Material World: China and capitalist property rights (2026)

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

On 16 July British industrial capital’s representative body, the CBI, gave its somewhat begrudging support to what it had called, on 16 May, ‘an expensive option of last resort’, namely the nationalisation of British Steel. Despite their reservations about potential compensation costs and a (probably) valid fear of a negative impact on future investment, for the moment we can assume that industrial capital is okay with bearing the tax burden of a reported daily subsidy of £1.3m. In the ‘national interest’ of course (tinyurl.com/yc58wxjs).

Nationalisation might be welcome news for British Steel’s 2,700 workers, but it is less than welcome in China, if we are to judge by the 17 July report on the Global Times website, one of the Chinese state’s English mouthpieces.

According to the site, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) is dead against this nationalisation. MOFCOM points out that British Steel is (was) a subsidiary of China’s Jingye Group, and says the British government has undermined Jingye’s ‘legitimate rights and interests’ and is severely damaging Chinese companies’ confidence in investing in the UK’. Somewhat in agreement with the CBI then. MOFCOM is also ‘pledging to take strong measures to safeguard [these] lawful interests’, although they don’t go into details about what these measures might be.

It is clear from the article that the Chinese state supports Jingye’s demand for compensation for its ‘substantial financial investments in continuous operations [and] equipment upgrades’ since 2020. There is also a clear statement that the state will defend the interests of any Chinese company whose UK investments are threatened in future. Again, a position with which the CBI doubtless concurs, and the type of position it would expect the British government to adopt should any of its members be threatened by some uppity foreign politicians.

Let’s pause a minute though. Isn’t the country concerned always referred to as ‘Communist China’ by the capitalist media? Run by the Chinese Communist Party? Filthy Marxists, every last one of them then.

Filthy Marxists pledged to defend the ‘legitimate interests’ of private property – after all, Jingye Group is a privately owned company with 40,000 employees. As it is privately owned, there is no share price but it claims an internationally recognised ‘brand value’ of almost £14 billion, putting it in the top 4 of Chinese steel producers (tinyurl.com/nhe4sv5r).

So ‘Sinified Marxism’, a Marxism tailored to the Chinese context, is defending private property now. Understandable, given that 60 percent of Chinese GDP is created in the private sector. This is why the Private Sector Promotion Law came into effect in May 2025, ‘promoting the private sector […], strengthening legal protections and injecting fresh momentum into a key driver of the world’s second-largest economy’. It ‘aims to optimize the development environment for the sector, ensure fair market competition, and promote the growth of both the private economy and private entrepreneurs’ (Global Times).

We can assume that the CBI would be less begrudging in its support for such a law but it does somewhat contradict the Chinese constitution which tells us that: ‘The socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production has been completed’. Perhaps steel works aren’t part of the means of production – could this be a case of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’?

Leaving that aside for now, what we can’t quite understand, with all that capital washing about, is how that same constitution can state that ‘the system of exploitation of man by man [has been] abolished’. Nor how, beginning slowly around the time the constitution was published (1982), billions of dollars of private capital have flowed into China in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI), peaking in 2021, when $344 billion was invested. Could it be that the foreign capitalists and their fund managers all failed to carry out due diligence, that none of them had studied the economic situation, that they had no idea that there is no exploitation in China, hence there is no possibility of their capital being able to return a profit, the sole aim of capital?

Answer? No, capital is only attracted to China to buy labour power in the expectation that it will generate surplus value – in other words, it goes only with the idea of exploiting the working class – the constitution is just so much tosh.

Let’s take another example, again from the Global Times (3 March 2026). It discusses the state’s plan to increase ‘support for financial development by optimizing preferential tax regimes for funds and single-family offices, attracting global capital convergence. Hong Kong is projected to become the world’s largest cross-border wealth management center in the coming years’. A single-family office, by the way, isn’t for the average family, it’s just for the ones that have so much money that they can afford to employ their own staff to manage their investments.

