Cooking the Books: Housing: the market versus promises (2026)

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

One of Labour’s election promises in 2024 was to build 1.5 million new houses by the end of its normal term in office in 2029. Actually, it wasn’t a promise that the government would itself organise the building of this number of houses but a promise that it would create conditions in which profit-seeking housing ‘developers’ would.

This made achieving the 1.5 million target dependent on it being profitable for the house-building firms to build that many new houses. Which was why, in an article in February 2025, we expressed scepticism about Labour being able to meet its target as it had no control over which way the market would turn. ‘The 1.5 million target,’ we wrote, ‘will only be met if the market expands enough’. Now, analysts are concluding that the market won’t expand to that extent.

An article in the Times (4 May) by Tom Haywood headed ‘Mayday: distressing signs in housing data’ and subtitled ‘Labour’s 1.5m target may be dead in the water after a steep fall in property enquiries’ is a case in point. Noting that a survey of estate agents covering March ‘showed the steepest monthly drop in new buyer enquiries in almost three years’, Haywood wrote:

‘All of this is yet another blow to Labour’s ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million homes by the end of 2029, which now looks close to impossible. The government needs developers to be busier, not quieter, given that they will only build when they can sell at the price they need to make a decent return for shareholders’ (our emphasis).

Precisely. As further evidence, and more convincing than one month’s figures, Haywood noted that hedge funds are betting that the share prices of house-builders and their suppliers will fall in the future, an indication that these vulture capitalists are not expecting the companies they have targeted to make much profit in the next few years. The betting takes the form of ‘short selling’, in which the vultures borrow shares at their current price, sell them, buy them back at their expected future lower price, then return them to the original owners and pocket the difference. Money, apparently, is also to be made from houses not being built!

Faced with rising costs but falling demand, house-builders are unable to pass on to potential buyers all the increased costs and so ‘are struggling to make the economics of projects in the capital stack up’, but not just in London as one survey ‘found that it was not financially viable to build homes in almost half of England.’

There is not much the government can do to make building houses more profitable. Why, then, does the government not give money to local councils to build more houses, as certain naive reformists are demanding? Well, for a start, it hasn’t got the money to give or, rather, could only take it from profits either through increased taxes (these ultimately fall on profits) or borrow it at a higher interest rate that would have to be paid from profits. Which no government, under economic pressure to give priority to profit-making, as all governments of capitalism are, can do, at least not without making general economic conditions worse.

Under capitalism, where houses are commodities produced for profit, there is no way out. Houses will only be produced directly for use — simply for people to live in — when this is the aim of all production. And that is possible only when the resources to produce what people need cease to be managed by profit-seeking companies pursuing ‘a decent return for shareholders’ and become the common heritage of all under democratic control.

Finance and Industry: How many millionaires (1962)

The Finance and Industry column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many millionaires

When the Inland Revenue Report for the year 1960-61 was published in January it showed that while in the previous year there had been 66 individuals with incomes above £100,000 a year, the number has now dropped to 60. The Evening News called it “Britain’s Vanishing Millionaires.”

It is not the Inland Revenue officials who are responsible for calling these people millionaires, but the newspapers nave long worked on the assumption that when a man’s income, before payment of tax, gets above the £100,000 mark (roughly £2,000 a week) his property of all kinds is probably above £1,000,000.

The number has varied a great deal. In 1938 it was 99. Then it dropped more or less steadily till it touched 38 in 1949 and 37 in 1952. Then it started rising again and reached 67 in 1958 before declining to 66 and now to 60.

In this century the peak seems to have been reached in 1921 when they numbered 208. As taxation is much higher and the purchasing power of each pound is much less than it was then, the very rich must find that things aren’t what they used to be. Even so, taking the official figures for 1958-9, the 2,700 people who had incomes over £20,000 had an average income of about £34,400 before paying tax and were left with an average of about £5,550 after paying tax —about £100 a week.

