Editorial: The Strike in Belgium (1961)

Editorial from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Belgian strike is an attempt on the part of some of the Belgian workers to force the Government to resign or change its method of dealing with the economic crisis. The Government, a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals, has precipitated this situation by its austerity measures. These consist of cuts in the social services such as the Belgian equivalent of the National Health Service, in the education programme, in unemployment pay, and in coal subsidies, along with the introduction of a Means Test and what is called “additional temporary taxation.” The Belgian local authorities are also to be empowered to impose additional income taxes of their own. The Belgian opposition party which calls itself “Socialist” claims that workers will suffer a loss of £21 to £28 a year.

The popular reason given for these austerity measures is the need to meet the trade and finance deficit caused by the loss of the Congo. But to accept this one has to accept the view that the Belgian capitalist class subsidised its workers out of the proceeds of exploitation of the Congolese: and that wealth which might have bought continued support for Belgian rule in the Congo was diverted to Belgian working class pay packets out of sheer generosity on the part of the Belgian capitalists.

A correspondent in The Guardian (28/12/60) gives a more reasoned view of the situation:

“Even before the Congo crisis, plans were being made to face the unpleasant fact that Belgium’s period of peak prosperity is over, and that her industrial production is growing very slowly in comparison with that of her Common Market partners. By economies in state spending, by increased taxation and by attracting foreign capital, M. Eyskens’ austerity programme was designed to achieve a vast investment drive to modernise Belgian industry and make Belgian products competitive in world markets. The most uneconomic of Belgian products is her coal, a chronic problem since the thirties. In recent months Belgium has launched on a serious programme of reform of uneconomic mines including a number of closures. Closure of mines, however, means social disruption; alternative jobs for discharged mineworkers are not yet available in mining areas and the Socialist Party has seized On the consequent unemployment and unrest to find support for its present frontal attacks on the austerity programme and the present Government.”

Socialists feel deep sympathy for the Belgian workers on strike. But they realise that their action is futile as a means to achieve anything but temporary respite from the encroachments of their masters on their standard of living, and that they are jeopardising their chances of achieving even that by using the strike weapon against the State, instead of using it to back up wage demands with which to offset the effect of the Government’s policy.

The lessons of this situation should be taken to heart. The strike weapon has a very limited usefulness and at its best can only deal with effects and not causes. To use this weapon against the might of the State is to invite disaster. If at election times the workers give their votes to the parties of capitalism, it ensures that the present type of situation will occur again.

The “Socialist” Party in Belgium is similar to the Labour Party in this country. It is these so-called “Socialists” who foist such wage-pruning schemes as National Health services, unemployment pay, family allowances, and so on, on to politically ignorant workers as bits of Socialism. And it is the same political charlatans who seek to make capital from the present situation by using the strike as a means to achieve government office themselves.

Governments do not develop reforms or pruning schemes because their attitude to the working class is necessarily either sympathetic or antagonistic. Governments administer the affairs of a capitalist economy in the interests of the national capitalist class. The Belgian workers would be well advised to consider this fact in relation to the present situation, recognising that a change of government is merely a change of label.

A more fundamental change is needed. Austerity, in a world of potential plenty, is always the lot of the working class under capitalism. It is not enough to demonstrate against one type of capitalist government. The workers must organise consciously to abolish the present economic system and establish in its place their own system of society—Socialism.

The New Cyprus Republic - Part 2 (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

(2) The Rude Awakening

The rude awakening was to come before the new Republic was three weeks old, and Ledra Street, which once echoed with the revolver shots of those bent on replacing the colonial government with one of their choosing, was to echo with the shouts of demonstrating Trade Unionists, striking in support of their fellow workers sacked for “economy reasons”.

The attention of the new representatives had been drawn to the plea, uttered against the dismissal of Public Works Department employees in the Paphos district, four days before Independence. Promises “to see what he could do about it” were given by the Minister of Labour in the transitional government. Combined right wing (SEK) and left wing (PEO) unions then issued strike notices against wrongful dismissal. At the same time, Mr. Beeley, the British representative at UNO, was placing the application of Cyprus for membership before the Security Council, saying “A democratic system of government and the necessary machinery for safeguarding the human rights and the interests of all sections of the community” exists in Cyprus.

While the voice of organised labour was beginning to express itself, the body of employers had been reorganising. Even as the daily press, was relaying as front page news the visits of diplomats presenting credentials at the Presidential Palace, (the old Government House) there appeared notices on their back pages. These were to give notice that “application had been made to the Cyprus Government for a licence ‘to form’ . . . The Cyprus Employers Consultative Association … to safeguard and promote the interests of all employers in Cyprus, especially in securing their fullest co-operation in, dealing with matters affecting relations between employers and their workpeople.” Continued link-ups of employers’ associations throughout the island have resulted in the association covering leading employers and most individual employers’ associations.

Still the sackings continued, amid strong press reaction, with T.U. delegations making representations to the Minister of Labour. A letter was published from the Government Workers’ "freedom is of real value as long as the worker is deprived of the sacred right Union to the Government saying, “No” to work" (Cyprus Mail 26/8/60). On August 27th, while pickets were demonstrating on the streets of Famagusta against dismissals, President Makarios announced a scheme for the expenditure of £331,300 on new public works to reduce unemployment. Then with cruel irony he said “We are in sympathy with those dismissed from Public Works, and certainly we don’t want them in the streets jobless. But I want to make it clear that I am not going to give in to slogans of demagogues. A labour conscience must be developed for the good of the country. Demagoguism and laziness must stop. What our country needs is work and production. Workers will be protected in the new state, but they must also work “.

One can be quite safe in saying that the first pronouncement of a government after its election is to call on the workers to work harder. In this case it came rather later than expected, but rarely has such a call been so cruelly worded. The “unemployed worker” who out of sheer desperation is forced to send deputations to beg for work from his newly-elected government, is roundly berated by the leader of that government for not working. The dismissals continued amid protests. The grant was seen by the workers as a stop-gap measure which, apart from failing to secure the re-engagement of the dismissed workers, would do nothing to relieve unemployment in the future. Plans for abolishing unemployment by means of foreign loans were discussed continually. Finally, a meeting of SEK, PEG, and the Turkish Federation of Labour decided on an island-wide strike for 8th September if the dismissed workers were not reinstated.

We Want Bread

The workers’ representatives negotiated up to the last minute with Minister of Labour and the President, who assured them that it was government policy to help the workers and that they would do everything in their power. But governmental concern was not sufficient for them to reverse their previous dismissal decisions, and a twenty-four hour protest strike was called. Shouts of “We want work—we want bread” went up outside the House of Representatives, while a union delegation went inside to present a solution. In every town mass rally and picket demonstrations were held, with placards saying, “Our children are hungry”, and “Let the promises become deeds”.

This token strike, undertaken by workers half-fearful of bringing the government in disrepute, had the sympathy of the general public, was peaceful, and moreover was an extremely effective example of how the working people, in default of anyone else, were prepared to “safeguard their imprescribable rights”. The strikers returned to work the following day to await the next move by the government.

The naively unrealistic “friendship with all countries” policy was to bring immediate reaction from the United Arab Republic. The friction was caused by the declaration that Mr. Zev Levin would be installed as the first Israeli ambassador to Cyprus. This came in the face of warnings by the Arab League to Cypriot merchants against trading with Israel. The announcement of the appointment was like a slap in the face to Egypt. Since the Suez, invasion launched by the British in 1956, Egypt had given full support to the self-determination agitation wishing to remove the threat of an unfriendly Cyprus on its doorstep.

