Life and Times: Detectorists and grave robbers (2026)

The Life and Times column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

I recently tuned in to two investigative series on Radio 4. Though they told what on the surface seemed quite different tales, they were linked by an important, in fact fundamental feature of the society we live in. They both equally vividly illustrated the hold that money has on us and the lengths to which some of us will go to obtain it. The first one told the story of two metal detectorists who stumbled upon a hoard of ancient Anglo-Saxon coins and decided not to follow the legal requirement to surrender them to the Treasury but to keep them and try to sell them secretly. The series was aptly entitled ‘Fool’s Gold’, since, in the end, the ‘gold’ they found had disastrous results for them. The second one, ‘The Grave Robbers’, investigated the fraudulent methods used by a covert group to claim the estates of people who die without leaving a will.

Detectorists declaring their discovery of ancient coins or artefacts are entitled to 50 percent of what the Treasury deems to be their value, the other 50 percent going to the owner of the land on which they were found. That value, however, is usually only a fraction of what collectors will pay on the black market. In this case the ‘official’ value of the coins in question was likely to be up to £12m. But the 50 percent of that amount the discoverers would have been eligible to receive was not enough for them and they chose to try to sell the coins themselves. It didn’t work, since, as the series told us, in the close-knit detectorist community secrets don’t stay secret for long, especially as, when some of the coins started appearing at a Mayfair auction house, rumours of an undeclared hoard begin to spread. The upshot was that the detectorists were exposed and went on the run, but finished up in the dock accused of theft and given prison sentences. However, hundreds of the coins remained unaccounted for, and still do.

The other series, ‘The Grave Robbers’, investigated a different kind of fraud, one where a ‘crime group’ uses forged wills to claim ownership of houses when people who lived in them on their own die without leaving a will. The ‘gang’ forges wills, as the programme put it, ‘to take the homes of the dead’, with the result that any genuine heirs that might exist are left with nothing. The series found that the group in question, based in Eastern Europe, was also involved in cannabis farms, money laundering and the sale of fake UK work visas. We hear from neighbours of a deceased man how the gang, using false but legally approved documents, had taken possession of his house, selling everything of value and using the property for whatever purpose they saw fit.

Both these stories illustrate the rampant hold that money or the prospect of it can have on human actions. And they are of course just the tip of the iceberg. We know that every day multiple attempts of all description are made to carry out what has come to be called ‘scam’ activity at the expense of both individuals and institutions, facilitated of course by the tools of electronic media.

Should we be surprised at this? Probably not, since the class-divided system we live in, where a tiny minority own most of the wealth and the vast majority own little but their ability to work for that majority in order to keep their heads above water, is by its nature a dog-eat-dog affair. Though vast wealth rarely brings meaningful satisfaction to the minority who have it, they do have praise and privilege heaped upon them, creating the temptation among others to look for ways of becoming part of that, to ‘get rich’, even at the expense of others who have little themselves. There is much talk of guarding against scams, but, within a system ruled by money, profit and wealth accumulation, such activities cannot be controlled. There may be attempts, via legislation or policing, to curb their extent, but, as with the other multiple problems the system throws up, it is unlikely to end up as anything more than tinkering at the edges.

Having said this, we must also observe that, though few people would mind having more money or being rich, the vast majority of us would not stoop to cheating or deceiving other individuals to achieve that purpose. At the same time, it cannot be denied that, while we are essentially cooperative creatures, we are also capable of a wide range of non-cooperative behaviours according to the situations we find ourselves in or are imposed on us. So, in some of us, the competitive nature of the society we live in can trigger anti-social forms of behaviour – the so-called ‘worst instincts’. Yet we all know from personal experience and on a day-today basis that most of those around us, far from seeking to make gain at the expense or disadvantage of others, are more likely to go out of their way to come to their assistance. It is, in fact, no exaggeration to say that even the very system we live in, competitive though it is at the core, depends on us cooperating with one another on a day-to-day basis in order for it to operate. The remarkable thing is that, though ‘money rules’ is the bane of most people’s existence, dictating actions and priorities and often causing hardship and suffering, this does not prevent so many of us from behaving generously towards others even if it means financial loss or inconvenience for ourselves. The recent World Happiness Report by Gallup, after carrying out exhaustive research, concludes that a key source of human happiness is being generous to others and engaging in volunteering activity. This writer can only reflect on how much more effectively human cooperation and generosity would flourish in the moneyless society based on voluntary work, democratic organisation and free access to all goods and services that we call socialism.

Howard Moss

Editorial: Russia also juggles with finance (1948)

Editorial from the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The more the Communists proclaim how different everything is in Russia the more events disclose how much that country resembles the other Capitalist States. The latest example is the decision of the Russian Government to issue a new currency in place of the old, thus doing what Belgium did in 1944 and what rumour says the British Government has been contemplating for some time past.

The Russian Government’s scheme, though rather complicated in detail, is simple enough in its broad intention. Wherever there is rationing and the sale of rationed goods at controlled prices a “black market” is bound to arise as those with enough money try to supplement their rations and get scarce high-priced luxuries. Russia was no exception though the “free” market in that country was officially recognised and anyone rich enough could buy what was offered at the enormous prices ruling there. The government’s scheme is to abolish rationing, reduce the prices of a few foodstuffs while raising the prices of other goods so that the new price level as a whole is raised to a point somewhere between the present low “rationed” prices and the present very high “free”market prices. At the same time they aim at a drastic reduction of the amount of money available to be spent, by the simple device of giving fewer new rouble notes in exchange for the old ones. If you have 100 roubles in cash in your pocket or at home you get only 10 in exchange. If you have 10,000 roubles deposited in a savings bank you get the full rate for the first 3,000 and two-thirds for the remaining 7,000 roubles. We can illustrate the effect by putting 10,000 roubles into pounds at the rate of exchange (32 to the pound) allowed to foreign diplomats in Russia. It means that a. man with £312 in a savings bank will find it reduced to £240. If his £312 was invested in a State Loan (except the most recent loan in 1947) he will have it cut to one-third of its value, £104. Wages are not being reduced but the workers, in addition to losing some of their cash and savings will be hit by the higher prices.

Of course the Daily Worker had to rush in and say what a fine thing it all is—”a step forward,” “a triumph for the Socialist economic system,” but the article (published on December 16th) indicated a certain amount of uneasiness. The writer, Mr. Andrew Rothstein, had to admit that “everyone will inevitably be affected to some extent because the new prices must lie somewhere between the ‘rationed’ and ‘off-rationed’ prices.”

Some other interesting points are thrown up by the new policy and by the Daily Worker comment on it. Just as Sir Stafford Cripps, at a time when prices are rising, tells the workers it will soon be all right because harder work will increase supplies and bring down prices, so the Daily Worker says “the existence of ample supplies . . . will soon more than compensate for the temporary difficulties.” This is printed in the “Worker” alongside the reproduction of a Russian “plenty to eat” poster which tells how much meat, fats, sugar, etc., etc. will be produced “in the five-year plan to be completed in 1950.”

During the war when news came out of Russia about the rouble-millionaires the Communists hastened to explain that this was a good thing and natural to a “socialist” country, and that we should note that it was all earned money and there were no speculators able to accumulate fortunes by speculation and black market operations as in Britain and U.S.A. Now we learn that the new policy is designed to hit “speculators, who amassed considerable sums ” and were, able to “buy up stocks, create artificial shortages and lower the purchasing power of the rouble.” (Daily Worker, 16/12/47).

It should be observed incidentally that the new policy, while reducing the big fortunes, does not by any means wipe them out. The speculator or other wealthy person with 1,000,000 roubles in State loans will still possess 333,000 roubles of investments and will, of course, gain to the extent that he can now buy goods at much lower prices than he formerly had to pay in the “free” market, prices which ranged up to ten and fifteen times pre-war prices. (Manchester Guardian, 15/12/47).

One wonders, too, how the Communists are going to wriggle out of their claim that the Russian Government, unlike other governments, does not descend to slick tricks in its dealings with workers’ savings. It is going to be very difficult to square what has just been done, with the claim made in 1946 that “money put into the State loan is, of course, absolutely secure” and that holders of bonds “can redeem them at their nominal value at any time within the 20-year period.” (Article by S. Grigoryev in Soviet News, published by the Soviet Embassy in London, 16/5/46.)

