. And, of course, to vote for it as well. Apart from that, they do not seem to count.

Or do they ? What if Kennedy’s call to mobilise bad been met with a blank refusal? What if American workers had refused to man the ships in the blockade? if Russian workers had said no to shipping the missiles? The leaders of capitalism would have been powerless. They could have exchanged insults or compliments for as long as they liked. In the end it would have been the workers, and not the leaders, who counted.

Capitalism's wars are fought because of the economic clashes of its opposing powers. But these wars can only be organised, supplied and fought by the very people who have nothing to gain—and everything to lose—by fighting them. That is why there is such a careful propaganda campaign, all the time, to condition the working class to accept the latest line-up in international capitalism. That is why the workers in this country are now taught to hate the Russians and to love the Germans, when a few years ago we were taught the exact opposite. Yes, workers do count.

Because they could stop capitalism's wars. They could do more than that. They could stop capitalism itself. Not, this time, by refusing to take part in it; but by understanding it. By taking the trouble, to start with, to remember and to put Cuba—and Korea, Formosa, Berlin and the rest—into perspective.

Capitalism marches to chaos upon the ignorance of the people who keep it in its miserable existence. Cuba was only one step along this unhappy road. But who dare say where it will end, if the march and the ignorance continue?

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Co-operative Movement at a dead end (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few months ago Reynolds News, the Co-operative Sunday newspaper, came out in its new form as the Sunday Citizen. Whatever other reasons for the change there may have been, doubtless the fall in circulation of the old paper from 720,0000 in 1947 to 310,000 in 196I has something to do with the effort to appeal to a new circle of readers. We do not know whether the change has won new readers, but we can tell what readership one of their regular contributors has in mind. He is Scorpio, "Sunday Citizen Economic Expert," who has a column headed Your Money. In the issue for October 21st he urged his readers “ Buy Oil Shares":

My advice has always been that you can't get high income yield, security against loss, quick access to your money, and hope of capital growth all at once.

Today I suggest a chance to come much nearer having it all four ways than you will often get. Buy some British Petroleum or Burmah Oil shares or, better, some of both.

Scorpio, or his editor, obviously thinks that no newspaper can be complete and up-to-date without a city column in which readers are helped with their investment problems. The Sunday Citizen has to keep up with the Jones’s of Fleet Street — what they do it must do, too.

And if Scorpio were to ask what is wrong with a Co-operative newspaper trying to have as wide an appeal as any other Sunday paper, the answer is that there is everything wrong with this particular venture, that of advising workers to risk what little savings they have (or some of them have) in buying shares.

In the first place it is a very dangerous game for workers to play. The inducement is the belief that they can make money. So they may at backing horses, and just as easily lose it. Scorpio's particular advice may turn out to be based on a correct guess about the future of the oil industry and of these two companies but, like all the other City recommendations it can be little more than a guess.

Very much to the point, how does it come about that a newspaper which belongs to the Co-operative Movement is not telling its readers to put their spare money into the Co-operative movement which so badly needs it?

There was a time when enthusiastic co-operators would have been shocked to find in their own Press someone who had so little belief in co-operation. Probably few readers are shocked today because, as a movement aiming at social change, co-operation has long been dead. More worrying still to many of its officials it hasn’t even been holding its own as a capitalist trading group in competition with commercial rivals. 

From the standpoint of the original solid aims of the movement probably few of its more than 12 million members even know what the original aims were. Some of them may have heard of Robert Owen and of the Rochdale Pioneers who formed a co-operative society in 1844, but few will know that for Owen and for the Rochdale Group the trading society was looked on not as an end in itself but as a means to revolutionise society:

. . . . Owen was not interested in "store keeping”. He wanted to set up self-supporting and self-governing villages of co-operation, organised committees providing work and happiness for their members. At first he advocated these as a means of over-coming unemployment, but later he broadened his plan to embrace all mankind.

(The Co-operative Movement. Published by the Labour Party.)