The first reaction from Egypt was to suggest that the reports were circulated by Israel to disturb the excellent relations with the new republic, but when it became evident that the report was factual, the question was given priority at the Arab League Foreign Ministers’ meeting which started in Beirut on August 22nd. At the closing session of its meeting, the League passed a resolution warning Cyprus that Zionism aims to succeed imperialism in every country and to continue exploiting it. The Cyprus Federation of Trade and Industry, in expressing great concern in the deterioration in diplomatic relations, revealed their real concern in a cable sent to the President. This stated that the economic interests of Cyprus demanded the strengthening of ties between the Republic and Arab countries. In reply to this a message was sent to the President by a committee of businessmen trading with Israel, who expressed support for the “bridge of friendship” policy, and requested a meeting with him to put forward their viewpoint. Although a trade pact was signed with the UAR at the end of September, the Arab-Israeli dispute continued to be one of the main newspaper topics, and no solution seems likely to satisfy all parties permanently.

Hence the two main policies upon which the new state was to have based its action had come to grief; and with it the idealistic policy of independence and industrial peace in a capitalist world of political and economic line-ups.

Opening the Seventh Cyprus International Trade Fair, President Makarios stressed the importance of the island as a trade link between East and West. In doing so he was merely following the path mapped out for him by numerous government leaders in as many countries, engaging in the monotonous and dangerous pastime of market-grabbing. The urgency of his appeal is underlined by the recently published Economic Review for 1959, which lays stress on the continued unfavourable trend in the terms of trade.

Storms Ahead

In spite of continued expressions of optimism in the future of the new state, from the point of view of economic and political stability, and trade and foreign relations everything points to more storms ahead. Cyprus has mainly an agricultural and mining economy, the latter accounting for more than half the value of exports. Agriculture can absorb no more of the labour force; already it accounts for over half. Although the most important single activity, it is uneconomic and heavily subsidised. A large number of farmers, unable to pay off loans, are threatened with the enforced sale of their land.

The question of capital investment to finance such projects has been the subject of much dispute. The Ambassador to Greece for the Soviet Union, Mr Sergeyev, with the appearance and behaviour of a miniature Khrushchev, visited the island and offered aid “without strings”. AKEL of course advocate taking up the offer, whilst others advise caution and consideration of other offers.

The question of future intercommunal disturbances has recently been given prominence by the statement of a Turkish political leader, Mr. Denktash, that attempts by Greek Cypriots to undermine the Zurich and London Agreements would lead to chaos and civil war. Scarcely a day passes without the Greek and Turkish dailies on the island throwing mud at each other. The prospects of even elementary political organisation involving both communities seem remote at the moment. The brightest hope, from the working, class point of view, is the admirable demonstration of unity during the recent strikes and demonstrations, which the workers have threatened to repeat. Both Turk and Greek spoke as one. The Trades Unions have recently opposed the principle, imposed by the Constitution, of a 70 per cent./30 per cent. division of Civil Service jobs between Greeks and Turks as being discriminatory and introducing political factors into a purely labour field.

Difference of Opinion

The difference of opinion between Makarios and the mayors mentioned earlier is developing into a full scale feud. A week after Independence Day it was announced that the mayors would publish a book stating their opinion of the Agreement. At the same time they served notice that they would revive the feud with Makarios, who went on record as saying “that some of them deserve to be tried by people’s courts”. Their next move, taken with a number of doctors, editors, lawyers, and party leaders, was to send a telegram to the Secretary General of UNO on the eve of the maiden speech made by the island’s representative, Mr. Zenon Rossides. As though to belie his references to newly independent Cyprus as “a bridge of unity for understanding and co-operation”. The telegram pointed out that the settlement was imposed on them, and infringed their fundamental right to self determination. Two more telegrams followed immediately, one from the Turkish Communal Chairman in support of the agreement and another of opposition from the Greeks. It is quite probable that an influential body, a kind of unofficial opposition outside Parliament, will develop.

In municipal matters a Greek and a Turkish Municipal Chamber administers the respective communities with moneys allocated by the government according to the 70 per cent./30 per cent. Ratio. This rigid partition in municipal matters is also found in education and in separate representation at parliamentary level.

Police Power

In this government as in so many others, the responsibility of power has had a very sobering effect on the erstwhile rebels. They have become respectable, cautious, and apprehensive. No doubt it is the current crime wave, including some murders of those who were informers during the emergency, that has prompted the President to announce an island-wide arms round up; after which very serious action is to be taken against those holding arms. The response to this was the negligible total of 30 guns; shocking the government into the threat of snap road checks and surprise house searches. Indeed, police power has already been strengthened by the government decision to retain the pass system, introduced by the British Government during the emergency, where by all adults over twelve years old must be in possession of civilian identity cards.

The possibility of an outbreak of violence between the Communists and the Eoka faction, which had spasmodically flared during the emergency, cannot be far from the President’s mind. Reports have come from Athens of renewed political activity by Grivas, and of his statement concerning the further clarification of certain points in the Constitution. We are reminded that it was in Athens that he first organised a private army, during the German occupation in 1943. During the civil war that followed liberation, the royalist Grivas had aligned his army against ELAS, the Communist army which he had known for a long time, intended to take over Greece, and which had put a price on his head. After Greece had been forced into the camp of Western Capitalism, he made an unsuccessful attempt to get into the Greek Parliament. The subsequent failure and disillusionment turned his interest to his native Cyprus, where the growth of Communist Party influence gave him cause for concern. Although AKEL had supported the earlier Enosis movement, the Greek Civil War and its outcome had resulted in a typical about face. As always the communist attitude was inconsistent and vacillating, but union with a member of the Western, as opposed to the Eastern Capitalist blocks was not to their liking. Whilst apprehensive that self-determination would result in Enosis, their present attitude appears to be in favour of independence. The present set-up suits them very well, giving them plenty of room of manoeuvre Cyprus into the communist camp. True to the principle of “catching them young”, both groups have already formed youth organisations.

Under colonial rule, there is often identification of the ruling class with the colonial power. The belief used to be current in the “left wing” that after the achievement of national independence the resulting disillusionment would provide the experience necessary for the working class to see the class issue more clearly. Of course, this is not believed by Russia who is just as anxious as any other country to woo the newly independent states, to capture their trade and to use them as counters in international diplomacy. In any case it is a fallacious argument and certainly not borne out by the facts.

The struggle in Cyprus resulted in many hundreds of working class dead and wounded. The voice of its Capitalist Class, as yet young and weak, but struggling to be heard, finds a ready mouthpiece in its government which has shown itself to be just as chauvinistic and trade conscious as any of the other governments set up as a result of national independence. It has taken its place with the other capitalist states in a world of actual and potential aggression, and will add its voice to the general discord which is called “trade and peace”, no doubt falling into line behind one or other of the major powers.

Socialist Knowledge

This is not a step forward for the working class of Cyprus or anywhere else, and far from there being any sign of them becoming socialist, independence has thrown the nationalistic aspirations of Greek and Turk into relief. The introduction to the Cyprus working class of socialist knowledge with its clear-cut class issues, uncomplicated by nationalistic arguments, is badly needed to dispel these bars to its emancipation.

Then it will realise that its struggle, whether resulting in Enosis or independence, effectively enables its capitalist class to capture more elbow room to develop, and secure a hold on labour, in order to exploit it more efficiently in the name of the new Cyprus Republic.

R. J.

Notes by the Way: The Purchasing Power of the Pound (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Purchasing Power of the Pound

At the T.U. Congress, in order to lead the delegates away from the policy of repudiating “wage-freezing” and pressing for higher wages, members of the General Council laid emphasis on the idea that lower prices would be more advantageous than higher wages. Mr. Arthur Deakin crystallised the view in the remark “I want to see £1 buy a pound’s worth of goods.” (Daily Express, 10/9/48.) Accurately speaking, the statement doesn’t mean anything, because what a £1 will buy is “a pound’s worth of goods” ; it can’t be anything else. The delegates, however, knew what he meant. It was a way of saying that he wants prices to stop rising and if possible he wants them to be reduced. Many workers think the same but what they have in mind is that they would like to see prices back to the level of 1939, or better still back to 1914, but without any fall in wages. If they kept the present level of wages and could spend them on goods at the much lower 1914 price level they would indeed have got something. It will, however, not happen, and the Government has never even suggested that they have any hope of seeing it happen. If prices came down by half, wages would soon follow, closely enough.

