A word of advice to Labour Party supporters (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party is searching for a policy. The nationalisation of the basic industries and the extension of the social services have been brought about and still the position of the working class remains unchanged, the workers must sell their ability to work for a wage that scarcely buys the necessities of life. At the last general election a large number of workers showed their discontent with the Labour Party’s administration by placing the Tories in power. To rally the support of the workers next time, a host of publications have been issued recently by the Labour Party and groups within it. All attempt to find some new solution to the problems of Capitalism, since nationalisation and the welfare state have failed to solve them.

One of these publications, the “New Fabian Essays,” was reviewed in the Economist (May 25th, 1952). The reviewer wrote:—

“Mr. Crosland presents a skilful analysis of the mixed economy, neither Capitalism nor Socialism, that war and six years of Labour rule have created. Mr. Strachey thinks rather well of the result and Mr. Crossman, naturally, dismisses it contemptuously as ‘welfare capitalism.' Neither manages to define the Socialism which he wants to evolve from it. Mr. Crosland himself effectively challenges the stock Left-wing assumption that the mixed economy is naturally transitory and must pass quickly into some sort of Socialism; and he dismisses several of the orthodox lines of advance—more social services, more nationalisation, more controls, more direct taxation—without making the alternatives at all clear . . . 

“. . . . The gross result is certainly not even the beginnings of a new philosophy either of socialist change or of consolidation in the welfare state."

The Glasgow Forward (23rd August, 1952) commented upon another of these publications:—

“The Labour Party's latest policy statement—ironically titled 'Facing the Facts'—has met with all-round criticism. It tries to please everybody in the party and ends of pleasing nobody. At the moment the Labour Party is suffering from too many personalities, too many platitudes—and too few policies."

Another pamphlet published by the Socialist Union, “Socialism—A Restatement of Principles,” is called by the Tribune (11th July, 1952) “ Sunday School Socialism.” According to the Economist (June 28th, 1952), the pamphlet argues that “The Labour movement is not . . . concerned with overthrowing Capitalism and replacing it by something called Socialism . . . All the social and economic changes from the Capitalism of the nineteenth century cannot be seen as part of the transition to some definite socialist system . . .” 

From this the pamphlet goes on to protest against the class war as an instrument of socialist advance: it declares roundly that the programmes and thoughts of socialists “have all grown out of the discontents of the past, and were designed to meet the injustices of a past age it not only objects to the identification of nationalisation with Socialism, but asks whether anyone knows what “socialisation” means. . . .

“All this is, of course, destructive,” wrote the Economist. “Positively, socialist union offers as yet ethical, not political, principles; and the best of ethics can lead men to almost any practical conclusion.”

Over 70 years ago. Frederick Engels had something to say about the relation of ethics to Socialism which was later published as “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” Here Engels traced the origin and development of Socialism, its historical conditions and philosophical ideas. He called those who sought to bring about a better society by appealing to ethical principles. Utopians. He wrote:

"The ‘Utopians” mode of thought has for a long time governed the Socialist ideas of the nineteenth century. and still governs some of them. Until very recently all French and English socialists did homage to it. The earlier German Communism, including that of Weitling was of the same school. To all these Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding. his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one of the other. Hence from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion, a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of the different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition, a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed, the more the definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

“To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, pp. 117-8, Marx Engels' Sel. Works, published by Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd.)

As the foregoing comments on the Labour publications show, Engels’ words also describe the Labourites of the 20th century.

Engels pointed to the working class struggles in the early 19th century and argued that these ’’facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and labour. As to the universal harmony and universal prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition . . .”

"The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period. . . .”

"The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticised the existing capitalist mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose. But for this it was necessary—(1) to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and (2) lo lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his labourer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and production of capital were both explained.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, M.E.S.W., pp. 123-5.)

After tracing the development of modern social production from small handicraft, Engels wrote:

“The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialised. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to the market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

“This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonism of to-day.” (M.E.S.W.. Vol. II. pp. 128-9.)

Engels explained in detail the social antagonisms that follow from this fundamental contradiction and pointed out how it would be eliminated ”with the seizing of the means of production by society.” (P. 140.)

By this Engels didn’t mean nationalisation. He claimed that

"the transformation . . . into state ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces . . . the modern State . . . is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as the individual capitalists. The modem State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers—proletarians.” (P. 136.) 

Members and sympathisers of the Labour Party seeking a policy to which they can give their support should lay hold of ”Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” and read it carefully. They can find it included in “Marx, Engels, Selected Works,” Vol. II. The language may reflect the conditions under which it was written, but as an exposition of the rise and development of capitalist society and the solution to its problems. Socialism, it is right up to date.

We hope that many of them would then realise that the object of their policy should be the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of production and that to ” thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.”

J. T.

How Labour changed (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

1. 1906. 29 trade unionist MPs elected with Liberal support constitute themselves as the parliamentary Labour Party.
2. 1918. The party adopts a new constitution, Clause Four of which reads: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’.
3. 1929. An amendment added ‘distribution and exchange’, spelling out that nationalisation (state capitalism), not socialism, was what was envisaged. (Link)
4. 1935. ‘A Labour government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’ (Clement Attlee, Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42).
5. 1945. General election manifesto: ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.’
6. 1956. Labour intellectual Anthony Crosland published The Future of Socialism in which he argued that the aim of a more equal distribution of wealth did not require the nationalisation of industry.
7. 1959. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell proposes to abandon Clause Four but this is turned down by the Labour Party conference.
8. 1974. February general election manifesto: ‘It is indeed our intention to (a) bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.
9. 1995. New Clause Four adopted: ‘A dynamic economy, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and co-operation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’.
10. 2024. ‘Labour is the party of business’ (Starmer). ‘Be in no doubt, we will campaign as a pro-business party — and we will govern as a pro-business party.’ (Link )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edgar Hardcastle

Labour's capitalist wealth fund (2024)

Tony Crosland

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party used to believe that if the government controlled the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ — such as the central bank, coal, electricity, steel, railways — it would be able to control the way the capitalist economy worked as it would make state capital investment rather than private capital investment the driving force. If private capital investment faltered then the state could step in and invest instead.

The 1945 Labour government did implement widespread nationalisation but things didn’t work out as planned. The theory was premised on the state industries making sufficient profits. In practice, while they did make a profit most of time, it wasn’t enough and they themselves had to borrow money. As they were providing a monopoly service to the private sector there were pressures not to charge too much so as not to undermine the competitiveness of private capitalist firms on export markets. They were also burdened by having to pay interest on the compensation bonds paid to the former owners. Then, after Labour was voted out of office in 1951, oil — in private hands — began to outcompete coal as a means of generating power for industry and the transport of goods, undermining any ‘commanding’ position the government was supposed to have.

