The Passing Show (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

If our civilisation perishes, as others have perished, and leaves behind very little in the way of written record, any future historian might still get a reasonably clear picture of our society by reading an account of the “towpath murder,” as it has come to be called, at Twickenham. He would read how four youths attacked one young man, whom none of them had ever seen before, and against whom they had no personal grudge, in order to rob him of any valuables he might have on him. He would read how when the victim was lying on the ground moaning, one of the assailants (in his own words) “kicked him twice on the head to keep him quiet.” The assailant made this statement in evidence, without apparently any admission that such behaviour was much out of the ordinary. The future historian would then read how the victim had died, and how the trial ended with sentences of hanging and imprisonment.

Violence

Anyone from a future era who read this would be horrified, and rightly so. What kind of society was this (he would ask himself) that bred such men? Anyone who supports our system of society might well ask himself the same question. For this brutality didn’t happen among the Hottentots of Africa; nor did it happen in an enemy country in time of war (if it had done, we should not have lacked people to tell us how terrible the nation must be where such a thing could occur); it happened right here, in this society, in this country in the suburbs of the capital, London. Can we be surprised? In our society the great god is the acquisition of wealth, and a minor god is its ostentatious spending, which assures us of the admiration of our fellows. Violence, which is required by our ruling class when it engages in war, is portrayed and glorified by the press, the cinema, the television. Anyone who refuses to engage in violence when his rulers demand it is shunned by society, sneered at, perhaps imprisoned. Inevitably the more impressionable natures come to look on violence as admirable, especially if it leads to that great end of our morality, the gaining of money. And so we have violent crime. Then society seeks a solution in hanging the individuals responsible. Society thinks it is hanging its own failures, but that it cannot do. To find a solution, society must re-organise itself on a civilised basis.

Republic

Dr. Verwoerd has won his majority for the creation of a South African Republic. True, he did it by restricting the right to vote to those whose faces were the correct shade of greyish-pink, and barring those whose skins had colours in the range from light brown to black. Even then he had to ensure his success by counting in the votes of the greyish-pink minority who live in South-West Africa (which is not part of the Union of South Africa at all). Nevertheless, he won. The landowning class, which has always been opposed to the connection with the British crown, has triumphed; and the capitalist class of South Africa has lost. How long will the South African capitalists endure this? Wherever they look in the world today, they see the capitalists ruling supreme. Everywhere they see the workers voting for the one capitalist party (in totalitarian states) or for one of two or more capitalist parties (in democratic states). Because of the race fears carefully fostered by the South African landowners, many South African workers must have given their votes to the landowners instead of to the capitalists. How greedily the capitalists must cast their eyes on the nine million voteless inhabitants of the Union! Surely, the capitalists reason, if these were enfranchised, most of them would vote for us. It must only be a question of time now before the South African capitalists, their power growing steadily as trade and industry grow, make their bid for political as well as economic power.

Retail Technicians

The Bridlington Chamber of Commerce doesn't like the sound of the words “shop hands” and “shop assistants.” It thinks other names should be substituted—“retail tacticians,” “sales staff,” or “ counter public relations officers.” We don’t put so much emphasis on names: we are concerned with realities. As workers, we don’t care what we are called. We believe it is time that society was no longer divided into two classes, capitalists and workers (whatever the latter may be named); it is time that we became simply, and fully, human beings.

Thanks to Him

The People (14/8/60) printed an article about the fraudulent claims which have been made by some advertisers in the United States. It quotes many examples from a book called The Operators, by Frank Gibney. The prize one is perhaps an advertisement offering shares in “the world's richest undrilled oil field.’’ It waxed lyrical: “Thanks to Him from Whom all the joyful things of the earth flow forth—a Divine Guidance without which this exceedingly great joy could not now be ours. . ." This line was a great success, and the money rolled in. The advertisers were a million dollars to the good-before it came out that this particular bit of Divine Guidance had only indicated a barren patch of land in Utah; so the law intervened.

Phoney Claims

No doubt it occurred to The People that this and similar advertisements quoted in the article would hardly encourage its readers to put much faith in its own adverts. Which, in turn, wouldn’t encourage its advertisers—and newspapers make their profit out of their advertisement revenue. Hence repeated assurances that this kind of thing couldn’t happen here:

British newspapers believe in protecting their readers against exploitation. The Advertising Association maintains an advertisement investigation department to ensure that any advertisement which makes phoney claims, exaggerates, tries to frighten you. or is in any way unethical, never reaches print. National newspapers like The People investigate every new advertiser thoroughly to make sure that his company is reputable and that his product can do all he claims of it.

Well, there it is in black and white. So all those soap powders and detergents that claim to wash cleaner than all the others, and all the petrols that say they have more power than all the others, and all the cigarettes which insist they are made of better tobacco than all the others—well, they are all correct. No “phoney claims’’ or “exaggerations” would ever be permitted—The People says so. Each manufacturing line is like a race, in which each competitor beats all the others.

Luck on Purchase

In view of The People's statements an advertisement appearing in its stable-mate, the Daily Herald, is particularly interesting. It offers a "Lucky Welsh Lady Key Ring" for 2s. 6d. It apparently consists of a simple metal key ring, plus a mascot attached to it. The advert states boldly "Luck on Purchase." Are we expected to believe that the Daily Herald has "investigated this advertiser thoroughly” to make sure that the “product can do all he claims of it ”? Or are The People's sweeping statements merely to make sure advertisers aren’t discouraged from paying for space in its columns?

Alwyn Edgar

Into Battle! The War over Soap Substitutes (1950)

From the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to all reports, the first salvoes are now being fired in what promises to be one of the biggest trade-wars we have seen in this country for many a long year. The contestants in the struggle are the manufacturers of detergents, or soap-substitutes.

The set-to in Britain is actually the second round of a contest which has only just come to an uneasy (and probably temporary) end in the United States. Here, Proctor and Gamble an American firm, and Lever Bros., the Anglo-Dutch combine, fought out a bitter struggle for many months before Lever Bros, were defeated and forced to content themselves, for the time being at any rate, with only a minor share of the American soap-substitute market.

Now the scene has changed to this country, though the chief contenders are the same. On the one hand is Thomas Hedley & Co., the British subsidiary of Proctor and Gamble; on the other. Lever Bros, once more, fighting this time on their own ground. In addition there are a host of smaller fry, all trying hard to keep a foothold in a very precarious and uncertain market.

All of them, big and small, are spending large sums on advertising (Hedley’s and Lever Bros, are employing two of the biggest firms in the business). Hedley’s are reported to have already spent £72,000 on Press advertising for “Dreft,” besides about £100,000 on film publicity. Now they are busy launching “Tide” on the public, with what seems like lavishness of advertising even greater than that devoted to “Dreft.” Lever Bros, in their turn have already spent £73,000 on “Wisk,” and £22,000 on their liquid product “Quix.” Both seem ready to spend a lot more besides. These two big firms, it will be noticed, are playing the game of running two products, so giving themselves an opportunity of pitting one against the other, as well as against the products of their rivals. When one product really begins to outstrip the other, then they will probably drop the poorly-selling one and concentrate on the one that is selling well. One of them, perhaps both, may even now be working out plans to launch a third, so getting the additional advantage of newness—an important factor when each new product is launched with lavish publicity.

Just recently, the situation has been further complicated by a new big rival, the American Colgate-Palmolive-Peet combine, which plans to put its own product “Fab” on the market in a big way. The smaller fry are, of course, now some way behind, but they are all struggling hard for their own little place in the trade. Domestos Ltd., for example, have already spent £39,000 on advertising “ Stergene,” and the Brobat Mfg. Co. £33,000 on “Brobat.” Boots with “D.10,” and the Co-op with “Cascade,” are of course at some advantage in that they can distribute their products in their own shops, but their trade will in effect be confined to their own distribution system. They will not stand a chance on the open market unless they are prepared to risk a great deal of money in pushing their products. Having taken a look at the jungle outside, they have no doubt already decided to stay at home!

