Material World: Paycheck to paycheck (2026)

The Material World column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’re used to hearing that the overall standard of living in the West is significantly higher than in the countries that make up what used to be known as the ‘Third World’ but are now commonly referred to as the ‘Global South’. For many of these, most sources indicate progress in expanding access to basic necessities such as water, sanitation and health facilities. Yet a recent joint report by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that approximately 1 in 4 people globally, or close to 2.1 billion, lack access to clean drinking water and that this contributes to roughly 3.5 million deaths per year, nearly 400,000 of these children under five.

More broadly, according to an Oxfam International report from June 2025, 3.7 billion of the world’s population, or around 45 percent, live in conditions of moderate or severe food insecurity with over 700 million living on less than 2.15 dollars per day and 3.4 billion living on less than 5.50 dollars per days. This means that many are unlikely to have the money to eat regularly and so will often skimp on food or skip meals. In addition, the business data website Statista has reported on a United Nations estimate that around 1.1 billion people worldwide, including around 50 percent of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, are living in slums, described as ‘areas of self-built, unsanitary housing where extreme poverty is rife’.

How does all this compare to the standard of living in what is seen as ‘the richest country in the world’, the USA? We would expect it to be a lot higher overall, and indeed it is. But what are things actually like? Wildly differing figures on living standards, poverty and deprivation are to be found depending on the sources you consult. For example, the CNN Business website recently reported on a Bank of America analysis which estimated that around 1 in 4 (24 percent) of American households are barely getting by – living ‘paycheck to paycheck’, as they put it.

The bank’s statisticians combed through data on millions of customers to track how much they spent on basics such as housing, groceries, childcare and utilities and found it constituted over 95 percent of their income ‘leaving little to nothing left over for the “nice-to-have” things like going out to dinner or taking a vacation, let alone saving’. One of their interviewees who had a degree but was working in a construction business about to shut down is quoted as saying ‘to be 34 and living paycheck to paycheck with no savings, things are pretty crappy right now’.

However, a different survey came up with a quite different result, which was that the proportion of workers living paycheck to paycheck was not 24 percent but 67 percent. This figure emerged from the Financial Wellness in the Workplace Report by the PNC Bank, based on workers aged 21 to 69 working full time at companies with more than 100 employees. It painted a picture of workers struggling to cover everyday expenses, especially with cost of living currently outpacing wage growth. A Newsweek report on this survey quoted Taylor Nelms, vice-president of research and insights at the Financial Health Network, as saying: ‘The percentage of U.S. households that say they spend more or the same as they bring in has been remarkably consistent, hovering around 50 percent over the past several years but right now it’s compounded by high housing costs, insurance premiums, and the return of student loan payments. These are the areas where households feel most squeezed’.

There’s clearly a big difference between these survey results, but whichever figure you take as reliable, it’s clear that many millions of people in the world’s ‘richest country’ are not only not rich but are materially insecure and struggling to keep their heads above water, with some in particularly straightened circumstances. The CNN report highlights some of the typical symptoms of this – people falling behind on their bills, minimum credit card payments being made, an increased percentage of borrowers late on their car loans (referred to as ‘a clear sign of financial distress, especially since car loans are historically the last payments Americans are willing to miss’), and people filing for bankruptcy having incurred large medical debts while ill. Nor does any of this take into account the undoubtedly worse conditions of those who have no employment at all or are homeless or not registered to work. The current estimate of the number of unemployed people is 4.4 percent of the workforce, so 7.6 million people living in even worse circumstances than those ‘just getting by’.

What conclusions can we draw from this? First and foremost that, though wage and salary workers in what is usually considered the most advanced part of the Western world are undoubtedly better off on the whole than their counterparts elsewhere, this does not prevent many of them from suffering poverty and insecurity. And this in a world which, if it were organised rationally (ie, with a system aimed at catering for the needs of all and not the profits of a few), could provide abundantly for all of its 8.3 billion population. Already in fact the world possesses enough productive capacity to eliminate global poverty many times over. Yet this can never happen as long as we have a system – the market system – which ensures vast wealth inequality between the tiny minority of people who own most of the resources and the large majority who own little more than their skills and energies and their ability to sell these for a wage or salary.

It is no kind of aberration, therefore, that the USA has, according to Forbes Magazine, 905 billionaires with a combined wealth of 7.8 trillion dollars and that, according to Federal Reserve data, the top 1 percent of households in the United States hold 30.5 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent hold 2.5 percent. Rather it is the inevitable consequence of a system (production for profit) that has no mechanism for meeting the basic needs of the whole of humanity and will always fail to do that. This being the case, it is as clear as it can possibly be that the majority of the world’s workers need to take collective and democratic political action to bring that system to an end and replace it by one that will be cooperative, moneyless, wageless and based on free access and production for use.

Howard Moss

Dynamite. (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jeering at the claims of the Tariff Reformer as the possessor of a nostrum that will alleviate poverty, Burns, at Tynemouth, 14.10,08 (Daily News report) said “I am not a prophet, but I suggest this : If Protection were in existence, it would never see one hard summer because the people would perish.” So. The people who under Free Trade have so great an advantage over the miserable wretches who are forced to exist under Protection, are so strong, so virile, so well nourished after their generations of prosperity, that they would perish in one summer of Protection that the miserable weaklings of Protection manage, somehow, to pull through years of. No, we should not describe Burns as a prophet. A much shorter word will suffice. He doesn’t seem to have sense enough to know when he is giving the game away. Verily, if his salary is to be preserved to him the Lord must make quick and violent incision in him, for he is indeed raw.

* * *

“In Newcastle Mr. Hudson (Labour) was hand in glove with the Liberal candidate at the last (general) election. He was entertained at the Liberal Club less than 36 hours before the election, and he urged his supporters to split their votes between the Liberal and himself, which was very loyally done.” 

Sunday Chronicle, 13.9.08.