In opposition, as Patrick Maguire pointed out in an article before the election in the Times (21 June), some Labour strategists began to question the commanding heights theory and to suggest that there were other ways of controlling the economy such as monetary and tax policy without needing to take industry out of private hands. This view was put forward by Labour politician Anthony Crosland in 1956 in his book The Future of Socialism. According to Maguire:

‘Crosland said something heretical. Profits were not only a precondition of rapid growth but something that socialists must “logically applaud” as a driver of industrial expansion and investment’.

The view of the current Labour leadership, Maguire went on, is basically the same:

‘That a Labour government that wishes to transform public services needs to encourage private investment and, yes, profit’.

Something, of course, that the Conservatives and Liberals had always accepted.

Actually, Crosland questioned whether capitalism was still capitalism and whether what had evolved in its place was still dominated by the profit motive, but it is revealing that, when his book was republished on its fiftieth anniversary in 2006, he was perceived by Labour leaders as saying that the economy was driven by private capitalist firms seeking to make a profit and that this must be applauded and encouraged. But this was a lesson the Labour Party had learned in the meantime from its experience in office in the 1960s and 70s.

Maguire’s article was entitled ‘Reeves’s plan for growth is built on private cash’. What she is setting up is a ‘National Wealth Fund’ to mobilise private capital to invest in the transition to a low-carbon economy in the expectation that this will stimulate growth in the rest of the capitalist economy (‘boost growth and unlock investment’ as the government press release put it – tinyurl.com/59ckdkdv).

The idea is that, for a particular project, the state will put up a quarter of the amount needed as long as private investors put up the rest, with any profits to be shared pro rata. To work, the project will need to be profitable; otherwise no private capitalist firm will be interested. As one of those involved in the scheme told the Times (15 July):

‘This is going to sink or swim based on its return generation. If this loses money it’ll be in trouble. It’s absolutely critical that it makes money’.

For the private capitalist investors of course, not just the government.

The government is banking that putting up a quarter of the money will attract private capital that otherwise wouldn’t be interested as the risk of not generating enough profit was too high. This might indeed attract some private capital. But, as Mehreen Kahn, the Economics Editor of the Times has pointed out:

‘Labour has made a virtue of “derisking” private sector investment. The danger is a state that will end up underwriting corporate profits while nationalising losses in the rush to fix a longstanding investment gap by throwing money at private finance’ (16 July).

In any event, the commanding heights of the economy remain occupied by private capitalist enterprises and so the economy will be driven by how much these decide to invest, which in turn will depend on how much profit they judge they can make. That means that whether or not there is the growth that the Labour government wants (to pay for promised improvements in public services) will be up to those deciding on private capital investment. To have any chance of succeeding, the government will have to pander to private capitalist industry and serve its interests.

This they already pledged to do when they proclaimed themselves the Party of Business. During — and for — the elections they added that they were pro-worker too. But it is not possible to be both pro-business and pro-worker as there is an irreconcilable conflict of interests between the capitalists and the workers arising from the fact that profits originate from the difference between what workers produce and what they get paid. Any party that takes office under capitalism is forced to give priority to profit-making as this is what drives the capitalist economy and so has to be pro-business, even if it might want to be pro-worker and even if initially it brings in some pro-worker measures. This is the experience not just of all previous Labour governments but of similar governments everywhere. The newly-elected Starmer Labour government won’t be — can’t be — any different. As will become evident.

As we said, capitalism was the problem, not the Tories. It still is.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Mr. Crosland abolishes Capitalism — and Socialism (1955)

Editorial from the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Observer newspaper has been running a series of articles on the future of the Labour 'Party, in which various writers have diagnosed that Party’s troubles and offered remedies. Some of the articles have gone beyond the problems of organising and of attracting voters, to deal with wider topics such as the meaning of the Labour Party’s “Socialism” and the requirements of the world today. One of these, “A Time for Hard Thinking” (Observer, 9/10/55), was contributed by Mr. Anthony Crosland, who sat in Parliament as Labour M.P. for five years for the South Gloucestershire constituency, and was defeated in the Test division of Southampton at the general election in May of this year. Mr. Crosland is described as an economist and former university lecturer. He is a member of the executive of the Fabian Society.

Let it be said at once that if Mr. Crosland’s article is not impressive it is certainly staggering. It is staggering that one who has the opportunities possessed by Mr. Crosland of studying the world he lives in should be able to see so little and deceive himself so much.

The core of his argument is that such wonderful progress has been made in this country that the old working class economic problems are with us no more and Socialism should therefore be defined afresh “in terms of a set of social and ethical aspirations.”

Mr. Crosland maintains that "the long-run problems of concern to Socialists are no longer mainly economic.” This is because:—“British Capitalism has been transformed almost out of recognition. ... I, personally, think it rather absurd to go on calling this economy 'Capitalism.’ . . ."

It was right and proper, he says, to be concerned in the past with the economic problems of unemployment, instability, and physical poverty, but not any more.

“But to-day, the economic system has been reformed, and no longer poses these traditional problems. Even with a Conservative Government we shall probably maintain full employment (if not inflation) for as far ahead as we can see, and we now have a rate of economic growth which, although not fast enough to satisfy some austere perfectionists, is certainly fast enough to eliminate poverty and sustain a rapid rise in working-class earnings. Despite the tiresome problem of the foreign balance, our present economy is capable of distributing material benefits on a scale which would have staggered Socialists only a generation ago."

As already mentioned, the really interesting thing about this sketch of a Capitalism reformed out of recognition is that it is false in almost every particular.

It reads like one of the dreams indulged in by the earliest members of the Labour Party about what they thought would take place.

Almost the only factor among these he mentions, that gives seeming support to his case, is the unusually long period of very low unemployment.

Nobody questions that the replacement of the destruction caused by the last war has played a part in this but Mr. Crosland, like many others, thinks that “full employment” can now be maintained by Government policy. As it would take us too far afield to deal here with the economic fallacies inherent in this belief in permanent full-employment it must suffice at present to remind Mr. Crosland that every boom in Capitalism’s history has produced its prophets of no more slumps; not to mention the Labour Government that went into office in 1929 convinced that it could prevent slumps but which was submerged by the most prolonged depression for 50 years.

One of Mr. Crosland’s points is that the old Capitalist “instability” has disappeared. If he means in this country alone (this is not clear) he would be making the elementary error of supposing that British exports could go on booming in face of an outside world in the throes of a crisis; but whether he does mean this or not, there is no evidence anywhere that Capitalism has got rid of instability. Has Mr. Crosland forgotten the sharp recession in U.S.A. in 1954, the quite acute textile slump in Britain and elsewhere in 1952, and the recent announcement in Australia and New Zealand that imports of British cars and other goods, are being cut? And did Mr. Crosland notice the “stable” way the Stock Exchange behaved when President Eisenhower’s illness was reported? A Daily Mail New York representative cabled:

“The biggest stock market break since the great crash of 1929 hit Wall Street to-day—a direct reaction to President Eisenhowers illness. . .

