Editorial: The Budget (1948)

Editorial from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Budget time there is always a certain amount of excitement among the workers, rather like that about the result of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race—and with about as much justification. Always there is that mixture of hopes and fears—will beer and cigarettes go down? Will overtime be freed from income tax? Will purchase tax be reduced? Sir Stafford Cripps managed to please and displease nearly everyone, a bit on here, a bit off there. Beer and tobacco up a little, income tax down a little, purchase tax up on some things and down on others. The other principal features of the Budget were the capital levy which will raise about £100 millions from 140,000 of the very rich, the reiteration of the policy of freezing wages at their present level except where special factors justify an increase, and a refusal to freeze profits or to tax them more heavily. On this last point Cripps contented himself with a warning that if companies do increase their dividends to shareholders this year he will consider imposing a limit next year.

Speaking for the. Conservative opposition, Sir John Anderson, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, criticised certain features of the Budget, particularly the special levy, but otherwise be welcomed Sir Stafford Cripps’ “realistic and honest approach.” The Manchester Guardian (April 7th, 1948) praised it as “a strong, honest, and radical Budget,” and remarked of the capital levy that it is “in fact a stiff individual profits tax winch falls where it should, on the large personal capital.” That newspaper’s City Editor (April 7th, 1948) went further and showed that it is not even very stiff:–

”The levy on capital will not be severe even for those holding very large amounts of capital. Assuming an investment yield of 5 per cent. the tax would amount to 2½ per cent. on a capital of over £100.000.”

We may sum up by saying that if the workers find that the Budget makes little difference to their position so do the capitalists, and this is true of all Budgets no matter whether the Government is Conservative, or Labour. It explains why the Socialist refuses to get excited about Budget prospects.

What the working class get out of the capitalist system is the wage or salary they receive for selling their energies to the employers (including the Government and the administrative Boards which are Ihe employers in nationalised undertakings), and wages follow fairly closely the rises and falls of the cost of living. This is not an automatic process of adjustment, but takes place through the pressure and counter pressure exerted by the employing class and the workers in strikes and lockouts. When prices are falling unemployment is usually heavy enough to enable the employers to force down wages. When unemployment is at a very low point, as at present, it is easier for the workers to struggle for higher wages and thus try to maintain their standard of living in face of recently rising prices. Those who urge the workers not to take advantage of the present low unemployment to press for higher wages may discover at no very distant date that the opportunity will have passed. Unemployment will be the order of the day; or, as the City Editor of the News Chronicle puts it (April 10th, 1948), ”with the country probably over the inflationary hump and perhaps set on the, road to deflation with the help of the recent Budget.” Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist secretary of the Miners’ Union, apparently is among the short-sighted. According to the Daily Worker (April 6th, 1948) he said at Leicester, “The miners had not taken full advantage of the law of supply and demand of labour. If they had wages would have been much higher.”

When Cabinet spokesmen oppose higher wages they do so because their immediate and predominant responsibility, by virtue of being the Government, is to keep the capitalist system functioning in the only way that capitalism can function, that is by enabling the capitalists to make profits. The Labour Party grew up on the mistaken belief that under Labour Government there would be great possibilities to raise wages by cutting into profits. Rather late in the day some of them, certainly Sir Stafford Cripps, have come up against the, harsh truth that those who administer the capitalist system have very limited freedom of action—on all important issues they can depart little from the practice of their Conservative predecessors. Official figures on the proportion of the national income which goes as salaries, wages and rent and profits, etc., bring this out clearly. In 1938 wages accounted for 39 per cent., salaries for 24 per cent., and profits, rent and interest for 37 per cent. In 1947 wages accounted for 44 per cent., salaries 20 per cent., and rent, profits, etc., 36 per cent. (See Economist, April 10th, 1948, p. 596.) In each case the figures are after meeting income tax.) It will be observed that the percentage going to wages and salaries together, i.e., 63 per cent. in 1938 and 64 per cent. in 1947 has hardly changed at all, likewise the percentage to rent, profit, etc.—37 per cent. in 1938 and 36 per cent. in 1947.

This is the dilemma of all Labour Governments, but no such dilemma faces Socialists. Socialism is not a scheme for redistributing wealth and income inside capitalism, but a system of society to replace the capitalist system

Editorial: Two budgets (1952)

Editorial from the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Budgets are the concern of the capitalists, not of the working class, though it suits the Labour Party, like the other reformist parties, to pretend otherwise. The workers are not poor because of the Budget, but because the capitalist class own society’s means of production and distribution. It was admitted by the Economist (25th December, 1943) that:—

"1,800,000 persons, who are 7 per cent. of the adult persons in the country, own 85 per cent. of the private property and draw 28 per cent. of the individual incomes of the country."

The Economist said that their readers would be surprised to team this. Why they should be surprised was not explained; this inequality has been a feature of social life in Britain and the rest of the world throughout the capitalist era, and is equally true now despite all the talk of redistribution.

The capitalist State has to meet the cost of its civil service, armed forces and re-armament programmes and all the rest of the organisation necessary to the capitalist system. It does this through taxation the burden of which falls on the shoulders of those who alone can bear it, the propertied class. The wealth the workers produce belongs to the capitalist class and what the workers receive as wages and salaries is far below the value of what they, the workers, produce. That is how the workers are legally robbed and why they are poor. Rises or falls of prices, rises or falls of taxation and changes from one form to another, do not affect the fundamental position of the working class—at most they have temporary effects. White capitalism continues, the only sound policy for the working class is to struggle at all times to the fullest extent that conditions permit, to raise their wages and resist downward pressure.

During and since the war, under the abnormal conditions then existing, and with unemployment at a very low level, successive governments used the system of food subsidies in order to discourage the trade unions from pressing for higher wages. It was linked with high taxation on drink and tobacco, and, from 1946, the grant of children’s allowances to level the condition of the workers. The whole scheme was a device to lessen the movement for a general rise of wages and to divide the married workers against the unmarried. With it went the incessant demand of the Labour Government that the workers should refrain from "unreasonable” wage claims. Now that the fierce struggle against foreign competitors is hotting up again in the markets of the world, the policy is being modified because it has served its purpose. It was merely a wartime interlude in the running of capitalism, which is now getting back to normal pre-war conditions.

Against this background it will be seen how nonsensical is the Labour Party case against the Butler budget. They call is a “rich man’s budget,” as if any budget could be anything else. Mr. Douglas Jay, Labour M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on 17th March, accused Mr. Butler of "robbing the poor to pay the rich”—as if the details of any particular budget were of any importance by comparison with the ceaseless exploitation of the working class \\hich went on unchanged during six years of Labour government.

They charge the Tories with raising the cost of living, forgetting that while they were in power it went up about 40 per cent. They say that he is against wage increases, as of course he is, but forgetting the years in which they also preached "wage-restraint.” They denounce him for reducing food subsidies, but forget that it was Sir Stafford Cripps who decided not to permit any increase in the subsidies even though that meant a rise of the cost of living; a flat departure from the statement of his predecessor, Mr. Dalton, who in 1945 said:—

“I have decided to hold the present cost of living steady until further notice, even if this means an increase in the necessary Exchequer subsidies." (Hansard, 23rd October, 1945. Col. 1877.)

It was on that occasion that Mr. Dalton admitted the purpose of the subsidies as being "to restrain any disproportionate increase in wage rates,” and paid tribute to the "steadiness and good sense which the trade unions and their leaders have shown during the war in this regard.”