But Mr. Bernard Harris, city editor of the Sunday Express (5/11/62) gave it as his view that the number of people in the millionaire class as regards ownership of property far exceeds the number with incomes above £100,000 a year. His explanation is that in order avoid high death duties most of the very rich take steps in time to hand over the bulk of their property to their heirs.

“. . . for every one who died a millionaire there were probably 10 who divested themselves of part of their wealth in order to lose that distinction and qualify for smaller death duties. So it is a pretty safe conjecture that the number of millionaires and tax-conscious ex-millionaires ill Britain today is well over a thousand.”

As an example of this business of transferring property to escape heavy death duties the Daily Express (8/2/62) had the following:

“The Earl of St. Germans, 48, who has had a remarkable success with a London bookmaking firm called Nicholas Eliot, is to make over all his family estates, worth around £1,000,000, to his 21 year old son and heir Lord Eliot.”

The estates to be transferred include 6,000 acres in Cornwall, but not the turf accounting business.

A nice job

In the House of Commons on January 30 the Assistant Postmaster General, Miss Mervin Pike, was asked what is the weekly wage of Post Office men, Cleaners, Doorkeepers and Liftmen. She replied: “£8 16s. a week. The rates in outer and inner London are greater by 10s. to £1 respectively. This is the same as is paid to non-industrial male cleaners in the Civil Service generally.”

“. . . Asked if this wage is not ridiculously low” Miss Pike,, who clearly lacked the inclination to attempt lo justify it, took refuge in the argument that inquiry had shown Post Office cleaners to be getting more than is paid in industry generally.

These cleaners and others are among the Post Office workers whose claim for higher pay the Government rejected last year.

Accidents

This century has witnessed a great increase in the number of industrial accidents, that is to say, in the number of accidents that have to be reported and become recorded in official publications. But what of those that do not have to be reported?

The reportable accidents are those which are fatal or which disable the worker for more than three days from earning full wages for the work at which he is employed.

Within this definition the Ministry of Labour reported 217 deaths and 16,934 accidents in the building trades in the year 1960 (Labour Gazette, April, 1961).

But, according to a building trade employer, Mr. Peter Trench, the total number of accidents is enormously greater.

Writing in the Financial Times Building and Contracting Supplement recently, Mr. Trench, who is Director of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, estimates that for every reported accident there are 30 or 40 that do not have to be reported. And he puts the total number of accidents in the building trades at 500,000 a year or nearly 10,000 a week.

He records that accidents have been increasing in spite of propaganda designed to lessen the number. He gave his opinion as to the reason:

“Despite all the publicity and propaganda there are still far too many building firms in which little or no direct responsibility is accepted for seeing that accidents are prevented from happening; and there are still two many operatives adopting the metaphorically fatal attitude of ‘couldn’t care less’ which all too often becomes fatal in reality.”

He records the opinion of others that one of the causes is the greater size and complexity of modern buildings.

The New Men in Russian Industry

The emergence of a new social group is not necessarily dramatic or even at first obvious, but there are clear signs that new men are entering on to the political stage in Russia. In an article “New Pressures are growing up in Russia,” the Soviet Correspondent of the Financial Times recently noted that among the people who backed and to some extent forced Kruschev’s denunciation of Stalinist Terror at last year’s Party Congress in Moscow are “the younger professional managers.”

“These Party Professionals have as their principal job, the supervision of the running of the economy in their respective areas of the country. Like other young educated people in the Soviet Union, they enjoy a good standard of living, and are in a position to know that the country’s economic position can be improved much further still if sensible policies are assured. An obvious prerequisite of stable life for everyone is that there should be no repetition of the police rule, with arbitrary arrests and executions of Stalin’s time.”

David Floyd, in the Sunday Telegraph (26/11/61), expressing a similar view, quoted from a recent book on the history of the Russian Security Services, by Boris Lewytzkyj:

“The worker or technician responsible with the aid of the most up-to-date machinery for the whole industrial process, cannot carry out his duties properly unless he has considerable freedom of decision. No scientist can make progress with his terribly difficult intellectual work if he is constantly aware that the failure of an experiment may be labelled as an act of sabotage by some primitive policeman.