“Many shares dived by $15 The flood of selling orders raised the trading to 7,720,000 shares, the highest in 22 years. Total loss reached nearly £4,000 million.”—(Daily Mail, 27/9/55.)

The Daily Herald of the same date reported “gloom in share markets in this country partly due to the same cause. Alastair Forbes, a regular contributor of the Conservative Sunday Despatch had a pointed comment on this:— ,

". . . What can one say of capitalism as a system when the news that President Eisenhower has had a heart attack causes a panic selling wave on the stock market ? . . . Even the explanation that the selling panic would never have taken place if the intelligent members of the New York Exchange, who are all Jews, had not been away for Yom Kippur, is scarcely enough to rehabilitate the system in the eyes of the watcher through the Iron Curtain.”—(Sunday Dispatch, 2/10/55.)

But the chief interest attaches to Mr. Crosland’s belief that “physical poverty” is no more, and that “material benefits” are distributed now by Capitalism in Britain on a scale that would have staggered Socialists a generation ago. We are compelled to ask where Mr. Crosland, the economist, got this information.

There has, of course been a very great rise in the price of everything including the price the worker gets for the sale of his physical and mental energies, but we cannot suppose Mr. Crosland has not allowed for this. What, then, is there to show for the 30 years since—say 1925?

The figures published by the London and Cambridge Economic Service show a rise of average wage rates between 1925 and 1955 of 163 per cent.; that is to say wage rates now are about 2 2/3 what they were in 1925. The L.C.E.S. also show a rise of 116 per cent. in the cost of living. Coupling these two figures we can say that average wage rates are now 23 per cent, more than they were 30 years ago. Is a small increase of something averaging well under 1 per cent, a year a phenomenon to be staggered by? Is it this that, for Mr. Crosland, has revolutionised society and abolished Capitalism?

Let us remind Mr. Crosland, too, that this very modest rise has not been a “benefit” distributed by Capitalism or by Governments, but something for which the workers have had to struggle through strikes, the number of which is now steadily increasing. This we need hardly say is the old unregenerate Capitalism with its class struggle! It should not be forgotten, too, that the workers had to fight to maintain their wage rates under and against the Labour Government, and for the four years between the starting of the new wage index and cost of living index, in June, 1947, and the end of the Labour Government the workers fought a losing battle, for the cost of living rose by 29 per cent, and wage rates by only 22 per cent.

It is true that workers’ earnings have risen by a larger amount than have wage rates. This is because they are working more overtime, more piece-work and other-systems of pay related to output, more night work and shift work. Are these, too, regarded by Mr. Crosland as evidences of progress away from Capitalism?

He thinks “physical poverty” has .gone. May we ask Mr. Crosland what state of living it is that the unemployed, the sick and the aged enjoy on their small allowances, not to mention the several million men and women whose wage rates are on the £6—£7 level or less. Mr. Crosland is not the only person to cherish silly notions about how the treatment of the above groups has been revolutionised, but when allowance is made for the fact that the cost of living is now only just a little short of 2½ times what it was in 1938 the thing will appear in proper perspective. Just to take one item, the unemployment benefit of a single man was 17/- in 1938, it is now 40/-. Truly a staggering advance except for the fact that the purchasing power of 40/- now is slightly less than that of 17/- in 1938!

And what does Mr. Crosland make of the slum position? He thinks that Capitalism has gone but certainly its slums have not. Mr. F. Collin Brown, chief housing and planning inspector to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, told a conference of Sanitary Inspectors at Scarborough on 13 September last that “he estimated that about one million houses in this country were beyond repair. . . . More than three million houses in Great Britain were over 80 years old, and two million-odd over a century old.”--(Times, 14/9/55.).

Another thing, and this [is] vital to the whole question of Capitalism and Socialism, is not even mentioned by Mr. Crosland, that is, the enduring vast inequality of ownership, the 10 per cent. who own 90 per cent. of the accumulated wealth. This is the basis of Capitalism, the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the propertied class. It has not been abolished, it has not been tackled. Nothing whatever has been done about it, nor could it be, except through the abolition of Capitalism and establishment of Socialism.

Mr. Crosland does not deal with this issue and until he does so he has not even begun to present an argument to support his fantastic proposition about the disappearance of Capitalism. Something he does do makes his case even flimsier. He ascribes to Karl Marx the responsibility for having originally turned attention to the economic problems of Capitalism. This, Mr. Crosland approves of, though now he thinks it has become out-of-date with the passing of Capitalism, but he also holds Marx largely responsible that “Socialism came to be (falsely) defined in terms of nationalisation.”

That Socialism was falsely defined in terms of nationalisation we readily admit but not by Marx; this was the work of the Labour Party.

But above all it is false because it obscures the essential feature of the Marxist case, that Capitalism rests on class ownership.

The early Fabians appreciated this and the importance of dealing with it. The later ones, Mr. Crosland among them, faced with the Labour Party’s 50 years of running way from the problem, can only offer now the bland suggestion that ownership doesn't matter after all and Capitalism has disappeared anyway.

One other thing Mr. Crosland failed to notice in his fascination for his argument for forgetting economic problems. He perceived, logically, that if his premises are correct the “ economists ” can be dispensed with for their job is done; but he did not notice that if Capitalism and its evils have passed away, and full employment is safe with the Conservatives, will workers any longer trouble to vote for the Labour Party or for Mr. Crosland?

‘You’ve Never Had it So Good’ (1960)

From the February 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr Macmillan has served the Tory party very well indeed. Along with shrewdness and other qualities he has shown himself to be a master showman in a team of showmen. But when he told the British workers that they’ve never had it so good, there must have been some of his fellow Tories who doubted its wisdom. A tag like this labels a politician and his party for a very long time and when their luck runs out—as it always does—they will never live it down. But a master showman has to take risks and so far the thing has exceeded beyond all possible expectations. He persuaded his followers that it is so, and then the Opposition, so that we now have Mr Anthony Crosland, Labour MP for Grimsby, endorsing it. He confessed this at a Labour Conference at Utrecht, and he told them that the British workers “now scarcely seem, either to themselves or to other classes, to be suffering from oppression or capitalist exploitation”. (Daily Mail 11.1.60). It helped to win the support of a majority of the electors for the Tory party. It convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Fisher, though it failed to win his approval. He calls it a “dreadful phrase”. “Whenever I hear it”, he said, “I say to myself in the words of Our Lord, ‘how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven'”. (Daily Telegraph 11.1.60). With his comfortable £7,500 a year he is worried lest the general affluence of the workers should imperil their souls.