Readers of the Daily Worker (15/12/47) who read that “the new rouble of full value will be much stronger that the old,” will perhaps recall how the Communists jeered at the late Lord Snowden when he defended the economy cuts of 1931 on the ground that they would enable the pound to be strengthened and “look the world in the face.”

Doubtless one of the reasons for the new policy in Russia is to back up the campaign to capture the support of the European workers by pointing out that the West European governments, notwithstanding loans from U.S.A., are behind Russia in abolishing rationing. If the British Communists try to push the same policy over here they will be in the same position as those Conservatives who press for the abolition of controls and who argue that it would be better for the workers in the long run even though it would mean higher prices immediately. The truth is that for the workers it would be merely a choice of evils and so far, judging by results of by-elections, the majority of workers prefer the evil of rationing that they have got used to and are not enamoured of the Conservative alternative.

Socialists, of course, are not in favour of Capitalism anyway, whether with or without controls.

USSR — Land of Privilege (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the ever-increasing participation of the Soviet Union in western trade, more information about the way the Russians live is coming to hand. We suspect that much of the information was always available but for their own purposes the western capitalist press suppressed the information which would have destroyed the myth they wished to keep alive, namely that Socialism was established there. They back it both ways. Friendship with the Soviet Union will produce pro-Russian propaganda, and will gloss over the numerous shortcomings in the Soviet system. At other times when there are differences of policy with the western powers, anti-Russian propaganda will expose and exaggerate these shortcomings. Eventually truth, like Hamlet’s ghost, will out, and now that the Russian workers have been indoctrinated in the cause of capitalism, the Soviet authorities will relax their censorship up to a point, because they cannot keep the lid on the kettle. Censorship makes an expensive form of administration.

The SPGB have always maintained that there is no essential difference in the class system in the Soviet Union from that elsewhere. The ruling class enjoy the same privileged existence, and use the same means to stay on top. The common features of western capitalism, exploitation of wage labour and production for profit, are present — with the resulting social inequality. All the propaganda by friend and foe alike cannot contradict or obscure this real situation.

One of the most obvious signs of social inequality is the wage differentials between the higher and the lower paid workers. The Daily Telegraph (2nd June 1976) on the occasion of the visit of the Soviet missile destroyer Obraztsovy drew attention to the enormous discrepancy in pay between officers and ratings. A Russian naval rating is paid £4.70 a month, and a full captain’s pay is £202.00 a month, more than 40 times greater than that of the ratings. This differential is quite considerable when it is taken into account that the Russians have over 8 million men in the armed forces. The British equivalent is that a captain receives approximately 8 times that of a rating.

Graft & Corruption

The city column of the Sunday Telegraph (18th April 1976), gave numerous examples of the corruption practised by high-ranking government officers, top scientists and members of the Soviet Politburo. Otari Lazfishiyili, the head of the government synthetics laboratory, was renowned for throwing lavish parties costing thousands of roubles. He enjoyed the luxury of a mansion, and had two country homes with swimming pools. Apparently he was running a black-market nylon business on the side, with over 100 accomplices. He made a million pounds before they caught him.

Another government official, the chief of the agricultural equipment purchase department in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Uri Sosnovsky, planned to take a cut of a 30-million rouble contract with a Swiss firm — he was hanged. The then Minister of Culture, Yekaterina Furtseva, was alleged to have spent about £60,000 in having an exclusive country dacha built for her daughter; this was in addition to the two owned by the Minister herself. The scandal lost her her seat on the Supreme Soviet in 1974. In the same article, a reference was made to petty corruption. Izvestia, the State newspaper, last year published figures to the effect that one-third of the relatively small number of private motorists in the USSR drove their cars on petrol paid for by the State. About 150 million gallons were estimated to be stolen or siphoned off from State vehicles.

There are as many instances of graft and corruption in the USSR as there are elsewhere. There is also a colossal black market. The fact that the penalties are high only underlines the extent of the problem. If the name of the game is capitalism, then the aim of the game is privilege. Those nearest the till are in a better position to get their hand in it, as are high Communist Party officials, government officials, and other socially privileged groups. The difference with the black marketeer, the corrupt official, and the stealer of state property, is that they do it through the back door. But many more obtain their privileges through the front door.

In a capitalist society people will always behave in a capitalist way, and Russia is no exception. Chief among those who receive and confer privileges through the front door are the Communist Party hierarchy. According to a book recently published, The Russians by Hedrick Smith, for three years Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, life at the top in Moscow is based on privilege (Sunday Times 16th May 1976). The most conspicuous symbols are the numerous grey-curtained chauffeur-driven cars containing VIPS doing their shopping and ignoring all traffic laws. There are special shops which sell Russian delicacies like caviar, smoked salmon, and the best canned sturgeon, vintage wines, and other luxuries well beyond the reach of the average Russian worker, and only accessible by special pass to the politically anointed. Perquisites are handed out according to rank; top leaders get home delivery, or use stores right inside the Kremlin, and the Supreme Soviet executive group have their special shop in the government buildings, Versenevsky Embankment Road. Soviet marshals, admirals, top scientists, senior editors of Pravda and Izvestia and other important publications, Lenin prize winners, actors, writers, dancers, economic managers — all have their special shops where cut-rate food is available, and these shops are debarred to the general Russian public.

Diplomats, trusted journalists, poets and the like, who have worked abroad, are issued with certificate roubles, a special currency, and can buy imported goods at bargain prices at the hard-currency Beryozka shops in Moscow. Many Moscow people are infuriated at the existence of these special stores because they don’t even accept Soviet currency. One white-collar worker fumed that it was a “violation of socialist principles”.

The cream of the élite, Politburo members and National secretaries, use black Zil saloon cars, hand-tooled and worth £40,000 apiece. In addition to car and shopping privileges, the Kremlin leaders enjoy special travel facilities, including a special airport Vmukoy 11. They also have exclusive health clinics, clubs, and even certain universities are regarded as the province of the government, for the offspring of the military and diplomatic élite. Many of the Party leaders have large guest houses. Brezhnev takes his guests boar-hunting. Many have mansions with exclusive grounds, private beaches, and recreational areas provided by the state, and their privacy ensured by state guards.

Top Dogs

Hedrick Smith tells a funny story about Brezhnev who was showing his mother round his various possessions and trying to impress her. Apparently this is a Muscovite joke. “He invited her up to see his town apartment. She looked nonplussed, so they sped off in his Zil to his dacha near Usovo, one previously used by Stalin and Khruschev, but still she said nothing. So he called for his personal helicopter and flew her straight to his hunting lodge at Zavidovo. There he escorted her to the banquet room, grandly displaying the big fireplace, his guns, and unable to restrain himself any longer asked: ‘Tell me Mama, what do you think?’. ‘Well’, she hesitated. ‘It’s good, Leonid. But what if the Reds come back?’ ”

The Soviet élite do not advertise their privileges, but the workers in Russia are left in no doubt that there is a special class of person upon whom everybody else dances attendance. All railroad trains, Aeroflot airlines, theatres and hotels, always reserve accommodation or seats in the event that these “important” people may drop in. Even state officials are given priority in any allocation of tickets at sports fixtures. Apparently at the 1972 hockey inter national competition between Canada and Russia, a Canadian diplomat was waiting to obtain his allocation of tickets when a young man walked in, went to the head of the queue, and identified himself as a member of the Central Committee. He asked for, and received, 3,000 tickets per game, a quarter of all the available seats. The diplomat commented that by the time other influential people got their cut, there was nothing left for the genuine hockey fan except perhaps a few dozen tickets forming a token box office. This, according to Smith, happens every time a big foreign sports team or cultural show visits Moscow. (Sunday Times 16th May 1976).

Nobody who really understands the nature of class society will be surprised at the way it operates in Russia. What is the point of a society based on the exploitation of workers for the purpose of private gain, unless the exploiter reaps the benefit? To say that no capitalist class exists in Russia is playing with words. The system is riddled with inequality from top to bottom, apart from the corruption and graft which are inseparable from government by dictatorship where officials wield immense power.