If the question is asked why are prices so much higher than in 1914 the greater part of the increase is easy to explain though the explanation is overlooked by many people.

In 1914, and again from 1925 to 1931, the British pound represented a certain weight of gold (113 grains of fine gold) and it was kept at that level automatically because, by law, Bank of England notes were convertible into gold or gold into notes. The American dollar also represented a fixed amount of gold, and the relationship of the weight of gold in the pound and dollar respectively was such that one pound equalled about 4.86 dollars. Now there is no convertibility of the pound into gold but, by agreement between the two governments, the pound is fixed at 4.03 dollars instead of the former 4.86 dollars. Also, since 1914, the dollar has been devalued and it too represents a smaller weight of gold than formerly; 59 per cent. of what it was in 1914.

The effect of these two changes taken together (i.e. that the dollar represents less gold, and that the pound represents fewer dollars) is that the pound now represents just under half the weight of gold it represented in 1914.

If we assumed that the value of gold itself had kept unchanged and therefore one ounce of gold would buy as much as in 1914. the effect of reducing the weight of gold represented by the Pound to one-half of what it used to be would naturally be that the pound would purchase only half as much as it did in 1914. There have been other factors also at work but by comparison with this they are of relatively small importance.

Incidentally it is worth noticing that those who believe that “we are no longer on the gold standard” are very wide of the mark.

* * *

The Russian Concentration Camps

Two exiled opponents of the Stalin Regime, Dallin and Nicolaevsky, wrote “Forced Labour in Soviet Russia,” giving a terrible picture of the conditions they allege exist in the Russian concentration camps. In our February issue we published a comment made by the Manchester Guardian in which the editor, while questioning some statements, accepted the description as convincing evidence of the inhumanity of the system of forced labour imposed on political and other prisoners. The Communists and their supporters deny the truth of the allegations. The Anglo-Russian News Bulletin (June 28th) published a review of “Forced Labour in Soviet Russia” by Mr. Rothstein, who is Lecturer on Soviet Institutions at the University of London School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Because Mr. Rothstein is presumably familiar with conditions in Russia, and able to obtain whatever information the Russian Government makes available, his review is interesting—but chiefly for what it does not say. He argues that the book contains contradictory statements and figures, that the authors are weak on arithmetic, that their estimates of the numbers in the camps could not be correct, that they make some statements “without a shred of evidence,” that they are guilty of distortions and malicious gossip and so on. The obvious intention of this line of attack is to cast such doubts on the reliability of Dallin and Nicolaevsky that the reader will conclude that he cannot believe anything they say. But before coming to any such conclusion it is necessary to notice that Mr. Rothstein stops short just at the point where he should be telling us something positive. We naturally expect him to tell us that there are no forced labour camps, or alternatively, give us some evidence that conditions in them are not inhuman. Why this silence on the part of Mr. Rothstein? Can it be that this “authority” on Soviet Institutions does not know about the institution of forced labour?

Further examination raises other doubts about Mr. Rothstein. He starts off by dismissing the whole book as being “largely a rehash of what Mr. Dallin . . . was writing in 1921, with some recent ‘documentation’ which will not stand up to serious analysis.” Later he brushes aside charges about contingents of forced labour raised since 1930 from the collective farms. Then he ridicules the idea that forced labour could have been used for the purpose of accumulating gold, on the ground that in the years 1934-1938 Russian foreign trade showed a huge favourable balance ”and therefore did not depend in the least on such accumulation.” The whole trend of Mr. Rothstein’s phrasing is to convey that at no time, from 1921 onwards, were the charges true. Unfortunately for him, those admirers of the Soviet regime, Sidney and Beatrice Webb in their “Soviet Communism” admitted and deplored the existence of concentration camps in which political prisoners, and peasants who resisted being forced into collective farms were “set to hard labour in return for a bare subsistence.” The Webbs were often eulogised by the Communists and as recently as 13th July, 1948, the Daily Worker praised their “power of objective observation and judgment” shown in another book on Russia. This is what the Webbs wrote in “Soviet Communism” (1937 edition, p.581) about one of the concentration camps :

“The miseries of a rigorous climate were aggravated by a cruel administration by brutal jailers, in which every kind of torment seems to have been employed.”

The matter was placed beyond question by the fact, as related by the Webbs, that after an outcry outside Russia, an official inquiry took place by the Russian authorities which resulted in the shooting or dismissal of many of the jailers. The camps were reorganised, but even then, said the Webbs, “the conditions, we fear, continued to be inhuman” (p.584).

So it seems that although Mr. Rothstein scoffs at the charges they were so well-founded up to 1937 that they convinced the Webbs.

About gold production Mr. Rothstein’s curious argument can be shown from official Russian figures to be entirely wrong. He argues that it cannot be true that forced labour was needed for gold production, because Russia at that time, 1934-1938, had no need of gold for foreign trade. Mr. Rothstein should tell this to the Russian Government, they would he surprised. In the Moscow publication “U.S.S.R. in Construction” (May, 1937) it is shown that gold production in Russia was rising at a stupendous rate during the years in question. Whereas in 1934 production was 157 per cent. above the 1930 level, by 1930 it had reached 340 per cent. above 1930.

So much for Mr. Rothstein. As his implied denial of the existence of forced labour camps in the years before 1937 is found to be worthless it is not unreasonable to be very suspicious about anything he says of present conditions.

* * *

What Nationalisation does for Tilling’s Shareholders

Thomas Tilling, the bus and road transport firm, with an issued capital of £4,420,000, have agreed to sell out to the Government for £25 million, and the purchase price ”will be paid in Transport stock, or cash, or partly in one form and partly in the other.” (Daily Mail, 9/9/48.)

A year ago the Company’s £1 shares were selling at 53s. 3d. When negotiations began they jumped to 75s. 3d., and when the agreement was announced they rose to nearly £6. As the City Editor of the Daily Express remarks (9/9/48), “For shareholders—State ownership with a smile.”

The Daily Herald’s City Editor (10/9/48) writes: 

“The generous purchase price of £24,800,000 offered by the Transport Commission for Tillings road transport and haulage interests started a boom in bus shares in the Stock Exchange yesterday. Prices soared to high record levels which added about £10,000,000 to market values.” 

The Daily Mail (9/9/48) still thought, however, that it was a hard bargain for the company and that the price agreed upon "is probably well below the real value.”

The company will still continue in business as it has other interests in addition to those sold to the Government.

* * *

The Law says it is preposterous

A man who took seriously the statement that under nationalisation the railways become “our” property was fined £1, with 15 guineas costs. He had refused to leave Kings Cross Station and was charged with trespassing. The magistrate said:

“The proposition that the railways are now nationalised and that any member of the public is entitled to go on their property and cannot be requested to leave is really a preposterous one and one that cannot be accepted for a moment.” Star (18/9/48).

* * *

The Lucky Tories

The following report of a speech by Mr. Cyril Osborne, Conservative M.P. for Louth, at Castle Donington on Saturday, 11th September, was published in the Star (12/9/48) :

“Fate has played a dirty trick on the Socialists. They have come to power just at the worst time; instead of being able to give everybody more the war has so impoverished us that they are compelled to force austerity down our throats. Soon they will have to enforce industrial discipline, harsher than the Tories ever dared in pre-war days. It will be bitter medicine for their supporters, but it will do them good. The Conservatives are lucky to be out of office during these days of bitter pill-taking, and the nation should be grateful to the Socialists for having provided such a willing doctor in Sir Stafford Cripps to administer such unpalatable medicine.”