In other words, the Chinese state is trying to make it cheaper and more profitable for capitalists to gamble in HK’s stock exchange casinos.

What the ruling clique in China has learned is that they have to do exactly the same as any other government – whether of the left or of the right. That is, create conditions in which capitalists are confident that they will be able to scoop up surplus value to their heart’s content.

Quite how long private capital will put up with the Chinese Communist Party supping at its table remains to be seen.

Budgie.

Why be Efficient ? (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have all heard Trades Union leaders on television blaming British management for inefficiency — claiming that this is the root cause of “our economic difficulties”. To most people the word “inefficient” means something bad and “efficient” means something good, so they are prepared to believe this claim. It also seems to be in line with their personal experience.

If you intend to erect a fence around your garden because you cannot afford to pay someone to do it, you will soon discover (if you did not know it already) that the most efficient way is first to cut all the timbers to their correct sizes, then to drill all the holes in the timbers, then to dig all the holes in the ground and then to mix all the required amount of concrete — and so on. This, in miniature, is mass production, as compared with performing each process over and over again as you proceed around the garden. Why is this called “being efficient”? Because it saves you labour time — your labour time — and after a hard week’s work this is of benefit to you and your family.

It is perhaps natural to transfer this idea to the larger world of industrial production and to conclude that greater efficiency in the factory will also be of benefit to you and your family. As things are at present, nothing could be further from the truth. Let us quote from a report in The Times of May 6th.

The British Steel Corporation’s plan is to increase output at its low-cost general steel plant at Scunthorpe and strip mill plants at Port Talbot and Llanwern, with the general steel plants in Scotland being supplied with their ingots from Ravenscraig. The effect of this will be to trim between 7,500 and 10,000 jobs in the general steels division and 9,000 to 10,000 jobs in the strip mill division (Our italics).

The above-mentioned plants are obviously more “efficient”, have more streamlined production processes and more up-to-date machinery (like using a power drill to make the holes in your timbers for the fence). But is all this efficiency of benefit to the workers who will become unemployed — or their families?

Who then does benefit by greater efficiency in industry? Someone does or it would not be considered worth striving for. To answer this question we have to understand in broad terms the economics of capitalist production.

The owners of factories, whether they be private companies or state enterprises, purchase raw materials or partly processed materials, together with plant and machinery. They then employ the abilities of

(from opposite) a labour force to produce finished materials or goods. These are then sold on the national or international market and there is a margin of profit for the shareholders or the investors in Government stock. This profit is not plucked out of the air. It represents the difference between the wages and salaries paid to the workers in the factory and the value of the work they have actually performed. Where else could the profit come from? Why do employers of labour try to minimize wages? Why do they use mass production methods? Why do they introduce better machinery? The answer is obvious: minimum wages, less labour time or fewer workers means a smaller wage bill. A smaller wage bill means a larger difference between costs of production and sale price — equals more profit.

All this is called “efficiency”. But it is primarily for the benefit of the shareholders, not the workers in the factory. For them it may, as now, be very much to their disadvantage.

The above quotation from The Times is part of an account of a meeting between a TUC committee and Mr. Wedgwood Benn, the Secretary of State for Industry. The account is concluded as follows:

Mr. Benn, the members of the (TUC) committee said, had been sympathetic and they had told him that in their committee’s view the corporation’s proposals at this stage were completely unacceptable.

So, closing down inefficient plants is now completely unacceptable to Trades Union leaders.

But there is still one more question to be answered. Why were these inefficient plants not closed down or improved long ago? Simply because the demand for steel was such that, overall, a very handsome margin of profit was attainable in the past at the market prices the industry could then command. Now there is worldwide overproduction and fierce competition between producers. The only way to compete is to be more “efficient”, that is, to cut labour costs. It is difficult to see what the TUC committee can do about that.