In April, 1951, when Mr. Gaitskell, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeated the decision not to increase the food subsidies, he admitted that this decision would mean a further rise of food prices and indeed the official food index figure rose from 131 in April, 1951, to 143 in October.

Other Labour Party critics charge the Tories with tenderness towards high profits, and one misguided Labour journal Forward, in its issue for 23rd February, 1952, chides the Tories on the ground that company profits repented during January, 1952, were up by £10,000,000. What it overlooked was that the company reports issued in January, 1952, related to profits made under the Labour Government in 1951!

Now that the Labour Party is in Opposition it will wage the sham fight about the details of running the capitalist system, but there was every justification for the jibe of the Liberal leader, Mr. Clement Davies, that if Mr. Gaitskell had been in Mr. Butler's place his Budget would have been "much of a muchness.” All budgets, no matter who introduces them, are designed to promote capitalism, not to undermine or abolish it.

Mr. Butler’s budget of 11th March had been preceded on 6th March by the budget report of the Russian Finance Minister, Mr. Zverev. They differed by five days, and little more.

The Russian Budget

The Russian Finance Minister’s budget report was reproduced in full in Soviet News (12th March, 1952) published by the Russian Embassy in London. It makes interesting reading particularly as evidence of the similarity of capitalism's problems and their treatment in the two countries.

They both have their re-armament problems; naturally both offered as instruments of “ defence,” not of "aggression.”

In 1952 the Russian Government plans to spend "for the defence of the country” 113,800 million roubles (£10,346,000,000 at the Russian official rate of exchange of 11 roubles to the £).

The amount of money to be raised from State loans in 1952 is set at £3,864 millions, and the estimated expenditure on the lottery prizes and interest to bondholders (“to pay out winnings to the population and interest on loans”) is estimated at £800 million. This latter figure relates, of course, to the interest, etc., on the total amount of loans outstanding, not merely to the additional loans to be raised during the year; at the average rate of 4 per cent. it implies that the total amount of bonds outstanding in 1952 will be about £20,000 million.

Turnover Tax (similar to the British purchase tax) brought into Budget revenues in 1951 the amount of £22,500 millions, an increase of 4.9 per cent. over 1950. It is to be increased this year by another 4.9 per cent. 

Mr Butler stepped up the taxes on profits by means of the Excess Profits Levy. His opposite number in Russia, Mr. Zverev, is going to do the same.

“Total profits in the branches of the national economy will amount to 88,100 million roubles in the current year as against 74,700 million roubles in 1951. The rise in profits makes it possible to leave a substantial part of them at the disposal of enterprises and Ministries for expanding production. At the same time, the profits tax paid into the State Budget will be increased and the share of this tax in the State Budget revenue will rise from 10.2 per cent. in 1951 to 12.2 per cent. in 1952.”

“The profits tax paid by State enterprises will be increased by 14,000 million roubles, or 29.2 per cent. more than last year. . ."

Conservative and Labour Party speakers are always urging the workers to produce more and lower the cost of production. Mr. Zverev’s report contained numerous remarks of the same kind. He reported that in 1951 “the labour productivity of workers in industry rose, by 10 per cent. compared with 1950.” But he was not satisfied with this and asked for more. His report also contained many complaints about industries which had failed to keep down their wages bill and operate sufficiently profitably:—

"It should be said that certain Ministries, enterprises and economic organisations are for from making full use of available potentialities for the further reduction of production costs, cutting trade outlays and making the work of economic organisations more profitable.”

“One of the main requisites for the further reduction of production costs is also the improvement of the organisation of labour at enterprises and the frugal expenditure of wage funds. Not all enterprises, however, live up to those requirements.”

For example, he complained that the Ministry of Paper and Woodworking Industry “permitted the mills to cover the over-expenditure of the wage fund,” and the Leningrad engineering plant of the Central Textile Machinery Administration of the Ministry of Machine and Instrument-making Industry “did not fulfil its production plans last year and overspent 13,500,000 roubles on wages.”

Time and time again he came back to this theme of not spending too much on wages, improving the control of “labour per unit of output,” and watching over “the expenditure of wage funds” and of “the timely and complete receipt of payments into the Budget.” Numerous branches of industry were named as being among those which illegally “overdraw the wage funds.” Others were charged with allowing expensive machinery “to stand idle a great deal,” thus adding to production costs, and many State farms were criticised because they “do not yet have a sufficiently high productivity of labour.”

We are told by Communists that in Russia the trade unions have control over the fixing of wages. What they do have (a very different matter) is the right to discuss the way the “wages fund” is allocated to different grades of workers; but of course the real control resides with those who fix the total amount of the wage fund for each enterprise, that is the Government and its agencies. How true this is can be seen from the Finance Minister’s report. Not once does he even mention as a possibility that the workers or the unions might have pressed for a bigger expenditure on wages. In each of the dozen cases that he refers to he tells the managements firmly that once the Government has fixed the wage fund they have got to stick to it and devote their energies to cutting down production costs and increasing the workers’ output.

British capitalism’s financial wizards and productivity experts would feel very much at home if transplanted to Mr. Zverev’s department.

It is only necessary to add that the Budget Report was unanimously approved. The session ended as follows, according to the Soviet News account:—

“Stormy, prolonged applause. All rise. A prolonged ovation in honour of Comrade J. V. Stalin resounds in the Kremlin Palace.”

It seems to have been like the Tory cheers for Mr. Butler.

The Socialist comment on British and Russian budgets is simplicity itself. The aim of the working class should be to end private and State capitalism and bring the means of production and distribution into ownership by the whole community as the basis of Socialism. While the workers continue to neglect this real issue and devote their attention instead to capitalism’s budgets and taxation they will remain a poverty-stricken exploited class and the exploiters will continue to be safe in the enjoyment of the privileged position that capitalism bestows on them.

Cooking the Books: The best laid schemes (2026)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the budget on 26 November speculation was rife as to what might be in it. In opposition Rachel Reeves, as Shadow Chancellor, had promised that the priority of a future Labour government would be growth, growth, growth.

But what is ‘growth’? She seems to mean a growth in Gross Domestic Product which is a measure of the inflation-adjusted price of all the goods and services produced in a year. The trouble is that this is not something that a government can bring about. As she herself pointed out in her budget speech, ‘private investment is the lifeblood of economic growth’. So, her plan is to create the best conditions for private investment for profit, one of which in her view is government investment in infrastructure projects. This, however, has to be paid for. As she doesn’t want to rely too much on borrowing she has had to increase taxes. Not that increased government investment will necessarily encourage more private investment; it might for a short while but in the end the only encouragement is the prospect of making a profit.

Capitalism is a system of production for profit where the aim is not growth as such but making profits which, when reinvested, bring about an increase in the production of wealth. It is a result of what Marx called ‘the accumulation of capital’.

Marx himself pointed out that, when it occurs, the more rapid the accumulation of capital, the more jobs there are and the higher are wages due to employers competing for workers. These days, it would also mean an increase in tax income for governments. Reeves seemed to be making the same point when she described ‘economic growth’ as ‘the best means to improve wages, create jobs, and support public services’.

But there is a difference. Marx never expected the accumulation of capital to be continuously onwards and upwards. He saw the process of capital accumulation as ‘a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation’ (Capital, vol 1, ch. 15, section 7). Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Reeves believes — and not only her but all the parties that aspire to manage capitalism — that, if the government gets it right, there can be a permanent boom.