To describe the system as Socialist, or anything remotely connected with Socialism is a deliberate and, as we have seen, a calculated distortion of words and meaning. We can well understand the intense hostility from Russian diplomats and politicians against those who criticise the Soviet Union. It certainly is a good system for them. We cannot understand the almost pathetic adulation from the underprivileged propertyless dupes of the Left in this country who look to the USSR as the “socialist oasis” in a capitalist paradise. This confuses the issue of Socialism, and to that extent holds back the genuine revolutionary movement.

Jim D'Arcy

By the Way: Unfaithful Wives of Soldiers (1945)

The By The Way Column from the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unfaithful Wives of Soldiers

Dr. Percy Herbert, the Bishop of Norwich, is very worried about unfaithful wives of soldiers.

He says unfaithful wives “are very widespread” (News-Chronicle, January 4th)—(presumably this means there are a lot of ’em, not that they are broad in the beam)—as high as one in ten, in some units in the Mediterranean.

The chaplain who gives him this information adds : “It is impossible to describe the mental and moral devastation caused to a husband when he hears of his wife’s infidelity.”

The Bishop is very concerned about the men who are engaged in “tearing the guts out” of the Germans (Mr. Churchill’s elegant phrase) being “morally devastated.” It really is difficult for a man to be “a combination of gangster, poacher, cat-burgler and footpad,” as Lord Wavell has defined a modern soldier, if he’s worrying about his wife’s fidelity.

Wives should remember that soldier husbands will stab, shoot, roast, blast and throttle the enemy much more efficiently if they are not “morally devastated.”

* * *

Medals and Principles

Mr. Jos. Shelley has refused to accept the M.B.E. awarded him, saying:—

“I am an active member of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, in which I serve on two of its important committees. If I accepted it questions regarding my principles might be raised and a false interpretation drawn. Principles matter; medals don’t.” —(Daily Herald, January 11th.)

Good for you, Joe!—this is only the beginning of the end of Sir Walter Citrine. Sir Mark Hodgson, Lord Ammon, Lord Latham, etc.

* * *

Privates, Infantry, Discharged : for the Information of :

“In Sunny Bahamas.—Opportunity to acquire Land and Building Sites now being developed in the most beautiful part of the Bahamas Islands, near Nassau. Suitable either for retirement or investment. Ideal climate, fishing, bathing, golf, etc. Low taxation and living costs. Regular air and shipping services after the war. . . .”—(Advert. in Evening Standard, January 13th. 1945.)

* * *

Paris—and London

The Daily Herald sent a British housewife, Mrs. Barker, to Paris to find out how the housewives are faring there after the liberation.

She tells a harrowing story of the terrible privations now being suffered by the population as a result of an artificial famine created by the war, and concludes: —

“Till then, it means unhappily that the larger your purse, the better you fare. The poor are often hungry. The middle class get by. The rich do very well indeed.”—(Daily Herald, January 12th, 1945.)

The same issue of the Herald (January 12th) carries a special Black Market story on how Inspector Yandell is cleaning up the Black Market—(Yes! Again!)—by Gordon Cummings, which states that: —

“Trafficking in coupons is a serious problem. On top of actual private deals, some retailers are getting supplies to cover their ‘off-the-coupon’ sales at fancy prices.”

And who, dear Mrs. Barker, are the people in London, as well as Paris, who can pay “fancy” (read high) prices? Who will always outbid the poor man?—i.e., the working man ! The question has only to be asked to be answered. Rationing has little or no significance for the rich. There are always plenty of really good substitutes, or rather alternatives, to be had.

If you can’t run a car. you can always take a cab or engage a private car. If there are no oranges—there are hot-house grapes and peaches. No cloth coats?—always one or two fur ones, at a price. Always grouse in season, or venison for a change—if you can afford it. No central heating at home? There are always good hotels for the best (richest) people.

In London, as in Paris, Berlin as New York or Moscow. “The poor are often hungry. . . . The rich do very well indeed”–in peace or war time. That’s capitalism, Mrs Barker. The only way out is Socialism.

* * *

Tailpiece

Racket No. 3—Coupons.

“Clothes coupon traffickers are getting bold. They are now openly offering coupons to strangers in public houses, night clubs, hotels, and even in the streets. 

“Their supplies are stolen, forged or ‘traded’ coupons. 

“Large numbers of the ‘traded’ coupons are bought from people who cannot use their quotas.”—(Daily Herald, January 16th.)

* * *

Wrong to Kill

Private George E. Smith, US. soldier, was on trial for murder of Diplomat Sir Eric Teichman by shooting him in his own grounds on December 3rd.

Three psychiatrists, two American Army officers and one British civilian, testified about the mental state of the prisoner.

Questioned about Smith’s mental age being only nine, Dr. Alexander, Colonel in the American Army and chief neuro-psychiatrist for this part of Britain (Norfolk), replied to the question, “Does Smith know it is wrong to kill?“—”Yes, he does.”—(Daily Express, January 12th, 1945.)

Poor George, if he could only have waited another month or two, till he got to the European mainland, he might have been given a medal. It’s the first time we’ve heard that it’s wrong for a soldier to kill; we thought it was his trade.

* * *

Fraternising with the ” Enemy “

“U.S. Troops Seek Kin in Europe. 

The American soldier, when not fighting, is anxious to find relatives who may be in Europe, reports Associated Press from Paris. At least 2,000 requests for help in tracing kith and kin have been received by the Red Cross in the last ten weeks. 

Doughboys whose roots may be French, Dutch, Polish—and in many cases German—are getting every possible help in their quest”.—(Evening Standard, December 30th, 1944.)

This sheds a little more light on the £15 fine on Allied troops for fraternising with Germans.

It must be rather difficult to inspire hatred and ferocity for “the enemy” when they are not only “class-brothers,” but sometimes even blood-brothers, as with many German-Americans.

Horatio

Proper Gander: An appetite for profit (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The usual template followed by TV documentaries presents issues in a frustratingly simplistic way, reshaping and reducing them to fit the pattern. The format starts with a speedy summary of what’s to come, which assumes the viewer doesn’t have the patience to see a story unfold. The rest of the programme is still edited in a snappy way which jumps around from one aspect of the topic to another, just at a less fast pace. Scenes of the reporter speaking with victims and experts on the issue are usually short, cutting down their explanations to a minimum in case we lose interest. Statistics aren’t very visual, so evidence of wrongdoing is livened up as shaky footage filmed undercover by the reporter with some personal risk of being rumbled. Bouncing between briefly sketched out aspects of a problem doesn’t give the subject enough depth, nor help the viewer comprehend it. Watching a documentary which keeps to this template is like watching edited highlights of the start of a more substantial programme. Problems are revealed and questions are raised, but any answers suggested never reach the fundamental causes or reasons. The usual implication is that different state regulation will resolve the issue, although why such reforms have never brought about a capitalist paradise isn’t considered. The companies which produce mainstream documentaries are embedded in the system, and so aren’t going to look beyond it.

A recent example of this formula being followed was BBC Three’s The Skinny Jab Uncovered, an investigation into the availability of semaglutide. This is medication which has been developed over recent years to manage type 2 diabetes and which also works as an appetite suppressant. NHS doctors are only likely to prescribe it to help with weight loss for people who are classed as obese. Other people who want to lose weight and can’t afford a private prescription can easily find lots of cheaper traders in semaglutide at beauty salons or online who won’t ask any questions apart from what their payment details are. Most people hear about it on social media such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. Demand grown by online promotion and discussion has outstripped supply, leading to a global shortage.

The product is a white powder which buyers mix with a liquid and then inject themselves with. The people attempting this aren’t likely to have had any medical training beforehand, and the packs they receive don’t even tend to come with instructions. Buying semaglutide from a salon can be accompanied by haphazard advice from staff about dosage and administration, as revealed by undercover filming. Some packets are stamped with words like ‘not for human consumption’ or ‘for research purposes only’, intended as a get-out clause for the seller if anyone makes any complaints after using it. Understandably confused buyers have tried to work out what to do for themselves or have turned to social media groups for guidance, with posts such as ‘I’m a bit scared’ and ‘hopefully I don’t die’. Some have experienced unpleasant side effects such as nausea and ended up in hospital. The manufactured desire to be thin makes some people accept or overlook the risks which come with self-administering what’s sold as semaglutide.