But just how much substance is there in this propaganda, and how much of it exists only in the distorting imagination of the politicians and Press?

Half the Story

There is no lack of supposed evidence to back it up. Let us look at some of it.

The Evening Standard (1.1.60) greeted the new year with an editorial telling us about the “Age of Plenty”. The opening paragraph set the tone:-

The age of scrimping is over. The age of affluence has begun. In the past 10 years Britain has passed through a social revolution whose full impact is only likely to be felt in the new decade which has just begun. For the first time in history the greater part of this country’s people—and not just the fortunate minority—have money to spare beyond their immediate needs.

Even a light-hearted journalist would hardly make this claim without evidence, and evidence is there.

One figure sums up the progress of this revolution. As the 1960’s begin, everyone living in this country has an income higher by an average of £3 a week than at the beginning of the ‘fifties.

But before passing on we must look more closely at the average increase of £3 a week. It was clearly derived from figures that turned up in the Press about that time. In the Financial Times (31.12.59) under the heading “Standard of Living” we were told that average personal income per head of the population jumped from £220 in 1950 to £375 in 1959. Sure enough the difference, £155 a year, is £3 a week so what more need be said? But what the writer omitted to point out was that in the same period, on official figures, the price level (cost of living) rose by 47 per cent. To buy in 1959 what could be bought for £220 in 1950 would need £323. So the real increase was not £3 a week but the difference between £323 and £375, a matter of about £1 a week, and that the £1 a week would buy in 1959 only about half that a like amount would have bought in 1950.

Another figure published by the Financial Times showed “expenditure” per head of the population (after deducting from average income the amount of taxation and the amount put aside as savings). This produced an increase between 1950 and 1959, of nearly £2 a week. But again, after allowing for the increase of prices this seemingly large increase gets cut down to a mere 4 per cent-—not a lot to show for 10 years of “social revolution”.

It is particularly surprising that the Financial Times should give figures in this incomplete form because four years ago (6.9.55) when that paper looked at similar figures published then, they pointed out what a miserable showing the figures gave when compared with 1938.They made the point that the real increase per head of the population (after allowing for higher prices) was the trifling rise of 4½  per cent as compared with 1938.

It happens to be useful to the case of those who see a vast increase of the standard of living to have chosen the year 1950 because average expenditure in all the post-war years up to 1952 (after allowing for higher prices) was actually below the pre-war level.

Mr George Schwartz in the Sunday Times (10.1.60) had his own line of comment. He at least is very well aware of the fact that much of the current statistical evidence of higher incomes is merely a reflection of the steady rise in prices and a corresponding decrease in the purchasing power of money. On this occasion he wanted to make the point that booming production and exports are not a new phase in British capitalism. He reproduced columns of figures showing how “peace and prosperity” were booming in the years 1903 to 1913. Again some very imposing figures, but when we look at prices in these ten years we see that they were steadily rising, a total rise of about 12 per cent. Wages were rising more slowly so that the higher wage actually bought less.

Staggering Truth

What is really astounding about Macmillan’s boast is that, at least on average, it contains an element of truth, remembering however that the rich too are in the average figures. The state of most British workers really is a little better than it has ever been before. Of course there are large numbers of clerical workers (including most of the civil service, bank clerks and others) who are worse off than they were before the war, and some industrial workers, including London busmen, are also worse off. But with fewer unemployed and several million married women enjoying the dubious advantage of doing two jobs, home and away, working class purchasing power has gone up. But what a commentary on capitalism that this small advance can be hailed as a social revolution and set the church worrying about the corrupting influence of working class “riches”!

Just about the turn of the year agricultural workers advanced to £8 a week for 46 hours toil. Hundreds of thousands of other men in industry and transport are on much the same level. The average earnings of women of 18 and over in manufacturing industry is £6 17 0 a week—hardly a corrupting level of affluence. And there are over 2 million people who in the course of a year are poor enough to qualify for National Assistance—with wives and children the number is much larger.

Real Capitalism

In spite of the talk about a social revolution capitalism has not changed. It is still a system of minority wealth and mass poverty and insecurity—and just at present it is profits, stock exchange prices and the emergence of new crops of millionaires that truly mark the phase of “you never had it so good”. And the Church, with a rise of £50 million in the value of its investments in the past five years, hasn’t done badly.

Just before Christmas, the People (20.12.59) gave unintentionally a close-up of the capitalism we still have with us. Mr Gilbert Harding ran a charity fund and invited readers to subscribe. He was proud to report that 40,000 readers had sent in £15,000 (it later reached £30,000). In particular he recorded that 89 workers in Reading had voted to his fund the £630 held by their defunct Social Club. They had been employed by a biscuit firm but a week before Christmas the firm closed down, unable to meet the competition of larger firms. In all, 290 workers got the sack, “with not a penny in compensation from the firm”, although many were likely to get other jobs, “for most of them the Christmas prospect looked bleak”. Mr Harding was entitled to single out the charitable mindedness of the workers who gave the money to his fund, the money “they had scrimped and saved to put the social club on its feet”.

But there was another item of interest. The People disclosed that when the chairman of the firm died “he left a quarter of a million pounds—all made out of biscuits”.

How much more useful it would have been to point out that the quarter of a million was just part of the tribute levied by the capitalist class from the workers, not “made out of biscuits” but out of them.

The socialist struggle has not ended, it has hardly begun, and it will achieve in due time a social system which really will be a social revolution. One in which, incidentally, it will not be necessary for workers to scrimp and save to help the discarded members of their class.

Edgar Hardcastle

So They Say: A Moral Stand, Not Taken (1974)

The So They Say Column from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Moral Stand, Not Taken

“Disillusionment” sweeps among Labour supporters like influenza after, usually, a year or two of the government they put in. This time a month or two has set the virus on its feet. One Labour journalist whose readers may already feel the symptoms is Matthew Coady of the Sunday People. In his “Week in Politics” on 31st March he wrote:

  Britain’s helping hand to Chile is to be withdrawn — and rightly. Mrs. Judith Hart. Minister for Overseas Aid, has made the only possible decision.
. . . This Generals’ bloodbath, which overthrew a Left Wing regime, is reckoned to have cost 10,000 lives, many of them executed after secret trials.
Is this the kind of set-up that Britain should help to under-pin ? Of course it isn’t.
. . . There is always a price for a moral stand. In this case it is the price of copper.

Brave words, but mistaken ones. Contrast them with the front-page story in The Guardian only two weeks later, headed Heffer may go after defying Wilson:

  Mr. Eric Heffer, Minister of State for Industry, last night faced imminent disciplinary action over his speech on Saturday in which he threw overboard the traditions of collective Cabinet responsibility and sharply criticized the Government’s decision to complete an arms contract with Chile.