But there is something the workers can do about it. They can consider a system of production and distribution in which steel (and all the other things they require) is produced to the extent that they need it — and not to the extent that it can be sold at a profit on a competitive market. Such a system is what we mean by Socialism, not Mr. Benn’s nationalized British Steel Corporation or Mr. Heath’s Imperial Chemical Industry.

Let Mr. Benn and Mr. Heath answer one question: why should workers be unemployed when they need the wealth that industry (and agriculture) can produce?

Under Socialism as we mean it, and as the word originally meant, workers would be working for themselves — like the chap fixing a fence around his garden. Then it would be worthwhile being efficient.

John Moore

Voice From The Back: Knowledge is power (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Knowledge is power

“Evolution,” says the message from the Alabama State board of education, “is a controversial theory some scientists present as scientific explanation for the origin of living things such as plants, animals and humans . . .” New York Times, 24 November.

The promise—

Mr Raynsford, MP for Greenwich, said that begging was the most disgraceful indictment of the present [Conservative] government’s policies. “Our task has got to be to eliminate begging in London and create a memory of how bad life was in the late 80s and early 90s.” Camden New Journal, 7 July 1994.

—The reality

Beggars who exploit youngsters to raise money face having their children taken into care, the [Labour] Government is warning. Ministers [including Nick Raynsford, Minister for London] are worried about the huge upsurge in street beggars using their offspring in an effort to extract cash from passers-by. Police and local social services departments are being told to intervene in such cases. Sunday Telegraph, 3 January 1999.

Strategic class war

Midland-based engineering giants Rolls-Royce today warned it could move production to America if Britain introduces costly new labour laws . . . Speaking at a business lunch in Sydney, Australia, Sir Ralph [Robins] said that social costs made it 30 percent more expensive to manufacture in Europe. “The last thing we want is the on-costs associated with the social costs of Europe,” he said. “But I don’t see any signs of it happening and the current government is not going down that path. But we will progressively move work to the United States if we find ourselves disadvantaged by those sort of social costs,” he said. Birmingham Evening Mail, 25 November.

How wealth divides the world

Here are some pretty amazing facts from the United Nations Human Development Report of 1998: The world consumed more than $24 trillion in goods and services last year, six times the figure for 1975. Of the world’s 6.8 billion people, 4.4 billion live in developing countries, the rest in rich industrial or transition countries. The three richest people in the world own assets that exceed the combined gross products of the world’s poorest 48 countries. Among the 4.4 billion people who live in developing countries, three-fifths have no access to basic sanitation; almost one-third are without safe drinking water; one-quarter lack adequate housing; one-fifth live beyond reach of modern health services; one fifth of the children do not get as far as grade five in school and one fifth are undernourished. Basic education for all would cost $6 billion a year—$8 billion is spent annually for cosmetics in the United States alone. Installation of water and sanitation for all would cost $9 billion plus some annual costs–$11 billion is spent annually on ice cream in Europe. Reproductive health services for women would cost $12 billion a year—$12 billion a year is spent on perfumes in Europe and the United States. Basic health care and nutrition would cost $13 billion—$17 billion a year is spent on pet food in Europe and the United States. $35 billion is spent on business entertainment in Japan; $50 billion on cigarettes in Europe; $400 billion on narcotic drugs around the world; and $780 billion on the world’s militaries. Washington Post, 2 December.

New Labour, old capitalism

On Monday, the new president of the Confederation of British Industry told his members that the greatest threat to British business was red tape. “Excessive regulation,” he said, would “suffocate the golden goose.” He singled out trade union recognition, the minimum wage and the Working Time Directive as measures which would “darken the business horizon” . . . but one speaker went further than most. We need, he told the conference, to hooting applause, “greater labour market flexibility” and “increasing capital market liberalisation”. The government must create “the most business friendly environment in the world”. Even bankruptcy should cease to be stigmatised. The speaker was the [then] Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Peter Mandelson, Guardian, 5 November.

Pollution and profits

British Steel last night urged the Chancellor to exempt it from the proposed carbon energy tax designed to meet the Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse gases by 12.5 percent by 2012. It said the tax would undermine its competitiveness, putting plants and jobs at risk. Guardian, 28 January.