The ‘historical role’ of the terror in the Soviet Union is finished. At the present time the Soviet leaders could achieve nothing by terror, at the best they could destroy the foundations of their own power.”

The Manager’s Life

On the same subject, interesting details about the life of a factory manager were given some time ago in articles written by a Russian factory manager and his English-born wife who recently left Russia.

He and his wife had no complaint about their financial position in Russia, though the husband, Ignat Ovsyannikov, did remark that sometimes a skilled worker in the factory might take home more pay than he did as manager.

As a manager he had

“the very comfortable living of 6,000 roubles per month, six times a Soviet working man’s wage, and as much as the salary paid to a Minister of a Soviet Republic.”

One of the features of the life of the factory manager and other people “in authority” is the way they are cut off from contact with the ordinary workers outside the factory:

“Anyone who has any authority at all in the Soviet Union is cut off from the ordinary people. it is, for example, impossible for a factory manager or party secretary to use the ordinary restaurants in his town. He would be likely to meet his employees on equal terms and that would not do. The managerial class is isolated from the rest of society. If a man is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party he will ever have a personal bodyguard to accompany him everywhere.”

Arrangements are made for the manager’s family to buy food at special stores, and to eat in closed restaurants They also have special medical services “for the upper class of Soviet society. They have their own clinics and sanatoria where they get the best of treatment. Members of the Central Committee and the Government have luxurious rest homes on the Black Sea coast.” (Sunday Telegraph, 13/7/61).

It is all remarkably like life as it is lived by the favoured few here or anywhere else in the world.

Edgar Hardcastle

On the Building Strike. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back in January last the London Master Builders’ Association, together with certain building firms outside the Association, placed before their “hands” a form with the following words inscribed thereon:

“I agree if employed by you, to peacefully work with my fellow employees (engaged either in your direct employment or in that of any sub-contractor) whether they are members of a Trade Society or not, and I agree that I will not quit your employment because any of my fellow employees is or is not a member of any Trade Society ; and I also agree that if I commit any breech of this agreement I shall be subject to a fine of Twenty Shillings, and I also agree that the amount of such fine may be deducted from any wages that may be due to me.”

The reason the masters issued this form was, on their own showing, that great disturbance is caused to their business by the “down tools” policy of their men to make non-unionists join the respective unions of their callings.

Now, as the masters say in the document: “to work peaceably with my fellow employees,” evidently peace is what the masters want—in order to get on with the business. And peace they will probably get, for that gaunt spectre, Starvation, is at work for them in the ranks of the struggling toilers.

The average trade-unionist thinks it is pos­sible to get almost every worker into a trade union either by coercion or by peaceful means. This idea is totally wrong. When the basis of the capitalist mode of production is understood this becomes apparent. The means and instru­ments of wealth production and distribution are owned by the capitalist or master class, and it necessarily follows that production is to be in their interest. Hence an army of unemployed workers is an advantage to them as exercising a powerful influence in keeping wages down. It follows that those who have a hard time of it will in many cases leave the trade unions and take any job that offers, whether it is under the T.U. standard or not.

The class-conscious worker sees no enemy in the non-unionist, but sees the capitalist whip of hunger which sets worker against worker.

The trade-unionist and the non-unionist are alike in this—they support capitalism by sending the master class into power time and time again. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the trade-unionist will presently be agitating for the amalgamation of trade unions, in order to try by “solidarity” to improve their conditions. For, sad to say, it seems so easy to try every method but the right one.

The great fault is that the toilers as a class see no other system than the wages system, and for that reason they play into the hands of the masters in their every action. After every strike they go back (if allowed) chastened, even if not beaten, and commence again with sullen energy to produce wealth for their masters, and in return got a bare subsistence.

It is a mad condition of social life.