* * *

“Mr. Hudson says that he is not going to take a hand in the contest and his attitude is the outcome of his loyalty to the Labour Party. Newcastle is a strong one-man seat for Labour. Two Labour candidates mean that both would be defeated at the next general election.” 

Sunday Chronicle, 20.9.08.

* * *

“The Independent Parliamentary Labour Party which boasts of its independence of either of the old political parties, has refrained from putting up a candidate at Newcastle because Mr. Hudson, the “Labour” member for the double-seated constituency, believes he cannot be independent of the Liberal vote at the next election ; or, at any rate, the leaders of his party believe that . . . Conservatives can afford to smile at the sight of Labour kow-towing to the Liberals who make helots of some state servants.” — Evening Chronicle, 18.9.08.

* * *

“Forty-six deaths from starvation in the county of London for 1907.” 

Home Office White Paper.

* * *

The Registrar General’s analysis of the 1901 census recently published shows that general labourers in industrial centres have an average mortality more than twice as high as the average for all workers, while the mortality among clergymen is less than half the average.

* * *

“The time is fast approaching when the real struggle will be between the man who wields hammer and chisel and the man who holds the cash-box—Capital versus Labour, if you like. Whig and Tory must give place to these.” 

The Business Man’s Magazine.

Whig and Tory know this already. The Business Man’s Magazine’s writer’s point is merely that Whig and Tory will soon be forced to drop the present pretence of political partizanship in the general interest and come out in what the draper would call “fast colours.”

* * *

Since the law came into operation that closed public houses in Scotland all day on Sunday and early on Saturday, the proportion of charges of drunkenness and disorderliness per 1,000 of the population of Glasgow has increased from 17.7 in 1904 to 27.7 in 1907 according to the official figures supplied by the Chief Constable of Glasgow. In 1904 there were 13,850 charges; 1905, 15,263 charges ; 1906, 20,458 charges ; and in 1907, 22,314. This is how the facts support the argument of the temperance crank that the absense of facilities for drinking prevents drinking being indulged in.

* * *

From 1896 to 1905 the total deaths from all classes of accidents in connection with mines in the United Kingdom was 10,202. (Blue Book.)

* * *

The latest report of the General Board of Commissioners states that since 1858 lunacy in Scotland has increased by 202 per cent. as against a population increase of 58 per cent. On the 1st January last the total number of insane person in Scotland was 17,908.

* * *

“According to the Board of Trade ‘Labour Gazette,’ returns from 268 trade unions, having a net membership of 648,585, showed 8.9 per cent. of the net membership as unemployed. According to the report of the New York State Labor Department, out of a total of 387,450 trade unionists reported on, 138,131, or 35.7 per cent., were unemployed on 31 March. The New York correspondent of the Daily Telegraph stated, on 27 April, on the authority of Mr. Herman Robinson, general organiser of the American Federation of Labor, that at least 40 per cent. of the trade unionists of the city of New York were unemployed on 1 April.” 

Morning Leader, 5.10.08.

Our radical history (2001)

Book Review from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zinn on History by Howard Zinn, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001.

Readers may be familiar with the work of the radical American historian and activist, Howard Zinn. It includes the witty, humane play Marx in Soho, as well as his magnificent Peoples Histories, of the United States and the twentieth century. During the Vietnam War it was Zinn, together with Noam Chomsky, who helped copy, smuggle out and then edit and publish the Pentagon Papers, official documents that illustrated the full and savage involvement of the American ruling class in the appalling invasion and destruction of South-East Asia.

This current volume is a collection of Zinn’s essays that date from the mid-sixties to last year, and concern themselves with broadly historical themes—sketches of individuals, tales of action, meditations on the role of the academic and history in general, on Marx and “Marxism”.

This sense of history shines through in his essay on the Seattle protests. Zinn welcomes the shift away from the single issue campaigns that characterised much of left-wing US protest in the eighties and nineties, and a growing targeting of capitalism itself. He reminds readers of North America’s rich (and sometimes overlooked) history of class resistance and militancy. Seattle was the stage for a general strike in 1919 of some 35,000 dock workers. Moreover, the area was often deeply militant, with the “Wobblies” (the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World) strong and much anti-war agitation against US involvement in World War I. So often today’s anti-capitalist protestors are ignorant of this legacy; Zinn’s work is going some way to remedying this.

Socialists will, I think be most interested on his thoughts about Marx and his ideas. Zinn, like Marx before him declares “je ne suis pas marxiste!” (“I am not a Marxist!”). The present reviewer feels the same. Marx’s turn of wit was, on this occasion given to one Pieper, a young German sychopant (or “nudnik”, as Zinn calls him in wonderfully colourful Yiddish)¸ a self-styled “Marxist”, who was attempting to get Marx to attend his Karl Marx society. Zinn, in quoting Marx’s weary and witty reply is saying that we ought to reflect on what is relevant and alive in Marx’s writings, rather than turning them into sterile dogma.

Marx wasn’t just a scholar, but an activist and commentator on the world he often painfully lived in. Zinn points readers to the Theses on Feurbach and the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. These are not “early” or “immature” works, he says, but rather rich in insights that are still as profoundly relevant as when they were written. The alienation and exploitation produced under capitalism are appalling; “It [The 1844 Manuscript] simply stated (but did not state simply) that the capitalist system violates whatever it means to be human”. To overcome this alienation a complete change—indeed , a transcendence—of capitalist society’s social, economic and political relationships is required. Zinn reminds us of Marx’s hostility towards nationalism, and points out that he would have been horrified by the so-called “socialist” societies that Stalinism created. Marx instead lauded the 1871 Paris Commune with its direct democracy, egalitarianism, levelling of wages and abolition of the guillotine as his idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, as he called the political transition to a socialist society.