Mr. Osborne here says that impoverishment due to war compelled the Labour Government, to do as they have done; but this certainly won’t prevent the Tories from trying to catch votes at the next election by laying the blame on the Labour Government and claiming that it would have been better under the Tories. We also remember that under long years of Tory Government there was always some excuse to hand to explain working class poverty and unemployment and we never remember any Tory Government that gave anything to the workers.

The truth is that capitalism run by Tories and capitalism run by the Labour Party are both unlucky for the workers.

* * *

Communist Defence of Russian Dictatorship

In the Daily Worker (24/8/48) Mr. J. R. Campbell answered a letter from a correspondent who wrote pointing out that Russia is “without democracy, without the right of criticism, ruled by a single party. You call this freedom. I call it slavery.”

In his lengthy reply Mr. Campbell does everything except meet the real criticism, which is that the Russian workers are forbidden by law to form political parties of their own choice. Unless they are members of the Communist Party they cannot belong to any political party. At elections, unless they want to vote for the candidate approved by the Communist Party, all they could do would be to vote against him; they are prevented from running opposition candidates. The membership of the Communist Party is only a very small minority of the population, and the overwhelming majority are not in a political party and cannot be.

What Mr. Campbell does is to argue as if the critics of the dictatorship are concerned solely with the right to form avowedly capitalist parties. He confines his statement to giving reasons why the workers in Russia do not need parties of the “capitalist opposition.” It may look to Mr. Campbell that this is a clever way of dodging the issue, but it only lands him in another awkward spot. The Russian Government doesn’t have to forbid the formation of capitalist parties like the Liberals and Tories unless there are in Russia people who want to form such parties. Now who would want to form capitalist parties in Russia today? and why would they want to form them? Obviously the capitalists would want to form parties of their own ; but are there capitalists in Russia? Here Mr. Campbell is in a dilemma. For the purpose of claiming that Socialism has been established in Russia he would have to maintain that there are no capitalists there; but in order to justify forbidding them to form political parties he would have to maintain that they do exist.

If he plumps for the former position and denies the existence of capitalists in Russia, then he is left to explain that it is some other groups of people who want to form capitalist parties and have to be prevented. So we have to assume that it is peasants or workers, who, knowing all the benefits of life in the Soviet paradise nevertheless want to organise Liberal or Tory capitalist parties and would do so if the law did not forbid it.

Having thus got himself into difficulties by pretending that it is only capitalist parties that are illegal in Russia perhaps Mr. Campbell will try to find time to deal with the real question which is why the workers are forcibly prevented from forming their own political parties; and how this can be squared with the claim that it is democratic.

Incidentally Mr. Campbell should take his courage in both hands and offer to tell British workers why he thinks it would be good for them, too, if they were allowed to belong to a political party only by permission of the Executive Committee of the C.P.G.B. and be thrown into concentration camps if they objected.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter From Europe: Mitterrand clamps down (1982)

The Letter From Europe Column from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had to happen sooner or later. The attempt by Mitterrand's PS/PC government to revive the economy and reduce unemployment in France by giving people more money to spend—increasing “popular consumption" as it was called—just couldn't last. Since capitalism is a system which cannot be controlled or manipulated by governments and since most of the money to finance the social reforms in question came straight off the printing press, what happened was inevitable: the general price level in France rose, and at a rate faster than in other countries, leading to a fall-off in exports and a record balance of payments deficit which in turn made a devaluation of the franc inevitable. The effect on employment, on the other hand, was minimal: sales of consumer goods picked up for a while but the number of unemployed continued to grow, by nearly 16 per cent since Mitterrand came to power, passing the 2 million mark in October.

Exactly a year ago the Socialist Standard, analysing the economic policy of the then brand new PS/PC government, wrote:

It will fail completely and within a year or so they will be faced with growing working class discontent over persisting unemployment and rising prices which they will not be able to satisfy, since the continuing crisis will force them to recognise that under capitalism priority must be given to profits and profit-making rather than to social reforms and popular consumption. The crunch will then come and they will be forced, like all governments of capitalism sooner or later, to take openly anti-working class measures. 

As a matter of fact the crunch has come sooner rather than later, less than a year after the PS/PC government took office at the end of June 1981. On 12 June this year the French franc was devalued within the European Monetary System, for the second time in less than 9 months in fact, since Mitterrand had already been forced to devalue last October too. The October devaluation had been accompanied by rather timid price controls and mere appeals for some wage moderation. This time it was different. The government has adopted the following measures:

• a legally-imposed wage freeze lasting till the end of October, the only exception being the rise in the minimum wage due on 1 July; a legally-imposed price freeze also until the end of October but with some important exceptions such as oil, gas, electricity and imported goods;
• an increase in contributions to the health service accompanied by a cut in some benefits;
• a similar operation of increased contributions for less benefits regarding the unemployment insurance scheme.

The Minister of Finance, Jacques Delors, has already announced that austerity will not finish at the end of October but will continue. in the form of a restrictive “incomes policy", at least until the end of 1983; in other words, for at least 18 months in all.

Delors has also made no attempt to disguise the fact that the living standards of workers will have fallen by the end of October. He has publicly admitted that, while wages will be completely frozen, prices will rise by at least 2.8 per cent during this period. This will happen not only because prices are much harder to control than wages, but also because a number of exceptions to the so-called "prices freeze” are being allowed, particularly oil products (petrol, heating oil. paraffin) and imported goods. Since one effect of the devaluation will precisely be to increase the prices of imported goods, it is evident how large a loophole this latter will be.

So the government has now done a complete U-turn. The aim is now not to increase popular consumption but to reduce it! The Prime Minister, Pierre Mauroy, had already forewarned, even before the devaluation. that wages were soon going to come under direct attack from the government when he told a PS meeting on 21 May: 

Excessive nominal increases in incomes and wages maintain inflation and deprive our economy of the means to create jobs. The government has decided to act and we will shortly have occasion to talk about this again (Republicain Lorrain, 22 May).

It is clear from this that the government accepts the old. mistaken theory that it is wage increases that cause inflation. In fact, wages only increase in a period of inflation because inflation—an overissue of an inconvertible currency—inevitably leads to a rise in the general price level; wages, the price of labour power, merely rise in line with all other prices. Wage and salary earners are the victims not the cause of inflation.

The government's hope is that its austerity package will bring price rises—currently running at an annual rate of 14 per cent— down to an average of 10 per cent over the 12 months of 1982. This means of course that for the remaining months of the year the rate will have to fall well below 10 per cent. But unless they limit the amount of inconvertible paper money in circulation to what the level of economic activity requires—and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is their intention—then the pressure for prices to go on rising will continue.

If the currency is being overissued, then freezing wages and prices can’t stop prices rising. Certainly this can work for a limited period, just as a dam can stop a river flowing . . . for a limited period. Thus it is possible that the government could achieve a short term success but in the long run they will fail. Eventually, and sooner rather than later, the dam will burst and prices—including wages—will resume their upward trend. Delors is in fact very worried about what is going to happen after the legal wage and price freeze is over and this is why he is hoping to persuade the unions to moderate their wage demands over a longer period.

The union leaders, or some of them, may be prepared to go along with this. French union leaders are also politically involved and may well be prepared to betray their members’ interests to help a government they support just as British union leaders have done when Labour has been in power.