Reporter Pria Rai buys 12 packs from various suppliers and sends them off to a laboratory for analysis. Perhaps surprisingly, as many as eight were pure samples, with the others being adulterated with sugar or containing no semaglutide at all. Diluting drugs with cheaper substances is a longstanding tactic by dodgy manufacturers and dealers to maximise how much money they make from each dose. Semaglutide made illicitly is likely to come from producers working outside state regulation, which further saves on costs which come with safeguards and testing. All this means that as well as being unsure how to use the product safely, buyers are unsure what they’re putting into themselves.

When Pria contacts the companies selling packets containing little or no semaglutide, they reply with flat denials or abuse and gloating. These sellers represent the weight loss industry at its most blatant. While semaglutide suppresses the appetite for food, it has fuelled an appetite for profit. Making money by encouraging and preying on insecurity about looks is more important to sellers than acting responsibly about a medical procedure. This has led to dubious tactics to reduce production costs and also unreliable and extravagant claims to promote sales of the product. The documentary doesn’t explain the weight loss industry in this way, though, and just ends with a quick mention that the government’s regulator is investigating.

How would this situation play out in a socialist society? Does the principle of free access to goods and services mean that anyone could have substances such as semaglutide on demand? The practicalities would be for people at the time to decide, but any responsible society would have safeguards around medication which had the potential to be used in a harmful way. Regulation of medication in a socialist society would only be based on the best available knowledge of its properties, a framework to make decisions which wouldn’t have to compete with an obsolete need to make money. This means that the current risks with semaglutide wouldn’t apply, such as the adulteration of black market supplies to minimise costs, and responsible use being linked to what people can afford. There would be no reason to produce or administer it in a way which encouraged harm. And what place would a substance like semaglutide have in a socialist society, apart from its use to treat diabetes? We don’t know to what extent people would crave an appetite suppressant as a dieting technique, but it’s likely to be less than today. Attitudes to weight, attractiveness and health would differ, and wouldn’t be shaped by an economic market, and in particular by industries which profit from manipulating how we want to look.

Mike Foster

Editorial: Human Nature, the Black Market and Socialism (1942)

Editorial from the July 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many who are vaguely sympathetic towards Socialism complain that they cannot see what basic difference there is between the S.P.G.B. and the organisations which seek to reform the capitalist system. They think we are exaggerating when we say that there is a fundamental similarity between the admirers of capitalism and the reformists which separates both from the Marxist. A glance at a topical problem, the “black market,” will show that there is no exaggeration in our claim, for both the admirers of capitalism and the reformists believe that it is possible to retain the basis of the capitalist social system and yet to change its operations and the conduct of the human beings who live under it, by means of Acts of Parliament and appeals to goodwill.

When the war began we were told by those who claimed to know that there would be no “profiteering” in this war. Socialists smiled and were disbelieving, knowing that a system built on a foundation of private ownership and profit-making will go on producing its evil results whether in peace or war. We smiled again when the News-Chronicle, nearly two years after the war began, said “the days of, the profiteers in clothing and other necessities of life are numbered” (News-Chronicle, July 25th, 1941). We were not impressed with the story that the capitalist thistle would suddenly produce a crop of social figs because of the appointment of “34 Board of Trade inspectors” who were going to track down the “profiteers.” Nor were we mistaken. Here are some brief items from the Press in June, 1942 : —

“The retail price of salmon was controlled. At once salmon disappeared from the shops. Now the salmon is a case in point of a great public evil. The Black Market must be destroyed or it will destroy us”. (“Sunday Express,” June 7fH, 1942.)

The News-Chronicle (June 18th, 1942) reported that when a “slight accident” occurred to a railway van containing furniture

“The backs of half the wardrobes were missing. On the floor lay a litter of asbestos chips. Superficially got up with a lacquer sprayed ‘oak’ graining, the wardrobes were intended for sale in a big industrial town. . .”

Again the reporter says : —

“I saw wardrobes, chests and dressing tables made of cardboard, and was told of others made of linoleum. They will be sold wholesale at £30 a suite. When they get to the shop windows they will be ticketed from 50 to 60 guineas—pegged prices authorised by the Board of Trade’s recent control order.”

Then there are motor cars. An investigation is being made into the prices of second-hand cars.

“In the last 18 months car prices have soared to a fantastic level. A car which cost £265 at the beginning of 1939 would have realised only about £160 a few months after the start of the war, but shortly afterwards prices rocketed so that it could be sold for £365, and even to-day such cars are being sold in the region of £300” (“Evening Standard,” June 18th, 1942.)

And food ! After the start of the Order fixing 5/- a head as the maximum charge for food in a restaurant the Daily Express (June 16th, 1942) reported the following; at a small fashionable restaurant . –

“Two luncheons 10s., two house charges 4s., six Martinis 22s. 6d., one bottle of Burgundy 27s. 6d., four cups of coffee, 6s.—Total £3 10s. 0d.”

It was all quite legal, “the prices of drinks are controlled only in the case of whisky, gin and beer.”

The following extracts are from articles in the Sunday Express (June 14th, 1942) : —

“The racketeers are using the existing shortage of supplies as a suitable occasion to corner stocks of many commodities and re-sell them for big profits. . . . One of the biggest profiteering ramps to-day is the whisky racket. . . . The furniture profiteering ramp to defeat both income tax and maximum controlled prices is worked in this way: A small manufacturing firm sells to the “boss” for absurdly low prices. The furniture is installed in a luxury apartment and resold at prices often 300 per cent. above those paid, and the profits are shared out. Jewellery, furs, silk stockings and underclothing are sold for cash in £1 notes in the West End by racketeers, who do not ask for coupons. Cosmetics and beauty preparations, too, can be bought in any quantity for cash.”

Lastly, there is the Judge sentencing some men charged with frauds in connection with corporation contracts who said : —

“This corruption will either be cut out of commercial life or it will destroy the State.” (“Daily Mail,” June 20th, 1942)

A pretty black picture. But, retorts the reformer, make the penalties more severe, copy Russia and Germany and introduce the death penalty, then it will cease. How little they know of that “human nature” they so often talk about. The history of capitalism has demonstrated beyond refutation that given the opportunity (the ownership of goods for sale and a ready market) and given the motive (big and quick profits) nothing will stop illicit deals in one form or another, from robbery and smuggling to black marketeering, and to the numerous operations that can be conducted just on the borderline of legality. The severity of the penalty may to a degree restrict, but it will never stamp out such deals, for operators will always be found who will discount the risk. Even within the limited sphere of keeping the number of such transactions to a comparatively moderate total, experience has proved that it is not the severity of the penalty but the small chance of escaping detection that is alone effective. Otherwise the intending law breaker always hopes that he will not be caught. This was the lesson of the Factory Acts, of the legal minimum wage of agricultural workers, and of income tax evasion. What alone made any impression was not the size of the penalty imposed on law breakers who were caught but the appointment of sufficient inspectors and the use of other means of convincing the offenders that their chances of escaping discovery were small. Even so, most legislation of such a nature is largely a dead letter. The capitalist basis which provides opportunity and motive still prevails against the puny efforts by law or pious resolution to make a competitive system work for the social good.

So much for those who hope to change by Act of Parliament the conduct of people living under capitalism as its exists to-day. But almost equally foolish are the Labour Party and I.L.P. reformists who believe that they can retain the capitalist or State-capitalist basis, with its rich and poor (but with the degree of inequality lessened), with its production of goods for sale, its property incomes and profit-making, and its whole paraphernalia of money, bonds and banks, and can yet persuade or compel capitalists and workers to desist from conduct which flows naturally from a two-class, private property social system, and go over to conduct appropriate to a social system based on human needs alone.