(Guardian, 15th April)

Perhaps before writing “there is always a price” Coady should have seen what was in the News of the World on the day he said it: Wilson warns of price spiral.

Grow Old Along With Me . . .

A second strange story from a Labour figure was that of Mrs. Marcia Williams, Wilson’s private secretary. On 11th April she made a statement to the press about the “land deals affair” in which her brother bought property with a highly profitable future. Saying “My conscience is dear”, Mrs. Williams explained:

  Employed as I have been, personally, there has been no pension attached to my job . . . I became involved in this venture, nominally, because it was felt that my 25 per cent interest (later reduced to 20 per cent) would provide income over the period of working which could be invested in a pension fund for my retirement.

(Daily Mirror, 11th April)

The fact that there is no pension attached to her job means that Mrs. Williams would have to depend on the State retirement pension. She finds the prospect unacceptable. That is understandable; and it leaves us with the thought that what the Labour government doles out with such self-praise to the working class, its members see as unsufficient to live on

Yes, Sir, That's Whose Baby?

Strange story no. 3. Newspapers on 5th April reported that consultation papers on the road and town accompaniments to the intended Maplin Airport were being rescinded, and the project was therefore now as good as killed off. The Guardian described it as “the Conservative Government’s multi-million pound plan”, and said:

  Mr. Crosland [Secretary for the Environment! has long been opposed to Maplin. On January 16, six weeks before the election, he assured the Commons that a Labour Government would cancel the project within "a matter of weeks”.

The fact is that a Labour government originated it all. In 1966 Labour said that a third London airport was needed and should be at Stansted — motorway, town development and all. After protests other sites were named, and in turn protested over, until Maplin was settled upon.

Claiming credit for squashing one’s own idea is quite novel. Perhaps that is the idea behind trading arms to Chile — to take “a moral stand” and stop it, later.

A Fertile Suggestion

Socialists always welcome old friends, and a venerable one has turned up this month. In a letter to The Observer on 7th April A. Rees of Bradford asserted that the poor make themselves poor by having too many children:

  I cannot help thinking that the people in the poverty trap have reproduced themselves into it. The problem is surely the folly of trying to raise children on low wages, breeding poverty as they breed children.

There is scope for some fascinating calculation here. Lord Longford has a large family but is well breeched; how many children would he have had to have to make himself poor? What about Lord Sainsbury? To get into the “poverty trap” by this method he’d have to put out the work to contract.

On the other hand, Mrs. Marcia Williams did not think of avoiding poverty by going to a birth-control clinic. She had a slice of a property deal instead — showing she knows the facts of life better than A. Rees of Bradford.

Unions and Politics

The General Secretary of the TUC made a speech on 28th March which contained valuable information for left-wing militants. First:

  Mr. Murray . . . said yesterday that no Government would do things for the trade union movement without expecting something from the unions in return. Mr. Murray, who was speaking to a parliamentary press gallery luncheon, said the union movement could not expect unquestioning co-operation.

This should dispose of the idea that “political strikes” can bring compliance from governments, or even that a change of government will give militants what they have been shouting for. And to make the point clear, he later referred to the high-spot of the 1972 agitation against the Industrial Relations Act:

  Mr. Murray accepted that the actions of the Pentonville five — the dockers who were saved from gaol only on the intervention of the Official Solicitor — had been regarded as stupid by some. But the incident had shown how important it was not to make martyrs.

(Guardian, 29th March)

At the time, the five dockers were claimed to have been released by the threat of a strike — a great victory for militant solidarity etc. Len Murray now confirms that it was not so. He might have added that six other pickets went to gaol last year without any suggestion that they were martyrs, and the only protest was a mild one at the severity of their sentences.

A Continuing Mess

What would be thought of a newspaper which, through failure of organization, had two blank pages in every issue? or a tobacconist whose packets of twenty cigarettes had only eighteen in? Presumably, that if they could not put their businesses in order they would soon be out of business.

Yet capitalism tries to educate children and fails in an equally elementary respect. A group in the Manchester College of Education wrote in the Education Guardian on 9th April:

  In research carried out recently by the Cadmean Trust it was revealed that 15 in every 100 children leave school virtually illiterate.

The writers call it “a national disgrace”. But after more than a century of educational expansion, continual reorganization, extension of the school-leaving age and so on the basic problem of education is unsolved. Is it not time capitalism was thrown out for inefficiency in this and every other direction?

Robert Barltrop

The Managerial Society Part Three — Fabian Version (1958)

From the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part Two

Management is a nice neutral word to describe capitalist property relations. It has no harsh ring of class antagonism, no hint of social conflict. The word is greatly in favour with Tories and Labourites. Once Labourites talked about capitalism and even hard-faced capitalists, but that was long ago. Now, according to the new Fabians, capitalism has gone, and capitalists— including the hard-faced ones—have been displaced from power by—Management. Some of the new thinkers now refer to capitalism in the past tense, just as historians refer to Rome or feudalism.

Capitalists without Capitalism
Although capitalism has gone, vide Crosland and others, capitalists still linger on, presumably through sheer inertia. It appears, however, that they are but vestigial survivals in the socio-economic body, like the appendix. Time and the managed enterprise plus State planning will wither them away. Actually it was not the new Fabians who pioneered the notion of a departed capitalism, but an old-time Labourite, Mr. Morrison, who in a more remote past used to talk in an old-fashioned way about the capitalist system. Nevertheless with the return of the 1945 Labour Government—which he regarded as a “victory for Socialism,” he declared: “The Labour Party does not propose to abolish the profit motive” (Observer, 28/10/46). In the same speech we were told the “new order” would be based on the recognition that “Management must in future recognise Labour as a service and not as a commodity.” He added that “this new status of the worker would, however, involve new duties as well as new rights.” It may be recorded that, “The victory for Socialism” was unblemished by any attempt of counter-revolution on the part of the capitalists.

To show that by 1948 class antagonism had been abolished, Mr. Morrison in another speech (Observer, 14/3/48) assured us that

  “The modern worker is or should be a responsible partner in industry . . . knocking at the manager’s door with ideas and suggestions.”

After that it was easy for Mr. Morrison to define Socialism as

  “The assertion of social responsibility for matters which are properly of social concern.”

This, of course, is crass confusion. The terms social and Socialism do not mean the same thing apart from the fact that both are derived from society. Anything from the issuing of licences to the supervision of brothels can be of social concern, but they have nothing to do with Socialism, which means the establishment of a social organisation based on free and social access to the agencies of production and distribution.