This high-pressure advertising is, of course, only the prelude to the fight. The first real blow was struck by Lever Bros, when they offered, temporarily, to let housewives have two packets of “Wisk” for the price of one. Hedley’s replied by covering large areas of London with vouchers offering a 1s. 7d. packet of “Tide” for 6d. Apart from stunts, prices generally are already on the way down. “Fab” recently dropped from 1s. 9d. to 1s. 7d.; “Dreft ” from 1s. 7d. to 1s. 4d.; and “Cascade ” from 8d. to 6d. (Price differences are largely accounted for by differences in the sizes of the packets). All of them are probably working frantically to think of other bright ideas which will enable them to gain an advantage.

Even when soap-rationing is abolished, all the manufacturers seem convinced that there is a future for detergents. If they did not think so, they obviously would not be doing what they are doing. Reinforcing them in their belief is their determination to bring down the price of detergents below the price of soap. One of the main ways in which this can be done is by reducing the price of the raw materials from which detergents are made.

Detergents, as is well known, are derived from petrol, and just as competition is now rife among the detergent manufacturers so is competition among the oil-producers. At least four companies are already producing raw materials for soap-substitutes, and others are thinking of doing so. Shell are the biggest producers at present with “Teepol.” After them come I.C.I. with “Lissapol,” Anglo-Iranian with “Comprox,” and Monsanto Chemicals with “ Santomerse ”— all struggling hard to get hold of as much of the rapidly growing market as they can. For detergents to really compete with soap, the oil-producers will have to cut their prices. That they can do so was shown when the soap ration was last increased—prices immediately dropped. They will probably find means of doing so again when rationing is fully lifted and their products have to compete on equal terms with soap.

Whatever form the struggle takes, it should be interesting to watch. The contestants may fight to the limit, as they did in the United States. They may try to reach a compromise, which will certainly be an uneasy and temporary one. Perhaps the abolition of soap-rationing will prick the whole bubble. We do not know, nor do we wish to speculate.

What is worthy of comment is the stupidity of a system in which huge sums of money are being spent in selling, one against the other, products between which there is probably not a scrap of difference worth troubling about; the stupidity of a system in which adults in complete possession of their senses spend their working hours thinking up new and better stunts to help sell these products; the stupidity of a system where other fully mature men and women worry themselves sick wondering whether “this” is a better name than “ that,” or “that” is a better name than “this” (we have it on no less an authority than the Financial Times that enormous care and market research is expended on choosing just the right brand name). The example of soap-substitutes can be multiplied a thousandfold, and the wastefulness in terms of wealth and human effort is correspondingly greater.

Capitalism has introduced a substitute for soap. When are you workers going to introduce the substitute for capitalism—socialism?

Stan Hampson

On the pin (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oklahoma City, USA, has the unpleasant distinction of being the site of an experiment in discomfort. Some Oklahomans are protesting at this and there can be little wonder that they are. But experiments on human beings in the mass are not a novelty; they are, in fact, going on all the time.

Each morning for the past five months, jet aircraft have flown backwards and forwards over Oklahoma City, deliberately breaking through the sound barrier about half a dozen times between seven o’clock and about half past one. This will go on, day after day, until the beginning of next month.

The object of these experiments is to find out the effect which sonic booms have upon the people on the ground. Now that the American aircraft industry has entered the international race to build a supersonic airliner, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is trying to discover what would constitute an aircraft “acceptable” to the people it will fly over. There is no doubt that the projected airliner will be an excessive nuisance; the FAA are experimenting to find out the limits to which the nuisance can go. How much noise and other discomfort will people stand ?

There has inevitably been some protest from Oklahoma City, a small part of whose 500,000 people not see why their homes should be damaged (windows have broken, walls have sagged and bulged, plaster has split under the boom), their nerves shattered and their lives endangered (one ceiling which came down in the Negro section of the City narrowly missed a six year old child), in the cause of building a bigger, faster, noisier, more objectionable aircraft than those which already cause considerable disturbance.

The FAA has offered a conciliatory front to the protestors—they even promised to call off the experiments if the City authorities asked them to. But not all of Oklahoma’s citizens dislike the booms (we shall come to the reason for this in a moment), so no such request has been made. In any event, there is little doubt that, whatever Oklahoma or any other community may say, the world is going to be pestered by the supersonic airliners.

The protests of the people who live around London Airport have not been able to reduce the noise nuisance there; in fact, jet flights, which are the main culprits, steadily increase. Occasionally the government pulls off a dishonest trick. As the pace of competition among the jet operators gets hotter, the airlines make frequent application to be allowed to step up their allocation of flights—sometimes night flights. It is not unknown for the Ministry of Aviation to grant only part of such application, and to follow this with such a hullabaloo about their professed concern for the eardrums of the people around the airport that the fact that they have actually granted an increase in flights goes almost unnoticed.

The reason for the popularity of the big jets is that they are one of the cheapest methods of moving people over long distances by air that has ever been discovered. This means that their operator can hope to make big profits from them. If this should apply also to the supersonic liner, then that monster will before long be crashing about over our heads.

The thing which will stop the supersonic project will not be the demonstrations of the people who will be driven to distraction by it. It will not be because the thing is officially considered to be too great an assault upon human living conditions. The airliner will be abandoned if it is proved to be so crushingly unprofitable that the nations who are now racing to build it are persuaded that their economic interests are better served by dropping the project.

This has happened before. The post war years are littered with aircraft—the Brabazon, the Princess flying boat—which did not make the commercial grade. Others—the Vanguard, for example—only scraped in and were immediately an economic embarrassment. The development of the helicopter as an inter city link has been held in check not because it is a deafeningly clacking contraption (which it is) but because its operators have not been able to make it pay.

We may reflect, with a wry smile, upon the fact that up to now the most profitable aircraft have also been among the most objectionable. So we have got the jets, whose throaty scream drowns all conversation as they pass overhead at a height at which the traditional piston engine would hardly be noticed. And we have not got the flying boats, which might have been that much less of a nuisance because their airports would have probably been built on the coast. If this unfortunate circumstance is anything like a constant rule, the supersonic jets will be profitable. And we shall look back wistfully to the comparatively peaceful days when simple 707’s thundered over the roof-tops.

The Oklahoma experiments will then be consigned to embarrassed history. But other experiments, in different fields, will go on. Day after day, for example, we are subjected to investigation by what are officially known as market research organisations. Smooth, earnestly bespectacled young men call at our front doors, flick over plastic pictures of electric shavers, challenging us to identify their makers. (The writer, who has a weakness for electric shavers and who therefore devours all the ads for them, came out with full marks for this, but was disappointed not to receive a prize.)

The same young men may come back again some time later, with other questions about other products. They do not call at every house. They “sample” us, which perhaps makes some people feel like rare sherry, except that rare sherry is more respected by its drinkers than we are by our masters.

The smart young men have even divided us into groups, according to the jobs we do and how much we get for it. A company director is probably in group A or B. A tool maker may be somewhere in Group C. And so on down the alphabet, until somewhere among the E’s are the people, who scrape along on National Assistance.

None of the smart young men seem to see anything wrong in this. Most of them are anxious to identify themselves with the market research herd, dressing, talking and even combing their hair to the same pattern. They could have stepped straight out of those exceedingly irritating advertisements which, by a novel stroke, tell us when not to chew gum. They look out at the world with confident eyes, convinced of their ability to sell it absolutely anything.

The reason for this sort of activity—to use a rather delicate word for it—is that capitalist industry must always be obsessed by its markets. Profit is at the moment the primary objective of production- but although it is made when the goods are produced, profit can only be realised when they are sold. It did not take capitalism long to realise that it had better try to get to know its markets. So they are constantly sampling us, experimenting on us, sending out their smart young men to put us under their microscopes.

They may even try to alter a market, to persuade us to stop buying one type of product and to start buying another. Or they may try to open up new markets, with goods which have not been widely sold before. (Any day now, for example, we shall be swamped with advertisements for central heating systems.)

In Oklahoma, as a matter of fact, some of the business interests descry a market in the sonic booms, The local Chamber of Commerce hope that, if the experiments help to turn out an “acceptable” aircraft, Oklahoma’s airfield will be developed as one of the world's first supersonic airports. Speculating on this prospect, they have already bought up a lot of land around the airfield. Hungrily they look to the business which a supersonic airport would bring them—the contracts to build and to supply, and the extra population which would come to the area. Dazzled by visions of the golden economic boom, the business men of Oklahoma City have no eyes for the distress which the sonic booms will cause to the people of the area.