A government might be lucky and be in office during the ‘prosperity’ phase of the cycle but not even the government’s own advisers at the Office for Budgetary Responsibility are predicting that. They are currently estimating that ‘growth’ over the next four or five years will be only 1.5 percent a year. Which is slow by previous capitalist standards and won’t bring about many more jobs or higher wages or enough tax revenue to honour Labour’s promises to improve public services.

In any event, the OBR forecasts are little more than a guess. The fact is that economic forecasts, especially over a longer period, are hardly worth the paper they are printed on as nobody can foretell how the capitalist economy will move. If they turn out to be correct, it will have been a lucky guess.

What will happen in practice over the next few years is that the government will merely react to whatever the workings of capitalism present it with. They will just be muddling through, or, to use the nautical language governments do when they seek to explain their failure by having to ‘face strong headwinds’ or being ‘blown off course’, they will just be navigating by sight.

Letter: Landlords and capitalists (1949)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

(We have received the following letter from Mr. C. Stowasser, Manchester, who writes on the notepaper of the “Henry George School of Social Science.” Ed. Comm.)

Dear Sir,

In the interesting article of your May issue, “A Budget Secret Revealed,” you made one or two statements which I would like to comment on. In the first place you implied that the subsidy system should have been extended by increases of subsidies on foodstuffs. There are two points to be made on this: (a) subsidies, like taxes, ultimately come for the most part out of the pockets of the workers; (b) subsidies instead of increasing production merely help to increase land rents and are therefore of benefit to the landlords only. In the second place you implied that all incomes should be equalised. Now, although I sympathise strongly with this idea, 1 should like to point out that even if there was a completely equal distribution of wealth in this country it would only raise workers’ wages by about five pounds per annum. So you see the question is really and truly mainly one of production and redistribution. Now what all Socialists fail to see is that full production can only be achieved when we break down that all powerful barrier, the Land Monopoly. As you well know, since there is no tax on the site-value of land, the landowner is able to withhold valuable town land from use and by so doing creates a tremendously high monopoly value of land. Is it any wonder that there is poverty and unemployment when the community must pay a toll, amounting to as much as £500,000 or £600,000 an acre in the case of towns, for the right to use land. If we taxed landowners on the positional value of their land all landowners would be forced either to use their land fully or sell cheap—there would be full employment and plenty of houses—the exploitation of the worker would cease. Your paper shows clearly that autocratic planning does not bring prosperity—why don’t you go one step further and proclaim that true freedom can only come by giving all men access to the land through the taxation of land values.

Yours sincerely,

C. Stowasser, B.A. Comm.

Reply:

Our correspondent reads into the article he criticises (“A Budget Secret Revealed,” Socialist Standard, May) implications that were not suggested or intended, and that were in fact expressly disowned. He assumes that we are in favour of an increase of the subsidies on foodstuffs, and that we “implied that all incomes should be equalised.” He is quite mistaken. The S.P.G.B. stands for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. We hold that there are no ways in which capitalism can be made to function in the interests of the working class. We do not say that the Labour government in general and Sir Stafford Cripps in particular have followed a wrong budgetary policy and that all would be well if they followed some other policy. As we pointed out in the article,

“Budgets are the financial arrangements made for the conduct of the capitalist state and it is childish muddle-headedness to ask that they be transformed into ‘Socialist’ budgets.”

Having taken on the job of administering capitalism “they are forced within very narrow limits to do those things that capitalism requires.”

On the question of equalising incomes our correspondent is equally wide of the mark. Under capitalism incomes come from wages or from the ownership of property and they vary greatly in amount. Socialism is not a scheme for making them equal. Wages and incomes from property-owning will both disappear under Socialism. The principal way in which Socialism will lessen the labour and increase the consumption of those who under capitalism are the working class will be by cutting out the enormous waste of labour inseparable from capitalism.

Having disposed of one correspondent’s misconceptions about Socialism now let us look at his scheme for reforming capitalism by the levying of “a tax on the site-value of land.” This is not a working-class issue but a hangover of the conflict of interests between landowners and industrial capitalists. It is not even a vital issue to the capitalists any longer. When the land was monopolised by a relatively small number of big landowners the industrial capitalists suffered the mortification of having to give up to the landowners a large part of the proceeds of their exploitation of the workers. They resented it and would have liked to escape that burden. The result, however, would have been to increase the profits of the capitalists; it would not have lessened the exploitation of the workers. But in the past half century landownership has undergone great changes. We read in the Sunday Express (20/3/49) that whereas “less than 50 years ago 2,500 private landlords shared between them over half of Britain, today, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, there are only 469 estates of more than 1,000 acres left.” The government itself, the Local Authorities and the nationalised industries have vastly increased their holdings of land and much land is now owned by farmers: “of Britain’s 370,508 farms, a third are now owner-occupied. ” Also much land is now owned by estate companies and industrial companies and the writer in the Sunday Express states that the Prudential alone owns land valued at £35 million. These changes have taken place but they have not in the least improved the position of the working class.

In a leaflet that our correspondent sends us we arc assured that the scheme he recommends would “provide public revenue without hampering industry,” and that the burden would fall only on the landlord. But nowhere are we told why the working class should object to the landlord receiving part of the proceeds of working class exploitation without also objecting to the industrial, commercial and financial capitalists receiving a much larger part. According to official estimates the receivers of rent from land and buildings took £430 millions in 1948; but the profits of traders and partnerships amounted to £970 millions, and the trading profits of companies were £1,639 millions. In 10 years the percentage of the total national income going to receivers of rent has fallen from 8.5 per cent., to 4.4 per cent., while the other two groups of exploiters have increased their percentage from 21.2 per cent. to 27 per cent. This may please the capitalists but it is no concern of the working class.

The S.P.G.B. urges the workers not to interest themselves in the internal squabble of the exploiters but to work for the abolition of all exploitation.

Ed. Comm.

Jottings. (1909)

The Jottings Column from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. A. D. Steel-Maitland and Miss Rose Squire were appointed to investigate the relationship of industrial and sanitary conditions to pauperism. Their report to the Poor Law Commission is issued as a Blue Book. Their summing up gives the following conditions as being contributory to pauperism in the order given.

1. Casual and Irregular Employment.

2. Bad Housing Conditions.

3. Seasonal Fluctuations in Trade.

4. Unhealthy Trades and Insanitary Conditions of Work Places.

5. Earnings Habitually Below what are required for Healthy Subsistence.

6. Dangerous Trades.

7. Excessive Hours of Work.

Regarding cause 2 the investigators say ”These contribute to pauperism through disease and demoralisation. They are important causes of Pauperism, but less so than the first.”

The Socialist is well aware that the bad housing conditions are consequent upon (or effects of) the irregular employment under existing conditions. Shortness of wages compels the wage worker to accept a slum dwelling.

Some of the slums are the result of “improvements,” it is pointed out.

“Improvements in towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, etc., the widening of streets for business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the introduction of tramways, etc., drive the poor into worse and more crowded hiding places.”—” Capital,” Vol. I, p. 674.

This shows clearly that the palliative of better housing does not palliate the real evil of the present system at all, but this by the way.

* * *

With reference to No. 7, “Excessive Hours of Work,” the comment of the investigators is “We have been unable to trace any connection between long hours of work and pauperism.”

Whilst, however, they cannot trace “any connection between long hours of work and pauperism,” they tell us that drink is one of the principal causes of pauperism, but for the most part it is the effect of causes such as dangerous and unhealthy conditions of work, excessive hours, low wages and bad housing. So showing drink to be a cause of pauperism and excessive hours to be a cause of drinking habits, these blind tools of capitalist hypocrits cannot (?) trace any connection between long hours and pauperism.