How could they!

Companies will be warned this week that they could be subjected to devastating computer hacking attacks from disgruntled employees who face the sack as part of cost-cutting programmes. Experts say that employees with only limited knowledge of computers are now able to download hacking programmes from thousands of illicit Internet sites around the world and use them to wreak havoc on their employers’ computer networks. In one recent case, an employee who feared he would lose his job used a hacking program to wipe his employer’s central computer database after his name was erased from the payroll list. Times, 26 October.

Gaspers (1967)

From the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We are confident we will be able to convince the Ministry of Labour that the productivity will be far in excess of anything we are likely to get from railway management” (N.U.R. Secretary, Sidney Greene, on a bonus agreement with British Rail. 4.4.67).

#    #    #    #

“Her Majesty is quite safe with the Labour Party.” (Emanuel Shinwell, Daily Telegraph report 10.4.67).

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“Just as in the Stage of Leninism one could not be a Marxist if he were not a Leninist, so today one cannot be called a Marxist-Leninist if he does not master the thought of Mao-Tse-Tung." (Italian Journal — quoted in The Marxist).

#    #    #    #

“We have suggested £5 might be a reasonable figure. We know that when elderly people have to go into homes or hospitals it costs a great deal more than £5 a week to keep them”. (Labour M.P. Hamling, on payment to single women with dependent relatives, 13.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“The Government's decision to pay high salaries to the managers of the nationalised steel industry is sensible, and was probably inevitable too”. (Guardian editorial 16.3.67).

#    #    #    #

“There is no way to my mind of identifying the lowest paid” (£15,000 a year P.I.B. Chairman, Aubrey Jones, 16.3.67).

Against the odds? (1984)

From the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism production is carried on for profit but governments nevertheless have a certain leeway to choose, for political or strategic reasons, to subsidise industries that would otherwise go to the wall. The coal industry in Britain is a case in point. But money diverted to subsidising unprofitable industries is money that could otherwise have been used to invest in modernising profitable industries to enable them to compete better on the world market. Thus the logic of capitalism decrees that subsidies should be kept to a minimum.

The present Conservative government, under pressure like governments everywhere from competitive conditions on the world market, has decided to prune subsidies to industry. And they have imported an American businessman, Ian MacGregor, to help them do this. After having wielded his axe in the steel industry more or less successfully, he has now been given the task of doing a similar hatchet job on the coal industry.

It was inevitable that the NUM. under its present leadership, should have responded to this challenge. Its President, Arthur Scargill, has never disguised the fact that he has always wanted a strike both on the wages and on the pit closures issues. But the NUM Rulebook only authorises strikes under two circumstances: a national strike after a ballot in which 55 per cent of those taking part vote for strike action, and an area strike on a simple authorisation from the National Executive Committee. The NEC’s recommendation to strike having been turned down on two occasions since Scargill's election to the presidency in 1982 (without doubt because most members felt that, with 3 million unemployed, the moment wasn’t propitious), the only alternative for the NUM leadership was to authorise area strikes as they did at the March NEC meeting.

In doing so they took the risk of splitting the union since the NUM is still to a large extent what it was officially called until 1945: “The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain"; in other words, it is a federation of area unions (which are registered trade unions in their own right) enjoying a certain amount of autonomy. This led to some Areas (Yorkshire, Scotland, Durham) deciding to strike while others (Nottingham. Midlands, Lancashire) decided not to. When miners from striking areas decided to picket pits in non-striking areas the scene was set for the clashes between miner and miner — and the intervention of the State — which the capitalist media have been gleefully chronicling.

We have always held that the details of how a particular struggle against a capitalist (or state capitalist) employer should be waged must be decided by the group of workers immediately involved. Beyond that all we have offered is general advice based on past experience of the class struggle: any strike action should be decided and organised democratically; the chances of winning should be carefully weighed up; is the employer deliberately provoking a strike for his own ends; don’t trust leaders; don’t let politicians and political groups interfere; recognise that a strike is not a simple disagreement between “social partners’’ but an aspect of a conflict between two classes with antagonistic and irreconcilable interests.