Experiments are not confined to the commercial field. Everyone knows that the great publicity drive which the Conservative Party launched before their victory in 1959 was managed by one of this country’s leading advertising agencies. This agency did not rush out haphazardly, slapping up hastily designed posters in any old place. They first of all took their sample of what they call public opinion, they made their experiments and they thought around it all. Only then did they decide on the line which their publicity should take.

The lessons of that defeat were not wasted upon the Labour Party. They assembled their own force of high powered admen, who gravely discussed which line they should adopt. Should they plug Nationalisation? Pensions? Roads? Out of all this came the Let's Go slogan, and the thumbs up sign— and is it only coincidence that Mr. Wilson is now inseparable from his pipe?

All of this effort has gone into finding out what the people will bear in the way of election propaganda, in the same way as the Oklahoma experiments are supposed to find out what they will bear in the way of thunder over their heads. It has gone into finding out what political image will appeal most to the voters’ ignorance and apathy. That is why the Tories no longer present themselves as the party born with a divine right to rule and why Labour has stuffed away its cloth cap, which is now worn only at events like Miners' Galas.

Nobody is exempt from such investigations—even the investigators themselves. That paunchy, florid sales executive, poring over the latest market research returns, enunciating in careful accents through his teeth, does not escape. He, too, is part of a market, to be assessed and experimented upon. Even the chewing gum makers are after him, along with the car firms and the people who try to persuade him that theirs is the best way of suppressing his ulcers.

Capitalism exploits and restricts its entire working class. But more than that, it degrades us in a multitude of ways. It has us wriggling on a pin on its observation board, and is carefully noting our every twitch and spasm. Does that spasm indicate that we would prefer another sort of pin? Does that twitch mean that we want one with a different shape head? If there’s money in it, capitalism is interested.

Maybe the working class do not object to this. In moments of despair, it even seems that they actually like it. In which case they do not object to, they like, blatant humiliation.

But, as Vera Lynn never tired of pointing out, somewhere there is a silver lining. Whatever the result of the experiments, and whether any notice is taken of them or not, they do prove one thing. We count. Mass opinion is important At the moment, it is all mass ignorance; but if it were mass knowledge. . .  If the people refused to chew gum, or take plastic spoons with their detergent powder, if they said a unanimous No to supersonic aircraft, all these things would have to stop.

There is one obvious qualification to this. If ever people got around to thinking like that, they would almost certainly be on the verge of saying the biggest-ever No. They would be about to say No to capitalism itself, to its grisly experiments, its cynical posturings and its ruthless degradations. There is a moral in this for us all, for the deafened folk of Oklahoma, for the canvassed, sampled, classified, humiliated people of the world.

Stop wriggling and get off that pin.

Ivan.

The myth of consumer sovereignty (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his seminal work, Stone Age Economics published in 1972, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins controversially suggested that hunter gatherers, though conspicuously lacking in those sundry accoutrements of what we call ‘civilisation’ – like money, fast cars, an 80-inch flat- screen TV and a semi-detached terrace in the suburbs – may nevertheless have constituted what he called the ‘original affluent society’.

This was a startling claim, to say the least. It certainly challenged what we conventionally mean by the term ‘affluence’. As Sahlins noted:

‘By the common understanding, an affluent society is one in which all the people’s material wants are easily satisfied. To assert that the hunters are affluent is to deny then that the human condition is an ordained tragedy, with man the prisoner, at hard labor, of a perpetual disparity between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means. For there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by producing much or desiring little.’

‘Producing much’ is what Sahlins called the ‘Galbraithean way’ to affluence – named after the economist, J K Galbraith, who had written a book in the 1950s called The Affluent Society – although Galbraith himself was somewhat ambivalent about the whole subject of affluence.

As he saw it, the age-old problem of scarcity had been largely overcome. The emphasis on increasing productivity and output, he argued, may have been apposite in earlier times when large swathes of the population had little option but to endure grinding poverty. However, this was no longer the case in the post-war era of mass production and consumer plenty. Hence, society’s priorities needed to change – from delivering yet more affluence to dealing with the challenges that affluence threw up – such as glaring inequality and environmental destruction. Amongst other things, concluded Galbraith, this called for more Keynesian-style government regulation of the economy, more investment in the public sector and so on.

As a consumption theorist, Galbraith was very much influenced by earlier writers in that tradition – like Thorstein Veblen, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), for instance. Galbraith argued that the conventional wisdom regarding the role of consumers had become outdated – that is, the idea that the ‘consumer is king’. According to this, whatever the consumer wants, businesses obligingly provide.

For Galbraith, the boot had since transferred to the other foot: it was now the producer who was king and the consumer, the subject. The consumer was, for instance, now more of a price-taker than a price-maker, a tendency that would have been reinforced by the increasing concentration and centralisation of capital in fewer hands. In short, the increasing domination of the economy by giant corporations.

Because of their large size, these corporations were not so much constrained by market competition when it came to setting prices. Nor for that matter, by the single-minded quest to maximise profits. That might well still be the primary goal of small businesses or, indeed, the shareholders of large corporations. However, suggested Galbraith in another book entitled The New Industrial State (1964), the former were in decline while the latter had largely lost control to a specialist planning and technical elite – dubbed the ‘technostructure’ – intent upon promoting technical efficiency and expanding the corporation out of undistributed profits.

In that sense profits still mattered; the corporation would prefer, for example, to finance itself rather than depend on bank loans and this obviously required that it be profitable. But the point that Galbraith was making was simply that the pursuit of profit was not of such overriding importance as it once was and that other objectives had entered into the frame alongside profit-making. With hindsight, however, things have not turned out quite like Galbraith imagined, with ‘shareholder capitalism’ now back firmly in the driving seat.

Dependence effect

For him, all these various developments also gave rise to something that he called the ‘dependence effect’. By this he meant consumer preferences had become more dependent on, or conditioned by, the corporate imperatives of big business. These latter were to increase sales and thereby make the fullest possible use of the large-scale productive capacity they had built up and so reap the benefits of scale economies. In other words, to some extent, these imperatives were technologically driven. While the resulting price reductions might, in the short run, seem to adversely affect the revenue stream of a business and hence its profits, in the long run it enabled the business to undercut its competitors and so capture a larger slice of the market.

However, what this also meant is that more demand for these products had to be created, or stimulated, in order to justify and maintain a high level of output. Price cutting would help in that respect but, in addition, boosting demand necessitated resorting to intensive advertising and ‘salesmanship’. In short, by generally promoting a culture of emulative and acquisitive consumerism.

Strictly speaking, the aim was not so much to satisfy the wants of the consumer as such. Rather, it was to ensure that the consumer remained perpetually unsatisfied and forever in a state of wanting more. In short, it was to promote the idea of ‘consumption for the sake of consumption’ (mirroring ‘production for the sake of production’).

Galbraith argued from what he called a commonsensical premise that the more amply a person´s wants are supplied the less urgent will those wants become. However:

‘If the individual’s wants are to be urgent they must be original with himself. They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. And above all they must not be contrived by the process of production by which they are satisfied. For this means that the whole case for the urgency of production, based on the urgency of wants, falls to the ground. One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants.’

In other words, the institutions of modern advertising and salesmanship ‘cannot be reconciled with the notion of independently determined desires, for their central function is to create desires—to bring into being wants that previously did not exist’.

Predictably enough, Galbraith´s arguments were excoriated by hostile critics like market libertarians for whom the concept of consumer sovereignty was something sacrosanct. It was key to their model of competitive market economy that works to maximise economic welfare in strict accordance with the wants of rational actors expressed through the market. Since these are essentially both rational and sovereign it was not for anyone else to question or frown upon such wants – whatever might be the social or environmental costs of satisfying them.

Any suggestion that consumer preferences might be moulded by institutional forces emanating from outside or beyond the individual themselves was regarded as anathema, an affront to the individualistic worldview of the market libertarians. If individuals were so easily manipulated, what is to prevent them making irrational choices, perhaps leading to some or other suboptimal outcome that might tarnish the good reputation of the free market?