The life of the working man, oven when he in regularly employed, is a rotten one, and his poverty is only intensified when he “downs tools.” “You must not quit work,” say the masters, “because of men not holding a ticket,” but you must quit when the masters have no further use for you, and then come the penalties of unemployment—sickness, starvation, worry. There is a far worse document than this one of the Master Builders’ Association which the workers have signed, and have signed willingly. That is the document at the polling booth—a document that gives the masters political power to keep going this hellish system of society, that spells poverty to the workers, and untold wealth to those who employ the slaves of industry.

“A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” says the ticket workman. There cannot be any such thing as a fair day’s work until throughout society all able-bodied human beings perform their portion of the work of society. Then, and then only, will society see how it pays to have all work, and therefore all enjoy the social product of mankind’s energy used in a sane manner. Until that time comes—the day of the awakening of the working class—there will be a large number of officials to bleed the ticket men. These officials will endeavour to make it appear that the unions have won victories ; they will cry “organise ! Organise !” and will call the non-unionists scabs and blacklegs ; and all the time they will support this rotten social system, which produces scabs, blacklegs, and hirelings who will preach anything that will give them some advantage over the average wage slave.

So, then, you of the building trades who are suffering from the lockout, realise now that the masters are still masters and you are wage-slaves. With all the tickets you have handled, there still remains to be taken up, the ticket of the class-conscious worker—the ticket of the man who has discovered that the working class will not achieve their emancipation until the capitalist class are wiped out.

Good nature will not do it ; the clapping of hands will not accomplish it. The worshipping of heroes will not bring better times. You must think for yourselves.

It must be the workers as a class who must gain working-class emancipation, by their world­wide collective energy, intelligently used to capture Political power, to make it law that the means of wealth production and distribution shall belong to the people.

S. W.

In the Augean stables (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

All three of the big political parties have had a hand in “solving” the housing problem. The Tories began with the 1851 Act, and the Times (March 25th, 1927) boasted that the Tories had a record of achievement in this direction extending over seventy years. The Liberals and the Labour Party both claim credit for several Acts under which house building has been helped by the Government, through subsidies or otherwise.

The late Mr. Wheatley, prominent member of the I.L.P., was responsible as Minister of Health for the Labour Government’s Housing Act in 1924. Imposing figures have been presented showing what has been done. Up to November, 1932, over 1,800,000 houses had been built since January, 1919, 1,096,387 with State aid and 797,249 without aid., (See Manchester Guardian, November 2nd, 1932).

As long ago as 1928 the Conservative Party, in a leaflet called “Conservative Social Reform,” claimed that their Government had been able “to wipe out the housing Shortage by building nearly 650,000 houses in less than four years.” And yet, after the problem has been “solved” many times during the past century, and after all the chief reformist parties have had a hand in it, supplemented by innumerable philanthropic and semi-philanthropic efforts, the evil is with us still, as huge and as devastating as ever.

[From “The Housing Problem — The Socialist View”, Socialist Standard, January 1933]

Cooking the Books: A good question (2025)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 8 December the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, did the rounds of the television studios to publicise the Labour government’s plan to get 1.5 million new homes built over the next five years. The next day the press gave her a hard time with such headlines as ‘Rayner contradicts herself saying there “is plenty of housing” then admits there’s a “housing crisis”’ (tinyurl.com/3vjw84v4).

One of the things she said was: ‘There is plenty of housing already, but there’s not enough for the people that desperately need it.’

This is saying that there is enough housing available but that it’s too expensive for a lot of people. Which would indeed be a paradox. It would also mean that what is called the ‘housing crisis’ is not a crisis arising from there not being enough homes but from people not having enough money to be able to buy the homes that are for sale. In other words, a crisis due to people being too poor to pay for what they need.

So, strictly speaking, we should be talking about an ‘affordability crisis’. In which case, building more houses won’t solve the problem. As the headline of an article in the Times (11 December) by columnist Alice Thompson asked, ‘Building homes is fine but who will buy them?’

Good question, as Rayner would have had to prevaricate had this been put to her. Houses today are not built to provide accommodation for people, however desperately they might need it. They are built to be sold with a view to making a profit. As the Home Builders Federation explained to Thompson, ‘bluntly’ as she put it, ‘Builders can only build if buyers can buy’. The problem is that not enough buyers can buy.