Enter the New Fabians
After this the new Fabians began to feverishly explore the “new social order” via the New Fabian Essays. Mr. Anthony Crosland, one of the contributors, is certain that capitalism has been abolished. What he isn’t certain about is the form of society which has replaced it, so he plumps for calling it “Statism,” and it becomes his version of the Managerial Society. All it amounts to is the fact that vast units of capital and the enlargement of the State’s economic functions have replaced the laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century. But even laissez-faire was not a universal feature of capitalism. The U.S.A., Germany, Italy, Japan, etc., all began as capitalist countries, with marked State intervention, so there must be some feature more fundamental to capitalism than laissez-faire. If, of course, State intervention into the economic life of a country is “Statism,” or ” Socialism,” as the new Fabians hold, then the countries just mentioned have never had capitalism. Such are the startling conclusions drawn from the logic of Mr. Crosland.

It is a Marxist commonplace and acutely analysed long ago by Engels, that the growth of monopoly capital is a logical development from laissez-faire. Thus we can say —capitalism is dead, long live capitalism. If the elastic and highly competitive character of 19th century capitalism led by its very nature to monopolistic forms, this does not mean that competition has been eliminated, but, on the contrary, re-enacted on a vaster scale.

Old Fallacies of New Fabians
Because Crossman, Crosland, Roy Jenkins, Albu, and other Fabians believe, as did old-time Fabians, that State economic activity is Socialism, and because they limit capitalism to mean merely the uninhibited free play of market forces, for them State enterprise and the existence of huge formations of monopolistic and semi-monopolistic capitals is the negation of capitalism. Having restricted the content of capitalism to mean laissez-faire, they see State intervention and government policy entwined with capital interests as the decline and fall of the system. They fail to see that the transformation of 19th century State policy from non-intervention in economic organisation to active participation, was not due to so-called Socialist tendencies, but to the challenge by other powers to England’s economic supremacy.

Just as both old and new Fabians have not taken into account the fact that for English 19th century free trade competition there was substituted international competition, in which tariffs and protection were legitimate aids, and for the cut-throat competition of the free market there is substituted the cut-throat competition of the international units of capital. Add to this the colonial policies of the Big Powers, the export of capital and the search for spheres of influence and it is not hard to see how capitalist economics and politics go hand in hand.

Again, it was not socialistic tendencies, but world competition which compelled governments to undertake to subsidise or nationalise those industries whose services and commodities are vital to the needs of the capitalist economy as a whole, i.e., coal, gas,, electric power, transport, etc. And the need for State intervention becomes especially urgent where conflicting interests prevent these industries, when privately owned, from carrying out the necessary reorganisation. Again, the necessity of supplying cheap services and facilities for industry as a whole may mean a rate of profit or a slow rate of return unattractive to outside sources of investment or that private funds have ample and more lucrative avenues elsewhere. In that case it becomes necessary for the government to reorganise certain basic industries essential for the entire economy.

Because Labourites have represented large-scale formations of capital as a development towards Socialism and nationalisation as its stepping-stone, they are forced to maintain that the coalescing of large industry with State enterprise is the virtual elimination of capitalism and its replacement by a managerial system which constitutes the transitional period of Socialism. In such a way has Burnham’s theory been Fabianised or paralysed.

The State and the Classes
Although the Fabians have “abolished capitalism” they have not abolished the State. But they say it is no longer the executive committee of one class but “the social instrument of all classes.” Thus the army, air force, police, judiciary, etc., are all at the disposal of the working class if and when they care to use them unless, of course, another class wants to use them at the same time. Then one supposes it is a question of priorities. No doubt, when workers are on strike, especially in a big way, they may take note of such useful information.

The Fabians have, however, abolished classes, or almost. Thus Mr. Crossman in a broadcast (August, 1948) :—

  “In the Marxist sense there is no longer a bourgeoisie only a vestigial group to remind us of its former dominance. There is no more a proletariat in the Marxist sense, only a remnant to remind us of past miseries.”

Having eliminated the main division of capitalism, the odds and ends left seem hardly worth classifying, although Mr. Crossman still speaks of classes.

Now many Fabians who criticise Marx at least know someone who has read Marx, or someone who knows somebody who has. But such important sources of information do not seem to be available to Mr. Crossman. Otherwise even he might have known that Marx classified bourgeoisie and proletariat as property owners and those who possessed only their capacities to work. The class structure of capitalism—and this is the essence of capitalism, said Marx—is the division between owners of capital and wage-workers, whose means of livelihood consisted of selling their services to the former. Whether the capitalist is a man of great wealth or only moderately so, or whether the propertyless wage worker—proletarian—receives high or low wages does not determine the social relation which capital owners and employees enter into. It is ownership of means of production which is the basis of capitalist society.

That this division between owners and non-owners, in spite of two Labour Governments and fair shares for all, still holds good, can be statistically verified. The Oxford Institute of Statistics tells us 80 per cent. of capital is owned by 10 per cent. of the population, and that 1 per cent. own half of the entire capital.

Mr. Crossman might even get a few facts about the class division of wealth from some of his Labour cohorts. Writing in the Sunday Pictorial (27/11/55), Mr. Wilfred Fienburg, Labour M.P., stated :—

  “Let us face it, there ARE two classes in Britain to-day . . . one-tenth owns nine-tenths of the wealth and there are the others, 45,000,000 others, who own practically no wealth at all.”

And Professor W. Arthur Lewis writing on the Distribution of Property, Socialist Commentary, December, 1955, said:—

  “Two-thirds of the private property in this country is owned by less than 4% of the population. This uneven distribution lies at the root of most of the evils with which Socialists have been concerned in the economic sphere— especially the uneven distribution of income and economic power.”

Yet Mr. Crosland calmly asserts :—

  “It is no longer true that property relationships determine the distribution of economic power.” (New Fabian Essays, page 38)

Concentration of Wealth
In spite of the fact that, according to the new Fabians, capitalism is going or is gone, the concentration of wealth into fewer hands is still a marked phenomenon of this “non-capitalist society.” In fact, Mr. Bevan, a fellow-member of the same party as Mr. Crosland says :—

  “Even among the wealthy classes the concentration of wealth in the upper layers is disturbing—200 companies out of 176,000 in Britain take more than a quarter of all profits A little over 1 % take 60% of the profits.”—(Reynolds News, 15/5/55.)

While Margaret Hall on “Monopoly Policy” in The British Economy (p. 422), says :—

  “By the mid-twentieth century the concentration of economic power was accepted as the normal evolution of the advanced capitalist systems.”

So, in spite of the fact that, according to some of the new Fabians there has been a dispersal of wealth and economic power, there has been no dispersal in ownership. Neither has Mr. Crosland’s non-capitalist society altered the trends of the concentration of capital.