Rejecting the very idea of a ‘dependence effect’ thus committed these market libertarians to the view that our wants (whether urgent or not) must necessarily always be ‘original’ to the individual themselves – or, to use Galbraith’s expression, will always spring from their own inner disposition alone. Suggesting they can be conditioned or shaped by some external force or factor had one further consequence. It could potentially call into question that most sacred of dogmas upon which much mainstream economic thinking hinges – namely, that our wants are insatiable. For if we can be persuaded to buy more we can also be persuaded to want less and therefore to buy less. Clearly, that would not be in the interests of the business community.

Manipulating wants

For Galbraith, that is precisely what this community was in the business of doing – persuading consumers. As he argued, if wants were genuinely original or innate to the consumer then what would be the point in advertising at all. The consumer would seek out and find the product that might satisfy their particular want of their own accord. The fact that the product is so relentlessly publicised strongly suggests that the purpose of the advertisers is to expand the consumer´s wants or even to supply them with completely novel wants that they did not even realise they had.

Naturally, this has prompted a counterargument from Galbraith´s critics that advertising can be justified on the grounds that it is merely alerting us to the existence of useful products we might otherwise have overlooked. However, this counterargument strikes one as being somewhat disingenuous.

To begin with, there is the sheer scale of advertising to consider. It seems absolutely disproportionate to what the market libertarians claim its purpose to be. It does not seem credible, to put it mildly, to suggest that businesses, ferociously competing against each other for a bigger slice of the market, would spend such vast sums of money merely to provide a public service, as it were – of informing the consumer of the availability of these products and thereby enabling them to better satisfy their wants.

Galbraith might have been naïve if he imagined that advertising could somehow be pruned back to a bare minimum in a competitive market economy. But his critics were no less, if not considerably more, naïve in their understanding of what advertising is about. Its purpose is, very clearly, more to persuade than inform. This is evident in the very of techniques of advertising itself. These involve repetition, reinforcement and the copious use of emotional associations, fantasy, irony and downright innuendo. Such techniques are demonstrably manipulative in style, often preying on people’s vulnerabilities and sense of self-esteem.

In the early days of advertising there was, arguably, rather more in the way of factual or informational content to adverts but those days have long gone. The dark arts of the advertisers have evolved way beyond that since then. Advertising today, suggests Andrew Simms, is about mind control. Like air pollution it seeps into every nook and cranny of our lives. Indeed, it is reckoned that the average American citizen is exposed to anywhere between 4,000 and 10,000 adverts every single day:

‘Advertising works by getting under your radar, introducing new ideas without bothering your conscious mind. Extensive scientific research shows that, when exposed to advertising, people “buy into” the materialistic values and goals it encourages. Consequently, they report lower levels of personal wellbeing, experience conflict in relationships, engage in fewer positive social behaviours, and experience detrimental effects on study and work. Critically, the more that people prioritise materialistic values and goals, the less they embrace positive attitudes towards the environment – and the more likely they are to behave in damaging ways.’

More ominously, Simms goes on to refer to the findings of neuroscience on the effects of advertising on the human brain: ‘advertising goes as far as lodging itself in the brain, rewiring it by forming physical structures and causing permanent change. Brands that have been made familiar through advertising have a strong influence on the choices people make. Under MRI scans, the logos of recognisable car brands are shown to activate a single particular region in the brain in the medial prefrontal cortex. Brands and logos have also been shown to generate strong preferences between virtually identical products, such as fizzy drinks – preferences that disappear in blind tests. Researchers looking to assess the power of advertised brands concluded that “there are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans”’ (Guardian, 11 October 2021).

If we accept that the purpose of advertising is more to persuade than to inform then this puts our market libertarians in an essentially untenable position. It means having to concede that our wants are not necessarily those that are original to ourselves and that, consequently, we are not at all like the sovereign individuals depicted in individualist mythology, driven by impulses that arise entirely within ourselves. It means having to acknowledge that we are, indeed, social animals capable of influencing and being influenced by others.

Given the manipulative nature of advertising it follows that weakening or removing its influence would result in a situation in which consumer wants would indeed more closely approximate those of our hypothetical sovereign individual. Therein lies a delicious irony – the fact that market libertarianism through its endorsement of the practice of advertising would appear to be in league with those very forces that threaten our individual sovereignty and our ability to rationally think for ourselves.

Untenable position

Faced with the incontrovertible evidence that advertising does indeed contrive to expand our wants or introduce new ones, some market libertarians have adopted a somewhat different tack than that of outright denial. This might be described as an exercise in damage limitation.

A case in point was the prominent free market supporter, Friedrich von Hayek. Hayek contended that it was a gross exaggeration to suggest corporations could determine consumer preferences through the power of advertising alone. That is undoubtedly true although it misses the larger point. The inculcation of consumerist values in the population is not something for which any one particular agency or institution can be held solely responsible. It is woven into the very fabric of life under capitalism.

It arises from the system´s competitive dynamic and its built-in disposition to grow without limit. The relentless accumulation of capital that competition compels finds its correlate in the no less relentless drive to boost market sales by means of which the economic surpluses to finance that accumulation can be realised.

Robin Cox

The Battle for Your Mind (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does happiness reside in a bottle of perfume? Is your only concern the sweat under your arms? We take a look at the world of advertising

In 1969 the American Association of Advertising Agencies estimated that approximately 1,600 advertisements were aimed at each individual every day. That may seem a ridiculous number at first but the individual is not aware of most of them. The average person is likely to take momentarily notice of about 60 to 80 commercials a day with only 10 to 13 making a conscious impression. The number of advertisements hitting each individual today is certainly higher. You can now find advertisements regularly covering taxis, buses, toilets, envelopes, phone boxes and golf balls. In order to maintain sanity amongst this constant bombardment each individual has to erect a sort of sensory screen that can detect the oncoming signal and reject it.

On rare occasions advertisements are clever, entertaining and creative. Advertisements of this variety are few and far between, but they do exist and it would be incorrect to say that all advertising is “bad”. However, success in advertising is dependent upon the ability to manipulate the emotions, thoughts, and intelligence of the target audience to achieve the desired reaction—to get them to buy your product or service over that of your competitors. Typically, ads concern themselves with fantasy; a constructed world usually beyond the reach of our everyday experiences. They offer a vision of a world where happiness resides in a bottle of perfume, where your only concern is the sweat under your arms, and where a a low calorie drink could change your life (as part of a well-balanced diet of course).

Advertising has conditioned generations to accept it as an inescapable part of the landscape, as ubiquitous as night and day. There was a time, however, when advertising was widely considered an unwanted distraction. For example, editors initially thought ads were an intrusion upon the reader and would segregate all the adverts to the back of their magazine where they were out of the way.

“Fluff”

The roots of mass advertising lie in magazines and took off over 100 years ago when industries began producing vast amounts of consumer goods. Since broadcasting didn’t exist and newspapers were largely local, magazines were the only national advertising medium. The fact that you could produce high quality colour graphics on heavy paper, unlike newspapers, meant that magazines were much favoured by advertisers.

As soon as advertising revenue became important, at around 1890, ad agencies insisted that ads be moved from the back of magazines to the front. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before major advertisers were demanding that their ads appear opposite the opening pages of major articles. But it didn’t end there. Editors were soon selecting articles based not only on the basis of their expected interest to its readers but for their influence of advertisements.

As mass advertising grew, “liberal” and “radical” ideas in editorials became a problem. So did serious articles. A reader in an analytical frame of mind was unlikely to be enthusiastic about an advertisement for a trivial product. An article about genuine social suffering would certainly interrupt the “buying mood”. What was the solution? Easy, change the content. Better still, just fill the publication with material that will attract the readership the advertisers want. Before television emerged in the 1950’s, successful magazines were 65 percent ads. By that time, most magazines were fundamentally designed for advertising rather than editorial matter (see Vogue, Talk, Here’s Health, etc). Pick any random magazine off the newsagent’s shelf today and you’ll have a tough time trying to spot the difference between an article and an advertisement. Compare the differences between the styles, content and ideas. Most of the material claiming to be an “article” is in fact product promotion. Some writers call this “fluff”, a term used to describe material which is not news in any real sense but is non-advertising material supporting advertisers (see promotion sections in Vogue, Marie Claire, Woman’s Own, Muscle and Fitness, etc). Advertsiers want “fluff”, to create a buying mood.