The present spectacle of the “profiteers” and racketeers and the comparative futility of the efforts to stamp them out should be a warning to all who believe that capitalism can be reformed. Socialists take their stand on the very different principle that only by a fundamental change in the basis of society, from private ownership to the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution will human conduct likewise change. It is to the economic foundation, not to the legal and ethical superstructure of society, that attention needs to be directed.

Editorial: Who Are Responsible for Defence Weaknesses? (1942)

Editorial from the January 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

In war as in peace the blind greed of capitalists persist even to the extent of endangering the continued existence of their sources of gain. We are prompted to make the statement by a report from a Special Correspondent which appeared in the Sunday Express for January 4th. This correspondent, writing from Sydney, Australia, reports an interview he had with Senator Foll on Malayan defences, and this is what the Senator told him: —

“The British War Office sadly neglected the Malayan defences. The civil and defence authorities told me this frankly and most decidedly during my visit to Malaya last August.

I was so alarmed at the information that I reported it to Mr. Menzies and other Cabinet Ministers on my return to Australia.

Mr. Menzies told me that he had repeatedly demanded stronger Malayan defences while he was in England.

From the time of Munich, Australia’s military strategy has been based on the likelihood of an attack by Japan. We were alarmed at the slight preparation provided against this in Malaya and Singapore. That was the main reason for Sir Earle Page’s visit to London via Singapore.

I think, frankly, that people holding large interests in Malaya were themselves principally responsible. They were engrossed in the big profits the war was bringing them and they resented even trivial taxation for the defence of their holdings.”

The last paragraph is the illuminating one. Government officials and military strategists are freely blamed for weaknesses and failures in Malaya and elsewhere, but how much of this blame should really rest on the shoulders of seekers after profit who were the power behind the various governments or whose actions thwarted the policies of those governments? Why, for instance, was Germany able to become strong again after 1918 and able to embark on a policy of conquest? One reason was because Germany became a profitable field for investors and these investors were prepared to risk a good deal rather than have their profitable investments disturbed.

It is customary to blame Balfour and Macdonald for failing to keep up to date in rearmament during the period preceding the present war, but the major responsibility rests with the wealthy interests who found the high cost of re-arming cut into their profits. Profits were their main objects, and so they made hay while the sun shone, hoping to wriggle out of trouble somehow later on. A fair example of the intelligence or blind lust of the capitalists as a class.

Another instance of the blind and unprincipled lust bred by a system under which goods are produced for the sole purpose of making a profit for capitalist investors is provided by the black market that figures so largely in the news these days, and the numerous cases where people are prepared to jeopardise the successful prosecution of the war (their war) in order to make profit out of it. The following quotations are only two examples that illustrate the point: —

“Barham and Marriage, Ltd., of Leadenhall Street, E.C., grocerer, were fined £10 with 10 guineas costs at Kensington to-day for selling milk powder substitute grossly deficient in fat proteins and milk sugar at their shop at Church Street, Kensington.

Mr. Barry Evans, prosecuting, said the powder when analysed was shown to be essentially flour and salt and was in no sense a composition resembling milk powder.

The substitute was sold at 3s. a lb., but could be produced at 2½d. a lb.

Dr. James Fenton, medical officer of health of Kensington, said that if infants were fed on the powder they would suffer from anaemia and a lowered resistance to infection.

If a mother fed her child on the powder believing she was giving the infant a complete food, the child would starve under her eyes.

Mr. R. Seaton, defending, said the firm was supplied with a powder called “Milkona” by the manufacturers, with a warranty at 2s. 3d. a pound.

They innocently purchased it for retail to the public. They were not unscrupulous and not a breath of complaint had hitherto been made against them.—( Evening Standard,” 31st October, 1941.)

Pal Food Products, Ldt., of South Audley Street, London, W.I, were fined £10 and five guineas costs at Stratford to-day for selling a mixture called Pal-lem with a misleading label.

It was stated that the mixture was described on the label as containing vitamin C, and as the perfect substitute for fresh lemons.

Dr. Hammance, public analyst, said the bottle, which was bought for 1s. 3d., could have been manufactured for ¾d. There was no vitamin C in the contents, nor was there any citric acid, the only acid being tartaric”.—(“Evening Standard,” December 31st, 1941.)

These facts are simply further support for our contention that capitalism, owing to its private property basis and profit-making object, is incapable of solving the major problems with which it is afflicted. These problems can only be solved when the profit motive is obliterated by the introduction of Socialism.

At the Bottom of the Heap (2006)

From the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The chairman of the Bench had wanted to send Chu Hua to prison, so she had been let out of the dock to speak to the duty solicitor in case he could persuade the magistrates to a less vengeful sentence. Now she sat squirming downwards and backwards into her chair, her dull eyes flickering in fear, clutching her threadbare jacket against the chill of the interview room. She did not look like a criminal who threatened to undermine what all right-thinking people – like magistrates – uphold as the basis of civilised society. It was not that she had cloned credit cards, nor dealt in controlled drugs. She had not sexually abused any children, nor deceived impoverished young women in Eastern Europe into coming here only to find that the well paid jobs they had been promised were really as enslaved prostitutes. She had not murdered anyone, nor robbed a bank at the point of a gun. “So why did you” asked the solicitor, “try to sell those counterfeit DVDs?”

It was sad story, eked out with the help of the interpreter. Chu Hua was born in a remote village in North China; the interpreter knew of the area, that it was deeply impoverished, obviously not borne up by the flood of supposed prosperity of supposed “socialist” China. Chu Hua’s parents tried to provide for their family from what little they produced in their vegetable garden. They could not afford to send the children to school so Chu Hua was scantily educated and illiterate, with no prospects of improving in that village. In 2001 she came to England as an asylum seeker, on the grounds that she was a member of the Fa Lung Kung cult. Her application was refused and now she has to report each month to the Home Office Immigration Service, and she is not allowed to take employment or apply for benefit. Sometimes she gets cash-in-hand work as a cleaner but this lasts for only a week or so because she is scared of being reported for benefit fraud. She is reduced to relying on friends and other contacts for food and somewhere to live, sleeping on floors in a roomful of other people. But bad as this is she thinks it is better than her former life in China.

Cult

On the face of it, the Fa Lung Kung seems to do little more than practise slow, hypnotic, Tai-Chi like meditation exercises – like those hardy early morning groups in many an English park. The problem in China was that it developed into a hugely popular movement with a membership large enough, and ardent enough, for the government to outlaw it as a destabilising influence. At some point it wandered beyond meditation, claiming that its followers can see through a “third eye” which protects them and can cure them of diseases. Such preoccupations, on a large scale, can be addictive enough to affect workers’ disciplined acceptance of their role as wage slaves. A ruling class will not be happy to allow too much brainwashing which does not promote their own power and influence over society. At times Fa Lung Kung has been tolerated in China (although it was banned under Mao Zedong’s regime as unhealthy and superstitious) but in recent years there has been a fierce crackdown in which the cult’s followers lost their jobs or were sent to prison where they were beaten or even killed. As might be expected, the movement spawned a considerable media industry and not a few con artists to exploit anyone vulnerable to claims about mystical powers of mental adjustment to social stress. Even so the mere fact of membership of the cult was accepted in the United States as justification for asylum; as Chu Hua soon found out, that did not apply in this country.

So she spends most of her days wandering along the local High Street and it was there, in an indoor market, that a man who must have noticed her vulnerability suggested that she could earn a little money by helping him sell some DVDs. It was not long before the police saw her – and recognised her as someone who had been arrested twice before for the same offence. Her two previous appearances in Court had resulted in her being ordered to do Community Service, which she had completed happily as it was better than the High Street and kept her occupied, scrubbing off graffiti or cleaning school playgrounds. She must have wondered why she was not allowed to do the same kind of work for a wage. But now this was her third such offence in a short period and the Court was running out of patience with her.