The Mixed Economy
The mixed economy, as it is called by “the new thinkers” to describe extant capitalism is supposed to be the British way of effecting a happy compromise between capitalism and Socialism. It is neither happy nor a compromise. Actually, over nine-tenths of manufacture, building, trade, and finance is privately owned and the remainder of State enterprise—power and railways—are themselves, as we have said, economic appendages to private enterprise. Even people like Mr. Morrison have never envisaged the mixed economy as more than a two-tenths State industry and eight-tenths private industry. Thus the mixed economy has a whisky and soda flavour. Mostly the spirit of private enterprise and a dash of nationalisation to take off the raw edge—but hardly a mixture.

Propaganda Value of the Managerial Society
The concept of a Managerial Society seeks to soft-peddle working class resentment and feeling in the struggles over the division of wealth. Now, the bloated, top-hatted, cigar-smoking capitalist of old-style Labour cartoons has been faded out. Instead we have managers who, though they seek profits, are really interested in the skills and techniques of management and who, unlike the capitalists, are workers, a special kind of worker, but still workers, and between one section of workers and other sections of workers there should be a general unanimity of interests, not conflict. Under the old capitalist society it was division and struggle. Under the managerial set-up it is, or should be, co-operation and collaboration, and if vide Mr. Crosland we might not be “all Socialist now,” we are at least all workers now.

In this way have the new Fabians presented the Managerial Society or, as they alternatively call it—British Socialism.

Ted Wilmott

Crosland: His Kind of "Socialism" (1976)

From the January 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anthony Crosland, Labour Cabinet Minister and “guru” of the moderate wing of the Labour Party (vide The Observer) has delivered a lecture, at the invitation of the President of Costa Rica (another “socialist”?) on the above theme. It has now been published by the Fabian Society — who else? — and, as it is an artful ploy to kid Labour voters, it calls for a reply from us.

First, it will be noted that Crosland has his very own special brand of Socialism. Socialists have always held that Socialism is definite and unique, like oxygen or silicon: not so! says Tony. But, if everybody is inventing his own brand of Socialism, it ceases to mean anything and is all things to all men — as befits a Labour Party. One difficulty that arises when you run round inventing your own do-it-yourself Socialism is that you have to indicate what you mean, so that the others will think they know what you are talking about.

This our “guru” kindly did. Socialism (Crosland variety) is (1) a set of aspirations which socialists wish to achieve, (2) the relief of the poor, (3) a wider equality in the distribution of property. (Taken from “Social-Democracy in Europe” by A. Crosland, Fabian Society.)

Anybody who has read two issues of the Socialist Standard could tell Crosland that this piffle has nothing to do with Socialism. And a good few who’ve never read it at all — in fact, Disraeli or Gladstone would have agreed with it; in public anyway. It is nothing but good old Liberal (or Tory) baloney.

Just for the record: “relief” of poverty is perpetuation of poverty. Socialism is the abolition of poverty. Socialism is not the re-distribution of wealth (property) but the abolition of property.

Stirring manfully to give his vapourings a semblance of reality, the “guru” has to drag in Karl Marx. Social-Democracy, he declares

  requires, and indeed can be defined as the nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange (sic).

He maintains:

  The ownership of the means of production is not now the key factor which imparts to a society its essential character.

Apart from the absurdity of the obsolete notion that nationalization has anything to do with Socialism, this does not even tally with the notorious claims of the Labour Party constitution, which states nationalization (“public ownership”) as one of the party’s numerous objectives.

The artful trick consists in implying that Marx advocated this (nationalization or state ownership). Marx did not. He was crystal clear about it. And in case Crosland is kidding anybody — as the old- time Commies used to try it — that because the very first edition of The Communist Manifesto contained a demand for nationalization, that Marx was a “nationalizer”, the explanation is perfectly clear as Engels indicated in the last edition.

These demands were aimed at a fragmentary, underdeveloped continental transport and industry, and considered (rightly or wrongly) progressive by Marx in 1847. In subsequent polemics with the German social-democrats Marx, and particularly Engels, emphatically denounced the claim that state ownership was Socialism. Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring:

  Recently, however, since Bismarck adopted state ownership, a certain spurious socialism has made its appearance — here and there even degenerating into a kind of flunkeyism — which declares that all taking over by the state, even the Bismarckian kind, is in itself socialistic. If, however, the taking over of the tobacco trade by the state was socialistic, Napoleon and Metternich would rank among the founders of socialism . . . Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal Porcelain Manufacture, and even the regimental tailors in the army, would be socialist institutions.

Our lecturer proceeds to inform us that the dictatorships were easily the most inefficient regimes during the last war — which we have been telling left-wing insurrectionists for years. But this is the lead-in for the suggestion that the “Communist State” has something to do with Marx and Socialism; whereas actually the dictatorship was the invention of one Lenin.

We are treated to a few figures (no Fabian lecture complete without them!) which purport to show that “the trend” is in the right direction. There is less inequality, he claims, because the Diamond Report showed:

  “‘That the top 10% of earners now command only 21.4% of total personal incomes, compared with 34.6% before the war.”
  “That ownership of capital by the top 10% has fallen considerably, and the top 1% very markedly.”

— and that this re-distribution continues. Now these figures by themselves are extremely suspect; and can be juggled to almost any result required, by ignoring inflation and taking special periods (e.g. post-war boom).

But even accepting all his statements — so what? Is this Socialism — that a few rich capitalists have become comparatively less rich? or a few wage- earners less poor? How long before the next figures completely refute this lot?

We now come to the guts of the matter. Crosland says this “statistical evidence” is confirmed “by our own experience”. The beaches in Spain are crowded with “working people, enjoying the pleasures previously reserved for the few”. And (here we go again) "the motor car has brought new freedom to millions of people”.

Right back to the old “the workers are better off” syndrome. Incidentally, thousands of workers today complain that the motor car keeps them poor, not “free’. But what is all this but the hoary old rigmarole of the Theory of Increasing Misery in reverse? Marx wrote that the workers would sink down into ever-increasing poverty — and they haven’t — so there!

First, Marx never wrote anything of the sort. What he did write was:

  Along with the diminishing number of the magnates of capital . . . grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.

(Capital, Vol. I p. 836, Kerr edn.)

Yes! the modern working class has cars, washing machines, colour telly, hot water, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, because this is 1975, not 1875; and because the capitalists spend millions kidding the workers to buy these things (they go broke if they don’t); and because sheer technical progress enables cheap production in factories in thousands instead of ones in laboratories.

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise alongside the little house. It shrinks from a house into a hut. Its owner now has no redress however high it may shoot up, if the palace grows to a greater extent, the small house owner will be cramped and dissatisfied.

(Wage Labour and Capital)

What is Marx saying? Suppose two men on ladders, one on the bottom rung, the other on the tenth. If while the bottom one moves up ten rungs the top moves up as well, their relative position is unchanged. The top-dog is still the same degree higher than the bottom dog.

