A delusion that dies hard is the belief that plenty of everything is actually produced in the world, only needing to be properly distributed. This idea was being put forward over a century ago. It was encouraged by the increases of output due to machine production; by the obvious contrast between rich and poor; and by the periodical trade depressions in which the inability to sell what had been produced seemed to indicate that production had been greater than peoples needs.
The appearances, however, were very misleading and many people were, and still are, misled.
The seemingly very great increase of output when a machine replaces a number of men, can, and usually does, look very different when account is taken of the number of men required for the manufacture, operation and maintenance, of the machine, showing itself in the enormous increase that has taken place in the number of workers in the engineering and allied trades. When account is taken of all the factors the overall increase of productivity is found to be very small An industry able to show a continuous increase, year after year, of say 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. in output per man would be doing well. In some industries productivity falls not rises.
The surpluses of goods during a crisis do not mean that more has been produced than mankind needs but only that there is more on sale than the buyers will take; what they will take being limited for the great majority by their lack of money,
Marx, who was not taken in by the delusion we are discussing, quite rightly pointed out that capitalism does not produce enough for human needs.
Some eighty years ago Marx wrote:—
“It is not a fact that too many necessities of life are produced in proportion to the existing population. The reverse is true. Not enough is produced to satisfy the wants of the great mass decently and humanly.”(Capital, Vol. III, p. 302.)
That was true then and it is true now.
If we take British capitalism as an example we can sum up the developments of the 50 years since the formation of the S.P.G.B. in a few simple propositions. Writing about the year 1904, in his book “Riches and Poverty,” the late Chiozza Money showed in detail the outstanding features of British life. They were that production was at a miserably inadequate level in relation to the needs of the population; that much of the product was trashy; and that out of what was produced the rich minority drew an amount quite out of proportion to their numbers.
There are people who will acknowledge the truth of Chiozza Money’s indictment of the capitalism of 1904, but who imagine that there has been some vast change since then. Of course, if they commit the elementary error of dealing with monetary amounts without allowing for the fall in what money will buy, they can get all sorts of fanciful pictures. On that basis they can say that the national income and national production, and also wages, are some six or seven times greater than in 1904.
But if they come down to earth and look at real values they will find that the national income and national product have increased since 1904 only by something in the region of 70 per cent. or 80 per cent.
(Estimates of growth of national income are reproduced in “Economic Development in U.K. 1850-1950,” published by American Mutual Security Agency to U.K. See also Colin Clark’s estimates in Review of Economic Progress Queensland, July-August, 1951).
But this increase has first to be adjusted to the larger number of people it covers, the population of the United Kingdom having increased from 40 million to 50 million. This cuts down the increase of the national income to an increase per head of the population of about 40 per cent. since 1904.
This increase of production has taken place partly through a small continuing increase of output per worker, partly through the absorption of most of the unemployed, and, finally, through the fact that a larger proportion of the population are now normally out at work in offices and industry instead of being at home (notably more married women).
We are then left with an increase in the national income per head of the population of about 40 per cent. in the half century since 1904. But let it not be imagined that this means there is available 40 per cent, more articles of everyday consumption. By no means. The national income, national production, and the Index of Production published regularly by the Government, all include, not only such items as additional factories, school buildings. Government offices, etc., but also armaments; this last item being particularly worth looking at. In 1904, expenditure on the army and navy was about £66 million, equivalent to less than 4 per cent. of the total national income. In recent years it has exceeded 10 per cent. of the national income, amounting in 1953-4 to nearly £1,400 millions. This is peace-time expenditure. During the two world wars it has been four or five times as great and for the whole half century has averaged over 15 per cent. of the national income, totalling upwards of £40,000 million and leaving that much less in the form of articles of consumption. If, to this, we add the destruction resulting from the big and little wars of the half century, it is beyond doubt that the great bulk of the not very large increase of production and productivity per man that has taken place since 1904 has been swallowed up in British capitalism’s armaments and wars.
If, in the meantime, the workers’ average earnings have, through their struggles on the industrial field increased more than the increase of their cost of living, and their hours of work are less than in 1904, these changes, too, must have set against them the more intensified work that is expected in the shorter working day, together with the fact that for many millions of workers the shorter time spent in the factory has been offset by the longer time spent uncomfortably travelling to and from work, because houses have been built further away from places of employment.
And though real wages are for many groups of workers higher than in 1904, only the very superficial observer can be deceived into thinking that poverty has been abolished. With a present cost of living about 2⅓ times what it was in 1938 what kind of life is given by the adult average earnings (before deduction of tax and insurance) of 197/8 a week on which to bring up a family? or by the woman’s average of 105/3? The railwaymen are just celebrating the raising of their wages, but the new rate for 60,000 porters and others will be, in London, 134/-, rising to 136/- after one year and to 138/- after two years. Provincial rates are 3/ less. Is this the abolition of poverty?
The Chancellor of the Exchequer disclosed in answer to a question (Hansard 16/11/54) that in 1953, out of 23 million male and female workers, only one in five has more than about £9 a week after deducting tax and insurance; and that there are 8,600,000 whose net income is under 96/- a week. Millions of pensioners are worse off still. Apart from the present low level of unemployment British capitalism of 1955 is much like that of 1904 for the workers. It is very like it too in respect of housing, for in 1904 the Government and the reformist parties were telling each other that they really must do something to solve the housing problem. They still are. The recent record rate of building is probably within reach of catching up the additional needs created by the war. But now, says Mr. Duncan Sandys, Minister of Housing and Local Government, “ they must waste no time getting down to the job of slum clearance.” (Speech at Birmingham, Manchester Guardian, 12/1/55.)
“We think there may be about a million slum houses. If this figure proves correct, I suggest that we should aim at breaking the back of the problem in most areas within ten years.”
But still another housing problem is looming up, "the modernisation of older houses.”
“Over one-third of the houses all over the country were built in the nineteenth century or earlier, and in the interests of all concerned they should be brought up to date.”
For many workers it is only by living in cramped accommodation in these slums and old, sub-standard houses, at low rents, that money can be found for modest expenditure on entertainment, holidays, drink and tobacco.
Which brings us back to where we came in, for Chiozza Money 50 years ago was writing about overcrowding, back-to-back houses, ill-effects on health, etc., etc., and of the need to do something about the housing problem. We have all these housing evils with us still, .The more capitalism changes the more it remains the same.
Edgar Hardcastle
Blogger's Note:
Despite it not being February, this article got a bump 'cos it's mentioned in the Editorial Committee's reply to this letter which appeared in the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard.
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