What then can be said of the chances of the present miners’ strike succeeding? The first point to notice is that, in calling for unprofitable pits to be kept open, the NUM leaders are in effect calling on the government to make a political decision to continue to subsidise the coal industry to the same extent as before. We can understand why miners would want to make such a demand but are not sure that it is a legitimate trade union demand. Experience has shown that, in such circumstances, the best that can be obtained is better redundancy terms (higher lump sums, bigger and longer weekly payments, and so on). We would have thought, therefore, that a more intelligent approach would have been to raise this demand, being prepared of course to strike to back it up if necessary.

But, as the NUM leadership has decided to fight on the issue of maintaining the government's subsidy to the coal industry, we are bound to say that victory on this issue seems much less likely, not to say highly improbable (look at what happened to the steelworkers when they went on strike against MacGregor). A long strike can work, as the previous relatively successful miners’ strikes in 1972 and 1974 showed, but this requires favourable circumstances such as the full backing of the men and women involved and the sympathy of the general public. But the full backing of the miners is precisely what is lacking in this particular case. Miners have voted twice since 1982 against national strike action, and. though their opinion might have shifted since, this is by no means certain and it obviously hasn't in Nottingham and the Midlands. So to have launched into a strike, with a dubious objective and a divided membership, would seem to have been rather imprudent.

The capitalist press have of course concentrated on vilifying Arthur Scargill but he undoubtedly does have the support of a majority of miners in his home area of Yorkshire and in a number of other areas too. He is clearly more acceptable, from a trade union point of view, than his predecessor Joe (now, naturally. Lord) Gormley, who wheeled and dealed with the Coal Board, the Labour Party and the government behind the miners’ backs in the posh restaurants of London. Even so, Scargill is open to criticism from a trade union point of view, first and foremost because like a number of others who want to lead the working class he is not and never has been a democrat.

Though no longer a card-carrying member of the so-called Communist Party, he is still a staunch supporter of Russian state capitalism (to the extent of opposing the emergence of free trade unionism in Poland). As an unrepentant Leninist he believes that he has a right to go against the wishes of a majority of his members, to “give them a lead" as he would put it; set them in motion, people like him think, and by the dynamic of the situation they'll follow. Undoubtedly the traditional solidarity of miners once on strike, even of those opposed to strike action, has played a part in this strike, but Scargill and other we-know-better-than-the-mass-of-the-workers militants are playing with fire here. If he doesn’t want to go down in trade union histroy as the man that split the miners' union he's sooner or later going to have to take into account the fact that perhaps a majority of his members didn't want to strike.

Adam Buick

State Capitalist Steel (1969)

From the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when the nationalisation of an industry was heralded as bringing it within the ownership of the whole people. Vesting day for the coal industry was marked with many pits be-bannered and placarded with displays recording the claim of common ownership. This delusion long demonstrated by the policies of the NCB, plus the experience of redundant unemployed miners from a declining industry, and the experience of workers in other nationalised industries, probably accounts for the lack of such claims when steel was recently nationalised.

Why then, it might be asked, are industries nationalised if it does not bring them into common ownership? Broadly speaking there are three answers: to control the run-down of a declining industry. (Back in 1948 this was thought to apply to gas); to control an industry best operated as a single-unit for the whole capitalist class because of its powerful position, e.g. electricity: and to rationalise industries in need of re-organisation—railways, coal and steel.