The rest of the book is devoted to accounts of Zinn’s own activism, mainly against the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. One of the best essays is on the Freedom Schools in Mississippi the free, egalitarian summer schools for poor blacks that Zinn and others set up in 1964, often at risk of injury and death. Zinn reminds us that “education is not just a tool of indoctrination, but a powerful tool of emancipation as well.

I can’t pretend to agree with Zinn all the time; yes, some of Marx’s economics is dense and difficult, but an understanding of surplus value and commodity production is vital to understanding capitalism. Zinn is also too often prone to supporting reformism on grounds of “pragmatism”, provision of public healthcare in the US being a case in point. However, given where he comes from and the generation he belongs to, it is at least understandable. “Human beings make history, but not always in circumstances of their own choosing,” as Uncle Charlie was fond of saying. Given all the history out there being written by bourgeois apologists, plodding careerist empiricists, dull local-fixated antiquarians and childish, pretentious postmodernists, we need more radical historians like Howard Zinn. A touching and worthwhile collection; read it and start reading and researching your own radical history.

Rob Worden

Blogger's Note:

Zinn's famous essay,  'Je Ne Suis Pas Marxiste',  is available on the blog.

A New Capitalist Revolution? (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the passing of time and the acceleration of the tempo of events over the last few decades, there seems to be growing among the supporters of Capitalism a desire to see their system as young and virile as it was a century or more ago. In Britain this desire has lately found expression in the concept of a New Elizabethan era, with all its supposed opportunities for giving rein to those doubtful virtues of individualism and enterprise.

In America, however, there is no comparable period of history upon which to found such a mythology of a golden era to return. Instead of feeling that they have something approaching senility which can somehow be rejuvenated, propagandists for American Capitalism appear to be very concerned to create the impression that they have something completely new—an American Revolution, unique, progressive, and above all superior to a "Socialist” Britain or “Communist” Russia.

Let us take a closer look at some of the evidence that is brought forward to substantiate this theory of a new capitalist revolution. One of the most consistent media used to expound it in this country is the monthly "Reader's Digest.” In its August issue there appeared an article on “Humanising Industry—A New Revolution” (from “Time” magazine), and in September “The Unsystematic American System” (from “Harper’s Magazine”). Both are fairly representative of the sort of views that Americans are encouraged to hold about their country’s economic system in historical relation to the rest of the world.

Humanizing Industry

One of the chief effects of the Industrial Revolution upon workers as a class was their reduction to the status of appendages to a vast impersonal machine, caused by the development of mass production for a market. Socialists recognise that the nature of Capitalism is such that within it no basic change can be made in this subservient status of the workers. But, according to “Time” magazine:—

“Now a second Industrial Revolution, quieter but more profound, is sweeping through U.S. industry. Its name: Human Relations in Industry. Its purpose: to give the worker a sense of usefulness and importance. Its goal: to make life more fun by making work more meaningful.”

This, one may think at first glance, sounds just what the doctor ordered. But these otherwise admirable sentiments turn out to be only a build-up for a variant of that bugbear of regimented workers, time and motion studies. Pioneered in the 1880’s by Frederick Winslow Taylor, whose system caused managements to think of workers as little more than machines that had to eat, these studies facilitated speed-up on the factory assembly lines up to the point where greater “efficiency” no longer yielded greater output. Then in 1923 a sociologist, Elton Mayo, made the startling discovery that the men were poor producers (i.e., produced less than was felt could be squeezed out of them) because they were unhappy; so he prescribed four daily rest periods and brought in a nurse to whom workers could complain. Result: production for the first time reached the established quotas of efficiency.

The industrial psychologists were called upon to counteract the ill effects on production of the over-application of time and motion studies. But have these refinements in any way altered the workers' status as sellers of labour power? Obviously, the object of introducing welfare measures is to create more efficient workers, and not “to make life more fun.” It is certainly an adroit move on the part of employers to disguise their profit motive by talking about making workers happy, though this is not to suggest that they prefer unhappy ones. The proof, however, that the workers’ feelings are the by-product of the system and not its chief concern is the obstinate reluctance of employers to spread a little happiness by granting wage increases.

While on the subject of humanising industry it is interesting to note that some American observers dispute the view that any real change has taken place. Thus, in “Hollywood—The Dream Factory,” Hortense Powdermaker writes:—

“The technique of business and many other organizations in trying to personalize their selling relationships, such as by announcing the name of employees to customers, really fools no one. The fact that the name of the post office clerk, the bank teller or the person who handles complaints in the department store, is posted, does not really influence their relationship with customers."

There is no reason to suppose that the selling relationship between worker and capitalist has in fact changed, despite the propaganda to the contrary.

New Role of the Unions

In order to gain the fullest advantage from the introduction of expensive plant and machinery, industrialists in America have been obliged to find ways of overcoming the resistance of workers to intensive exploitation. Recognising the labour unions’ right to bargain collectively, the employers have turned what might have been defeat into victory by inviting them to co-operate in the task of exploiting the workers.

“Management began to learn that the once-feared unions themselves held keys to higher production. In Pittsburg the United Steel Workers challenged one management to name its most productive department. Then the union boosted production there by 210 per cent, in a month.

“In one Detroit metal tubing company, every attempt to boost production by special incentives had failed. The company offered the union a novel proposal: set a certain standard for labour costs and let workers and management share all the savings when increased output drove costs below that figure. Not only did production beat all records, but the workers themselves began prodding slackers.”

Perhaps the author of the above, in his enthusiasm, has not noticed the irony of using the phrase “a certain standard for labour costs” in an article on humanizing industry. It effectively explodes the myth that American capitalists regard their workers as something more than costs of production. A few extra dollars “profit-shared” seems to be a pretty high price to pay for the spectacle of workers prodding each other instead of the boss and his union-leader lackey.