Such aims have been long forgotten as the co-operative movement enrolled its members by the million and gave them the satisfaction of their dividend on purchases. In the co-operative movement\ prosperous years it was possible to recruit new members by publicising the “divi" But the co-operatives have not kept up with the leaders in the race for trade. In 1960 their sales reached the record level of £1,066 million, but their proportion of total retail sales actually fell slightly and their average dividend payment was 11¾d. in the pound, compared with 1s. in the pound in 1953 and 1s. 9½d. in 1939.

In 1958, after two years’ investigation, a committee presided over by Mr. Hugh Gaitskell and with Mr. C. A. R. Crosland as secretary issued a long report on the methods and problems of the co-operative movement. They found that the expansion of membership and trade was slowing down.

In the period 1890 to 1920 the cooperative share in total national expenditure on goods and services more than doubled, but in the next thirty-six years it increased by only one-sixth.

Comparing the I950’s with the beginning of this century, the small private retailers lost ground heavily but the principal gainers were the multiple shops and to a smaller extent the department stores. The Committee found the relative lack of progress of the co-operatives since the war “the most disturbing feature.”

The Committee, some of whose recommendations came in for much criticism, urged big changes, including the amalgamation of retail societies to reduce the number from about 950 to 200 or 300, more efficient management, better service and better staff recruitment, and the improvement of labour relations.

But although some amalgamations are taking place and costly schemes of modernisation are being introduced, the troubles have continued for many of the retail societies:

In 1960 retail sales as a whole rose by four per cent., department store sales by as much as seven per cent.. Co-operative sales by only one per cent. Even the small shopkeeper did better. And now the cut-price super market is menacing the Co-ops’ traditional strongholds. Well may Co-operative officials shiver in their ” Sunday Footwear. 

If there is any mystery about the Co-ops' decline, a visit to the local branch may clear up part of it—though not for people who live in Leicester. Nottingham and certain other places where the Co-ops’ are notoriously efficient. ’’Dowdy, parochial and technically backward” were Mr. Crosland’s words for the Co-op. and the shelves sometimes tend to confirm them. (Daily Telegraph, 11.5.61.)

Trying to compete with private traders, some co-operatives are going in for cut prices but while this increases sales it means, as for the big Liverpool society, that there is no surplus available for the traditional dividend on purchases, for the first time in the Society's 47 years’ history.

Where they have been more successful is in the insurance field. The Co-operative Insurance Society, has just opened its new skyscraper headquarters in Manchester. The Co-operative News (27/10/62) found this noteworthy because it was opened by Prince Philip—

. . . the first occasion on which a member of the Royal Family has declared open a co-operative building.”

As employers the co-operatives have their problems too. Strikes are not unknown (including in the C.I.S.).

Before the war the pay and conditions of co-operative employees compared rather favourably with the majority of their private competitors. It is doubtful if they do so today. A few months ago the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied workers made an inquiry into staffing conditions in a number of Co-operative societies. They found that two-thirds of them were understaffed and two in every five of the Union's branches gave as the reason “that recruits could not be found because of the low wages paid by the Society when compared with pay in outside jobs.” The Socialist attitude towards the cooperative movement is that it solves no working class problem. Even if modernisation enables the co-operatives to recover lost ground in their fight against their retail rivals, they cannot achieve the social revolution which is the aim of the Socialist Movement. The dreams of Robert Owen and some of the Co-operative pioneers can be achieved only through Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is surplus value (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

If a person who owned a million pounds decided to spend it he could live, without working, for forty years at the level of £25,000 p.a. before being broke. If the million pounds was invested at an average of five per cent. interest p.a. over 40 years, it would enable him to live at the level of £50,000 a year for the same time, and he would still have his million. Who said that you can't cat your cake and still have it?

Surplus value is the sole source of all rent, profit and interest, and the exploitation of the Working Class is the source of all surplus value. Capital is wealth used in the reproduction of wealth in order to extract profit. This is investment of money as distinct from spending it.