One of the best examples to demonstrate the level of influence major advertisers now have over the contents of magazines is Vogue magazine. The January 2001 issue totalled 186 pages. Of those 186 pages, 87 were full-page ads. (In the first 66 pages there are 50 full-page ads.) Another 21 pages could be described as “fluff”, product promotion. The first “article” comes in at page 33. 17 pages consist of travel, food and horoscope sections. That leaves 61 pages out of 186 for article space. Of those 61 pages, 43 are full-page photographs. The main article entitled “Stars In Their Own Eyes” totals 28 pages, 27 of which are full-page photographs with 1 page of text. Richard Shortway, editor of Vogue, has said, “The cold, hard, facts of magazine publishing mean that those who advertise get editorial coverage”.

Another good example is Talk magazine. In the first 48 pages of the premier issue there were 46 full-page adverts! Unlike a few decades ago where editors would segregate ads to the back of the magazine on the grounds that it was an infringement upon the reader, the of bulk of adverting now appears in the opening pages—just where the advertisers want them.

Garbage

Advertising’s greatest effect on the mind is not so much its detail, but the mass conditioning attempted by the same basic themes occurring over and over as we slouch in a chair and uncritically listen to the garbage emitting from the box everyday.

Advertising likes to tell us how to think and how not to think. Some of the criteria we are told to use include how one should judge what is credible and incredible, what is success and failure, and how we should judge ourselves against others. Even though the advertisers are at war with each other for viewers’ and readers’ attention, the same themes keep cropping up again and again. That is because all advertising is born out of the same system, capitalism. Advertising does not exist in a vacuum; it is part of a system. Forget the three R’s taught in the education system; it is the 3 C’s in advertising that count—consumerism, conformity and competition.

Some advertisers aren’t shy to declare their support for capitalist ideas:

• “Business is the engine of society. Without it there would be no jobs. No products. No competition. No advancements.” (A 1996 Microsoft ad)
• “Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.” (Mead Coated Papers)
• “You don’t win silver, you lose gold”. (Nike)
• “Identify yourself”. (Mitsubishi)

There are many researchers who believe subliminal advertising is being employed by a number of major advertisers to influence the subconscious mind of its viewers and readers. (Subliminal advertising is defined as images and messages that are below the threshold of conscious perception, but which will nevertheless affect the viewer on a subconscious level). The use of subliminal advertising may or may not be a reality. That is not the important thing. What we have to look at the reason for the existence of advertising in the first place, not necessarily the techniques advertiser’s employ.

Hype

The Vice President of Proctor and Gamble made a statement over 20 years ago which is truer today than ever. He said, “We’re in programming first to assume a good environment for advertising“.

In 1965 the Federal Communications Commission held hearings to determine how much influence advertisers had on non-commercial content of television and radio. Albert N. Halverstadt, then general advertising manager of Procter and Gamble, was particularly interested in the image of business and business people. He gave the FCC formal requirements for television programs:

“There will be no material on any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless, and lacking all sentiment or spiritual motivation. If a businessman is cast in the role of a villain, it must be made clear that he is not typical but is as much despised by his fellow businessmen as he is by other members of society”.

The manager of corporate communications for General Electric has said, “We insist on a program environment that reinforces our corporate image”.

Far from being content with dominating the pages of popular magazines, major advertisers—BP, Pepsi, Levi’s, Cadburys, Ford, Nike and the rest—have set to conquer the almighty task of controlling the messages that emit from the black box in the corner of our rooms. Without doubt TV is the most effective advertising medium. Viewers don’t have time to examine or judge the messages. You sit and listen as the TV talks at you. Far from taking a passing interest, advertisers want to know exactly what time of day and in-between what programmes their ads will be shown because that will define the audience population they are buying. And there is no shortage of time. A double episode of the highly popular American sitcom “Friends” airs about 18 minutes of ads in one hour, which is nearly a third of the programming time. But don’t be mistaken in thinking the scripts of programmes are devoid of advertising influence. The ad agencies aren’t going to let them off that easily. TV executives (like editors) have surrendered to the altar of profit and are forced into the competition for viewer’s attention. Michael L. Buchenbeth has said: “The scripts are written to build tension before the commercials to hold the viewers attention during the commercials“. The basic strategy in programming is not merely geared towards satisfying the audience’s tastes but what is perceived as the most likely to attract advertisers. Like magazines, the difference between ads and programming becomes blurred. Flick the TV on . . . is it soap, a documentary, the news, an ad . . . who knows?

The motion picture has obvious advantages in immediacy, sound, colour over the still image. There is no end to the image and sound creation and manipulation possibilities; the ads with Steve McQueen in are a good example. However, the problem as far as the admen are concerned is the fact that you can only broadcast one message on one programme at a time. If an audience finds an ad boring, too long or too offensive they’re likely to commit the ultimate sin that haunts every ad agency and TV executive—they’ll switch the TV off.

The correct atmosphere is essential for advertising; which is a buying atmosphere. Short, half-hour programmes that are trivial, non-political and humorous are much favoured by advertisers. Coronation St, Star’s in their eyes, GMTV, Neighbours, She’s got to have it, Friends, TOTP, Blind Date (etc, etc) fit the bill well. Richard Lesser, then Vice President of the Grey Advertising Agency, in an article in Advertising Age (12 December 1957) wrote, “Advertisers for years have been studying the integration of the show and the commercials to see how the two can be married to each other“. It is no coincidence, for example, that Rachael and Monica from the American sitcom “Friends” have never appeared on air with anything less than perfect and immaculate hair since they have advertised L’Oreal hair products. Which ads most frequently appear in-between each episode? That’s right, L’Oreal shampoo ads that feature both Rachael and Monica.

What about the News? The fact that the Newsreaders’ scripts are interwoven with the advertisers’ interests is deliberately ignored. We are supposed to think that the ideas are the independent work of professional journalists detached from commercial bias. If the audiences were told that the ideas represented explicit demands of advertisers, the message would lose its impact. Sure, they can say what they want; as long they don’t conflict with the advertisers’ interests. The major advertisers can actually demand they report along certain lines by threatening to pull out their advertising.

Politics too

Advertising has also been used as a tool in the struggle for political ideas. Politicians, leaders and political parties alike have for some time exploited this effective medium. Political campaigns are increasingly looking and sounding more like advertising campaigns with each successive election. Sound-bites, slogans and style are very important considerations in any campaign now. The fact that a political party needs to spend thousands and thousands on advertising campaigns to improve its image just shows how shallow their message is, or the lack of one. Capitalist parties have long since ran out of anything intelligent to say and their only hope is to either re-hash old ideas or change the packaging they sell them in (see “New” Labour). Of course, the problem does not lie in the fact that they promote their political agenda but rather that they have nothing useful to say. Take away all the style and sloganeering and all you are left with is a bunch people who say very average things about very average politics; not worth voting for (see New Labour, again).

Would advertising still exist in with a society based upon common ownership? No. The inhabitants of a socialist society may well decide to have images and messages in the cities and outer environment but instead of being under the control of a profit seeking minority, they would be under the democratic control of the society, and will therefore benefit society instead of retarding it. When everyone has an equal say in what is produced and free access to it, there is no need to seduce people to choose one product or service over other. Of course, there may be a range of products which serve the same function but people will make choices free from the distortion and manipulation of advertising. The need for advertising only exists when different companies are competing over the same market for a bigger cut of the profit. A socialist society won’t require cities, towns, magazines and newspapers to be plastered with images and messages that serve no useful social function but contribute only to pollute the mental environment. There will be no profit to accumulate, no companies to exploit the workforce and no leaders to follow. Creativity, free from the constraints of profit making, can flourish and can be used to benefit society, and not be wasted on the anti-social aims of advertising agencies. Ideas, concepts and solutions will not be judged by their ability to realise a profit but by their value to its people.

T. M. Jones

Human Needs (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question is often asked, “What would life be like under Socialism?'' If we can't say precisely what it will be be like, we can at least say what it will not be like. We can say it will be production for use, which means there will be no buying and selling and consequently no high pressure advertising, no costly and frenzied attempts to get people to buy this or that. It won’t be a veneer society covering the sham and the shoddy. Only the best will be good enough in Socialist production.