The working class of America (and elsewhere) has yet to see that if its “share” of the profits becomes more than an insignificant fraction of the total profit, then this enables wages to be reduced, which in turn makes it harder to get a cut out of what the boss saves on labour costs. New production records become new standards, which the worker must exceed before he qualifies for his hand-out There is nothing revolutionary about this ingenious device—the carrot is perhaps a little juicier but is still out of reach of the straining donkey.

The Unsystematic System

According to the article in the September “Reader’s Digest” the word Capitalism no longer fits the present American system because "it stands for the primitive economic system of the 19th century.” Let us grant, for the purpose of argument, that another word may be used to denote the economic system of the 20th century to date. Have there been any fundamental changes to justify the assertion that a revolution has taken place comparable to that transforming Feudalism into Capitalism?

“A combination of patchwork revisions of the system—tax laws, minimum-wage laws, subsidies, guarantees and regulations, plus union pressures and new management attitudes—had brought about a redistribution of income, from the well-to-do to the less well-to-do.

”. . . the business system as a whole seemed to run better if some of the national income was ploughed into improvements in the income and status of the lower-income groups, enabling them to buy more goods and thus to expand the market for everybody. Americans had discovered a new frontier to open up: the purchasing power of the poor.”

The claim to have redistributed income must be treated with considerable scepticism. Every capitalist power describes its reform measures in this way; in this country Lord Beveridge may be credited with having reorganised poverty along similar lines. The most significant part of the argument concerns the purchasing power of the poor. Note that no reference is made to abolishing poverty—the poor are still to remain such, but with improved income and status.

To sum up. Capitalism in America, far from having been revolutionised, is still immensely strong and resourceful. It has succeeded in gaining the acquiescence of the majority in ways that are remarkably similar to those used in Soviet Russia—allegedly new management attitudes, democracy in industry, raised purchasing power of the poor. But, even assuming that all these things have all the advantages claimed for them, the system based upon private property and exploitation has not disappeared. Neither the threat of war nor the poverty and insecurity of the majority has been removed.

To workers seeking a way out of their problems without understanding what causes them, the idea of a capitalist revolution may seem to be a kind of second best to a socialist one. To socialists, the word revolution has a precise meaning—a complete change in the structure of society. All imitations must be refused, since they bring inevitable disappointment and delay the coming of the real thing.

Stan Parker

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest Oxfam report which was released at 4th UN Financing for Development meet in Seville, Spain, shows that since 2015 the top 1% people in the world have amassed US$ 33.9 trillion in new wealth which is enough to end annual poverty 22 times over. 

(Scoop Independent News)

In some cases, health professionals perform FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] secretly in exchange for payment, turning the practice into a commercial enterprise, 

(People Daily)

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world. People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes — a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately $50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72 percent of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimized. 

(Consortium News)

The entire political and intellectual machinery of the French ruling class is now moving in this direction. That includes the miserable little left, led by the Socialist Party, who bark at us from morning to night. They don’t realize that they’re participating in a broader establishment strategy: acting as the left-wing auxiliary of the right. They live in a dreamworld, wanting France to be like Germany, with a grand coalition of the centre: Social Democrats who are indistinguishable from liberals, Greens who are always clamouring for war. These people are doing the work of dividing us every day while pretending to be for unity.

(Portside)

One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. That figure alone tells us that we have a major economic crisis on our hands. The cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have been, and most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month. Anyone that attempts to deny this is simply not living in reality. 

(Zero Hedge)

Donald Trump styled himself as a populist, ‘anti-establishment’ president. But look at what he has actually done in office, and you see he’s a status-quo politician with nothing to offer working Americans.

(Jacobin)

Will voters finally stop both blaming politicians for their troubles and depending on them to end them? Will voters—and non-voters—transform themselves into people who act for themselves, in their own interests, instead of allowing others to act for them? That would be what social change looks like. The survival of the human race may well depend upon it. 

(The Brooklyn Rail)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Editorial: The Festive Season. (1908)

Editorial from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Festive Season.

The usual cant is now being uttered concerning the “festive season,” and the conventional phrases are on most people’s lips. To those with the wherewithal to purchase the good things of life it is possible to be merry and joyous, but to these Christmas is no exception to the rule. They can and do eat, drink and be merry, taking no thought of the morrow, even if it be that on the morrow they die. But although the working class may, for the time being, “forget their sorrow and remember their misery no more,” their ever-present poverty and the constant dread of even harder times, makes a “joyous” Christmas impossible.

What is the position to-day ? Says that wordy describer of evils for which he has no remedy, Mr. Geo. R. Sims :

“No one has any money. The cry of an impoverished people rings through the land. The West End weeps and the City sits in sackcloth and ashes. All parties agree that there is “very little money about.”

One is bound to accept the statement when one hears it so plaintively put forward in every direction. Commercial and professional men, dukes and doss-house keepers, traders and toilers, all tell you the same thing, and yet—capitals, please, Mr. Printer, AND YET

Luxury and Extravagance

leap to your eyes everywhere, and the shop windows this Christmas time are making as glorious a show of goods as ever delighted the eyes of a passing public in the palmy days of booming British trade and national well-being.

Magnificent hotels and gorgeous restaurants, such as the capital never possessed before, flourish and pay dividends ; men who used to go to the City in a twopenny ‘bus are now whirled thither in a thousand-guinea motor-car.”

And yet from all the industrial centres, not those of England alone, but of all parts of the world, come accounts of the distress among the working class. In London the starving condition of the school children has forced leading members of the exploiting class to issue an urgent appeal for funds, fearful lest the supply of efficient wage slaves may be impaired, or that this starvation, in the midst of plenty, if allowed to continue, may goad people into action that may threaten the supremacy of the master class. In the North of England special appeals have been issued for funds to help the unemployed and their starving dependents. As the Newcastle Journal of Dec. 10th said :

“The cry for Relief of Distress is in evidence that the contrivances invented to prevent so many people falling into poverty and to ease the lot of such as might fall have been a dead failure—a most lamentable failure. For, as the means of relief have gone on increasing, the number demanding to be relieved goes on increasing in still greater proportion. . . . Our country abounds with orphan asylums, houses of refuge, training ships for outcasts, hospitals for every kind of disease, convalescent homes, alms-houses, and charity organisations of one sort and another—each and all of which were designed to play their part in reducing the mass of poverty, and in elevating the condition of those dwelling on the borders of pauperism, in social and moral respects. But their failure to attain such end is dismal. Never was the mass of poverty in our country greater than it is to-day—never was the cry of the distressful louder than it is to-day. . . The Distress Committee in every town is proclaiming that the state of things is worse than it was before.”

