Mud slinging (2026)

From the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you ever go on social media sites that discuss Marx, it’s likely that you’ll come across a post that claims to refute/debunk his ideas. One of the common charges against Marx is that his theory of value, based on labour-time, is untenable because not all labour produces value. The evidence for this? The mud pie.

Now it’s true that, however many mud pies you make, however much labour-time you expend on that task, you won’t create any value. So surely, Marx got it wrong…. And if his theory of value falls, so does the entire edifice of Marx’s economics.

But here’s why the mud pie argument doesn’t work. References below are to Capital Volume 1.

First, we ought to remind ourselves that, at root, Marx is dealing with an issue that is key to human existence: the labour process, by which ‘Nature’s material [is] adapted by a change of form to the wants of man’ (chapter 7 section 1), a process which creates useful things, otherwise known as use-values. At a certain time in human history the results of this process take the form of the commodity.

To drive home the point, a commodity is ‘an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another’ (chapter 1, section 1).

When the commodity appears in history, so too does value and ‘Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne, but it must be embodied in a use value of some kind’ (chapter 7 section 2).

Lastly, from chapter 8 ‘Value exists only in articles of utility, in objects’.

The takeaway message: Marx’s theory applies to human beings carrying out productive activity to satisfy real needs and wants, not to a child making mud pies (or sandcastles).

By the way, the people who put forwards the mud pie argument have plainly never even opened a copy of Capital, let alone read or understood it. The only reason for dealing with this infantile guff in the Socialist Standard is that the argument re-appears regularly online, presumably on the assumption that if you keep throwing mud, some of it will stick.

Budgie.

Trust me, I’m a reformist (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember Kaa, the snake in the cartoon version of The Jungle Book? A thoroughly dangerous and treacherous constrictor whose one interest in life is to get his coils around Mowgli and squeeze the life out of the poor lad.He nearly manages it too, with his hypnotic eyes and the lisped lyrics of a song that goes:

‘Trusst in me, jusst in me, shut your eyes and trusst in me’.

And if you were to look for a common denominator of all the reformist parties currently slithering around in front of the working class, whatever the details of the various plans they’ve hatched to ensure a wonderful future for the likes of you and me, it would surely be this plea to ‘Trusst in me’.

And they all echo one of Kaa’s follow-up lines, ‘You can sleep safe and sound, knowing I am around’.

And if you reckon that you will be able to sleep safe and sound by once again voting to hand over the administration of the capitalist system to any of these reformists, you are heading for yet another rude awakening. Because, as we will never tire of reminding you, the system cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority. The minority’s interest will and must always come first.

And unlike the fictional Kaa, who was after just one quick fatal squeeze, in the real world we’re trapped in the coils of a system that is designed to keep squeezing us to provide its owners with profit.

Budgie

Rootless (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Grassroots Left, one of the factions within new leftist political grouping Your Party, says in the programme for the central executive committee of the party: ‘Our goal is to bring an end to capitalism, a socially and ecologically destructive system driven by the profit motive and private ownership of the means of production, and replace it with a socialist society organised to meet people’s needs, not generate profit’ (tinyurl.com/ysjhycp9).

Wonderful, they want to bring an end to capitalism! Well…. no, they are regurgitating Old Labour nonsense from decades ago because they go on to say that they want to have ‘key sections of the economy owned and democratically controlled by the people who work in them and depend upon them’.

We wonder what those key sections are. Shipbuilding? Steel? Textiles? Nah, too late mate, all gone. According to current UK government figures, service industries (care homes, education, estate agents, advertising, and of course banks and insurance companies, the latter four being of sod all use except in a capitalist society) account for 81 percent of total UK economic ‘output’.

And if they did get their way, given they are talking about the UK only, how do they intend to manage the interchange of wealth between this services economy with the world capitalist economy, ever hungry for profits? We don’t have a clue, and neither do they.

Then what happens when the capitalist economy goes into recession, as it inevitably will? Which of these geniuses will have the task of wringing their hands as they take the so sad decision of cutting services and jobs?

How many workers are going to fall for such tripe? Probably not many, but it will help capitalism as it will sow even more confusion in workers’ minds as to the real meaning of socialism.

Budgie

Capital vs the environment (2025)

 

From the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the scientists are right, humanity is facing a climate emergency. There has been much hand-wringing at the many COP-out meetings, but little protection has been afforded to the environment. In fact, the damage seems to be increasing. This should come as no surprise, as socialists have long argued that the capitalist system of production prevents rational stewardship of the planet. The five features of the system set out here show why this is so.