Pirates

The recent explosion in the production and sale of pirated DVDs has alarmed the industry, which sees it as a threat to its profits. The biggest operator in this field is HMV, which also trades in CDs and owns the Waterstones booksellers. During the last complete year, HMV recorded a pre-tax profit of ú136.2 million – up by 9.9 percent on the previous year. Not all of this, of course, came from the sale of DVDs; Waterstones is notorious for its ruthless cost cutting war against independent booksellers and makes huge profits from best-sellers like the Harry Potter books. But DVDs are extremely important to HMV’s profits; while the group’s underlying sales were down by 4 percent during the last year the sale of DVDs went up, and with it HMV’s share of the market for them, of which the group claims to have “the lion’s share”. So they are bound to take any threat to their pre-eminent position seriously – and that does not mean they worry about a few school-age computer wizards downloading and writing their own, illegal, copies of DVDs to share with their mates.

The copyright laws, with their harsh penalties, are there to aid HMV in their war against the pirates. One local authority recently decided that pirated DVDs and CDs represented so urgent a threat to their community that they formed an alliance with the local police to hunt down the pirates and close down their factories. On one gloriously successful day for the partnership the local plods and council penpushers seized £30,000 worth of illegal DVDs and CDs from one business, then a few days later went to the place again and took possession of another £20,000 worth. During the past year they have “visited” more than 90 premises, seized over 150,000 items, closed down one DVD factory and launched several prosecutions. These achievements are publicised by the council with such pride that some of their citizens may overlook the fact that they do not have an exactly successful record when it comes to their other responsibilities. Not long ago this council was assessed, in terms of the services it supplies to vulnerable people such as the homeless, the elderly or children in need, as one of the worst in London, to the extent that they were under threat of being taken over by a Whitehall hit squad.

Priorities

But of course that council was utterly correct in its priorities because the realisation of a profit through the orderly, legally controlled process of production for sale must take precedence over any human need. It is the priority of capitalism and when all is said and done it is what people like councillors and MPs are elected for – at least as things are for the present. If we had a society with a different priority wealth would be turned out to meet human needs, so that all people would have unfettered access to it, which would be enough to give any self-respecting councillor a seizure. It would be the end of the social arrangements which made it imperative for Chu Hua to come all that way across the world although when she got here it was made plain to her that she was not welcome. And now she is a threat to a mighty corporation like HMV.

In any event Chu Hua’s fears overcame her; she took her chance to leave the Court and did not come back. Huffing and puffing, the chairman was openly pleased to have his opinion of her so quickly vindicated and readily agreed to the prosecutor’s request for a warrant for her arrest. If she comes up in Court again she will have yet another charge – Failing to Surrender – against her. She is out there somewhere, scraping along somehow, vulnerable to a host of predators. We can only hope she survives.

Ivan

By The Way: “Purer" Socialists (? !) (1945)

The By The Way Column from the May 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Purer" Socialists (? !)

  “The system of state capitalist economy now being practised in Russia with (according to my view) its almost indecent emphasis upon personal profit as a stimulus to social and economic activity, is in many respects much closer to British 19th century economic-doctrines than are the economic conditions in Britain to-day. In certain details such as the Russian provision that peasants may sell their surplus in the free market at free prices it is the English farmer in 1945 who is the purer Socialist. There will be no difficulty in Russians and British understanding each other on the basis of the profit motive!

  A second imaginary obstacle is the belief by some people in Britain that the Russian Government is Communist in the sense that it is working for world revolution. This in the Russia of 1945 is a most shocking suggestion, for you are telling the Russians that they are Trotskyites! This is worse than to tell (say) an ardent young Tory that he is a reactionary.”

Commander King-Hall, M.P. (Parliamentary delegation to Russia.. “Observer,” March 18th, 1945).)

--0--

The First 2,000,000

  “Russia tried to buy 2,000,000 artificial legs on the American market last week.

   The small U.S. factories, already far behind on domestic orders, could not help out—none of them produces more than 5,000 artificial limbs a year. The Soviets, who must step up their own small output, are already studying American methods.

  For 2,000,000 false legs was only a starting estimate; after three and a half years of continuous fighting, the number of war cripples in Russia is unknown.”

(“Time,” U.S.A., October 9th, 1944.)

--0--

"Lend to the End," etc.

  “Mink coats, which would cost up to £10,000 in the shops, are being sold secretly for £1,000 to £2,000 paid in cash to dodge purchase tax restrictions.

  Evidence was given to me yesterday that there are “queues” of ready-money buyers willing to purchase luxury furs—with no bill or receipt changing hands.

  The coats are being sold as “second-hand” but they are really coats almost completely renovated with pre-war skins kept in storage.

  Prices of mink coats are four times as much as they were before the war. Five hundred pounds was a reasonable price in 1938, while a hop-price coat cost as much as £2,500.

  Under second-hand guise, the ready cash minks—usually bought as an investment—are not liable to purchase tax, but they are still covered by a Price Control regulation.” 

(“Daily Mail,” March 20th.)

--0--

Secrets of Scotland Yard! Black Market in Curates Next

  “The Bishop of Chelmsford has issued a warning of the possibility of a “black market” in curates.

  This might happen, he says, unless there is an alteration in the present system of stipends, which allows parishes able to afford the best clergy to get them at the expense of the smaller parishes that need them most.”

(“Daily Herald,” March 5th, 1945).

--0--

For That "Portal” House

  “The copy of Charles Lamb's Essays, issued in 1823, which he inscribed and presented to his friend Robert Southey, the poet, was bought at Hodgson's yesterday by Mr. Wade for £340. It belonged to the Earl of Gosford, and had been bound in a scrap of an old cotton dress by Southey’s daughter Kate.

   A woman sent a defective copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, 1623. Mr. Ernest Maggs paid £1,800 for it. The late Lord Rosebery's perfect copy brought as much as £14,500 in 1933.”

(“Daily Telegraph,” February 24th, 1945).

V.C. Son of Italian sets a Poser

  “Son of an Italian ice-cream vendor, 19 year-old Dennis Donnini has set the Court authorities a poser by winning the V.C.

  For Domini's father has never been naturalised, and that raises a problem for Court officials that has never arisen since the V.C. was initiated in 1856.

  The King cannot receive an enemy subject for the duration. How Domini stands legally as a subject of a co-belligerent country is a point they must decide.”

(“Daily Herald,” March 21st.)

Young Domini died in winning the V.C. He was in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The press reports the “magnificent courage” of this son of an Italian emigrant.

--0--

Why I wed a Yank

   “A pretty 23-years-old British girl landed at La Guardia airport to-day and explained why it is that British girls marry American soldiers.

  She said British girls prefer American Service men.—

1. Because they’re more gay and carefree than “serious and steady” Britons.

2. They wear “snappier” uniforms.

3. They have more money.

Six other British war-brides who travelled with her nodded in agreement.”

(“Daily Mail,” March 20th.)

The “three" reasons look very much like one to us. (More money).

Perhaps these girls will be somewhat perplexed, at first, to find that under capitalism, the land of the greatest wealth is also a country of great poverty.

Cooking the Books: The paradox of cash (2021)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 4 December the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a report which accused the Bank of England of not knowing where £50 billion’s worth of its bank notes were or what they were being used for. This, despite declining cash transactions as ‘cash was used in six out of 10 transactions a decade ago but in 2019 it was less than three in 10’.

The Committee put forward some possible explanations for what it called ‘the missing £50 billion’: overseas transactions and savings; undeclared domestic savings (as under the bed); and ‘use in the shadow economy’. This suggests that some at least of the notes were in circulation and used in buying transactions not counted by the Bank.

Commentators suggested that many of them would be being used in ‘the shadow economy’ (as to avoid paying VAT). According to David Smith, Economics Editor of the Sunday Times:

  ‘Research by HM Revenue & Customs in 2017 suggested that roughly 5 per cent of people were operating in the hidden economy. The Institute of Economic Affairs suggests something larger, between 9 per cent and 12 per cent of gross domestic product, or roughly £200 billion. Quite a bit of that missing £50 billion of cash is in the black economy’ (Times, 9 December).

It’s the same in Germany where €6 billion worth of old money (the Deutschmark) have still not been converted into euros, some of which the tax authorities think could be being used to ‘wipe away traces of illicit deals’ (Times, 18 December).