We agree with the writer that all these benevolent contrivances have failed lamentably “because they do not get near to the root of the evil—because they do not even aim at touching the root of the evil.” And in endeavouring to earn his money as a capitalist hack he, as might be expected, charges the working class with improvidence, thriftlessness, and wastefulness ! He accuses them of being reckless of future needs, and given to living from hand to mouth. As if the wage slaves of capitalism could do other than live from hand to mouth ! He suggests that the distress in Sunderland is largely due to the workers’ extravagance and self-indulgence when the day was long and work was plentiful. Other writers state that these Sunderland mechanics have been receiving £7 or £8 per week in wages, and they have spent it all as they received it. We do not believe these amounts have been paid in wages, but even if they have, and the receivers have spent all their takings each week, what has been the effect? They have found employment in other departments of industry which would not have been provided had they refrained from spending their wages. Tailors, shoemakers, producers and purveyors of food and drink, employees of transit companies, etc., have had work as the result of the “thriftlessness” of these Sunderland shipwrights. Had they “hoarded,” had they put by for a rainy day, it would have been necessary long before this to make appeals to relieve the distress of unemployed workers who have been kept going by the “extravagance” of their fellows.

Under capitalism, it is in the interests of the working class that wealth should be destroyed as quickly as possible after it is produced, and the Newcastle Journal’s claptrap no more suggests a solution of the problem than any of the “contrivances” it writes down.

In the “Empire Beyond the Seas” thousands of good workmen are workless and hungry. From Canada comes the news that every industry is overcrowded. In Toronto there are 10,000 out of work, 4,000 in Winnipeg, and similar numbers in other large centres. Even Lord Strathcona, the High Commissioner, whilst not confirming (nor disputing) these figures, admits that “the general conditions of labour and business are not so brisk as at this time last year, but everything is reasonably satisfactory.” “Reasonably satisfactory” means, of course, that the unemployed are quiet, that they are not making themselves a nuisance. Let it be remembered that these unemployed workmen in Canada are not of “the idle, loafing, profligate class” : they are men who have been mainly selected for their physical fitness and mechanical skill, as only those who can pass a very severe test in these respects are allowed to join the parties of emigrants “assisted” by various capitalist agencies, open or disguised, to “start afresh.” And although it is admitted that there is an acute unemployed problem in Canada, “General” Booth is advertising for 600 men and women to join a party going there, under government auspices, on Feb. 20th !

From America, the “land of the free,” the paradise that the Tariff Reformer points to, but (like the Christian and his paradise) is in no hurry to go to, we learn, on the authority of the Daily Mail, that

“Distressing stories of a vain struggle for existence in America are told by crowds of sad-faced emigrants streaming from the steerage decks of every arriving trans-Atlantic liner. The vast majority, according to competent assurance I have received, are arriving only with money for the barest immediate necessities. I have interviewed a number of distracted wanderers—broad-shouldered, industrious-looking Galicians, Bohemians, Poles, and Italians—who, in broken English, picked up during brief sojourns in America, declared that they were willing to do any kind of work, they had not earned a dollar for three months” 

(Daily Mail’s Bremen Correspondent, Dec. 5)

These workers out of European countries left their homes (capitalism having broken them up long before the advent of Socialism) because conditions of livelihood were productive of poverty and unhappiness, and they are now leaving Protection-ridden America for the same reason.

Let us take another phase of the workers’ existence.

Early on the morning of the 18th December, an explosion occurred at a mine belonging to the Pittsburg (U.S.A.) Coat Company at Jacob’s Creek, some eighteen miles from Connellsville. Two hundred and fifty miners lost their lives, and we are told that the women relatives of the men gathered around the pitmouth frenzied with grief. What a merry Christmas ! What a prospect of a happy New Year for these women and children deprived of bread-winner by this sudden “act of God” !

This is the third great coal-mine explosion that has occurred in the United States in less than a fortnight. On December 6th between four and five hundred miners lost their lives at the Monongah Mine, and on the 16th another seventy met their doom in the Yolande Mine, Alabama. On the day of the Jacob’s Creek explosion the Commission appointed by Mr. Garfield, Secretary of the Interior, issued a pamphlet showing that 22,840 persons have lost their lives in coal-mine accidents in America in the last seventeen years. Half of these deaths were caused during the last six years. In 1906 alone 6,861 persons were involved in accidents, 2,061 of whom perished. In 1906 there were 1,116 lives lost in British mines. It is well that the accidents and diseases of occupations should be borne in mind when our opponents are telling us of the “reward” to which the capitalist is entitled because of the risks he takes. He never risks his life for a paltry wage insufficient at the best of times to keep one decently.

When one takes into consideration, then, the conditions of the working class all over the wide world ; when one remembers that, no matter what political, fiscal, or religious systems are in vogue, all over the world the working class is poor and the master class is rich ; when one knows that their exploitatation must continue, what a farce it is to talk to the wage slaves of “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year !” There is no festive season for them. There cannot be until capitalism is abolished. When the workers, organised as a class-conscious party, not only in opposition to those political factions which are avowedly capitalist, but also to those which, while professing to be anti-capitalist are yet pro-capitalist, by reason of their efforts at “reforming” this system and their support of capitalist candidates and parties, shall be preparing to take over the means of wealth production and thus end working-class exploitation, they will be able to indulge in good wishes and encouragement. When, however, their historic mission is fulfilled it will not be a case of wishing each other a good time once in 365 days, but life for all, young and old, will be a festive season all the time. To hasten that good day is the work which the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been doing and which it hopes to do even more vigorously in the year now before it.