1. The economic status quo

The ownership/control of the world’s productive resources is in the hands of a small minority – via ‘legal title’, as with private capital, or via membership of a clique that controls a state. Yet this ownership/control is fragmented, creating a host of competing interests among that minority.

To consider the implications of this fragmentation, let’s imagine there’s an individual capitalist, Bill, the sole owner of a factory where copper pipe is produced, a standard product sold to industrial customers. All of Bill’s money is tied up in the factory, and the business provides him with an income that means he has no need to do any work himself.

This also means that, if he is to maintain his status as part of the minority, he is absolutely reliant on the continuing success of the business (and who can blame him for wanting to maintain his status? Who would willingly swap the relative freedom of the capitalist for the life of a worker?). However, Bill has no monopoly over copper pipe. His factory is competing in a market and, as any capitalist knows, competition means ‘expand or die’. So what does Bill have to do to avoid economic death?

Experience shows that competition constantly forces businesses to adopt new technologies to increase productivity, that is, to reduce the amount of labour used in their production processes, and produce more in the same amount of time. So Bill will be obliged to use much of the income generated by his company to bring in modern equipment.

One of the facts of new technology is that it won’t be new forever. Sooner or later, there’s no telling when, it will be overtaken by even newer tech that will tend to depress market prices. This means that Bill will have to ensure his new tech runs as fast as it will go to get as much of his product out of the door before prices drop, before his now outdated technology becomes relatively less productive or even economically unusable. This of course means an increase in the use of raw materials and in output – more pipe will be thrown onto the market.

And remember, competitors will be trying to match or better what Bill is doing, so demand for raw materials and output will be multiplied across the pipe-making sector.

A minor detail of new technology is that ‘early adopters’ expect to undercut their competitors for a while and gain market share. But this advantage will only persist until the new technology becomes the norm. This gives an additional impetus to increase production in the meantime, and of course, increase the use of raw materials.

The increased production in Bill’s sector cannot continue ad infinitum. Sooner or later, an imbalance, where supply exceeds demand, will occur. This will usually result in smaller, less productive companies being forced out of business. Supply will align more with demand, until competition creates a new imbalance. (The slump phase of the general business cycle would have a similar effect on Bill’s sector, but that is beyond the scope of the present analysis.)

2. Production for profit

Nothing is produced under the capitalist system unless there is an expectation of profit. In general, although rates of profit will vary, profits are made most of the time (even in a time of economic crisis when lots of businesses go to the wall, there is money capital around to pick up industrial assets at ‘fire sale’ prices which can then be exploited profitably). This increases the amount of money capital that, in light of the competition discussed above, has to be re-invested in some sort of productive process. Hence the staggering amount of wealth in the form of industrial assets that has accumulated under the capitalist system. And it is the very same competition that ensures that these assets can never be left idle for any extended period of time. They must always be put to use, putting new demands on natural resources.

3. The scramble for sales

What has been said above applies to every type of company, be it private, a PLC or workers’ cooperative. It applies too to every sector of capitalist production, be it ship-building, production of industrial robots or the garment trade. But there is an additional factor that operates when we consider the production of personal consumption goods – furniture, clothing, cars and the like.

As we saw above, capital is always on the look-out for profits. In the personal consumption goods sector, this results in the use of cheap materials, planned obsolescence and rapid turnover of fashions, anything in fact that will result in more sales. And on a more general level, it leads to the promotion of individual ownership when public provision would be a far more efficient use of resources (think public transport and laundries, tool libraries, even clothes libraries – why not, it works for wedding suits, doesn’t it?)

4. Anarchic production

The conflict of interests within the owning class makes the rational planning of production (and hence rational use of resources) impossible under the capitalist system. So at the time of writing, (August 2025) there is world overcapacity in, for example, steel, cars, and chemicals.

5. A ‘political’ dimension

Even though capital has now created a world market, individual nation-states, a hangover from capital’s early days, still have a role in protecting the common interests of ‘their’ owning class. So as we are seeing at present, the overcapacity that tends to arise from the economics of capitalist production can also be created or exacerbated by national industrial policies (eg the Chips Act in the US and the ‘Made in China 2025’ policy in China). Although this feature appears to be political, it derives directly from the underlying economic structure.

Budgie.

“Bots batter Boffs” (2025)

From the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

As an avid sci-fi fan I just couldn’t resist the front cover of a recent Daily Star (24 February) with its picture of a killer robot and the headline BOTS BATTER BOFFS, especially as a textbox promised the ‘Full Story’, written by no less than the chief reporter.

So, dear reader, I bought a copy and, rushing to page 9, I learned that software development jobs are now about 30 percent fewer than five years ago, and that tech workers are afraid of redundancy because AI is now able to do some entry-level programming.