* * *

The June issue of the Pioneer, the organ of the “Labour and Socialist” movement in Burnley and edited from the S.D.P. club in that town, contains an article on the Budget by Robinson Graham.

The sixpenny super-tax is hailed gladly by the writer of the article. He goes on to say “we Socialists (!) are determined that the working class shall be reminded that this Liberal tax is a tax which has been advocated by Socialists on the platform and in the Press since the inception of the Socialist movement.” Again, “the Government has merely embodied the public wish formed by the Socialist agitator.” Quite unconsciously Mr. Graham belittles the “Socialist” effort alluded to above and points out that “ten Budgets like this one would make little or no difference to the lives of the working classes.”

As the item advocated since the inception of the “Socialist” movement is contained in the Budget, those “Socialists” who advocated it stand condemned, on their own admission, for side-tracking the workers, in so far as time has been wasted on a useless measure.

There is some sound advice in the concluding paragraph of Mr. Graham’s article, which the workers of Burnley and elsewhere (and Mr. Graham himself) should take to heart. They are urged to “direct their attention to ways and means of overthrowing the capitalist system which makes poverty the common experience of the great majority of our people,” and since it is admitted that the Liberal Government have brought in this Budget with a view “to restoring the confidence of the British workmen” in themselves, it should be a lesson to the workers to fight shy of even S.D.P. agitation for super-taxes and the like, which can be used for the restoration of confidence in a capitalist Government.r

Socialism is the only remedy, and that alone, for our social evils. Super-taxes will not make any alteration whatever in the basis of society, in fact, they presuppose exploitation in order that the taxes may be levied and realised.

Those who, claiming to be working-class leaders, direct working-class political activity against anything except the capitalist system must be swept away.

* * *

We are informed by the Baker’s Record, that the S.D.P. have convened a meeting to consider the food supply of the nation, at which they propose to put forward a resolution urging the Government to purchase large reserve stores of corn with money invested in the Post Office Savings Bank. This all very fine as an example of revolutionary daring, but it isn’t to be supposed that the capitalist class are going to put up for ever with the revolutionary (!) plots that are hatched at Mooney’s bar. One of these fine days the S.D.P. will find itself suppressed, unless some particularly funny turn so excites the hilarity of the police as to prevent them executing their duty. Moreover, they are in for a “rough-and-tumble” with the I.L.P., for I hear that the latter have long ago ear-marked “the money in the Post Office Savings Bank” for the capitalists to buy themselves out with.

JAYBEE.

News in Review: Unions to heel (1965)

The News in Review column from the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unions to heel

The time when the Attlee government were in office was the heyday of the unofficial strike. The reason was that very often an unofficial action was the only method of pushing a wage claim; whatever the official union leaders were compelled to do at the negotiating table, in public many of them championed the wage-restraint policy of the Labour government.

Since then, times have not been so good for the wildcat striker. The official strike has come back into respectability.

The Wilson government did not find the unions so docile. On the very night of Labour’s victory last October, TUC General Secretary George Woodcock made it plain that he still thought the unions’ first job was to stand out for their members’ interests, independent if need be from government policy.

But it was predictable that some union leaders should decide that, simply because Labour is in power, the economic fortunes of the employers should come first.

Last March Mr. John Boyd, who is on the executive of both the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Labour Party, appealed to the annual women’s conference of his union for “. . . sympathetic understanding, co-operation, discipline and restraint . . ."

The moderates have an even more impressive convert. Mr. Ted Hill of the Boilermakers, who was once the enfant terrible of the unions’ left wing, wrote in his union journal last January that unions should help the TUC to reduce strikes and restrictive practices: "If there is likely to be a demarcation dispute, submit the matter to arbitration . . . if there is likely to be a strike, take the matter through procedure before taking strike action.”

Are the unions, then, tamed? Will they give up the struggle for better wages and conditions? On the contrary, the pressures of capitalism will themselves show up the words of men like Boyd and Hill for the wishful thinking that they are. For example the AEU women, just like the Labour Party women before them, have demanded equal pay. All the time, the more usual type of wage claim is coming in, as inevitable as tomorrow's dawn.

This is not surprising. During Labour's first three months of office the Official Index Retail Prices which, whatever, its deficiencies is some sort of guide in these matters, rose by about one and a half per cent. This means that the buying power of the pound, taken as twenty shillings when Labour came into office, had fallen to 19s. 8d. by last January.

The working class cannot afford to ignore such factors as this. Rising prices mean a decline in living standards, unless they are balanced out by a rise in wages. Apart from that, there are other things which ensure that the working class will carry on the struggle to improve their wages and working conditions.

This is an inevitable by product of the basic employer/employee relationship of capitalism, which as long as it lasts will always produce strikes and other disputes.

This situation will not be abolished, nor even changed, by speeches and resolutions, nor by the breathtaking manoeuvres of union leaders who are left wing firebrands when the Tories are in office and who disappoint their deluded followers by becoming staid right wingers when Labour takes over.

Art, for whose sake?

An essential part of the popular British conception of an American millionaire is that he is a vulgar Philistine who yet likes to flaunt his wealth by buying up famous works of art which mean nothing to him.

It follows from this that, whenever a rich American buys a famous picture, or piece of sculpture, over here, and wants to take it back home, there are protests on all sides.

This is what happened when Mr. Norton Simon bought Rembrandt's picture of his son, Titus, at Christie's. The protests were all the stronger because Mr. Simon appeared to have put in his successful bid after the auctioneer's hammer had come down for the last time.

The press reports of what they called this “dramatic” incident inspired many workers whose usual experience of artistic enjoyment is confined to studying the Maidenform Bra adverts on the Underground to assume a sudden knowledge of the intricacies of top rank auctions.

Everyone seemed to be agreed that it would be a calamity if Titus left this country. In some ways it was reminiscent of the hooha over da Vinci's Madonna and Child; there were attempts to stop the Board of Trade granting an export licence for Titus, appeals to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide for repurchasing the picture in his Budget, schemes to raise the £798,000 needed to buy it back. A simple soul would have assumed from this that Titus was a British picture, and that there had been long queues of art-hungry people to view it. In fact Rembrandt was, of course, a Dutchman, which, on the protestors’ own arguments, means that the Dutch are the only people who have a right to be annoyed about the affair.

Then again, the picture had not been open to public viewing but had been part of a rich Englishman’s collection in the Channel Islands. (Were the Dutch annoyed when Titus was originally bought out of Holland?)

Nationalism is never logical, but it is blatantly stupid when it works up its ire over the artistic products of another country.

Most of the people who were indignant over the Rembrandt picture can never have come remotely near to seeing it when it was in the Cooks’ private collection. At any rate, Mr. Simon intended it for wider enjoyment than that; he planned to show it at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Indignation would be better directed against a social system in which works of art can be bought and sold, and bargained for, and be the subject of nationalistic emotions. Rembrandt, who died in neglected squalor, might have been bitterly amused by it all.

Gas in Vietnam

The world has never recovered from the shock of the first gas attacks on the Western Front in 1915, and the sense of shock has been in no way lessened by the knowledge that there were many other horrors borne of that war.

Why the shock should have been so intense and so long-lasting has never been adequately explained. It persists today, although there is no gas which inflicts a worse death than napalm, or the fringes of a nuclear flash, or indeed many other of the ghastly machines which capitalism has invented and developed to a high degree of efficiency to prosecute its wars.