In early commodity production the producers were owners of their means of production, raw materials, etc. They owned the articles they made and they sold them. The right of a person to own what his labour created was a recognised principle. Modern capitalism excludes the working class from ownership of the means of production. The worker is compelled to sell his ability to work in order to live. He sells his labour power as distinct from his labour. The value of the commodity labour power is determined by the amount of food, clothing, shelter, etc., required to reproduce the mental and physical energy expended and to reproduce other wage slaves. For example, the value of engineering labour power is approximately 5s. per hour. In working an hour the engineer may produce value exceeding 15s. These social and historical aspects are of great importance.

Money can be transformed into capital, of which there are two aspects. Constant capital consists of machinery, raw materials, and so on; variable capital, in money form, purchases labour power. Labour is the positive or creative factor. In modern society, labour is the source of all wealth. Irrespective of how gigantic, complex and costly the productive machinery may be, it is all a product of labour.

In the productive process, let us assume a capital of £10,000 invested, of which £7,500 is constant and £2,500 variable. We also, for convenience, assume that the total capital is consumed in the process of production, although this in fact rarely happens. If 10,000 articles valued at 25s. each are created, the total product is £12,500, an increase of £2,500 on the original capital. Where does this increase come from? Neither constant nor variable capital can grow or expand. The original value invested can only re-appear, in new form, in the new wealth created If we take one article, value 25s., depreciation of machinery and the raw materials re-appear here at a value of 15s., variable capital at 5s., making a total of 20s. invested by the employer. But he sells at 25s. Labour power is the only commodity which can produce more than it itself consumes. Of course, the worker can't sell his labour, because having sold his ability to work, his labour is his master’s property. The difference between the value of labour power and the value of labour is, therefore, 5s. in this case, surplus value, or unpaid labour.

The manufacturer would argue that the £2,500 is a modest twenty-five per cent profit, a reward for his thrift and directive ability. It is quite true that, considered as a rate of profit, it is 25 per cent. of the original sum invested. However, the increase arises directly out of the variable portion of capital and to determine the extent of the exploitation of the workers we must consider its relation to surplus value.

In our example we have £2,500 wages against £2,500 surplus value; or a 100 per cent, rate of exploitation. In other words, the total variable capital advanced, in this case, represented half of the value of the embodied labour.

Let us now take a producer who owns his means of production, a tailor for example. Let us suppose that be purchases his raw materials, he spins, weaves and tailors the coat. The wear and tear of his machinery together with the raw materials used costs, say £6. His labour power in the process is valued at £7. The total product is £13. His embodied labour is the source of the new wealth— the coat—and this he realises in full in selling the coat for £13. Had he been a wage slave, compelled to sell his labour power, as distinct from his labour he might have received about £3 10s. l0d. wages, or half the value of his labour power. The other half would go into the pocket of his master, as profit, surplus value. When people own their own instrument of production and sell the products of their own labour neither profit nor surplus value arise.

We can also regard this exploiting process from the standpoint of labour time. Workers are employed at a given wage, say £10 per week, for a specified working week of 44 hours. If the rate of exploitation is 100 per cent., then in the first half of the week they produce, in new wealth, value equal to their wages. In the second half a similar quantity is produced. The working week, therefore, includes 22 hours of surplus labour time.

In every process of production capital is expanded and accumulated. The immense mechanism of production today is the outcome of countless generations of unpaid labour, of surplus value. This Marx calls dead labour returning vampire like to suck the blood of living labour. This vast productive equipment, the natural resources and the labour of society, has been the inheritance of the propertied class for hundreds of years and is utilised for their private gain. The inheritance of the producers, the workers, has been continued poverty, in various degrees of severity. The accumulation of capital and the expansion of the means of production, generally speaking, brings greater exploitation to the workers. Capitalism has produced these twins and will always maintain them as long as it lasts.

The Marxian theory of value clearly shows the facts of our economic and social life in modern society. The abolition of capitalism is the sole means by which this state of affairs can be ended, in order to enjoy the fruits of their labour men and women must re-organise society on a Socialist basis. Only on this foundation can the great productive machinery, resources of nature and the labour of society be utilised to full capacity for the benefit of all of mankind. This great social change is possible and practical whenever a majority of workers decide to bring it about.

John Higgins