In fact, not only is the affordability crisis preventing people using existing housing; it is also preventing more houses being built:

‘Big commercial housebuilders already have stockpiles of land where planning permission has been granted … yet more than 40 per cent of homes granted planning permission are paused.’

Thompson went on to explain why:

‘This is because housebuilders only build at the rate they can sell. Taylor Wimpey’s chief executive, Jennie Daly, defends the strategy thus: “We are not delivering more homes than the market can absorb”’.

Since the population of Britain is expanding there may well be a paying demand for more houses to be built and the profit-seeking housebuilding firms will meet this spontaneously. Whether this will lead them to build another 1.5 million over the next five years is another matter. They will certainly try not to build ‘more than the market can absorb’. The 1.5 million target will only be met if the market expands enough. But this would require dealing with the ‘affordability crisis’ by giving more money, one way or the other, to those who currently ‘desperately need’ better housing but can’t afford it because it’s too expensive.

That’s not going to happen, if only because the present government is actually cutting back on housing benefit by not increasing the rate in line with rising prices. Besides, if subsidising people to buy a house or flat became the norm then employers would not need to pay the same amount of wages. It would be back to square one.

Building trade’s decline. (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A leading article with the above heading was published in the “Daily Chronicle” of Saturday, July 11th, 1914. This article is remarkable for the damaging information against the private ownership of the means of life, and for the “tender-heartedness” shown by this capitalist politician. Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P., the author of the article, has, as usual, condemned the economic and political state of the country, and switches the attention of working-class readers to Parliament—the saviour of the people—the place from which can issue the commands, the admonitions, the laws to make it so that all shall be well for the working class in the “better times” that are coming under capitalism.

Mr. Money says: “Between 1901 and 1911 an army of men passed out of the building trade in England and Wales, and that in spite of an increase in population of three and a half millions. Whereas in 1901, the population being 32,500,000, the Census showed 1,042,864 men employed in building and works of construction, in 1911, the population having advanced to 36,100,000, the number of persons employed in building and works of construction fell to 946,127. Three more years have elapsed, and in the interim, there is reason to fear, the number of persons employed in the industry has been stagnant or even subject to further decline. . The decline in employment is therefore a very serious thing for the nation, merely regarding the matter from the point of view of engaging our people in worthy occupations. When, however, we remember the nature of the industry concerned, we have to deplore in the figures referred to, not merely a decline in a noble employment, but a decline in the consumption of buildings, and especially of buildings in their aspect as the homes of our people.” Noble employment! Ye gods! So noble that the State has taken pity on those employed in the building trade to the extent of seven shillings unemployed benefit and ten shillings on sick ; so noble that they swarm like bees about a big job, and try to get the “glad eye” of the foreman ; so noble that when in work they have to speed up and compete one against the other—”Brothers” in the branch, and Brutes on the job.

We of the Socialist Party can tell where a great many of the builders’ “hands” have gone. Many have been forced to seek the shelter of the “Homes” provided for those broken on the wheel of industry—the workhouses ; many have “downed tools” for good, and walk the streets of “Old England” with “dull-eyed melancholly.” Hundreds have packed up and gone to distant lands with, the hope of getting “the staff of life” easier, and of securing a better prospect for their children. They have left this “tight little island,” blessed with hundreds of Acts of Parliament passed in the interest of the working class—so we have been told—left the land “blessed” with the history of “great men” who have looked after those who worked in “noble occupations.” “The Salvation Army” can account for some who have “got out and got under” ; in the workshops of the “Blood and Fire” brigade they have tasted the sweets of capitalism.