Poison gas is outlawed by what are called the international rules of war something which, although it allows all manner of horrors to flourish uncondemned, seems to convince many people that war is really a comfortable, humane occupation for gentlemen.

It was this combination of fear and hypocrisy which caused the storm over the American gas attacks in Vietnam. The United States government protested that they would not dream of using such barbaric methods of warfare (at the time they were busily dropping napalm bombs) and that the gas was really harmless stuff which any government might use against strikers or demonstrators.

The only comment to make on this is that it may be true. And then again it may not. No government—especially one which has such widespread interests and involvements as Washington—thinks twice about lying when it suits its purpose, and purposes are particularly open to being suited in wartime.

Gas warfare has one great thing to commend it to the designers of capitalism’s war machine. It destroys human beings but it does not damage property. The only snag, from their point of view, is that ways of delivering the stuff have to be found, and that these will he attacked by the other side with all the old methods of destruction—high explosives, incendiaries, nuclear missiles—which means that property is going to suffer after all.

There is no way out of it. War is not going to become a humane business. Even a comparatively small affair like the struggle in Vietnam can call into use some ghastly methods of dealing out death and destruction.

It is futile to expect capitalism to take a step backwards and humanise its wars—futile to expect a great power to throw away powerful, and possibly dominating, weapons. The people who have protested over the use of gas in Vietnam—many of them are the usual weary crowd of “Progressives’’—are once more turning their backs on the facts of capitalist life.

This js a dangerous habit. Capitalism has a way of making us face facts—and plenty of equipment with which to do it.

The Budget

Budget Day is usually the occasion for a certain amount of clowning about on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of this is undoubtedly stimulated by the newspapers’ anxiety to unearth what they call a human story behind the impersonally vast amounts of money with which the Chancellor juggles.

Thus there was Mr. Heathcoat Amory feeding the birds on his window sill. There was Mr. Maudling’s comely young daughter suddenly bursting to fame as a film starlet after the press had discovered her. And this year there was Mr. Callaghan’s new dispatch box—symbolising, he promised us, a new era in the Treasury.

After this it came as no surprise when the Chancellor chose the old faithfuls of tobacco and alcohol to bear increased taxes. These are two of the fields where government control has established near-monopoly conditions, which enables prices to be high enough for the State to skim off a nice, creamy dollop of tax.

Many of the Budget's extra imposts were widely forecast by the financial journalists. These “experts” get their living by discussing the effects which the government's financial policies are supposed to have on the British economy. But while they predict in one breath that a certain tax will operate in a certain way, they have to admit in the next that the whole thing is unpredictable.

For example, Alan Day in The Observer:

. . . very large tax increases . . . are needed if the Government wants both to slow down inflation and to keep up a more reasonable pace of expansion of output

And in the same article:

The authors of last week’s Economic Report were clearly bewildered by the task even of explaining what happened last year . . . Any judgement about this year's developments must involve a high degree of uncertainty.

For example, Richard Fry in The Guardian:

. . . the Chancellor must devise his tax claims so that the total effect will have just the right impact on demand, production, and employment over the coming year. That is always a delicate and chancy operation and it will be harder than usual this year.

This confusion persists, even after the Budget is out Mr. Callaghan himself, in a television interview, admitted that he was not sure what the result of his Budget would be and that he could only hope his sums and forecasts would turn out right Nobody pointed out the obvious, that capitalism is a chaotic social system which cannot be planned or budgeted or controlled.

Workers, also, are confused by Budgets. They are convinced that what the Chancellor decides will have a significant effect on their livelihoods. In fact, with or without tax, everyone who has to work for a living gets a wage which is generally enough to reproduce their working energies and abilities.

Taxation is really a concern of the capitalist class. They are the class who need the vast State machine, the armed forces and their costly weapons. It is in their interests that State medical and social services are run. They are the only class who can afford to bear the immense tax burden.

These facts are not generally accepted. Budgets are excellent subjects for the customary political shadow-boxing between the Labour and Conservative parties, and this year’s was no exception. But no Budget has ever had more than a negligible effect upon the lives of the mass of the people. Their poverty and problems have deeper roots.

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that most workers ignore this, preferring to spend their time grumbling about a few pennies on or off beer, fags and the other consolations of their drab existence.

Ku-Klux-Klan

One of the results of the much-publicised Civil Rights activities in Selma, Alabama, and the murder of a white woman civil rights worker, has been to focus attention on that grotesque body the Ku-Klux-Klan.

The excesses of this gang of bigots and racketeers are too well known to need repeating, but they are probably nearing the end of the road. A mere shadow of their former selves, although still a murderous shadow, President Johnson’s violent attack on them, and the Congressional Committee of Investigation, that looks as if it means business, will probably finish them off.

After all, a powerful modern state like the U.S.A. cannot tolerate an Invisible Empire within its boundaries, that defies its laws and holds it up to contempt.

Perhaps just as important, this is a world in which a large number of independent states with predominately coloured populations exist, and are growing in importance. These have economic, political and military value to the United States, particularly as other powerful States are looking for opportunities to muscle in. American Capitalists do not want visiting diplomats or businessmen to be insulted or threatened because of their skin colour.

The Ku-Klux-Klan, with its lunatic mumbo-jumbo, with its Imperial Wizards, Exalted Cyclops, Klokards, Klokams and Nighthawks, to quote just a few, its passwords, bloodoaths and burning crosses, sound like an exaggerated form of such harmless but futile organisations as the Freemasons and the Buffalo’s.

Except that its purpose is terrorism. It is amazing that anyone should take it seriously, but the grim fact is that in its hey-day its membership ran into millions. Its childish costumes and antics make it sound like a schoolboy game or a joke, but it was no joke to the victims of its obscene brutality.

Based on an organisation that arose in the bitter aftermath of the American Civil War, and which flourished for only about three years during the Reconstruction period before being disbanded, the KKK was resurrected in the early years of this century.

Anti; foreigners, Jews. Catholics and Negroes, it appealed to the worst prejudices and the ignorance of the American working class. From time to time it has ridden on waves of hysteria to national importance, but most of the time its power has been more local. In the I930's it added Communists and “labour agitators” to its list of victims.

The progress of the Klan has been marked by a trail of misery. Murder, mutilation, flogging and branding have been amongst its methods, and although its end is probably in sight, as the time-bombs of Alabama show, it looks like making a bloody exit.

Cooking the Books: A fuss about NICs (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the week before the budget last October the i paper carried an article headlined ‘Reeves warned NI business tax will hit workers’ pay’ with the subheading ‘Experts say the comments by the Office for Budget Responsibility show increasing employer NI is a tax on “working people”’.

In the event Chancellor Rachel Reeves did increase employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs), which led the media and opposition parties to claim that the government had reneged on its promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’ (defined, in the end, as those in employment). We are far — very far — from holding a brief for the government, but the claim that the increase in employer NICs will push down wages doesn’t hold water.

In its comments for Reeves’s budget, the OBR repeated:

‘The specific changes to employer NICs increase the costs of employment for firms which is mainly assumed to be passed on to employees through lower real wages, and which also reduces employment.’

So, they weren’t actually saying that the increase would lead to this but that, in their calculations, they had assumed that it would. However, they didn’t explain why they assumed this.

As a measure that increases labour costs, it could be expected to have some effect on employment, but the assumption that it would lower ‘real wages’ (the amount wages can buy in relation to prices) is unwarranted. The OBR seems to have meant that it would result in employers increasing the price of what they are selling, resulting in workers being able to buy less with their wages. But this assumes that, faced with an increase in costs, employers can simply pass this on to consumers through increasing the price of their product, which is not the case.