Before people can pursue any cultural activities their basic needs, food, clothing and shelter, must be met. Different societies have different needs depending on the level they have reached. Thus, Feudalism, based upon agriculture and individual handicraft, meant that cars television, jet planes, etc., were not only impossible, but unthinkable. These things presuppose all the scientific and technical development necessary to their production. The development of Capitalism brings with it new techniques and new methods of production that generate new needs. Mass production demands mass sales. Large-scale industry, for example, needs large-scale transport for its distribution and finds its logical extension in jet planes. Mass entertainment, from the music hall to the cinema and radio, finds its extension in television.

This may appear as though techniques were made to measure or as if some ready-made, overall, technology were just waiting to be taken off the scientific clothes' peg. It is not quite as mechanical as this. What we can say is that there is a never-ending cycle of discovery and investigation. New discoveries give rise to new fields of investigation that require specialisation and new techniques. And, like oil in the earth, they are just waiting to be tapped.

The historical conditions that gave rise to commodity production, the production of things for sale and profit, produced also the necessary new techniques. Large-scale, power-motivated industry grew up, based on mass production and from this flowed the mass advertising and the constant pressure to buy, buy, hammered into us with unchanging regularity. One could say that in capitalist society, nothing is bought, everything is sold.

Needs

Our needs are largely conditioned by the kind of society into which we are born. We satisfy our needs by buying things or services. To get the money, the majority of us, as wage workers, have to sell our energy and skill to someone prepared to make use of them. Wages approximate to what is required to keep the worker to a standard of working efficiency. Since profit is the motive of the Capitalist, he pays the worker less than the value of his product. Profit is unpaid labour, the difference between what the worker receives in his wage packet and the value of what he has produced. The Capitalist must turn into money this unpaid labour or profit on the market, hence the enormous growth of advertising and selling agencies. In America, the country of capitalism par excellence, advertising has reached a turnover involving 9,000 million dollars and we are told by statisticians that if this trend continues, by 1965 the figure will reach 15,000 million, barring a slump.

The waste that production for sale and profit engenders is immeasurable. Socialism, that is production for use, means that only the best will prevail. The gradations of quality to suit your pocket will go and along with the cheap-jack will go the sham, the shoddy, the thief and the spiv. Restrictive practices, so prevalent today, will disappear and resources will be used to the full.

Production factors can greatly influence our needs today. A new commodity plus an intense advertising campaign creates new needs. It is hard to believe that before the war we managed quite well without nylon and other manmade fibres. Snob values and the “keeping lip with the Joneses" are exploited by the advertising experts whose job it is to manipulate and play on the weaknesses of potential consumers.

The most prevalent aspiration in this society is the acquisition of money, for money gives one a social power. Without it you are a failure; with it a success. Hence the striving to climb that slippery ladder, to reach the top, at all costs, to be able to surround oneself with all the things that will earn the approbation of one's fellow men. These are the kind of values that obtain today. Relationships between people revolve around this factor. The personality becomes identified by and through the accumulation of things and not through the exercise of one's human capacities. Full development is repressed and stultified by the property society we live in.

Soul-destroying

Let us look at some of its effects. Over 40 per cent, of lying-in patients in hospitals are mental cases. The soul-destroying repetitive processes that most workers do because it is cheaper to produce in that way, completely separate them from joy in their labour. The feeling that they can be sacked only adds to the frustration and insecurity of living. Workers do not have a job. They have the loan of a job which can be taken from them whenever their employer decides to do so. The threat of war and mass annihilation, due to the same basic cause, Capitalism, hangs over us like Damocles' sword. The irritations, mistrust, guardedness and jungle morality of this society all serve to alienate the sociability of people. We know that once the property basis of society is ended and production is for use, then people will act in a harmonious and sociable way.

Production, when it is for use and not for profit, will depend solely on the amount of people available and the natural resources to work on. All the wasted and useless labour that we have today will be usefully employed under Socialism. Men in the armed forces, policemen, people engaged in accounting, collecting and doling out money, insurance, banking and the hundred and one other useless tasks so necessary to capitalism will enter into production. Potentially we can produce an abundance. It simply becomes a matter of organisation. We know that under Socialism people will not seek to acquire things which today carry with them status and prestige value. Those compensating factors will no longer fill a need and the emphasis in people's lives will at last be on the quality of living rather than the quantity of possessions.

J.C. Gormley

Sting in the Tail: Hobson's Choice (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hobson's Choice

Walk down your local High Street and marvel at the choice capitalism gives to the consumer.

Just look at all the different stores and shops there are competing for our custom. Take shoe shops for example. There's Dolcis, Freeman Hardy Willis, Lllley and Skinner, Saxone, Manfleld, Cable, Trueform, Curtess and Shoe City.

Plenty of healthy competition there, eh?

Well, no, because all of them are owned by Sears which describes itself as "Britain's foremost speciality retailer with 3,600 outlets".

Some competition. Some choice!

Good News, Bad News

First, the good news for the government The 60,000 drop in unemployment in April was double the expected figure (cheers). The bad news Is that this will add to the pressure for higher wages and salaries (groan).

But what's bad about that? tf demand for labour is high then its price will rise and surely this is in line with the government's free market philosophy?

Ah, but THAT'S different! Why? Norman Fowler, the Employment Secretary, explains that the current increase in average earnings of over nine per cent "puts at risk our ability to compete" (The Guardian, 19 May)

Those who choose to run capitalism never have their troubles to seek, with even good news bringing gloom in its wake. Don't you feel sorry for them?

Intellectual Poverty

John Moore's claim that poverty has been abolished was probably meant to rescue his sinking political career, but did he have to make such a fool of himself by arguing that poverty should only be measured by Victorian standards?

But how should poverty be measured? Here's how Owen, the socialist house painter, did it In Robert Tressed's novel 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists":

What I call poverty is when people are not able to secure for themselves all the benefits of civilisation . . . If a man is only able to provide himself and his family with the bare necessaries of existence, that man's family is living in poverty. Since he cannot enjoy the advantages of civilisation he might just as well be a savage; better, In fact, for a savage does not know what he is deprived of.

This was written by a working man and Moore's argument is, by comparison, a measure of his intellectual poverty.

Racial Nonsense

Jewish and Aslan groups in Glasgow were upset recently over an invitation to take part in a TV debate with Lady Jane Birdwood, a veteran racist loony.

A spokesman summed up why both these groups boycotted the debate:

We were concerned that the programme would publicise the views of the far right. Their opinion is rarely reported In Scotland and we wish that to remain the case.

(Observer Scotland 7th May)

Leaving aside the undemocratic idea expressed here, do these people think that racist organisations don't exist in Glasgow? Their literature is openly sold in the city and they cannot be ignored out of existence.

The best way to deal with racist ideas is to publicly expose them for the nonsense they are, and those who refused to participate in the debate, which took place anyway, missed an opportunity the Socialist Party would have jumped at.

The Baby Killers

The world has ten per cent more food than it needs, but human error, neglect and complacency have left at least half a billion people hungry, a UN conference was told yesterday. "It Is . . . a question of distribution and imbalances created by International trade, not of shortage”, a conference report said.

Participants were told malnutrition, coupled with diarrohoea and Infectious diseases, kill an estimated 14 million children every five years. The conference reported that most malnourished people live in Asia and Africa.

(The Guardian 23rd. May)

Could any evidence be more damning? Capitalism, the mass killer without parallel, stands convicted yet again and only awaits its deserved fate. Come on, workers, what are you waiting for?

Adspeak

That capitalism is a wasteful society is nowhere better illustrated than in the advertising industry. The latest piece of madness from there is reported in the advertising trade magazine Campaign (19th. May)

Lyons Tetley Is introducing round tea bags In a bid to grab a bigger slice of a £300 million market, while trying to halt the relentless decline in tea sales.

The company has spent £9 million developing what it claims is its biggest product innovation since tea bags appeared in Britain 36 years ago. And It Is putting £3 million behind a TV campaign through D'Arcy Masslus Benton and Bowles.

The new round bags have been launched, because, according to the company, they give the consumer ”emotional satisfaction”. Deputy marketing director Ian Prutton said: *The shape Is such a neat fit with a cup, mug or pot there’s an immediate practical, tangible benefit.”

£9 million spent on developing and £3 million in advertising round tea bags.