Mr. Chiozza Money has criticised the workings of capitalism, and we must try and “better the instruction.” Let us quote again. “It is fundamentally important that Britain should be rebuilt. It is by far the most important social question. The inside of a house matters much, and the outside of a house matters no less. Between their interior and their exterior aspects, buildings for an industrial nation become the framework of the lives of the majority of its people. They either let in or keep out the sun. They either form beautiful and healthy cities or environ town populations is ugliness and misery. They either make or mar our lives. Let no man imagine that by securing himself in a decent home he has rid his own person or his own family of the curse of bad housing. A house can never be an individual thing or a private thing. . . The private investor has failed and is failing to give the nation the houses which it needs. With the money which has been invested abroad in the last four years by British investors every slum in this country could have been wiped out, and when I say this I use the term ‘slum’ to include not merely the most squalid streets, but to cover about one-fifth of all the town dwellings of the country.”

What is the “remedy” of this capitalist M.P. ? It is to make it the duty of local authorities to “house their people well,” and to assist them with “supplies of cheap capital.” We can understand Mr. Money very well in his insidious way of keeping working-class attention still longer fixed on the lips and promises of the capitalist politicians. We understand from his wail that this social mess in the shape of “houses” is because of naughty capitalists ; much “good” will result when the “good” capitalists predominate. We, of the working class are according to this capitalist prize-fighter—the children of those who house us, of those who feed and clothe us, who pay us wages, and kill our brothers and sisters in Factory, Mill, and Mine, and fine themselves, through a manager, £24 for murdering over 400 miners in a pit in “gallant little Wales.”

Mr. Money wants our capitalist fathers to be more thoughtful for their children; but Mr. Money is in that section of capitalist politicians who raised the load line to suit the ship-owners; who ticketed and numbered the proletariat to suit the masters, and who have mucked about a “Home Rule Bill” for over 30 years while the workers have been stifled in slums—and polish their tools in case something turns up.

“Cheap Capital” to house the workers. Very well. The only way to attain this desired end of capitalist “goody goodies” is to exploit the working class more and more—and improved methods of hastening the wealth production under capitalism will swell the unemployed army, will crowd the workers in the slums, and make them fit instruments to produce wealth for “Cheap Capital.”

We, of the Socialist Party think that it matters everything to preach to the workers that they are wage-slaves; that their so-called decent homes hang together by but a slender thread ; the evolution of a rotten system of wealth production will scatter many home nests of those who think they are safe.

So, then, we are framed in by slums, by unemployed men, by starving children, by factory hells, by want of the necessaries of life in the midst of plenty. We want bread and it is difficult to get—but the steam plough is working. We want decent houses—but the workmen are not allowed to build. We want life, freedom, the obstacles hewn out of our path to get food, clothing, and shelter after the working of our brain and muscle—and some of greatest obstacles in the path of the toilers of the world are those who preach that we are “but little children weak” and they—the “great intellects” who will some day do us some good.

Look to Parliament and see there the agents of the capitalist class, who spin silky words about and around our social sores. When the delegates of the class-conscious workers sit in Parliaments of the World, the days of the “kind perishers” will be numbered.

S. W.

Building in Russia (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

During September and October, 1962, members of the Eastern Counties Federation of Building Trades Employers visited Russia and made a fairly extensive study of their building methods. Resulting from this visit, they have published a very revealing pamphlet, Building in Russia. They say:

“We believe we are the first group of British builders to examine the structure and organisation of the Soviet construction industry, our report covers a wide field, with the emphasis on housing. We hope it gives a broad but accurate picture of what we saw in a tour of some 6,000 miles extending from Leningrad, through Moscow to Volgograd in the South".

The British building trade unionist can, with this material, compare his wages and conditions with those of his brother in Russia.

In order to speed up housebuilding, emphasis has been placed on prefabricated factory built units, rather than the traditional brick-built house of this country. “The aim is to build compact residential areas with blocks of flats, 5,8 and 10 storey, densities being on average 150 persons per acre. Two room flats predominate . . .”

As the State owns and controls all capital for construction, area building Trusts are formed to decide upon design and the price of each contract. The chief of the Trust and his managers then negotiate with the Unions to determine site conditions. However, with a fixed price for each job there is a definite limit to the pay which can be offered! This has an all too familiar ring; haggling with the boss for terms that would hardly satisfy the militant on most British building sites. For example bonus earnings up to 50 per cent. of wages can apparently be earned with an efficient Trust. In comparison, British Union agreements have often settled for a minimum of 20 per cent. of earnings, but where union organisation is strong on the building site, bonuses nearer 100 per cent. and over are expected and negotiated.