The TUC understood the situation better. Employers, they pointed out, will:

‘have a range of options on how they can cover these increases. They can absorb the costs and many will choose this option. They could also raise productivity by investing in their business, raise the prices they charge customers, or seek to suppress wage growth in their organisation. It can be difficult to predict what balance of these approaches employers will opt for and it will vary greatly between firms and industries.

‘Workers will be particularly interested in the extent to which employers seek to shift the burden onto them by holding down wages. One thing is for certain – there is no automatic link between business tax and worker wages (…) how the costs are shared will depend on the growth trajectory of the business and economy and on the bargaining power of workers.’

This is substantially correct, although they could have also pointed out that the price increase option would only be open if any increase was ‘what the market will bear’.

It’s not true that a tax that increases employer labour costs would inevitably lead to lower pay. You can see this where labour costs are increased through workers obtaining a wage increase.

The employer would have the same options that the TUC mentions. If, as the OBR assumes, an increase in labour costs leads to ‘lower real wages’, then so should such an increase due to higher wages. It amounts to the old fallacy that an increase in wages is pointless as it merely leads to an increase in prices which nullifies it, a fallacy exposed by Marx in 1865 in his lecture to British trade unionists, later published as Value, Price and Profit.

Slicing the pork barrel thin (2024)

From the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party’s new autumn budget, presented by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, has made notable changes to universal credit and other benefits. However, these updates have raised concerns for vulnerable communities.

We’ve been speaking with people currently on benefits, universal credit, and Personal Independence Payments (PIP) about their experiences in the UK today.

Claire, 35, who transitioned from ESA to universal credit and works part-time in administration in Sheffield, is disabled due to genetic and autoimmune conditions. She also receives PIP. Claire says ‘The job centre is horrible; it’s not set up to support disabled people properly. They lack time, resources, and training.’

Toni, 44, is self-employed in events management in London, but her part-time universal credit isn’t enough. ‘I was fine when I worked in Europe; my business thrived for nearly a decade. But since Brexit, the cost of living crisis, and COVID, my business has tanked. Event venues are closing, and there are no opportunities for those without access to Europe. I have no options unless I retrain at my age!’

Starting in April 2025, benefits including universal credit will rise by just 1.7 percent. This means only a few extra pounds per month for claimants who have been struggling to make ends meet from one capitalist crisis to the next.

Claire believes the support is inadequate for disabled individuals wanting to work, saying it falls short of previous options like disabled tax credits, which provided more effective assistance.

Reeves announced a cap on universal credit deductions for debt repayments, lowering it from 25 percent to 15 percent of the standard allowance. This aims to ease financial pressure for over a million households, potentially saving them around £420 a year.

‘It’s disheartening,’ Claire reflects, on her feeling of alienation from society. When asked about the impact on her mental health, she added, ‘Yes, the challenges of universal credit deepen my sense of isolation.’

Toni feels society has abandoned her: ‘I worked hard for years and paid into the system, but when COVID hit, my business got no help. I was dumped on the dole and left to fend for myself, which only makes me feel more alienated’.

Claire adds ‘They’re just continuing the previous government’s policies. I didn’t agree with them then, and I still don’t. The system doesn’t support disabled people or consider different levels of disability.’

They’re also concerned about the new measure allowing the DWP direct access to bank accounts. This approach to combating fraud feels like a surveillance tactic that will erode trust among unemployed workers. What they feel they need are real job opportunities, not increased government intrusion into their lives.

Labour will uphold the Conservatives’ reforms to the work capability assessment, making it harder for disabled workers to qualify for the highest level of incapacity benefits. This could affect over 420,000 people, resulting in a loss of about £5,000 in annual support for many.

A new £240 million ‘Get Britain Working’ initiative aims to provide work, skills, and health support for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions. This includes the already controversial idea of sending job coaches into mental health wards to push the severely ill back into work.

The earnings threshold for carer’s allowance will rise to £10,000 a year, allowing more unpaid carers to qualify for support. However, we note that the broader social care system remains underfunded and profit-driven.

Labour has also decided to keep the two-child limit on benefits, which denies extra support for families with more than two children and pushes many deeper into poverty.

Claire expressed her concerns about no longer receiving cost of living payments and the reduced eligibility for the Warm Home Discount, making it harder for her to heat her home amid rising costs.

The budget fails to adequately address the financial strain on the UK’s most vulnerable. Small increases, targeting the working poor with threats of prosecution and debt recovery measures, don’t meet the real needs of those struggling, especially when many families rely on food banks or multiple jobs just to get by.

Claire remarked, ‘We will struggle even more than before.’ She envisions a truly socialist society prioritising adequate material support and holistic health care for everyone.

Neither the Labour Party nor the Tories can solve these issues. The current government may offer minor increases, but they remain trapped in a system that prioritises market whims over people’s needs. ‘The market giveth, and the market taketh away.’

Names have been changed to avoid potential targeting or sanctions.

A.T.

Cooking the Books: No such thing as a workers’ budget (2024)

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

‘What would be a workers’ Budget?’ the Trotskyist Workers’ Liberty asked on Budget Day. With graffiti on a wall saying ‘Tax the Rich’ as an illustration, the article expounded:

‘A workers’ budget would tax the rich heavily’. ‘A workers’ budget would rebuild public services and restore real wages and benefits’. ‘Increase corporation tax’. ‘No easing of the rules can square the circle and win the resources needed to rebuild public services and real wages without taking from the millionaires’.

Taxing the rich to increase wages and benefits and provide better public services is fantasy politics. It’s not going to happen and, if it was tried, would precipitate a massive economic crisis.

The article cites a calculation that ‘a wealth tax, increased capital gains tax, and a few other items could raise £50 billion a year’, but that’s only 6.25 percent of the £800 billion currently spent on health, education, and pensions and other benefits. So the bulk of the money ‘to rebuild public services and real wages’ would have to come from taxing profits. The article mentions doubling corporation tax to over 50 percent of profits (but even that wouldn’t raise enough). This would reduce both the incentive and the amount for private corporations to re-invest in maintaining and expanding production. Hence, the reduction in production and a massive increase in unemployment.

The slogan ‘Tax the Rich’ assumes the continued existence of the rich, the continued division of society into the rich and the rest, into a class which owns the means of production and lives off an unearned property income (profit, interest or rent) and a class which, excluded from such ownership, depends on working for an employer for a wage or salary.

The assumption is that the rich should continue to exploit the workers but that part (most) of their income should be taxed away to pay for higher wages and better public services for the rest. It is the fantasy of capitalism being made to serve the interests of the non-capitalist majority.

The absurdity, let alone the infeasibility, of such a social arrangement — the capitalist as capitalist for the benefit of the working class — is obvious.

Some naive leftwingers might believe in this but we doubt if the leaders of Trotskyist groups do. For them, proposals for a ‘workers’ budget’ will be an application of the cynical tactic of proposing something to attract worker support but which they know won’t work, in the expectation that, when it doesn’t, the disillusioned workers who fell for it will turn to them for leadership in an assault on the capitalist state.

Real socialists are honest. We say that under capitalism there can be no such thing as a ‘workers’ budget’ as this implies that capitalism could be made to operate in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. But experience has repeatedly shown that it can’t. The only budget that there can be is a capitalists’ budget.

What the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, set out on 30 October was what the British capitalist state plans to spend in the next tax year (which in the UK, for some odd historical reason, starts in April) and how it intends to pay for it.