It does not take much imagination to think of £12 million being spent on something a little more socially useful.

Like perhaps helping to avoid the death of 14 million children in the next five years. That would certainly give us more "emotional satisfaction".

T.V. Drama

The studio lighting is turned down. The subject is seen in silhouette. The voice has been distorted, so that the subject cannot be identified.

What's going on? Is it a Mafia supergrass, a sex offender perhaps an IRA bomber? Let's listen to the disguised voice. "I've been working on the railway for 15 years. My take home pay with overtime and working my rest day is £150 per week".

It's nothing more sinister than a member of the National Union of Railwaymen in dispute with the British Railways Board. But why the elaborate precautions to disguise the identity of the striker? It is because the BRB have issued a directive that forbids railway workers talking to the Press unless what they say has been cleared by the BRB. This is industrial relations 1989 style.

The government also have a representative in the studio. He is bathed in the full glare of the studio lights. The only distortion to his voice is the arrogant upper class accent of a public school education.

He is Mr. Paul Channon, Minister of Transport and millionaire. He doesn't need to work his rest day. In fact after the Lockerbie air disaster he flew off to the West Indies on holiday.

He is indignant about the "selfishness" of railway workers. He speaks angrily about "duty to the public".

He is a hypocritical parasite defending a class divided exploitative system. It is time the working class turned the lights out on him and all his class!

Profit . . . (1993)

From the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A bit random, I know, but this capitalist advert was included in the August 1993 Socialist Standard. I'm sure it's self-explanatory for a regular reader of the blog. I'm guessing this sort of advertising wouldn't be so brazen in 2022.

Voice From The Back: The Price Of Oil (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Price Of Oil

Away back in September 2003 two workers were suffocated to death in a huge gas leak on Shell’s Brent Bravo oil platform in the North Sea. “Bill Campbell, a former senior manager with the oil giants, says vital maintenance work was ignored and lies told to allow platforms to carry on producing oil at all times” (Daily Record, 14 June). The company were fined £900,000 for safety breaches. An amount that is completely derisory when compared with their billions in profits every year. Bill Campbell who worked in the North Sea for 25 years went on BBC Scotland TV to denounce the company, but they did not send a spokesperson to deny the charges. They were probably too busy counting their profits to consider the deaths of two expendable workers.

Lazy Workers?

“Avoiding work is a full-time job and seems to be getting harder, at least in America where Workaholics Anonymous now has self-help branches in 35 cities. New figures suggest that employees are working three hours a week more than their parents did, the equivalent to nearly four extra weeks a year” (Times, 21 June). Socialists used to be told that socialism was impractical because the working class were too lazy. That argument certainly doesn’t apply here.

A Tale Of Three Virgins

Three sisters in Inverness featured in a bizarre insurance policy. They insured themselves against having a virgin birth. The insurance company only cancelled the policy because of religious pressure. “The Catholic Church was not happy about what we have been doing” (The Herald, 23 June). What was their objection we wonder? They don’t believe in virgin births? They could not accept the notion that the next Jesus might be a Jock? A second coming could lead to mass unemployment in the Vatican?.

Science And Profits

Sir Ian Chalmers writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine states that the scientific record of clinical trials is being distorted by drug companies in order to protect sales. “Patients’ lives are being put at risk because drug companies cannot be trusted to publish unbiased clinical research, according to a leading scientist” (Times, 29 June). We are dealing with capitalism, we are dealing with a multibillion dollar industry, why shouldn’t we have distortion? After all that is how capitalism operates.

Not Newsworthy?

Every evening editors of The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail have to make a decision about what to splash on their front pages the next day. Shall it be Pop Star Sniffs Cocaine, Soap Star Visits Brothel or maybe Politician’s Gay Secret? The senior policy officer for Water Aid, Henry Northover is hardly likely to make the tabloid’s headlines with the following. “Imagine 20 Jumbo jets filled with children – that’s the number who die every day owing to lack of clean water and sanitation” (Observer, 2 July). We are trying to imagine 20 Jumbo jets full of children crashing every day, and frankly it makes us ill, but of course it is not newsworthy in this mad society.

For The Good Times

The end of the World Cup has left many social observers scratching their heads in disbelief. No violence, no hooliganism and no mindless madness? Can this be the working class that the Daily Mail are always warning us about? Tens of thousands of working men and women from all over the world, enjoying each others’ company, laughing, joking, dancing and who knows what else. It would almost makes you believe that world socialism is possible, unless you read the Daily Mail of course.

And The Bad Times

Because of the proliferation of TV channels advertisers are concerned about their “lack of penetration”into profit-making areas. Even worse is the advent of VCR recorders, where people watch shows and delete the ads. The answers for these hucksters is to sponsor sports events. Unlike soaps, that workers can look at later, sports events are watched. While they occur. This explains why the TV rights for NFL (American football) is $3.7 billion, the World Cup $1.1 billion and why you had to watch those silly Budwieser ads. Worse is to follow. “Images like a giant Coca-Cola bottle emerging from the centre circle, can be projected onto the pitch” (Observer, 9 July). Perhaps they could arrange a penalty shoot between Pepsi and Coca Cola? Capitalism distorts everything, even our leisure time . . .

The Passing Show: Pensions and Hypocrisy (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pensions and Hypocrisy 

I am looking at the Labour Party's manifesto for the 1964 General Election. In the section dealing with “social security”. I see:—

For those already retired and for widows, an Incomes Guarantee will be introduced. This will lay down a new national minimum benefit. Those whose incomes fall below the new minimum will receive as of right, and without recourse to National Assistance, an income supplement.

Now I will ignore for the moment the fact that it was the previous Labour Government which introduced the “means-tested National Assistance benefits” as the same booklet dubs them a few lines further up the same page. Nor will I make too much of the information (given by Assistance Board Chairman Lord Runcorn, in May) that some 71 percent of the total of weekly allowances made were to elderly people, about 1,386,000 of them at the end of last year. I will ignore all this, if only to avoid having to listen to the tedious reply that pensions have already been raised by a few bob and that anyway there has not been time yet to introduce more far-reaching measures.

Whatever their intentions may have been, the Labour Party never seemed in much doubt before the election of the plight in which many pensioners found themselves. Indeed, it was only the Tories who, in face of umpteen surveys of one kind or another and a mass of statistics, tried to pretend that pensioners were not so badly off; and they lost the election anyway. Labour’s policy was to exploit this situation and promise to remedy it.

And what do you think would be the way to do it—that’s if you are naive enough to think that such problems can be dealt with effectively under capitalism? Why, to give the pensioners an immediate and very, very substantial increase, of course. And if you are that innocent, you may think that this is Labour’s intention any day now. But you would be wrong, very wrong. After donkey’s years of books, pamphlets and enough newspaper cuttings on the subject to fill a library, all we get is—just another survey.

Ah, but you haven’t heard the best of it yet. This survey really has the edge on all the others. Just listen: —

. . . 11,000 pensioners in Britain are to be interviewed to see how they are managing and to find out any difficulties they may be having, the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance said yesterday.

(Guardian, 14.5.65.)

Just read those words again slowly and savour the full, damnable impertinence of them. And when you have stopped gasping at their sheer unctious condescension perhaps, with me, you will view them as just another exercise in the hypocrisy in which all governments dabble. On one hand, there will be efforts to give the impression of earnest and helpful action, and on the other a nett result, as far as the pensioners are concerned, of nothing. And if by now the Ministry do not know the sort of ’’difficulties they may be having”, then they must be deaf and blind to a scandal which has been common knowledge for years.

Old age pensioners are generally out of the run of productivity so beloved of capitalism’s economists and politicians, and that’s why they are chucked on to the scrap heap. It also explains why they are so conspicuously unsuccessful in their efforts to secure any worthwhile improvement in their miserable lot. They just haven’t the bargaining power of their younger brothers and sisters who are still at work.

But they do have a vote and there are some millions of them, so they cannot be ignored entirely. This explains why the Labour Party, among others, is careful to include them in its election pledges, only to try and fob them off with a crumb or two and a patronising pat on the head afterwards. Yes, pensioners are at the bottom of the priority list, and capitalism will see that they stay there.