To avoid the state keeping tabs on how you spend – or obtain – your money is an obvious advantage of cash for those who don’t want the state to know this. With electronic transactions, on the other hand, it is possible to tell how money got into the hands of the seller as there will be an electronic record of the sale somewhere. It was for this reason that some anti-state ‘libertarians’ thought up Bitcoin as an electronic equivalent of cash. As the mysterious Satoshi Nakomoto put in the original 2007 paper outlining the proposal:

  ‘A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution’.

After it was launched in 2009 it worked but involved complicated computing using large amounts of electricity. In the event bitcoins have been used more as a crypto-asset (held to gamble on its price rising – at the end of last year the price of one bitcoin had risen to a then record £25,000 and it’s now been higher – than a crypto-currency (means of payment), though undoubtedly it has been used for various illicit transactions, not that these are entirely untraceable if they involve conversions into and out of state currencies. Only bitcoins that are ‘mined’ (those behind the idea wanted to invent not just electronic cash but the equivalent of metallic commodity money) are truly anonymous, electronic cash.

Economists speak of the decline in cash transactions alongside a rise in the amounts of notes and coins as the ‘cash paradox’. Socialists can think of another paradox: the existence of computing power capable of helping solve the logistical problem of ensuring that physical goods are available where they are needed for people to take and use, alongside the use of this power to record zillions of individual payments and other monetary transactions. This scandalous misuse of computing power can only be ended in a world of common ownership and democratic control of productive resources where useful things will no longer be produced for sale on a market with a view to profit and where, therefore, money, whether physical or electronic, will have no place.

What is a Spiv? (1947)

From the October 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these days, when everybody is becoming Spiv-conscious, to ask what is a Spiv might seem to border on the fatuous. The purpose of this article will merely be to attempt to show that as a comprehensive definition of idler, drone and parasite the word Spiv leaves much to be desired.

Undoubtedly high-powered publicity has focussed the Spiv in constant if dubious limelight. For some he may yet come to acquire something of the symbolical status his more sinister counterpart, the American gangster, possesses for a generation of film-goers.

Shortages, Rationing, The Black Market, as some of capitalism’s present evils, have provided the conditions and opportunities for making England much more a land fit for Spivs to live in than it ever was: or likely to be it seems. For if the statements of certain Government spokesmen are to be taken at their face value, the Spiv is already on his way out. The Government in their efforts to ease the embarrassing, even if temporary, “labour shortage” for contemporary capitalism, have ear-marked the Spiv as a source of potential labour-power. For this Government of planners the unplanned existence of the Spiv (unplanned that is for the existing requirements of Capitalism) becomes at least a little irksome.

The Spiv thus finds himself the subject of Governmental interest and the object of weighty political pronouncements. The word is officially recognised now and is considered normal to the vocabulary of Cabinet Ministers.

Even in the rarefied atmosphere of The House of Lords the word has made its debut. Lord Pakenham replying to Lord Amwell (formerly Mr Fred Montague, MP) on the direction of idleness, said, “Lord Amwell no doubt referred to the gentlemen known as spivs and drones. He agreed that however wide his definition we had no use for slackers at this time”. (Daily Telegraph, 7/8/47). No doubt an interpretation of slackers in the sense of “a wide definition” might have found room for a broader and perhaps more embarrassing inclusion than that permitted by the more restrictive nature of the word Spiv. Doubtless comprehensive definitions of terms, while admirable in theory, are not necessarily politic in practice.

Mr Attlee in the House of Commons the same day said, “We shall take all action open to us against the Spivs and other drones”. Like Lord Pakenham Mr Attlee did not attempt a definition of terms. To have done so might have held awkward implications for the consideration of the members present. It might conceivably have led to the reading of “The Riot Act” in the “Mother of Parliaments”. A political flash-back, nevertheless, recalls the coupling of drones with “idle rich”, in the classic days of Labour Party propaganda.

Nevertheless, Mr Shinwell speaking on the question of appointments to the Electricity Board, did say “We have no regard for those persons who perform no useful service at all . . . They have been described as parasites, idlers, drones and rentiers”. He added, “I don’t intend to appoint them to any Board for which I am responsible.” (Daily Telegraph, 24/6/47). Whether this constitutes one of Mr Shinwell’s noted lapses into indiscretion or a momentary glimpse of a more fundamental aspect of drones and parasites, we venture no opinion. No threat of work direction for these gentlemen, however, only non-appointment to various Boards.

Mr Isaacs, Minister of Labour, has said, that “Spivs are not so numerous as some people think”. But at the Trade Union Conference he spoke of using full Governmental powers of direction in regard to them (Daily Telegraph, 3/9/47). He also told us that there are people who toil not and depend on the dividends earned by other workers. Had he said a wealthy section live on dividends and profits produced solely by the workers, he would have obtained full marks. Mr Isaacs is, however, not a person inclined to indiscretions.

Mr Tom Williams, MP, also spoke on direction of labour. He suggested if there are Spivs and drones or any one else (italics ours) who refused to accept occupations, Unemployment Benefit should be stopped, adding that starving men and women into work is the highest penalty which ought to be tried in the first six or twelve months. (Evening News, 2/9/47). Coupon clippers, rentiers and other profit-participants are, however, debarred from drawing Unemployment Benefit. Moreover, as their level of incomes have no more relevance to “The Poverty Line” than it has to “The Plimsoll Line”, Mr Williams’ dire threats to people refusing direction of work will doubtless be met by them with calm and studied contempt.

The Spiv assumes then the role of the Labour Government’s whipping boy. In the past the hard-faced business man and the treble-chinned plutocrat could be pilloried in the political stocks for Capitalism’s shortcomings. Called upon to administer capitalism the Labour Party must perforce—vide Morrison—ask for their co-operation and even enthusiasm for “Labour’s” New Social Order. The Spiv will be pleased or perturbed to discover that it is he and not the private ownership of the means of wealth production which now constitutes the basic contradiction of capitalism.

The Spiv, however, is not merely a post-war product or the illegitimate child of a Labour Government. His prototype has for many decades alternatively flourished and decayed in capitalist society. He is generally a big city product. Born mostly in city slums or near slums he early experiences the drab life and sordid surroundings of those who, like himself, dwell there and toil for others. When the opportunity occurs for doing a bit on the side or fiddling, he seizes it as a more lucrative and more colourful occupation than the monotony of the daily grind. He is often, however, compelled to devote more time and energy to his peculiar calling than is customary for him to admit. Neither can the Spiv for the most part wholly emancipate himself from his working class status. “In bad times” he is often reluctantly forced back into workshop or factory. For the Spiv, however, the age-long habit of work engrained in his fellow-toilers has been seriously undermined.

It has been said that the Spiv is at least a rebel. Some people have even sentimentalised him as a kind of revolt against the conditions imposed by the nature of capitalist exploitation. The Spiv’s own anti-Government and anti-authoritarian outlook might seem to lend colour to this view. The Spiv, however, generally lacks the class loyalty and class sentiment that goes to the making of the class-conscious social revolutionary. The zeal and selfless devotion of the socialist, with his illimitable vista of a world based on production for use and the Brotherhood of Man, lights no fires in the mind and imagination of the Spiv. A good time and plenty of fun at the expense of others gravely limits his social horizon. Pleasure and “the easy way” becomes basic to his existence. His mode of life constitutes a form of social parasitism which conflicts with the healthy social instincts of the vast majority of workers.

Also the Spiv evolves a standard of values that make for unconscious subservience to wealth and luxury. He is consequently, however insignificant, a factor making for its perpetuation. At his best he is a politically unreliable element. At his worst he can become the strike-breaking instrument of the employing class or a tool for political reaction. In a socialist society where all able-bodied people will engage in productive activity and where the principle prevails—From each according to his ability, to each according to his need—the Spiv, as such, can have no place.

The social solidarity of a system such as the present one is cleft by its basic class antagonism. With the decay of its own outworn economic functions goes the decay of its outworn ethical creeds. The ideological veneer of its so-called public opinion merely hides the subversion of its traditional moral tenets to private forms of hypocrisy and cynicism. The wealth and luxury of present society then breeds its own type of social parasitism with its individual greed and unscrupulousness and its inevitable anti-social consequences. It is this which sets the individual against society and, as in the case of the Spiv, who attempts to imitate and emulate the ruling section, society against the individual. It is hardly to be wondered that the putrefying effects of such a social cesspool as Capitalism, fail to secure for the population at large a 100 per cent immunity from contamination. Given capitalist society the Spiv must flourish like a green bay tree. Changing circumstances may decimate his ranks, but as an inevitable product of existing social conditions, he can hardly cease to exist.