Prior to the nationalisation of the steel industry the British Iron and Steel Federation (Steel Co. owners) had set up a committee (Development Co-ordinating Committee) to look into the rationalisation necessary to meet the industry’s future. The reasons for this enquiry lie in the world’s steel market. Since the early 60’s all over the world there has been excess capacity in the industry. Not too much capacity for peoples needs for steel, but too much capacity for the purchasing power of the world, developed and under-developed countries. Put another way this means that there is intense competition on the world’s steel markets and the producer who can offer at the lowest prices increases sales and profits. Although the industry controls the bulk of the home market and is maintaining its share in world exports, long term prospects are not so favourable.

Based on home coking coal and a high proportion of home ore with relatively small plants, the British industry in the mid-sixties compared unfavourably with other areas with access to cheaper coking coal and ore, and which had constructed larger more efficient plants. The advantages of cheaper British coal went once American coal spread into Japan and with Polish coking coal, into Europe. Although devaluation may have redressed the price levels it is at the expense of lower standards of living for the worker.

Likewise with ore. After the second world war when ore was scarce British ore was cheap. It is no longer so. Using 1957 as a base year (100) by 1965 the index for foreign ore prices had fallen to 72 and home prices had risen to 126. Further, being richer, foreign ores requires less processing and need 6 cwt of coke less to make a ton of iron.

In the last ten years the pace of technological development in steel has been rapid. Plant sizes are expanding rapidly. British steel may be one of the six largest enterprises in the world, but it has no plants with a capacity of 4 cu. ingot tons and over, whereas America has 50 per cent, and Japan 20 per cent capacity in such plants (1968). (Is Big Best — A. Bambridge).


Large imports of ore in bulk carriers of 65,000 to 200,000 tons, plus the possibility of cheap coking coal from abroad and the need for large plants, points to coastal siting. Apart from recommending coastal sites for integrated works the Committee recommended that production be concentrated in fewer plants. In 1966 there were 34 steel works in Britain. If the committee’s recommendations come about, and something like it no doubt will, 90 per cent of capacity will be produced in some 8 to 10 plants.

Such a rationalisation will have a great effect on the levels of employment within the industry. Employment in the steel industry stood at 316,640—December 1965, a figure marginally smaller than 1957. The Report envisages a workforce in 1975 of 215,000 men, when the industry should produce a third more steel with a third less men.

Of the excess 100,000 the report states that they need not all be redundancies.

  Properly handled, normal voluntary departures should be sufficient to account for a substantial part of the reduction. Even ignoring the more volatile fringe of the labour force and considering only the relatively stable element, i.e. men over 26 with more than one year’s service—labour turnover in 1965 was 12 per cent, and this is more than three times as large as the average annual reduction envisaged in the labour force over 1965-75, which is 3.75 per cent.

If you are not a wage worker able to make a ‘voluntary departure’, for you there is the promise of reasonable increases in earnings, providing there are ’reasonable’ reductions in the labour cost per ton of steel.

But what does this really mean for the workers? First, we would say, do not be misled by this 12 per cent red herring. Annual turnover cannot be related to a reduction in the work force spread over a number of years. Secondly it is possible that in one or two areas employment opportunities will increase. In others it will decline or cease entirely. A young steelworker prepared to move might find a job in the expanding areas, but competition could be considerable. An older steelworker can see his future by observing the miners in areas where pits have been closed. Further if these plans, or something like them, are to be fulfilled, plant construction must begin shortly and the effects will be concentrated in the later years.

But if you do not get the golden handshake, the mobility bribe, your future is certain. Your productivity will have to rise, that is you are going to work harder, so that you can be paid increased wages to buy commodities the prices of which will probably increase. How well you fare will depend upon your trade union strength, which with a declining membership in a period with a full labour market, will be subject to great pressures.

Since nationalisation British Steel has not announced its plans for rationalisation. However it will have to be on the lines of that envisaged by the BISF Report. The prospects for the steelworkers are redundancy, unemployment, moving homes, harder work, struggle for better wages and conditions. The lot of all workers under capitalism. These next few years are likely to be harder for the steelworkers than any they have experienced since the war. Their day to day struggles will be more frequent and intense, and the outcome a continuing vista of repetitive struggle over the same issues—work and wages.