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

We may be much more entertained by charity now. But on account of the Band Aid format, we are now arguably less knowledgeable about why some people suffer terribly around the world – and in no better a position to put an end to it. 

(The Conversation)

Today, political scientists and pollsters use ‘the working class’ to describe members of the work force who do not have a college degree. By that definition, the number of working-class Americans has been declining as the country has grown wealthier and more educated. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 38 percent of Americans had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2022, up from just 17 percent in 1980. There’s a major exception to that common definition, however. Marxist scholars use “working class” quite differently—typically encompassing anyone who depends on wages to survive, regardless of their educational experience. 

(Reason)

In fact, the Democratic Party, the party of the slavocracy, of Jim Crow and of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Vietnam War, has never been a party of the working class. It has, and will always be, a capitalist party. Sanders’ political role…is to use his nominally ‘independent’ designation to provide the Democratic Party with a veneer of credibility in order to contain opposition to the whole capitalist system. 

(WSWS)

What happened during the pandemic especially, was a good tutorial about how to do things. First of all, what pandemic showed us was the Hollywood utopian, you know, imagination of the future of humanity is absolutely bullshit, because when crises happen, people tend to help each other and be in solidarity, and they become even more, even loving, you know, towards each other. So we have to imagine politics as a, you know, natural disaster or like a disaster, like a pandemic, and we have to act like that.

(New Internationalist)

Bregman believes we should be more positive about human potential. ‘We’re at a point in our history where we have such amazing opportunities to make the world a wildly better place’, he says. ‘Our best days are in the future’. 

(Prospect)

A ‘very rare’ 77-year-old slice of the cake served at Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s wedding sold for £2,200 ($2,800) this week, according to auction house Reeman Dansie. The cake, which no longer looks edible, survived for almost eight decades since the wedding day on November 20, 1947.

(CNN)

Yunus’ claims to be overseeing a transition to ‘true democracy’, aimed at realising ‘social justice’ after the increasingly authoritarian rule of Hasina, are belied by the brutal attacks on garment workers

(WSWS)

‘The Turkish police catch 100 to 150 migrants every night. They have no mercy on them. They break their arms and legs. 

(BBC)

I’m all for supporting a new and viable political group but let’s look at what we already have before trying to reinvent the wheel.

(Guardian)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Git along, li'l flunky (1993)

From issue 10 of the World Socialist Review

Have you ever found yourself stuck in rush-hour traffic and wondering if the light—much less your life—would ever change? When you think about it, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the driver’s seat, since you’re always being told where to go. The Ross Perots of life literally bank on us acting like their societal chauffeurs or some other kind of admiring flunkies. Always mimicking their dreams and aspirations, trying to follow their lifestyles and goals; never conceiving our own.

In the same hot pursuit of the all-encompassing dollar, a neo-traditional ritual has grown up that runs roughshod over the grand cattle roundups of yesteryear’s golden days on the ranges. It’s euphemistically called morning and afternoon rush-hour traffic. In the cowboy days, otherwise unthinking and unmanageable beasts were herded up and driven long distances to self-destruction in slaughterhouses to make money for the well-to-do barons of old—leaving a hazy cloud of dust in their wake on the stampede to oblivion.

Today the money-making prize meat is much more mobile, intelligent and normally just two-legged! For miles around we herd ourselves on asphalt trails cramming into towering marketplaces of concrete and glass. Like the cattle barons of old, today’s bosses require our simultaneous presence in workplaces to chum out bewildering profits for their benefit—leaving a hazy cloud of smog in our wake as we come and go...

Humanoid cattle

Yesteryear’s slaughter produced a one-shot profit for the cattle barons. Today’s employment produces profit hundreds of times a year from the same humanoid herd member. On a relentless death-march of hypertension, heart failure, cancer, even AIDS; but for a reason no different from the grand slaughters that made America “great.” And at six feet under, evolution stops. All species are the same—dead meat.

Sitting for hours, day in and day out, in nauseating traffic jams isn’t a mass expression of individual free will, nor is it just a coincidence. It is a compulsion of capital that degrades us into high-tech cattle. Unlike cattle, though, we each have an advanced brain with which to think: and thus the ability to break out of this more sophisticated, but nonetheless induced, herd mentality at any point.

Today’s maverick entrepreneur cowboy-types just don’t know what’s on the other end of the rope. When they do find out, they will drop everything and run for cover (as Ross Perot did in his attempt to lasso the public, on getting what was for him a frightening glimpse, when he said, “.. .1 didn’t want to wreck the political process”). When we move en masse, there will be no stopping us. Not only in the driver’s seat, we will decide where we go and when, at our convenience—also, what we will do when we get there: something no cow ever dreamt of! With democratic control of the earth’s resources replacing control by capital, we can all tell the cowboy bosses to get lost so we can go about our business.

W.J. Lawrimore

Studs Terkel (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Studs Terkel, a prolific American writer and broadcaster over several decades,  died at the end October at the age of 96. His style and approach is well illustrated by the sub-title of his 1975 book Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Besides the subject of work, he dealt with leisure, family and education, culture and sub-culture. An article partly based on his writings appeared in the Socialist Standard for August 2003.

Some of Terkel’s nine thousand interviews — especially the broadcast ones — were with celebrities of various kinds. But his books were mainly about the life experiences of everyday men and women. He quoted these graphic words of an assembly-line worker: “I stand in one spot, about two or three feet area all night . . . it don’t stop. It just goes and goes. I bet there’s men who lived and died out there, never seen the end of that line.” Or again: “They give better care to that machine than they will to you . . . If that machine breaks down, there’s somebody out there to fix it right away. If I break down, I’m just pushed over to the other side till another man takes my place. The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running.”