True that the padded shoulders, the diagonally woven suit, the spear-pointed collar and dazzle tie have given the Spiv a sartorial significance and setting. If, however, for a double-breasted camel coat we substitute a faultlessly cut dress suit, the four bob jive for the dance floors of expensive clubs and exclusive hotels, the cheap billiard hall and garish saloon for Monte Carlo and other fashionable gambling resorts; the significance attached to the word Spiv becomes vague and even blurred.

It may be said that the Spiv, by devious methods of obtaining goods in short supply and selling at extortionate prices, is guilty of anti-social practices. Nevertheless he has the time-honoured methods of “Rings”, “Market Corners” and their inevitable outcome, Trusts and Combines, to set him a precedent. Again, if he plies a doubtful trade, the long existence of nefarious company-promoters and Bucket shop sponsors shows that in the matter of shady transactions the Spiv is no path-breaking pioneer. That the Spiv lives by the dubious exercise of his wits may also be true. Yet while a section of the community live on the unpaid labour of others well might the Spiv-kettle, in the matter of social parasitism, retort “Why call me black, brother pot?”

Nevertheless the word is accepted now. From a slang term of doubtful pedigree it is on its way to an assured place in the English dictionary. Henceforth it will be synonymous with idler, drone and parasite. As a definition it will obscure rather than enlighten. Its emphasis will be on those who live by their wits and doubtful practices and not on those whose social parasitism is the outcome of the exploitation of the vast majority through the medium of class-ownership of the means of wealth production. All of which might suggest that there is a form of intellectual Spivery in addition to a social one. Concluding, may we repeat—What is a Spiv?

Ted Wilmott

Profit the goal (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Report, published on 6 July, of the Special Commission set up by the Belgian Parliament to investigate the incidents that led to the deaths of 38 football supporters at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium on 29 May:

Further, the immediate cause of these incidents is to be found in the fact that English and Italian supporters were side by side in blocs X, Y and Z, which was impossible to foresee given that bloc Z was reserved for Belgians. 

The Belgian Football Union and the UEFA seemed to have been motivated more by preoccupations of a lucrative and commercial nature than by their duty to ensure the safety of spectators. 

Ticket sales, as it emerges from many statements and in particular that of Mr Roosens, were completely uncontrolled. A large number of tickets allowing entry to the Z zone (a neutral zone where under no circumstances should there have been Italian supporters) were sold to Italians. 

The sale of tickets at the Heysel Stadium (where in theory only 5 tickets could be sold per person) was organised in such a way that anyone - including Italians — could without problem buy tickets for the Z bloc. This went against not only the UEFA directives but also against the measures decided before the match. Such a procedure necessarily led to a black market.

Blogger's Note:
See also the article, 'Putting the boot in', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Running Commentary: Behind the Iron Curtain (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind the Iron Curtain

On 8 June, Panorama (BBC television) showed a film called “Behind The Curtain” made by Antoine Fournier, which consisted of interviews with workers in Moscow. The similarity with life in the West was quite remarkable, as the camera panned over Coca-Cola adverts, horse- and car-racing and amusement arcades. One assistant salesman on £45 a month explained how he is forced to try to earn some money “on the side” dealing in the black market. Another, dealing in the foreign clothes market, explained:

  Underground market is a very popular thing in the Soviet Union. All the young people I know do the things I do because, for two reasons. The first is a great profit, and the second is a simple interest to connect with foreigners. But there are lots of police in civil clothes who control the situation and if they catch you with the clothes, they never take you to the police station, they simply take your clothes and then resell them. Policemen have a little salary too, so we can understand them.

Here are some more excerpts from the interviews.

Can we film you at work? The bosses would never allow it.
Do you get good wages? Good pay? You must be joking . . . If I make 150 roubles a month. I’m doing alright . . . I’m just slaving away.
Do many women do your job? What can I say? There are so many of them. They need money, or they want to get a flat. But we're told a pack of lies. They’ve been lying for five years now about the flat, saying they’re going to give it to us. But we’re still living in a room like this one, we still haven’t a flat, just a room. When will you get your flat? We haven’t any idea. That depends on the boss. Go and ask him yourself. Looks like we haven’t earned it yet so they haven’t given it to us.
Are you going to vote tomorrow? Of course (they laugh) what a stupid question!
And who are you going to vote for? Don’t you have an easier question? (They all laugh cynically.) The portrait of our deputy is already hung up in the entrance!
What about Party members? If somebody joins the Party, either that means he’s a careerist, that he's already decided he wants to make a career of it, or, well it means that he’s just no good.
And Western people? First of all, I think they shouldn’t be afraid of us. We are people just like them. We live like they do.

Brixton

The hysteria over the Brixton riots has faded now, but with unemployment and resentment mounting all the time, it is quite possible that there will be further outbreaks of violence in inner-city areas. Brixton was quite clearly not a “race riot”; the police were attacked as representatives of state harassment and authority. But in the aftermath, references to the “black community” in the press suggested that the main division is between blacks and whites. In fact, the whole community, black and white, is divided into two classes. There are both black and white investors, property-owners, who profit from the poverty suffered by black and white workers.

For example, a Nigerian called Chief Francis Nzeribe has said he wants to invest money in Brixton. Some people in Brixton will be allowed to have jobs, to get wages which are just enough to live one, while Nzeribe will own all of the wealth they produce for him. He owns £50 million worth of assets around the world, and heads twenty-seven companies. He has been a private arms dealer and lives in a flat in Mayfair. He has said of his plans for Brixton: “I see this as an opportunity to make money” (New Standard, 5/5/81). Colour is irrelevant.

Gluts

A few years ago, the media were stirring up a popular fear that oil resources were going to run out. There was a danger of a shortage. Now the tune has changed, and they are getting worried about a “glut”. OPFC and other representatives of oil interests are complaining about the threat of falling prices and profits as hundreds of barrels of oil pour out from the Middle Fast each week, to say nothing of all of the other sources in the world. Because of the recession, world market demand is down, so supply seems to be too high to satisfy the profit demands of the owners.

Resources today are not measured by simple human needs, any more than production is controlled by them. The market rules. This is why today's glut becomes tomorrow’s scarcity. The present crisis in world capitalism is not just affecting oil, though. America has a “butter mountain” which is “growing by ten million pounds a week” (Guardian, 30/5/81); and on 26 May a Guardian article entitled: “There's an awful lot of coffee” referred to “the prospect that the world is likely to be oversupplied with coffee during the next twelve months or so”. But in today’s insane system, that will not prevent millions of people from starving to death this year, and millions more from drinking tea because it is cheaper.

China-Cola

China is supposed to be a People’s Republic. Its government claims to have saved its workers from the ravages of capitalist exploitation. So it is rather odd that on 15 April, Coca-Cola, the epitome of world capitalism, opened a bottling plant in Peking. But the Chinese workers will, it seems, be saved from this danger by their benevolent masters after all. At first, the drink will only be sold to people with hard currency (the Chinese ruling class). Later it may be available for “ordinary” Chinese people (the working class), but probably at a price well over what most of them could afford, (Times, 16/4/81) so thoroughly are they being drained dry by the “People’s” Parasites.

Capitalism's Casualties

Dr. Jay Herbert, chairman of the Hospital Doctors’ Association, remarked recently that more than half the country’s junior doctors work more than eighty hours a week, and that their resulting tiredness was a major cause of death in hospitals (Guardian 30/5/81). He pointed to Sunday evenings as a critical time, and said that the massive amount of overtime worked by doctors was allowed to continue for economic reasons: “Juniors are still expected to work for an overtime rate of one-third the basic rate. It is cheaper for hospitals to employ fewer doctors for longer hours than more doctors.”

Clifford Slapper