Nothing is sacred

When he was a Labour M.P.. Lord (then Mr.) Brockway talked once in the Commons on the sacredness of a newly born child. No doubt he believed what he said, and if you were to ask many people about this today, they would probably agree with him.

While not denying that these attitudes may be all very worthwhile within the limitations of their social conditions, we should not deceive ourselves that childhood is really considered all that sacred in a modern capitalist-society. True, the young ones are given extra attention by the authorities, but the outstanding reason for this is that they are soon to become the new workers, and capitalism has long learned the need of an assured supply of labour power. But sacredness? Not on your life.

If you have any doubts on this, try to find an hour to waste watching commercial TV at some time or the other. Note the frequent interruptions for adverts, and in particular the number of times they feature children—some of them little more than toddlers. Children cramming revolting quantities of sweets into their mouths, children guzzling gallons of soft drinks—both very questionable from a health point of view, or children talking in a most unchildish manner about the effect of this or that detergent on Mummy’s hands (silly Mummy believes it too, apparently). The firms who purvey this rubbish are well aware of the feelings of tenderness which are roused in an adult by the sight of a child, and they exploit them quite shamelessly in the name of that which is sacred before all else—the profit motive.

If you think this is far fetched, take a more critical look at that TV screen next time. Nothing is left untouched; wherever human feelings can be publicised to commercial advantage, the ad-man digs his claws in deep. His subjects range wide, from boy and girl love to the pride of a housewife in a basketful of clean clothes at the end of a washday (Alan Freeman exercises a particularly obnoxious technique here).

And have you got a tiger in your tank? This is perhaps the most blatant of the advertising stunts yet, and to all accounts it has paid off very handsomely. Maybe the sheer cheek of it has had something to do with its success—free publicity through the sticker on the car window— and here again, the kids do not escape. Listen to Miss Molly Tarrant (“Mass observation and motivational research specialist”) in The Guardian on May 31st: —

Children might have something to do with it . . . Many drivers will agree to put a sticker on if their children ask for it . . . although often the driver uses the children as an excuse.

No, nothing is sacred under capitalism, except the profit motive, which is not after all surprising. If capitalism is to be assured of continuous and unfailing support by its workers, then the necessary indoctrination in its debased standards must start at the earliest possible age, in all sorts of ways—some more subtle than others.

Gaspers

“Rising prices are no new phenomenon. They have faced every government since the war, as an intractable problem, to which no solution has yet been found.’’ (Mr. George Brown—Commons debate 12.5.65.)

“China is conducting necessary nuclear tests . . . and is developing the nuclear weapon for the purpose of . . . abolishing all nuclear weapons.” (Chinese communique, following their second atomic explosion, 14.5.65)

“Both our countries are totally opposed to the use of force for the settlement of international disputes.” (Indian Premier Mr. Shastri, speaking in Moscow 12.5.65.)

“In the held of National Assistance the number of clients today, at nearly two million, is undoubtedly much greater than Beveridge envisaged it would be." (Lord Runcorn, National Assistance Board Chairman, 15.5.65.)

Television (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The institutions and morality of Capitalism reflect the profit motive and thus the interests of the capitalist class. The means of mass propaganda, and thereby the power to put over their ideas are in the hands of the capitalist class (or their agent, the State) in each country.

Whole generations of workers come and go, blissfully unaware that anything is wrong with private property or with the system of working for wages. The real facts of life have to be learned, perhaps from experience outside the influence of the propaganda machine. The Press, Schools, Cinemas, Pulpit, Radio and T.V. do their job so well that most people never realise they are having an outlook foisted on them which is fundamentally opposite to their own class interest.

The structure of capitalism and its institutions rise from and are in harmony with its class-property basis. Land, oilfields, factories, mines, herds of cattle, are among the things which make up the means of production. While these belong to the capitalist class, the wealth producers will work for wages, the goods they produce will be for sale with a view to profit, and human relationship will be dominated by money. While capitalism lasts, so will the false social values it generates. The accumulation of personal wealth will remain the perverted criterion of worth. No wonder that a working class, as yet unaware of their social position as the all important producers, are often seen in large numbers gazing in awed reverence at some of the parasites who live off them. No wonder, in turn, that various forms of escapism and make-believe have become widely popular.

The cinemas, now showing signs of decline, only a few years ago had queues at almost every pay-box. Going to the pictures was the working-class pastime, just as watching “the telly” is today. The world of second-hand thrills and dreams has largely changed its medium.

The fictional cow-boy and detective heroes have different names now, but their function is unchanged. Catching offenders against property, and the idea that punishment is Justice, are as popular as ever.

The land-grabbers, the cattle-thieves, the con-man, and the bank-raider, are still brought to book by the goodies of the F.B.I., the C.I.D. or the Marshal’s Office. The stolen property is always returned to its ’’rightful owner,” with few people to ask how he came to own it.

We are told that it is a sign of prosperity if workers, after a day in the factory or office, can go home to watch television. In fact, this simply shows how dull and monotonous their lives really are. In a world based on production for sale there is so little spontaneous joy in living that the professional laughter man and entertainer are in great demand. Without the artificial stimulations of things like T.V. many people would be at a complete loss. Thus the artificial becomes the real and to escape is a substitute for living.

Some people, of course, only watch the more “sophisticated” programmes, such as plays, and take pride in confining their viewing to the B.B.C. Not having a Socialist outlook, they soak up the same debased set of virtues and vices as the rest. Even plays which mildly attempt to investigate some festering ill of capitalism, such as the plight of the old, housing, juvenile delinquency or war, are totally unable to offer any solution and never give away the correct cause of these things. Instead of blaming capitalism, the workers continue to blame bad leaders, governmental mistakes, dictatorship or human nature. So those who, by not watching commercials think they avoid the money-morality of capitalism, are mistaken.

The commercials, of course, demonstrate the sickening hypocrisy, the false values and phoney morality of capitalism most nakedly. 

In the average week's viewing it is scientifically “proven” and demonstrated that half a dozen different makes of soap powder and detergent wash clothes cleaner, lighter, brighter and whiter than each other. There are about as many brands of oil and petrol which perform great wonders for motorists, with each one said to be better than the rest. There are numerous brands of cigarettes which “everyone” is switching to. Then the “razor boys” have a go with half a dozen makes of safety and electric razors, all of which shave smoother, cleaner, faster, than the others. So the examples could be multiplied.

Of all the scores of different things advertised in commercials, either on T.V. or elsewhere, not once are any of the possible drawbacks or harmful effects mentioned. Exaggeration, half-truths and direct lying are commonplace in advertising. The fact that millions of people watch the same adverts every night (many of which are repeated several times in the same evening) and make so little protest about them, is an unhealthy indication of the general acceptance of capitalism’s low standards. Perhaps Sir Robert Fraser, Director-General of the Independent Television Authority, had this in mind when he said: “Every person of common sense knows that people of superior mental constitution are bound to find much of television intellectually beneath them. ’ (Daily Mirror, 18-5-60.) We do not accept the idea of “superior mental constitution,” but since Fraser spoke generally in high praise of television, one might ask where he fits in? The idea is deliberately planted that unless you wear a certain make of shirt, skirt or cosmetic and own a watch, carpet-cleaner or spin-drier made by a particular firm, you will fail to impress your friends. Your prestige will slip, you will fall behind in the rat-race.

All the* high-pressure sales drives and the subtle persuaders merely emphasise the constant need in capitalism to find markets. Although on the commercials they say that their commodities “are just the thing for you,” you cannot have them if you cannot afford them—or at any rate the instalments. The normal condition of a worker is to live within what his wages can buy or hire. Hire-purchase, or by saving up, are the ways open to him to get anything that costs more than he can spare out of one week's wages. For most workers T.V. means H.P. over a couple of years or a rental or relay. The best that capitalism can do with the immense possibilities of modern scientific techniques is to allow the working class, while living under the threat of a slump or a war,, to enjoy themselves on the never-never. Capitalism denies the working class access to the wide world of real things that make up living. Having to live within the limitations of the wages system, they get things out of perspective and T.V. becomes a substitute for things out of reach.

Production under the profit motive has reduced most work to drudgery. Having taken the joy out of our working life, capitalism would reduce us to passive viewers in our leisure time. Television is just one of many achievements abused by capitalism.

Harry Baldwin