Indeed, just like Labour governments in Britain, the PS/PC government in France hopes to exploit its links with the unions to keep wages down and is publicly boasting that it will be better able to get the unions to co-operate in this than the opposition parties. And it is true that when the previous "right wing’’ government decided in September 1976 to block prices for 3 months it didn't dare block wages as well, as the present "left wing" government has done, limiting itself simply to asking employers not to offer excessive wage increases. But even this brought trade unionists out on to the streets proclaiming "No to Austerity". History shows that allegedly "socialist” governments in all countries are better able to impose austerity on workers than openly capitalist ones. (A case could even be made out for saying that this is their role within capitalism.) What is happening in France today is a further confirmation of this rule.

Two further points must however be made. First, in a period of high unemployment real wages (what wages can buy) will tend to be under pressure anyway for purely economic reasons, irrespective of government policy or of whether the union leaders betray their members or not. Second, if inflation of the currency continues, then nominal money wages will go on rising, once again irrespective of what governments and union leaders may or may not do. But government action to try, in the one case, to reinforce downward pressures on real wages and, in the other, to try to counter the upward pressures on nominal wages clearly reveals that all governments are forced to run capitalism in the only way it can be — against the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. A sustained policy of increasing “popular consumption” under capitalism must sooner or later restrict popular consumption to protect profits.

Actually, as we pointed out in the article last August, Delors did not have such a simplistic solution to the economic crisis as the PCF, the CGT trade union and some of his PC colleagues — that economic activity could he revived by giving people more money to spend. He realised that the French economy was part of the world economy and that a revival in France could not be sustained without a revival in the world capitalist economy. But he too was naive in believing, without any reasonable grounds for doing so, that this world revival would occur within a year and that therefore the French government could safely "reflate” its economy (print more money to finance government spending) in anticipation. In June last year he declared that "the reflation measures already taken by the government . . . are a limited anticipation of the recovery of the world economy which the experts foresee for the end of this year or the beginning of next (The Times, 24 June 1981).

The end of 1981 came, but there was no world recovery. The months of 1982 passed, still no world recovery. The "experts” began to creep back into their holes. Meanwhile, as a direct result of the government's spending financed by the printing press, the rate of inflation remained higher in France than in other countries. . . leading eventually to the devaluation of 12 June and the current austerity measures.

When Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy announced the devaluation he could only remark pathetically that his government had done what it could "but the international recovery was not at the rendez-vous”. It takes two to make a rendez-vous and the PS/ PC government has found out the hard way that governments are in no position to impose a rendez vous on the capitalist economy. Capitalism is a world system which operates according to its own economic laws, going through its regular boom-slump. boom-slump cycles, irrespective of what governments may or may not do. It is true however that, while governments can do nothing to bring about a recovery before it would normally occur, they can. as Marx pointed out. make things worse by mistaken monetary policies, as the present French government just seems to have done. Mauroy would have been better to have employed some other metaphor: "we took a risk and we lost" or "we took a leap in the dark and fell flat on our faces". Or even Harold Wilson's "we were blown off course”!

This utter failure of the PS/PC government in France is yet another confirmation of our contention that capitalism can never be made to work in the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. It is a profit-making system based on the exploitation of wage-labour and can only function as such, whatever the political colour the government may happen to have. Any party which takes on the responsibility for governing under capitalism is sooner or later forced, whether it originally intended to or not, to respect the economic logic of capitalism which decrees that profits must come before wages, that the consumption of the wage and salary earning class must be limited so as to allow profits to be made.

Mitterrand's failure is proof that reformism is a futile waste of time. Since the Labour Party’s economic policy resembles very closely that pursued by Mitterrand until 12 June, there's a lesson here for workers in Britain too.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)

Notes by the Way: Austerity for how long, Sir Stafford? (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Austerity for how long, Sir Stafford?

The opening words of “Let Us Face the Future,” the Labour Party's declaration on which the 1945 General Election was fought, were "Victory in War must be followed by a Prosperous Peace.” There was no must about it and the cessation of American lease-lend soon brought the Government face to face with the fact that capitalism has its own way of disposing of election hopes and promises. Since 1945 we have had to make the best of a series of “crises” all of which have been announced by the Government with an air of surprise as if they could not have been foreseen. The workers have been asked to put up with austerity and “work harder” campaigns on the plea that after all they would not last for ever. Now Sir Stafford Cripps has let the cat out of the bag. Speaking at a Press Conference in London on 11th November, he said:

“We are now and shall be henceforth for as long as we can see into the future, engaged in a competition in overseas markets which demands for our success every economy that efficiency and high productivity can give us. We shall not be able to relapse from this endeavour any more than our competitors in the world markets will. We require a universal and sustained effort . . ." (Italics ours.) 

(Times, 12/11/48.)

So it is as Socialists have always said it must be, an indefinite sentence. For the workers the capitalist treadmill will last for as long as the working class chooses to put up with capitalism.

The Football Slavery Business

“Janus” in the Spectator (5/11/48) comments on the recent troubles about football transfer fees:

“The protest of the Middlesbrough footballer, Wilfrid Mannion, against the price (£30,000) put on his head by his club focuses attention afresh on the extraordinary traffic in human beings which prevails in League football circles. The transfer fee system has, I suppose, grown up gradually because League football is now frankly a business in which it is essential to attract large 'gates,' large 'gates' will not be attracted unless the home team consistently puts up a reasonably good show, it will not put up a good show unless it has good players, and it cannot get good players except by buying them from another club or putting so high a price on them that another club cannot attract them away. Pages could be written about this. It is enough to say that what the player—whose normal wage is £12 a week—gets out of a transfer fee of £10,000 or £15,000 is £10 for himself. Professional football might take a lesson from professional cricket. A man, it should be added, who leaves the club with which he is registered against its will is barred from playing as a professional for any other club.”

The Edmonton By-Election

The Labour Party’s experience at Edmonton, where their candidate's majority was reduced from 19,000 in 1945 to 3,327, has encouraged the Tories and correspondingly troubled the Labour Party. The Local Labourites blame the turnover of votes on an “insidious doorstep campaign” alleged to have been conducted by the Tories, in which instead of dealing with major political issues and the record of the Labour Government, the canvassers are said to have raised issues of race-prejudice and to have exploited “our nation’s post-war difficulties.” (Daily Mail, 15/11/48.)

The Daily Mail suggests that the Labour vote fell because of “the sudden cut in the bacon ration,” while the Daily Worker says “ This is the fruit of Right Wing Labour policy, particularly its cuts in housing.” (15/11/48.)

What is really going on is the normal working out of capitalist politics, the old game of ins and outs. The Labour "ins” say "ask your Dad about pre-war unemployment under the Tories” and the Tories retort with "ask your Mum about pre-war food supplies, prices and no rationing.” Socialists say look around at capitalism and its effects and ask your Mum and Dad and your grandparents for evidence that capitalism was always useless and hopeless for the working class. Those who administer capitalism are rightly blamed for their responsibility in what capitalism produces, while the capitalist opposition naturally (and falsely) promises that if they get back again capitalism will be different.

The Labour Party got in on non-Socialist votes and when the voters find that things do not go as promised they turn round and vote for candidates who make better promises. A Socialist electorate could not be led away by race-prejudice or by propaganda about bacon rations.

The “Final Stage of Communism” in Russia

A Times correspondent in Budapest (Times, 13/11/48) quotes extensively from an article in the Cominform newspaper which sets out to describe what is meant by "the final stage of Communism” towards which Russia, according to Soviet propaganda, is moving. In the article Stalin is quoted as having said that development towards Communism depends on great increases of production (e.g., to 60 million tons of steel a year compared with 19 million tons in 1940 and rather more now), and that it will take from 15 to 20 years to achieve.

What is of more interest is the social structure of this “Communist” society. According to the Times correspondent the article abandons the Marxian principle that the State will wither away, and also the "free-and-easy” system “about which Engels dreamed,” and forecasts a disciplined society rather like present day Russia but with many more and much better consumer goods. Money will continue under this “Communism.”