The various measures she announced were based on the supposition that the government can bring about growth. But it can’t. The most it can do is to create conditions that could encourage business investment. This in fact is what all budgets have to try to do and why they must all be capitalists’ budgets. There can be no such thing as a workers’ budget.

Blogger's Note:

A leading member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, Martin Thomas, replied to this column on their website.

Cooking the Books: Pocket money (2024)

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

At the end of August Starmer proclaimed that ‘things will get worse’ but that later they will ‘get better’. There is, he said, ‘a budget coming in October, and it’s going to be painful’, adding ‘we have no other choice’ (tinyurl.com/yc3tt3u3). By now we will know how painful and in what way.

Only as recently as May the Labour Party was promising to deliver ‘more money in people’s pockets [their emphasis in bold], improving living standards everywhere and helping working people keep more of the wealth that they create’ (tinyurl.com/2yz4j8se).

Some 40 percent or so of the adult population in the UK get a part of their money income from the government such as child benefit, state pension or universal credit. The government can also increase the minimum wage, and it can reduce income tax rates resulting in take-home pay going up. So it does have some power to literally put ‘more money in people’s pockets’.

It also has the power to take money out of people’s pockets. We already knew that the present government has the will to do this as one of the first things it did on entering office was to cut most pensioners’ income by £300. So when this government says it will make things get worse, that’s one politician’s pledge that we can be sure will be honoured.

This doesn’t necessarily have to take the form of reducing the nominal amount of money paid to people. It could also take the form of not increasing this more than the rise in the price level. Otherwise, how else could workers get to ‘keep more of the wealth that they create’?

What Starmer was implying was that the Labour government was going to inflict pain on people by reneging on its promise to put more money in their pockets. He is claiming that this is needed as a condition for things to get better later. ‘To accept short term pain for long term good’, as he put it. It’s a line that workers have often being sold — you’ll get jam tomorrow if you tighten your belts today.

The jam tomorrow is presented as a growing economy that will bring the government more in tax revenue and so enable it to ‘put more money in people’s pockets’ by increasing benefits or reducing income tax as well as to spend more to improve education, the health service and social amenities generally. But while the government does have the power to make things worse in the short term, it doesn’t have the power to create a growing economy. That, therefore, is essentially nothing more than a hope.

It is possible that the economy will grow a little faster but this would not be as a consequence of what the government may do. The capitalist economy moves through a never-ending series of boom-slump cycles and the Starmer government could be lucky and still be in office when it enters a boom phase. This won’t last of course since sooner or later the economic downturn phase will follow. And then workers will again be asked to tighten their belts in the hope of jam tomorrow.

Editorial: The Labour Party’s Budget. (1931)

Editorial from the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the Land Tax Socialism ?

When the Countess of Iveagh, a Conservative M.P., told a meeting of her party, as reported in the Southend Standard on May 21st, that she could see behind the Budget, and particularly behind the proposed Land Tax, “the pure Socialistic principle that private ownership should cease,” she was putting a point of view that finds expression alike in The Times and the Daily Herald. Have we not been assured for many years by the Labour Party leaders that their Budgets would be instruments for procuring bold social changes, and would, for that reason, be strikingly different from the unimaginative and orthodox financial measures of the Churchills and Lloyd Georges ?

Is there, then, ground for the fears of the Countess? Are we about to witness a great frontal attack upon the existing social system? The Government professes to attach great importance to the Land Tax, and even one of their harshest critics, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who recently resigned his ministerial post as a protest against their inertia, is enthusiastic for this one measure. His enthusiasm is inspired by the example of Vienna, where a Land Tax has been used by the Municipality to subsidise the building of working-class houses.

Nevertheless, these hopes and fears, so far as they relate to the wage earners, are groundless. The Land Tax is capitalist in origin and in effect, and has nothing whatever to do with Socialism. Sir Charles Trevelyan, forced to admit that it was a Liberal proposal, brought forward by Mr. Lloyd George 25 years ago, lamely seeks to gloss it over by describing the pre-war Liberals who were pushing the proposal as “Socialist-Liberals”—whatever that, may mean (New Leader, May 15th). He could have chosen no better example than Vienna to show the uselessness of the Land Tax to the workers. It is true that the Vienna Municipality taxed the land owners to build houses for workers at very low rents, but the effect of thus reducing the workers’ cost of living has been to facilitate a reduction, in their wages by a corresponding amount. The land owners have been taxed, not for the benefit of the workers, but of the employers. Here, as in Austria and elsewhere, in order to carry on the administration of capitalism, the Government needs revenue. Taxation, in the last resort, can be paid only by those who have property, and the controversies about the kind and amount of taxes are disputes between the sections of the propertied class as to which of them shall foot the bill. If this is a correct view of the situation, we would expect to find the Land Tax welcomed by certain sections of the capitalist class who stand to gain thereby; and, indeed, we find this to be the case. The following are comments from various capitalist newspapers, politicians, and business men.

The Daily Mail (April 29th), in its editorial, puts the Conservative point of view : —

“The new duty on land values will be received with favour even in the Conservative party, subject, of course, to the terms of the measure when they are made known.

For some unexplained reason urban land has hitherto escaped its fair share of taxation in this country. The position is very different in the United States, where land values in the great cities have long been subjected to taxation for State and municipal purposes, and at a rate much higher than Mr. Snowden proposes. In Mr. Snowden’s scheme agricultural land is to be exempted, so that the new duties will not affect farmers and small holders.

Such being the circumstances, it may be difficult for the Conservative leaders to prove that the proposed land tax is unreasonable, when it is regarded by the majority of voters as overdue. There could be no worse point upon which to fight an election when the next dissolution comes. The now scheme should then not be condemned out of hand.”

The Daily Herald’s Lobby Correspondent confirmed this :—

“Now the Conservatives realise that the taxes on urban land will be popular in most quarters, especially among business men, and that it would be bad ground to fight on.”—(Daily Herald, April 30th.)

The Daily Express’s Lobby Correspondent reported similarly : —

“The Conservatives, acquiescing in the principle of Mr. Snowden’s plan, will concentrate their attack on the details.”—(Daily Express, May 4th.)

Sir John Corcoran, director of the National Union of Manufacturers, gave his opinion, and presumably the opinion of his Association, to the Daily Herald (April 28th) :—

“If Mr. Snowden can levy the land tax without too much cost and in such a way that it will not have the effect of withholding development, the scheme may be practicable.”

Lord Melchett, director of coal, oil, and chemical concerns, also gave qualified approval (Daily Herald, April 28th).

What is true of the Land Tax is true of the Budget as a whole. It embodies no principle of any significance whatever to the workers. It makes no inroads into the power of the capitalists, and is, in fact, hardly distinguishable from former Tory Budgets. Mr. Churchill, the last Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, put the point neatly in the debate in the House of Commons on April 29th : —

“I shall deal with the general question of the Budget, and the House will naturally not be astonished if I say that I listened to the Budget speech with amusement, which almost rose into hilarity. (Laughter.) I could hardly believe my ears as I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer unfold a long series of proposals which were virtually an acceptance in fact and in form of the financial measures and expedients which I devised and practised, and which he derided and condemned. (Laughter.) As one by one those familiar shades arose from that side of the table, and as I recall to memory all the criticisms and scathing censures he had lavished upon each of them, I wondered whether I had not perhaps left behind some of my old Budget notes and that one of his able secretaries had, by mistake, put them into the Chancellors’ famous red box.”—(Times, April 30th.)

