No, this is not an article about the 4½ per cent. Bank Rate but about another item of 4½ per cent. that received almost no attention in the newspapers. It had to do with the Government’s annual Blue Book on National Income and Expenditure, the latest issue, covering the years 1938-1954, being published the first week in September.
For readers who are unfamiliar with the subject matter the Blue Book is not easy to understand; and when not understood its tables of figures can be very misleading as is shown from time to time by Press comments on it. But some of the tables tell us in precise terms and on official authority things that otherwise can only be conjectured on the basis of part information.
Our present comment is concerned only with the extent to which the “National Income” has increased and the way in which that increase has shown itself in every-day articles of consumption, the food, clothing, entertainment, etc., that concern us from day to day.
The total National Income (“ Gross National Product”) is shown to have increased from £5,175 millions in 1938 to £15,718 millions in 1954, but these figures do not mean that the national income has really trebled. Almost all of the difference is due merely to higher prices. No estimate is given in the Blue Book which makes allowances for price changes, but if we apply to these figures the same price allowance as is used elsewhere in the Book (Tables 21 and 22) we may assume that perhaps the real increase of the National Income since 1938 is about 25 per cent.
It is small enough for a period of 16 years, averaging about 1½ per cent. a year, but apologists will say that things would have been different if there had not been a war. In 1938 of course they were blaming the small increase of production on the slump and before that, on the previous war.
This increase of the national income has been obtained largely through the increase of the working population, notably through the reduction of the number of unemployed by 1½ million and through more married women being out at work.
The next thing is to find out what has happened to this increase, which as indicated above, may be about 25 per cent. Does it mean that in 1954 there were 25 per cent. more goods for everybody than in 1938? It does not mean this because in the first place much of the 25 per cent. increase does not take the form of everyday articles of consumption. Some of it goes into the increase of the Armed Forces and armaments, and the building of more factories and production of more factory machines. When we come down to articles of everyday expenditure the Blue Book provides us with an answer to the question.
It shows that, after allowing for price increase, the purchase of consumption goods (food, clothing, tobacco, rent, entertainment, travel, etc.), was in 1954 only 11 per cent. higher than in 1938. But as the Financial Times (6 September) pointed out the population had grown by 6½ per cent, so that “real expenditure per head was 4½ per cent up.” This, then, is the measure of what capitalism actually performs. When, therefore, the Tory Government as an election manoeuvre, held out the promise of doubling the standard of living in the next 25 years they are counting on something happening in the future for which there is no support in the past.
What have Socialists to say about this situation?
The problem is a purely Capitalist one and does not hit the Socialist case. On the contrary, it gives weighty support to what has always been the essence of that case. Socialists have never followed the reformist will o' the wisp of supposing that redistributing national income within the framework of capitalism is a solution. The Socialist case is that until capitalism is abolished and replaced by Socialism it is impossible to liberate the productive forces so that they can function for the benefit of mankind. With Socialism the immediate prospect opens up of greatly expanding the production of useful articles and services for mankind, above all by ceasing the waste of human effort on .capitalism’s wars, armaments and armed forces, and on the manifold financial and bureaucratic activities essential to capitalism but needless in a Socialist society.
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