The Times, which is interested in the struggle for world power between Russia and U.S.A., rather than in social theories, points out in its editorial that U.S.A. already produces more steel and coal than Russia plans to produce in 20 years’ time.

Solution of the Palestine Problem?

While the new state of Israel disputes for territory with the Arab states, and the Powers behind the scenes think of oil, pipe lines, Middle East strategy and the mineral wealth of the Dead Sea, the “solution” of the problem of European Jewish refugees is now accompanied by the new problem of the Arab refugees from Palestine. A letter in the Times (13/11/48) from Mr. Marcus Shloimovitz, in which he appeals to the Israel Government to make a generous effort to help the new army of refugees, contains the following:

"A tragic situation is rapidly deteriorating into a tragedy of heartless abandonment of over 350,000 Arab refugees in Palestine to the ‘mercies’ of a winter without adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical supplies. A letter I received from a co-religionist in the Lebanon the other day says that they are existing under the most deplorable conditions of squalor and semi-starvation. The Israeli Government are in a position to solve the problem, as it should be solved, by allowing them to return to their former homes in Palestine without delay. I am convinced that this is the duty of the leaders of Israel to their faith. It would show that they are merciful and humanitarian, in accordance with the teachings of Judaism. Have human feelings been so dulled by the happenings of the past 10 years that a further 350,000 victims of war (two-thirds are under 18 years of age, nearly one-third are children under five, and one in 10 is either an expectant or nursing mother) are regarded as a minor and inevitable consequence of the Palestine troubles?”

Oil Millionaire

From the Evening Standard (10/11 / 48):

‘‘It will take months fully to unravel the financial affairs of Lord Bearsted. But there seems little doubt that when he died this week, aged 66, he left less than he inherited in 1927 from his father, first Viscount and founder of the Shell oil group.

“Lord Bearsted’s share of his father’s £4,000,000 estate was more than a million. He multiplied this fortune several times.

“But he gave away large sums to charities. In addition, during his last years, Lord Bearsted disposed of the bulk of his fortune by trusts settled on his three sons.”

Another Communist Rift

Alongside the acrimonious dispute between the Tito Communists and the Russian Controlled Cominform another storm has blown up, between the Australian Communist Party and the British Communists. We are indebted to an Australian Comrade for a copy of the ”Communist Review” (Australian Communist Party, September, 1948) in which appears a long article criticising British Communist Party policy, together with an answer by the Executive of the British Party. The articles are far from friendly for the British Party accuses its Australian comrades of attributing to them ”various policies which we have never put forward, without giving evidence to substantiate the statements made . . .”

The British Party is accused of the “blunder of advocating the continuance of the reactionary coalition government, headed by the arch-imperialist and warmonger, Churchill.” It also showed “lack of understanding of the role of the social-democratic government,” failed to foresee the Labour Party’s victory at the 1945 General Election, and "failed to estimate correctly the position in Britain and the mood of the masses.” It is also accused of betraying a "class collaborationist outlook” because even as late as April, 1947 it was boosting the greater production campaign and the export drive.

The British Party in its reply denies ever having wanted a continuance of the war-time coalition government after the war under Winston Churchill, though they admit having proposed the formation of a government of ” National Unity,” but not under Churchill.

As, in 1939, the British Communist Party took the initiative of writing to Churchill and the Labour and Liberal leaders inviting them to form a coalition to oppose Hitler it is rather surprising that they should be so anxious to deny having wanted him as Prime Minister in 1945.

One revealing passage in the Australian party’s reply is the following about the British Communist miners’ leader, Mr. Arthur Horner:

"The language of Comrade Horner, in rebuking striking miners, is as fierce as that customarily used by the extreme right wing in Australia, and is headlined in the capitalist press in order to help break down strikes in Australia.”

A quotation from Mr. H. Pollitt’s booklet, "Looking Ahead,” is used by the Australians with telling effect in a charge that the British Party does not understand what is happening. Pollitt wrote: "I have no hesitation in declaring that the essence of the period we are now in is that of a transition stage towards Socialism.” The British party’s denial that this was meant to refer to Britain, is met by the production of other similar statements and the Australian Communist Party declares that "there can be no doubt that these statements have specific application to Britain and not general application, as the British leaders claim.” Altogether it looks as if some Communist “purges” are on the. way as soon as the Russian Party decides which party is toeing the line suitable to the Russian Government.

Communist Tribute to Rqoeevelt

The Daily Worker (11/11/48) announced a Peace Rally and an ex-servicemen’s march from Trafalgar Square to lay a wreath on the Cenotaph. The Rally was "called jointly by the Daily Worker and nine major trade union organisations.” The announcement goes on as follows:

“A delegation will also go to the Roosevelt Memorial with a tribute from the people of London to the late President ‘lover of peace’ and all those Americans following in his tradition.”

As Mr. Truman was Roosevelt’s Vice-President, and is his successor as leader of the “New Deal” Democratic Party this tribute presumably includes him. And why no Communist Tribute to Mr. Churchill, who, after all, was their choice as Prime Minister of Britain in 1939 and was brother-in-arms of Roosevelt during the war?

Edgar Hardcastle

The problem is not the Tories . . . . (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘GENERAL ELECTION NOW. TORIES ROBBERS MUST GO’ screamed a recent headline in a Trotskyist paper. It could have been one of many but this one was from the March issue of Counterfire, an SWP fragment.

The article denounced ‘fourteen years of Tory rule’ as ‘fourteen years of austerity, of cuts in our standard of living, cuts to public services, cuts in wages and conditions, cuts in benefits and cuts to the NHS.’

This is a more or less accurate description of what has happened since 2010 when the Tories came into office (with the LibDems as their junior partners for the first five of these years). But correlation is not causation. That the Tories were responsible for all these things is the standard Labour Party line, the suggestion being that they would not have happened had there been a Labour government. But wouldn’t they? These sorts of things have been known to happen when there’s been a Labour government in office; in fact under every Labour government that there’s been.

The cuts to public services, benefits and the NHS since 2010 were imposed by the government as decisions on these are a government responsibility but, in the economic circumstances of the slump that followed the financial crash of 2008, the government had no real choice. The capitalist economy is driven by the quest for profits and any government has to give priority to helping this.

In a slump this means reducing taxes on profits and cutting back on government spending. In theory a government could choose to refuse to do this but that would only make things worse by prolonging the slump. The cuts, then, were forced on the government that happened to be in office at the time by the operation of the coercive economic laws of capitalism. If Labour had been in office for these fourteen years they would have had to have done much the same. In any event, the fall in the standard of living and worsening wages and working conditions are a direct result of capitalism having been in a slump. That’s what happens in a slump and no government can stop this.

Counterfire is of a different opinion. They suggest governments do have a free choice in the matter. The budget, their article stated:

‘is an attempt to con us into believing that there is not enough money to fund the basic services we need, and a decent income for everyone. This is a lie. The truth is that there is plenty of money to go round; the truth is that austerity, the impoverishment of the British people and the devastating cuts to the NHS and public services are a political choice’.

This is left-wing populism as its stupidest — the money is there but the government refuses to spend it to provide ‘a decent income for everyone;’ they are robbers; kick them out. The money — or at least some of it — is there but no government is going to prioritise using taxes to improve public services, even less to provide a ‘decent’ income for everyone. That’s not its remit. Capitalism’s economic laws force governments to give priority to profit-making and conditions for profit-making. As government spending comes from taxes which ultimately fall on profits, governments cannot simply increase taxes to improve living conditions for the population. Under capitalism production is for profit, and must be, not to meet people’s needs. No government can change or even challenge that.