Terkel also captured people’s memories of the Depression years and the Second World War. Again and again the themes of solidarity and sharing shine through amidst the destitution and suffering. A woman born in 1911 recalls the ’20s in a mining town in Illinois: “we’d go out picnics, we’d go out fishing, all families. Everything for the picnic. And then when you went to the picnic, there was no money exchanged, no commercial, everything like one big family. They’d cook a pot of mulligan stew and everybody’d share out of that. That was a picnic. Today you go on a picnic, what is it? It’s commercial. You buy your ticket, you buy your popcorn, you buy your beer. If you haven’t got a fistful of money, you haven’t got no picnic.”

As Oliver Sacks once said, “There is no one in the world who can listen like Studs Terkel.” Reading his books provides an unforgettable picture of working-class American life and shows that, contrary to what may sometimes appear, American workers are dissatisfied with their lot and more than prepared to fight for better times.

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article first appeared on the Socialism or Your Money blog in November 2008.

World View: Voluntary Simplicity (1996)

From the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

A large number of Americans are turning away from commuting back and forth from "stressful” and “unfulfilling" jobs and rejecting the world of consumerism in favour of environmentally friendly lifestyles. They are adopting a new set of values: "The Three S's"—sustainability, spirituality and satisfaction, while searching for “meaning" and "aesthetic expression." This is the picture presented by Duane Elgin of the "voluntary simplicity" movement in the US at a recent debate of the Oxford Centre for Ethics and the Environment. The question for debate was “Does voluntary simplicity provide a realistic path toward ecological sustainability?" Elgin’s answer to this question was “yes".

Like many in the environmental movement, Elgin talks about changing society solely in terms of the consumer’s values changing. Dr Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American who debated Elgin argued for changing the economic structure of society. Schor who has helped set up the New Party in America, advocates a collective "downshifting” by western industrial nations. "Downshifting" is defined as making a "lifestyle decision" which reduces the amount of paid employment you do and/or reduces the money you earn in the hope of "regaining control" over your life. In a survey, 28 percent of Americans of working age said that, in the last five years, they had decided to “downshift" in this sense. Indeed. This trend among workers has been reported to have worried the stock markets, being a far broader phenomenon than that of mothers giving up work to look after children. The trend, says Schor, can be seen among both sexes, whether or not people have children and across all age groups up to those in their 50s and all income spectra.

The stereotyped view of America as a country having swallowed materialist/consumerist values whole is thus misleading, even among relatively wealthy US workers (and Schor’s statistics do not tell us how many non-downshifters remain unhappy with their “lifestyles"). Ninety-five percent of all downshifters, she explains, say they are now happier than they were before.

New Party, Old System

The ideas of Schor’s New Party are reminiscent of those of the Green Party in Britain. Schor advocates that Britain should opt for slower, “sustainable" growth (about one percent per year) and, in exchange, spend more on health and education. This assumption that capitalist economies can simply pick and choose their growth rate is naive. The economies of Britain, France and Germany, for example, are currently trying to cut back on welfare expenditure at the same time as they try desperately to boost their growth rates up and out of this current uncertain period.

Another fundamental problem with the "voluntary simplicity"/downshifting response to society’s current problems (of which the ecological crisis is just one) is obviously that most of the world’s people do not have the choice of such a "lifestyle change” open to them. Duane Elgin tells u how he was able to move to a more "modest" house in order to fund his book Voluntary Simplicity. Clearly, not everyone has a house which they can sell, or a job from which they could "downshift". Most parts of the world do not even have a welfare state that they can "downshift" into. The only kind of simplicity available to the majority of the world’s population is of an entirely involuntary nature. It involves no choice about how fulfilling one’s work will be or whether the capitalist one works for will use their resources "ethically". (It is debatable whether the capitalists have much choice about this themselves if they are to get a good return from their investments.)

The debate was billed as a confrontation of the question of how we create an ecologically sustainable society. It seems that, in answer to this, the ever-growing environmental literature, research and discussion such as that of Elgin and Schor will talk about everything other than the world’s population gaining common ownership and control over the world's resources as a necessary first step. 

Dan Greenwood

The Land of the Free! (1906)

From the February 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dispatch from Dayton, 0., reports that 300 employees of the National Cash Register Co. were discharged because they failed to attend a meeting to listen to addresses on the labour situation by the company officials. The meeting was called by the company because of its decision to refuse the demands of the Typographical union for an eight-hour day. This is the concern which advertises itself as the “model employer of labor,” because it furnishes bath towels, pocket-handkerchiefs and hair curlers to its employes. In return for these kindnesses the company exacts complete obedience from its slaves, as shown above. This only makes clear again that the capitalists will grant everything (even higher wages sometimes), but freedom to the workers, for with freedom will come an end of exploitation. The capitalists are dictators because they own the tools with which the workers must earn a livelihood. When the workers own the tools the despotism of capitalism will cease, and only then.

Labor (St. Louis).

The Home Owners (1956)

From the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reproduced from the “Western Socialist," Boston Massachusetts, May-June, 1956).

This is the saga of American home-ownership and American home-owners—of that not inconsiderable percentage of theoretical homeowners in the United States who are a part of the working-class. Let us begin with a scientific generalization.

The working-class, we Socialists maintain, is a propertyless class which owns nothing but its labour-power, its ability to produce. In exchange for this labour-power which the workers sell to the Capitalist class they receive back on the average enough of the necessities and the luxuries to keep them producing and reproducing themselves as a class. Home-ownership is certainly not to be figured as a part of the cost of producing and reproducing labour-power.