The I.L.P. is, as usual, divided in its attitude, but will, of course, go to the aid of the Government if there is danger of a defeat, no matter what the Government does and no matter what opinion the I.L.P. may decide to express about the merits of the Government’s measures. While Sir Charles Trevelyan supports the Land Tax, another I.L.P. Member of Parliament, described as a “leading member of the I.L.P. Group,” is quoted by the New Leader (May 1st) as saying of the Budget :

“Until Land Values were mentioned, it was a Tory statement. Then it became Liberal. Of Socialism, not a comma ! In other words, it is to be Toryism this year. Liberalism in two years’ time, and Socialism in the year X.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Brailsford, also of the I.L.P., writing in the New Leader on May10th, laments the Land Tax because it will encourage the use of land for commercial purposes and so disfigure the landscape. In the past, other members of the I.L.P. have advocated the Land Tax precisely for the purpose of promoting commercial development.

On the subject of the social reforms promised by the Labour Party, it is interesting to have Mr. Snowden’s admission that his views coincide with those of Gladstone—this from the party that regards Marx as out-of-date !

“I have always agreed with Mr. Gladstone’s rule that in times of industrial depression it is better to use our resources to stimulate trade than to make undue sacrifices. It is in times of prosperity that we can afford to lessen the intolerable burden of debt and so liberate resources for schemes of economic and social reform.”—(Daily Herald, April 28th.)

Any workers who are disappointed with the Labour Party’s Budget may derive some comfort from the announcement by the City Editor of the Daily Express (April 28th) that—

“The Budget was favourably received in the City.”

We can now point out to the Countess of Iveagh that behind the Land Tax proposals and the Budget generally we see, not Socialist theory, but a motley band of Liberal, Labour, and Conservative newspapers, politicians and business men, differing among themselves only on the question of the best method of administering the capitalist system.

A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lloyd George’s Budget certainly got the welcome he knew it would get from the “Labour” movement. The only feature to be regretted, from their point of view, is the forgetfulness of the Chancellor to acknowledge its source. Apart from that, it is hailed as being “on the right lines,” “a step on the way,” etc. Although Mr. Lloyd George doesn’t see his way clear to “relieve the working classes of the amount of taxation which they were called upon to bear” (vide Mr. Philip Snowden), it yet was comforting to know that a beginning was to be made in the way of doing something to relieve the heavy burden on local rates!.

* * *

On somewhat similar lines is the election manifesto of Mr. Jas. Martin, Labour candidate for N.E. Derbyshire. He goes “straight for the abolition of food taxes.” He favours also the “nationalisation of the mines and railways, which would not only cheapen coal and travel, but [mark this] provide revenue for the Exchequer” !

As if that was not enough to stamp Mr. Martin as a full-blown Liberal, he proceeds to give us the full Liberal programme with all its trimmings. He believes in Free Trade, Home Rule, and Land Reform—in fact, all that a respectable Liberal stands for. Strangely enough, he is opposed by another Liberal candidate. This, I believe, is due to some misunderstanding which has caused a split in the “Progressive forces.” Mr. Martin’s candidature is endorsed by the Miners’ Federation and the Labour Party. Though he was standing with the assent of the Derbyshire Miners’ Association, yet a large proportion of delegates at the adoption of the orthodox Liberal were members of that body. I don’t blame them : they couldn’t tell t’other from which.

The Labour election agent, Mr. A. Peters, declares that the miners have spent £10,000 within the last few years in order to maintain their position in the county. Can you wonder ?

* * *

One thing stands out clear in the diverse reports that reach us concerning the trouble in Mexico. That is that both General Huerta and General Carranza have given assurances that oil wells shall be protected during the fighting. Why ? Because these wells are chiefly the cause of the trouble. Ask Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust. Ask any of the greedy sharks in this country whose eyes are glued on Mexico. Huerta, representing Mexican interests, wants to preserve the oil wells for Mexico; Carranza, representing British and American capitalists, wants them for his masters.

Mexico is one of the richest mineral countries in the world—that is why all the world wants it. When oil was discovered during the Diaz regime, it was not long before the far-off nostrils of the capitalist wolves scented it. Then commenced the trouble. Diaz wouldn’t “sell out,” so means were adopted to make him “get out.” His successor looks like traversing the same road. Thus are the “rights” of capital vindicated.

Smug respectability, sitting at home in England, wonders what it is all about. “Why the devil don’t these fellows set to work instead of fighting each other, and let us earn our dividends ? This sort of thing lowers the rate, don’t you know !”

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Yes, we know. In Colorado, for instance, it is lowering the rate—of the population. They call it “Rockefeller’s war.” It is a typical industrial war—all one-sided. The capitalists have the full forces of the country at their disposal. The miners—only dogged determination and what few arms they are able to get hold of. Men, women, and children have been shot or sabred that shareholders may have their dividends. Women and children, have had to tramp the streets because their homes had been burned over their heads, in order that investors should have a “fair return” on their capital. And we are told there is no class war !

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May Day in this country seems to have resolved itself into a sort of rounding-up of recalcitrant and other sheep, into the Labour fold. As usual, the Labour Party were out in full force. Everywhere the same note was struck—emphasis on the importance of joining a trade union, electing leaders, sending them to Parliament, but, above all, being “loyal” to them. You see, the more members the bigger the unions ; the bigger the unions the more “leaders” required, and incidentally, the more soft jobs for the professional spongers.

We, on the other hand, don’t believe in making a hullaballoo once every twelve months. Instead, we engage in a steady, persistent propaganda of Socialist principles on every day in the year. One can understand these job-hunters not liking us and our work. Whereas they believe in the retention of the capitalist system, we work for its abolition. Its abolition would put them out of business.

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Old Age Pensions have proved a grand thing—for the capitalists. Recent returns relating to pauperism in England and Wales issued by the Local Government Board show that since 1909 there has been a decrease of more than 200,000. That this is due in a large measure to the introduction of Old Age Pensions is proved by the fact that in 1906 the number of paupers over 70 years of age was 229,474, whereas at the beginning of 1913 the number had fallen to 56,770.

This means that whilst formerly it just about 13s. 8d. per head to keep paupers inside a workhouse, they can now get them completely off their hands for the modest sum of five shillings. On this the pensioners have to subsist as best they can—usually with assistance from friends and relations, thus contributing directly to the further impoverishment of those who are already poor.

Old Age Pensions having fulfilled their mission of getting the aged people off the hands of the capitalists, the Poor Law authorities are now looking round for some device to rid themselves of those under 70. The Lambeth Board of Guardians have, so far, been the most successful. The experiment they tried was to send the inmates to look for work ! All they had to do was to go out and get a job, come back for the missus and kids, and—there you are ! Goodbye ! Simple, isn’t it ? At this rate there soon won’t be any Poor Law for Mr. Sidney Webb to worry about.

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Here is an example of the effect the above system has upon people who try to remain outside the Poor Law. It was brought to light at a Westminster inquest recently, and showed the hopeless struggle of an aged couple who tried to live on 12s. a week, of which 4s. 6d. had to go for rent. The victim of this hellish system was Mary Ann Russell, aged 72, of Pimlico, who was found with her throat cut.

Her husband, a grey-haired labourer of 67, said he had been out of work for thirteen weeks, and his wife had been much depressed in consequence. Their income consisted of 7s. from his National Insurance payments (which expired the week after the inquest) and 5s. her Old Age Pension. They owed rent, and it was more than the old lady could face. “We lived very happily together, sir,” said the old man, with tears streaming down his face, “but it’s too much to bear.”

Tom Sala