There is reason to be believe that Counterfire know this — some of them have written books which indicate some knowledge of how capitalism works (one by Chris Nineham is reviewed in this issue) — and so are just being populist in a bid to gather a following. This is in the Leninist tradition of contempt for the intellectual ability of the working class. They think that workers are capable only of reaching a trade-union consciousness and so there’s no point in putting before them anything that goes beyond this. Hence the populist rabble-rousing.

The politics of the headline is equally incoherent. They want the ‘Tory robbers’ out and are calling for an immediate general election to bring this about. So they want the Tories to be voted out. In other words, for workers to vote for some other party. But they don’t say which. Their call could be interpreted as saying vote for any party whose candidate has a chance of beating the Tory one; which in practice would mean voting Labour in most constituencies but voting LibDem in ‘blue wall’ seats. It certainly rules out voting for the Greens or any fringe left-wing candidate such as those of Galloway’s Workers Party (which he says hopes to contest every constituency in Britain).

But supposing this happens and the Tories are voted out. That means that there will either be a Labour government or, less likely, some sort of Lib-Lab arrangement. Nothing else changes. The means of life continue to be owned and controlled by private capitalist businesses. The economy remains driven by business investment for profit. Profit, not satisfying people’s needs, is still the aim of production.

In these circumstances the new government won’t be able to behave much differently from how the Tories have been. It too will have to abide by the economic laws of capitalism and give priority to profit-making. It is certainly not going to allocate any of ‘the plenty of money to go round’ to reverse previous cuts. The likely future prime minister has said so in so many words. He told last year’s Labour Conference that a Labour government would not be ‘a cheque-book state’ and declared in December that ‘anyone who expects an incoming Labour government to quickly turn on the spending taps is going to be disappointed’. He at least understands the limitations capitalism places on what governments can do in this respect, even if Counterfire doesn’t (or feigns not to).

So what’s the point of kicking the Tories out (objectionable as they are and happy, as many will be, to see the back of them) just to replace them with others who will have to pursue the same basic policy of prioritising profit?

The problem is not the Tories, it’s capitalism. It’s capitalism that must go.

Adam Buick

Letter: Debt (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

The prophetic words that capitalism would create its own gravediggers can be interpreted in many ways. It may be understood to mean that, as a result of exclusion from the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, a growing number of the population will rise up, enlightened and intellectualised, and revolutionise its dynamics to alter our direction, aims and desires; we hope towards socialism.

It could also be interpreted to mean that through its failings, inefficiencies and uneconomical ways, that it may self-destruct, that it becomes apparent to all, impossibly illogical even, that it must without doubt be surpassed in face of any remnant of opposition that may linger in the nooks and crannies of its many alleyways.

It may be bits of both of these. It is probable that it is bits drawn from the many other facets of life within capitalism. No doubt.

What is becoming increasingly apparent is that its very ‘rules’ if we may call them that, are losing the ability to defend and provide justification for its continuance. One such that has been discussed at great length, possibly more so than at any other time, is that of debt. We are told that our nation’s debt is of such magnitude that we should all prepare for many hard years ahead. That we will prevail over this debt but only by taking hard choices, there will be no easy option and many may suffer, but together we will defeat debt.

Now, if we can just for the moment try not to conjure up the image and inevitable analysis of ‘debt’ becoming an outside ‘alien’ thing, out of our sphere of control – rather absurdly in much the same way that wars or terrorists are often spoke of – and consider their grand solution to it by seeking to increase its availability, we may welcome its arrival and the simple opportunity that it provides.

We can now talk of debt as a bad thing – as a sign of failure. All of us wish we had less of it. Yet it remains of central importance to us; we are told the system cannot do without it, and it cannot. We can explore the idea that as it fails, inevitably and repeatedly, that debt can no longer provide a means to progress. We could say that its day has come and it has had its day. It would appear an easy argument to win: debt is bad therefore do not enter into it. Would this argument be entered into it would surely prove difficult to disprove. If debt, as it surely does, represents in their language a ‘fault’ of capitalism then let us explore it further. In no time at all it would lead into a cul de sac for it seems in their own words as far as debt is concerned ‘There Is No Alternative’. So what – we might then ask – is on offer?

Damian  McCarthy (by email)

Reply:

It is true that defenders of capitalism get themselves into a glaring contradiction over debt, blaming the crisis on too much debt and then advocating creating more debt to try to get out of it. But a distinction needs to be drawn between the “National Debt” and the personal debts of individual workers. The so-called “national” debt is what the capitalist state owes its creditors, who are mainly other capitalist institutions of one kind or another. As you point out, its size is now being bandied about as an excuse to justify even more austerity for the working class. But this is only an excuse for what they always want to do anyway. If it didn’t exist, they’d find some other excuse. Its size is their problem, not ours. We can, however, use it, as you suggest, to bring out the contradictions of capitalism. If all capitalism has to offer is more austerity in a world of potential plenty, let’s get rid of it.

Editors.

Cooking the Books: Does austerity breed extremism? (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article entitled ‘Austerity in Europe has huge consequences for its politics’ Mehreen Khan, Economics Editor of The Times, cited research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which suggested a link between the severity of austerity and votes for ‘extreme’ parties:

‘An MIT study covering more than 200 European elections between 1980-2015 found that deep fiscal consolidation ‘leads to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout and a rise in political fragmentation’. . . The researchers noted that centre-left governments paid the highest political price for their austerity drives’ (28 November).

This has a certain logic. The mainstream political parties, especially those of the ‘centre-left’, such as the Labour Party in this country, promise that, if elected, they will make things better. Voters believe them, and when these parties fail to deliver, seek an explanation. Few accept the socialist view that, however determined or competent or honest these governments might have been, they were doomed to fail because they set themselves the impossible task of making capitalism work to serve the interest of the majority. After turning from centre-right to centre-left and back again and seeing them both repeatedly fail, it would be surprising if there wasn’t an increase in the number of voters turning against both of them.

The end of the post-war boom in the mid-1970s brought about what has been called ‘the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state’. Governments found themselves unable to maintain the same level of spending on social reforms as before without undermining the accumulation of more capital out of profits that is the driving force of the capitalist economy. Since then, during the slump phase of the boom-slump economic cycle, they try to encourage investment for profit to resume by cutting back on their spending so as to reduce the burden of taxation on profits. This ‘deep fiscal consolidation’ (aka austerity) involves cutbacks in social benefits and in the provision of public services and amenities.

It is not as if centre-left governments want to impose austerity. They are compelled to by economic forces beyond their control which dictate that priority must be given to profits and conditions for profit-making on pain of making things worse as it is the pursuit of profits that drives the capitalist economy.

When governments, inevitably due to the nature of capitalism, fail to make things better some voters blame not capitalism but the politicians who have failed to make it work for them and even see politicians as a self-serving elite. Some give up bothering to vote, saying that ‘they are all the same’ (which, actually, is essentially true). Others turn to new political parties which denounce the conventional parties as rival gangs of professional politicians who are in it for themselves (as, again, many obviously are, not that it would make any difference if they weren’t).

Unlike in the 1930s these parties don’t blame political democracy, they blame the conventional reformist politicians who currently operate within it. They are ‘extreme’ in the sense that, being xenophobic and ultra-nationalist, they are at one end of the nationalist spectrum on which the conventional parties situate themselves too.

It goes without saying that, if ever they become the government, they will no more be able to make capitalism work for everybody than the mainstream reformist parties that they denounce. It is capitalism, not self-serving politicians, that is the cause of the problem.

Pathfinders: Doubleplusungood (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Orwell as can be expected…

The UK science community has been heaving a small sigh of relief lately having suffered less damage than expected from the spending cuts. True, the boffins are facing a funding freeze, keeping their £4.6bn budget at 2010 levels for the next 5 years, meaning a probable cut through inflation of around 10 percent in real terms, however this is as nothing compared to the mass cattle-trucking of scientific projects in the direction of the knacker’s yard that many had expected. But before the techies had even reached for a pipette of champers in celebration they were sobered by the further alarming news that the director general for science and research, the official in charge of that science budget and traditionally from respectable scientific stock, could soon be replaced by a – gasp – civil servant (‘UK research spending decisions set for a shake-up’, New Scientist online, 17 November).