The whole tone of the piece seems to be about smarty pants nerds getting their come-uppance. And those smarty pants must be pretty dumb after all, because they didn’t realise that their own efforts would put their livelihoods at risk. Maybe some of the Star’s readers even found it funny or comforting to know that other workers have shitty lives too.

Unsurprisingly, the chief reporter’s ‘Full story’ was nothing of the sort. He forgot to draw his readers’ attention to the fact that he was describing one of the glaring contradictions of the capitalist system. By which we mean that the advance in industrial technology that AI represents, in one way is very positive, as it increases productivity in a whole range of applications.

But for us, the workers, in economic terms, it becomes a negative. It will tend to result in (1) deskilling, which in turn will put pressure on wages, and (2) a reduction in the demand for labour power (while conversely, by throwing people out of work, increasing its supply), which will also tend to force wages down.

And this is a feature that affects all industries and all workers all around the world. It has done so ever since the capitalist form of production came into existence. Because lower production costs, including wages, are for the capitalist, the key aim when introducing new technologies and techniques as they give (at least) a temporary advantage in the cut-throat competition between capitalists.

By the way, these advances are almost always the combined results of the efforts of workers, not the capitalists. Just one more good reason, if you needed it, for getting rid of the entire rotten system.

Budgie.

Try thinking (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life’s a bag of shite and then you die. I wonder how many times you’ve heard that.

One of my mates even goes a bit further. He says you’re dead lucky to get the bag with it.

Well anyway. I was walking past a church close to where I live a few months back and I saw they’d put up a banner that reads Try Praying. Turned out that the slogan had been thought up by some folk near me. So I thought I might give it a go. After all, times are pretty rough for loads of people round here, not just myself.

It was a well-produced banner too, and hanging outside quite a nice building that gets a modest amount of footfall of a Sunday. Not as much as the boozer down the road but that’s another matter

So for a while I gave it my best shot. I dredged up a few phrases that I remember from my schooldays and even threw in a few of my own making. I didn’t ask for anything for myself, mind, I wasn’t after a 49-inch telly or a big house. Just general things like world peace and an end to hunger and poverty, the type of thing that all the religion bigwigs like the Pope and the Dalai Lama bang on about.

If you’ve seen the news recently, you’ll know how effective my praying was… because bugger all happened.

My mates said I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Things are as they are because that’s how they are, that’s life so stop your whingeing.

I can understand how easy it is to go along with that attitude – there’s so much stuff in the world that looks so complicated that you don’t even want to try to get your head around it.

But I’m not giving up that easily. I reckon things can be changed. I’m even tempted to put up my own banner outside my house, one that reads Try Thinking.

Now, I reckon there’s a good chance that like the vast majority of people on this planet, me included, you chose to be born in the wrong bed. Now I don’t necessarily mean that your family was really skint, although that could be true as well, I mean a family that has to work to earn a living. If you did, that was a crucial mistake. It probably means that you’re going to be a human resource, lumbered with boring work/unemployment/zero-hours contracts/insecure tenancies or stranglehold mortgages – I could go on but you know what I’m talking about – that bag of shite I mentioned just now.

Consider this for a moment, will you? All around the world, most real wealth is in the hands of an increasingly small minority. And what do they do with that wealth? First answer, they make damn sure that they keep their mitts firmly on it, and out of your reach. And who can blame them?

But that’s not the issue – the important thing is the effect of their ownership or control on production. It means that, by and large things are only ever made if there is a potential for profit. Seems crazy, but the latest fashion wasn’t produced to make you look fabulous, it was made by a human resource working in some crap-hole, maybe Leicester, maybe Vietnam, so that an employer can make some brass by flogging it on to you. Now producing for profit has all sorts of insane results. One of its minor faults is that it buggers up the planet – you know all that – if you don’t, go on Google. And every so often…. the markets come grinding to a halt and loads of people end up out of a job.

And you must have heard the joke about there being too much month at the end of the money. Producing for profit relies on keeping us not quite so skint that we can’t manage to go back into work next week, and skint enough to ensure that we bloody well do go back.

And then the sort of stuff that we can afford out of our wages is designed down to a price so it usually turns out to be a load of tat anyway, soon to be binned or fobbed off on a charity shop. Well, that’s what real life is like for us human resources.

There’s nothing natural about a situation where a minority can live it up while the rest of us just scrape by. This may have been going on for many years but there is no physical law that says that society has to be this way. The fact is that there is no longer any need for the capitalist system that has now taken over almost the entire world. My mates are wrong, change can happen, but it needs you and your mates to make it happen.

Budgie