Ken Knight

Observations: Capitalism for sale (1988)

The Observations Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to the privatisation of British Steel, the Shares Information Office sent me a letter inviting me to participate in the return of BSC to the private sector. I had been targeted as a likely share buyer because I had previously, in my pre-socialist days, been seduced into laying out money for British Telecom shares. I had subsequently become one of the 900,000 who, between November 1984 and March 1987, disposed of their BT shares. Like many others I discovered that the benefits of popular capitalism applied only to those who already owned the means of production and distribution. To discover whether you belong to the working class or the capitalist class, give up your job and see how long you can afford to live on the dividends from a few shares in British Gas, British Telecom and British Airways.

Founded in 1860 in the heart of the Black Country to manufacture wrought-iron tubes and fittings, the steel works expanded and amalgamated until, in the mid 1960s. it employed over two thousand people and covered an area of forty-nine acres. We lived in a row of terraced houses belonging to the steel company. The amenities were rather basic. Across the yard we had a brewhouse-cum-coalhouse. and an outside lav. Our house was directly opposite the main gates. Close enough to tumble out of bed and be at work when the bull hooted the starting time. My dad spent all his working life in the steel industry. They gave him a gold watch. It was, I supposed, inevitable that I would follow in my dad's footsteps. I well remember that callow but cocky youth who, in the mid sixties, became a wage slave for the first time.

One thing my dad couldn't stand was a bragger. The glossy sales brochure produced by BSC to market its sale gloatingly describes its success as a capitalist enterprise. Potential share buyers are regaled with smug facts and figures relating how within eight years the workforce has been reduced by two-thirds. Great joy surrounds the announcements of improved employee production and reduced employee costs. "Our priority is to develop an informed, motivated and skilled workforce." we are told; By which they mean that they are fully committed to ensure that their employees continue to produce for profit, not for need.

Nationalised or privatised, it makes no difference to workers blue collar, white collar, shop floor or management. Their position remains that of wage/salary slaves forced to sell their labour power in order to live. Despite the glossy brochures and the promise that a few shares give workers some sort of control over their livelihood, the basic wage labour/capital relationship remains unaltered.

Which would you prefer — a gold watch as a "thank you" for a lifetime spent creating wealth for the minority property-owning class, or a classless, moneyless, wageless society where goods are produced for need, not profit. Don't buy capitalism. Take up your option on socialism.

Dave Coggan

The Church's One Foundation (1959)

From the April 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Sunday Express (January 18th, 1959): “The Church of England stands to make millions of pounds if the Tories win the next election. The money will come from investments in free enterprise steel. The Church’s 2,187,000 shares put it among Britain's top ten investors in steel. . . . The investment is worth around £3,400,0000. Growing confidence that Tory success at the polls will end the threat of renationalisation has brought a rise of nearly 50 per cent. in steel shares from the low points touched last year. This suggests that the Church is already showing a profit in the region of £1,000,000 on its holding . . .  Soon the Church’s advisers will face the problem of reinvesting the £1,100,000 to be received from the take-over of its $260,000 British Aluminium shares.. This single transaction has brought the Church a profit estimated at £500,000."

The prophets of the early days for truth made spartan search,
     They lived on nuts and wore apparel strange;
But now in more enlightened times the profits of the Church
      Are made in dealings on the Stock Exchange.
"Take no thought for the body,” said the Gospel of St. Luke,
    “Consider ye the lilies of the field.”
They considered: but, while thinking, much more worldly steps they took,
     And placed their Cush to get the highest yield.
Do they pray, in their churches, that the Consols may not fall?
     Do they beg, as they kneel, that oil may rise?
Do they summon the Almighty to keep closer on the ball
      So their shares, like their prayers, may hit the skies?
The Church complains it cannot reach the workers—it despairs
      That it doesn't find them very fruitful soil;
But the Church can reach the workers other ways—by buying shares,
      And grabbing surplus value from their toil.

Alwyn Edgar