In the face of appearances, however, this would seem to be rather a bumptious statement insofar as the American working-class is concerned. There is, without doubt, a mountain of paper in the form of deeds and titles of ownership to homes of all types which might be found in the possession of American working -people and the ledgers in the nation's registries of deeds will bear this out. On the other hand, however, there is another mountain of paper in the form of first and second mortgages. liens and attachments and so forth reposing in the nation's banks and finance companies which fairly well serves to uphold the validity of the Socialist claim and which exposes working-class home-ownership for what it is—an illusion.

The “Propertied” Working Class

Since the introduction of the G.I. Bill of Rights which arose out of World War II, nominal home-ownership among the American workers soared. Despite die astronomical heights to which the price of property rose since that conflict, it became possible for a G.I. to purchase a home with a down-payment which varied from nothing at all to a mere 5 per cent. of the selling price. The banks would put up a portion of the money and the Government through its Veterans' Administration would guarantee the rest of it.[1] Nor does the fact that the G.I Bill does not extend its benefits to non-G.I.'s excepting in the case of the numerous instances of artful transfer of such privileges by G.I.'s to others, exclude another large portion of the working-class from the ranks of home-owners. For in many cases at least a large part of a down-payment can be raised by the “buyer” by means of a second mortgage—in most cases a short term loan with a long rate of interest

And so we find that a large percentage of the American working class has become and is becoming “owners” of real estate, even landlords. Just how little average equity the worker has in his home is another matter, however, which does not need too much research to unearth. First of all, we have the first mortgage. An article in the Boston Sunday Globe for June 10, '56 tells us that there is an “unprecedented debt of nearly $90 billions on home mortgages . . ." This mortgage debt, we are informed, “is being repaid by American families with remarkably low rates of fore-closures." Be this as it may, the picture looks something like this:

Let us say our worker buys a home for $10,000 (a pretty shabby sort of deal at today's market) and that he gets his loan at 4½% interest. If he pays $60.00 per month for principle and interest it will take him 21 years and 11 months to pay off the loan.[2] But this is not the whole story by any means, for the city or town gets its cut and in most cases these taxes are added to the monthly payments making the total in this case more like $80.00 per, rather than $60.00, and which also means that the $10,000 home has within the span of a typical 20-year mortgage, just about doubled itself in cost. 

It never rains but it pours

“The course of true love never runs smooth,” they tell us, nor for that matter is the course of a 20-year mortgage any smoother. A home, like its owners, does not get any younger as time goes on. In fact, figures show that almost 50% of them are at least as old if not older than the workers who buy them and in the years to follow there is much to be done in the way of repair. This section is not required reading for those workers who are able, after a hard day's labour at the shop or where have you, to repair or replace the roof, paint the sides, instal or repair the plumbing, heating equipment or electric wiring, build a fence, grow and trim a hedge, etc. This applies rather to the overwhelming majority of our fellow-worker home-owners who are too exhausted, or too inexperienced to do the work of a dozen craftsmen in their spare time. These make the grist for the Home Improvement milk with their "easy payment” plans backed by the Government's Federal Housing Authority or by various Home Improvement Plans sponsored by individual banks. These can tie them up for periods up to five years in amounts ranging up to $2,500 plus interest. Providing, of course, one's credit still warrants such a loan. For those who have slipped and have fallen by the way-side, credit-wise, there are the second mortgage and other types of friendly finance companies which ask no more than an arm and a leg in return for the loan.

In the face of the continuing debt which confronts the worker “home-owner” in the years his mortgage has to run, fortunate indeed is the fellow who does not lose his status and revert to that of tenant in name as well as tenant in fact. In recent years there have been a fairly insignificant number of foreclosures—insignificant when compared with the vast increase in nominal home-ownership. According to the Statistical Abstract of the U.S. for 1955, pg. 457, estimated non-farm real estate foreclosures for continental U.S. ranged from 68,100 in 1926 to a high of 252,000 in 1933 and a low of 10,453 in 1946. The figure for 1954 was 26,211.

This data was taken from approximately 1,400 counties, cities, townships, or other governmental divisions. It represents the number of properties acquired through foreclosure proceedings but excludes voluntary deeds of sale in lieu of foreclosures or defaults on real estate contracts. And this last item is by no means inconsiderable. Anyone who has engaged in the so-called art of salesmanship in the home improvement field has become cognizant of the fact that a not insignificant percentage of "home-owners” become delinquent in their mortgage payments or their payments on the roof, side wall or combination storm and screen windows, with the result that they are either foreclosed or jump clear with a few dollars fa lieu of foreclosure.

That so-called Common Stake

The nominal home-ownership by American workers will no doubt continue and even to expand as time goes on. To a considerable extent and especially in the case of that large number of workers who "own” city tenements, they in effect act as rent-collectors and maintenance-men for the banks that hold the mortgage. It certainly works fine for the Capitalist class to have a working population, a large part of which has such a tangible stake in the nation as a real-estate deed even if the balance on the mortgages, the outstanding F.H.A’s, attachments and liens just about obviate the tide. Anything that adds to the feeling of a common bond between the workers and their masters is a wonderful thing—for the masters; especially when it costs them nothing. To the extent that such "ownership” exists the illusion helps to hold back worker class-consciousness. The working-class home-owner is less likely to favour strong action against his employers in a strike for example. His 20-year mortgage and his F.H.A. notes loom darkly before him and help influence his actions.

This sort of thing, however, can but help to hold back the tide. It can not prevent it from ultimately sweeping in to engulf the Capitalist system, to finally relegate it to the history of past societies. The vast majority of workers, even in America, may aspire to but will not be able to attain even the spurious type of home ownership we have been discussing. Capitalism is a system which provides real property ownership only for the Capitalist class.

Harry Morrison

[1] Last year 30% of all houses were bought with V. A. guaranteed private loans, although out of a total of 14.5 million G.I.'s of World War II more than 10 millions have taken advantage of this feature. (National Real Estate and Building Journal, May, 1956.)

[2] From a table published by “Changing Times" for February, 1956.