“The contradictions of capitalism today are not those analysed by Marx 100 years ago”, says Crosland. The contradiction of all the contradictions which Marx analysed was that between wage-labour and capital, now rapidly engulfing the last continents of this earth. Crosland’s panacea for all this, his kind of Socialism, is “more industrial democracy”.

In the immortal words of Joe Bloggs: What a load of rubbish!

Horatio.

News In Review: Martyrs Wanted (1960)

The News in Review column from the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Martyrs Wanted

The railways have been carrying a deficit for many years, although it is possible that at some time in the future they will again become a direct profit-making concern. In the meantime, the railways are vital to the smooth running of industry generally.

The railway deficit was a useful propaganda weapon which the Railway Commission wielded in an effort to stave off the railway men’s claim for higher wages last month, along with the well worn slogans like “the welfare of the rest of society,” and “the good of the country.” It is unrealistic for the Railway Commission to expect that one section of the community should martyr itself to ”the national interest,” that is to say, to the interest of the capitalist class as a whole, when workers generally are involved in a constant struggle to secure a living wage. The railwaymen should not be misled by these meaningless catch-phrases, or be swayed in their determination to increase their pitifully low wages. They would be enjoying a much higher standard of living if they had gone about achieving this in a more militant way, with unity and greater purpose.


Clause Four

The Labour Party’s present wrangle over the possible revision of its constitution is merely a further commentary on this party’s reformist character. Mr. Gaitskell has hit back at his critics who object to his plan to alter the clause which pledges the party to 100 per cent. nationalisation. The rank and file are now told that a revised constitution is essential to enable the party to win the next election—which is an interesting comment on the way the Labour Party leaders’ minds work. Gaitskell’s opponents have called his plans “a betrayal of Socialism.” But since nationalisation has got nothing to do with Socialism this criticism is very wide of the mark.

In an article entitled “ The Future of the Left” (Encounter, March, 1960). C. A. R. Crosland, M.P. explains that the Labour Party now accepts a “mixed economy” and is no longer committed to “complete public ownership of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.” He goes on further to say “Mr. Gaitskell’s (Blackpool) speech came as a great surprise to many of the rank and file who have not grasped what the leadership have been saying for the past ten years." But what have the Labour Party leadership been saying for the last ten years? They have been very busy in offering suggestions and assisting the present Government to run capitalism or, as they would now have us believe, a “mixed economy.”

The battle over clause four has nothing to do with Socialism. Whether clause four is revised or not, capitalism, under Tory and Labour Governments, will continue to produce its nightmares of insecurity and threatened mass annihilation.


Mining Disaster

The beginning of 1960 has seen two major coalmine disasters, first in South Africa, and then in East Germany. In the South African case, the disaster was in the Clydesdale Colliery at Coalbrook, where 435 miners were entombed. It may be thought that disasters in South African mines of the magnitude of this one are isolated, but although not involving so many men at a time, there are many accidents each year, the 1959 figures showing non-white deaths in the mines as 733 (Johannesburg Star, 29/1/60). However embarrassing it may be for the South African Government with its policy of apartheid, five of the 435 men buried together in the mine were white. Separate religious services were held at the pithead at the time of the disaster, one for the five white men and one for the 430 Africans. Under the Workmen’s Compensation Act, which covers African and white mine-workers, there is a grant of £40 for burial expenses for whites but only £15 for Africans. The compensation payable to widows and dependants of the dead men will also be reckoned with due regard to the colour of their skins. Widows of Europeans will be entitled to £13 4s. per month if childless, with an extra £6 12s. per month for each child, but a maximum of £33 per month, regardless of the number of children. African widows will be entitled to a lump sum, handled by a trust fund in Pretoria, which only produces between £3 and £4 a month (Johannesburg Star, 4/2/60). Apartheid still operates even after death.


Four Minutes

Some years ago the phrase "I’ve only got four minutes” was made popular as the opening gambit of a music-hall comedian. Little did he know that in a few short years his phrase would take on a new and terrible significance.

Four minutes, we are told, is all the time that we will have between the warning of an approaching enemy rocket and its arrival on target. For this purpose the Government is spending something in the region of fifty million pounds, so that we can be informed in advance of our impending demise.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with this venture, it seems a pretty hopeless prospect to know that the possibility for destroying us all has now been reduced to a four-minute job. Man's destructive capacity is now such a fine art, with push-button rockets and hydrogen bombs that can devastate a whole country, that the mind boggles at this latest madness.

Thus it is not surprising that people feel totally inadequate to cope with this kind of insanity, and tend to rationalise these happenings by thinking that atom bombs would never be used anyway. In this situation, to be an optimist where such tremendous grounds for pessimism exist, becomes necessary for one’s own sanity. Socialists themselves are not free from this, but at least they are trying to do something about it. What about you?


Jackboot Revival

During the current period of boom and peace old enemies have been forgotten, but recently there has been a slight stir on the western front. Germany has revived, and with this revival have come insidious outbursts of anti-semitism, and more recently, negotiations between Adenauer and Franco with the aim of setting up military bases in Spain. Hands have gone up in horror, as one might expect, and although these negotiations have come as a surprise to ordinary people, it is clear that the British Government have known about this for quite a time.

“Why the secrecy?”, one may ask. Indeed, it is a puzzle which would to many people be too involved to fit together. However, the explanation is not too difficult to find. Britain and France are in a sticky position. The world situation is now one of “West” versus “East,” with Western Germany belonging to the West and East Germany belonging to the East. In these circumstances, Allied countries are prepared to forgive and forget old enemies, and recruit them against old friends. However, no-one has quite forgotten the last war and that Spain was the training-ground for the German soldiers used in World War II.

Herr Strauss, the German Minister of Defence, in charge of the army, discussing uniforms for the new West German Army, was reported to have said: “Jackboots will march for Democracy/' What a paradox! One can envisage the logical conclusion of this view and see racial extermination and the establishment of concentration camps carried out in the name of democracy as well. It is also well to note that Herr Strauss was one of the small minority in the West German Parliament that voted against reparations for Jews who suffered under the Nazi regime.

Where will it end? Our friends are our enemies and our enemies have become friends. It seems reasonable to suppose that these crazy paradoxical antics of the politicians will continue until the British working class abandons completely the pernicious nationalisms that are foisted on them by their leaders, and comes to recognise their identity of interests with the working people of all countries.

Spare a Penny

A cyclone in Mauritius kills thirty-nine, wrecks forty thousand buildings, makes a hundred thousand homeless, and destroys much of the sugar crop on which the economy of the island rests. An earthquake devastates the town of Agadir in Morocco, killing over twelve thousand people. Now appeals are launched on behalf of the disaster areas. This rattling of cans under the noses of the public is the way misfortunes are dealt with under capitalism. In a Socialist society the care of the injured, and the support of the dependants of the dead, would not be left to charity. They, like every other member of the human society, would participate freely in the goods produced by society.