It would be a mystery to anyone who has been following the Orwellian tactics of the Con-Dem Coalition lately why scientists should be shocked at this. Indeed, despite what they may think, they have still got off lightly. It could have been far worse.

A miasma of doublethink pervades the Con-Dem Coalition’s every political pronouncement as they manoeuvre to secure their grubby rich friends every concession while bamboozling their victims into believing that they are the ones getting more ‘freedoms’. Home Secretary Theresa May, for example, has been loudly ridiculing the Equality legislation planned by that silly Harriet Har-person, claiming that inequality somehow makes you free (‘Theresa May scraps equality in the name of fairness’, Guardian, 17 November). The Equality Duty was designed to end decades of legal confusion in which victims of discrimination had virtually no chance of redress against big corporations, and instead to place the responsibility on employers to demonstrate through good practice that they were not discriminating in the workplace, a kind of guilty-until-proved innocent reversal of emphasis. Instead, in a spin of doubletalk, May uses the very failures of the old legislation to argue against any new legislation that might potentially solve the problem. In the name of fairness, the bosses get themselves off the hook and discriminated groups can look forward to having to make all the running to get anyone to listen to them – just as it’s always been. They are free to complain, and the bosses are free to ignore them, which is what the Coalition means by freedom.

 

Similarly emancipated are workers everywhere on medication, as the Government cuts the cojones from the drug regulatory body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and hands prescription powers entirely to GPs. No longer shall poor old Mrs Jones be denied the £30,000 treatment that might have kept her in miserable pain for an extra six weeks, because that demonic nest of Doctor Deaths at NICE considered it not worth the money – now any GP can prescribe anything! Anything, that is, that their budget can afford and that they can be badgered or bluffed or blackmailed into buying by the omni-present pharmaceutical salesmen. No more Mr NICE Guy, now it’s Mr Market and drugs for whoever can pay the most and shout the loudest.

 

 Best to stay healthy and away from doctors then, but in that case you’ll be taking advice on how to stay healthy from the very businesses which have always devoted so much of their time and your money in making you unhealthy in the first place. With a cynicism that could collapse lungs, the Health Secretary has given up the usual murky practice of consulting with big business behind closed doors before making health policy, and handed the power of policy-making entirely over to the businesses. In what is one of the most blatant displays of English Tea Partyism, and in a broadside designed to de-mast the dreaded Food Standards Agency, Andrew Lansley has set up new ‘responsibility deal’ networks to deal with obesity, alcoholism, exercise, behavioural problems and health and safety at work, in which key consultants are members of Unilever, the Wine and Spirit Trade Organisation, Mars, all big supermarkets and a raft of other commercial interests not famous for their health credentials. In the craven old days, a minister would at least formulate policy first and then run it past these moguls to see what he could get away with. In the galloping gutlessness of the new order, Lansley has simply invited the moguls to come up with their proposals and run them past him, in order to see what he can get past the media. An early casualty of this supine approach has been the abandonment of the simple and easy to understand ‘traffic light’ nutritional coding system in favour of a different system known through studies to be incomprehensible to customers, despite the fact that some supermarkets had already agreed to give the traffic light system a try (‘Good for the nation’s health – or big business?’ Guardian, 13 November).

What next, one wonders? The handing of UK defence policy to the arms industry perhaps. Meanwhile the doublethink redoubles as public sector workers are being liberated from their jobs and told that they have the freedom to take over their former workplaces and run them as ‘John Lewis co-operatives’, after the style of the mutualised department store. Taking the name of this column cruelly in vain Francis Maude, the minister in the Cabinet Office in charge of civil servants, has launched 12 ‘Pathfinder’ initiatives, fledgling public-service but employee-owned mutuals who are the supposed trailblazers for a new era in which all responsibilities formerly borne by the state will now be borne by social workers and health visitors running their own co-ops. As Thatcher gave us ‘right-to-buy’, Maude is giving us ‘right-to-run’, but not everyone is fooled by the spin. As some pundits point out, such co-ops will have a huge uphill struggle, and most will collapse and be eaten up by, yes, you guessed it, the big corporations. And what is so liberating about exposing public services to the free market anyway? wonders Unite General Secretary Tony Woodley: “You go to John Lewis to buy a sofa or a fridge, not to have chemotherapy” (Guardian, 17 November)

In view of these developments, the science community should think itself lucky it’s only getting a civil servant to administer its budget. In a year from now it could be a McDonalds executive. The proof that capitalism is fundamentally not good for healthy science or the science of health is made clearer by the fact that, although government regulation solves none of the basic problems facing science in a money age, the further the drift towards an unregulated free market, the worse it gets for science, as indeed for everyone else.

Paddy Shannon

Santa’s New Clauses (2010)

A Short Story from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Memo to: Little Helpers Team Leaders

To be cascaded to all staff

Dear Colleagues

As we approach our busy season I feel it only fair to remind you of the financial difficulties we find ourselves in as a result of the on-going recession. As you know, the juvenile gratuity market is experiencing heavy turbulence and we are committed to making savings wherever possible. As your Chief Executive I am setting a personal example by reducing my 2.6% annual growth in intake of mince pies and sherry by approximately 0.8%, phased in over the next fifteen years.

Certain scurrilous tabloid newspapers have been spreading unsubstantiated rumours that I have awarded myself a bonus of ten million pounds. Rest assured this is utterly unsubstantiated. In fact it was a modest seven million pounds ‘performance & productivity’ reward – which reflects well on all of us, by the way! – plus one million for the Management Consultation exercise with myself, one million in stress-related compensation for writing this, and one million in shares which may go down as well as up.

Needless to say, our core business strategy still revolves around putting children first, and Management has agreed a bold new plan to ensure our competitiveness in the difficult times ahead:

• To enhance efficiency and fairness we must recognise that unfairness is more efficient, and thus end the practice of a Universal Entitlement to Presents..
• The work-shy must play their part in maintaining the true spirit of Christmas. It is hardly fair on taxpayers that those on benefits who refuse to work for nothing should continue to expect presents for their children.
• We will no longer be delivering free chocolate to children in hot countries – it only melts. Instead we will introduce a fair trade agreement – their arable land in exchange for toy guns, pistols, machetes and napalm.
• You may have heard that those spiteful Fire Fighters threatened to go on strike on Bonfire Night, which would have spoiled the fun for so many young ones – obviously it wouldn’t be right to reward their young ones this Christmas!

Meanwhile, let’s remember that special group who have had a very tough time lately and borne it all without complaint. Our hard-working Cabinet ministers and Captains of Industry in the C.B.I (Collect Bank Interest) have taken courageous and selfless decisions in order to resuscitate our ailing economy – a task which has earned them No Thanks Whatsoever from the ungrateful population – their children deserve our special kindness this Yuletide. With the money saved from the undeserving, we can afford to pay all these children through £9,000 pa college courses!

With all of us making sacrifices, here’s where you can play your part in making Christmas special for certain children the world over. The great news is that you get to keep your jobs, on condition that you agree to certain new terms and conditions. Your friends in the Reindeer Union have already welcomed these new clauses with open legs and the abattoir sub-provision has not been invoked even once!

There will be a downward restructuring of wages, holiday and sick pay entitlements to zero while the statutory retirement age will be infinitely extended so that now you work for eternity.

Failure to accept this generous offer will necessitate the immediate relocation of the Grotto and Workshop to New Zealand where all staff will be replaced by sub-minimum-wage Hobbits.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Ho, ho, ho, and have a Merry Austerity,

Santa

Santa