The State apparently fixes the wages, determines the amount of bonus to be earned and insists on a 3.7 per cent. profit from all contracts finished at scheduled cost. When a profit is realised, an enterprise fund for the building worker within the Trust is formed, to be shared into workers’ bonuses, housing and holiday facilities; Living conditions of the unfortunates who work for an inefficient Trust clearly reveal the unequal equality of Soviet “Socialism.”

The standard of accommodation for the Russian working class is low compared with Britain’s New Towns’ traditional 2 and 3 bedroom terraced house. During 1964-1965, says the report, a suburb of Moscow will provide “90,000 people in flats, 10 per cent. of which will have one room, 60 per cent. 2, and 30 per cent. 3 rooms. Living rooms are used for sleeping in.”

To speed up house production, the Soviet Government have mass housing projects, with strictly narrow limits of layout and design. They say that the housing problem will be solved by 1970. One thing, however, which has resulted is monotonous city suburbs which are “depressing and oppressive despite open spaces.”

Building conditions for the wage earner under Soviet State and British private capitalism are so nearly alike that differences are hard to detect.

For a 40 hour week, typical wage rates in Moscow range from £6 per week (minimum) for labourers, £12 carpenters, £16 bricklayers to £20 for a general foreman and £40 for a building Trust manager. Lost time due to bad weather qualifies for half pay, whilst overtime qualifies for double time.

Building trade rates of pay in Britain are stated to be, at present, labourers £11 9s. and all skilled trades £12 7s. Soviet workers may pay less in rent which does not exceed 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. of the family income, but what they can purchase on commodities is small indeed. “Foodstuffs are two or three times dearer than in Britain, a poor quality suit costs £40, an overcoat £80 and a pair of shoes £15.”

Perhaps the most important difference between the two industries concerns strikes and tea breaks. Whereas the British trade unions clearly recognise the vital need to withdraw labour in times of dispute, and take refreshments and rest for dirty and arduous tasks, Soviet unions are denied these essential rights. The pamphlet drily comments “Tea breaks and strikes are not in the industrial vocabulary.”

All these comparisons show only too clearly that capitalism functions in the Soviet Union, with a working class living on a very poor standard. Although it was not the object they had in mind, the building employers’ pamphlet certainly exposes the claim that Socialism is enjoyed by building workers, or by any other workers, in Russia.

J. P.

The Housing Problem: The Socialist View. (1933)

From the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The problem of housing has been brought into prominence again by the Government's decision to discontinue subsidies except for the purpose of slum clearance. What is the so-called housing problem? And what have Socialists to say about it ?

The first thing to be noticed is that, properly speaking, it is not a housing problem at all. There is not a universal shortage of housing, but only a shortage among part of the population. Those who have enough money experience no difficulty in renting, buying or building new and spacious accommodation. It is only the workers who need help, and that is simply because they are poor. The housing problem is only another aspect of, or another name for, the general problem of working class poverty.

Does capitalism produce houses (or any other articles) for the use of the population? By no means. It produces houses only when it is profitable to the capitalist to do so, and to the extent that those who need accommodation can afford to pay for it. Mr. Harry Barnes, formerly Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Liberal M.P. for Newcastle East, in his book, “Housing" (Pub. by Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1923), points out that the rate at which new houses were being built during the 110 years from 1801 to 1911, was not constant, or increasing with the increase in population, but rose and fell in accordance with the amount of profit to be obtained in house building as compared with the rate of profit to be obtained by investing money in other directions. (See pages 17 and 43, and all chapter V.) He says: —

In times of great trading, commercial and industrial activity, building will slacken owing to the engrossing and profitable character of other occupations. (P. 43.)

Thus, instead of building houses to meet the growing needs of a growing population, 19th century capitalism showed “a period of considerable activity in house-building from 1801 to 1841, then half a century in which the pace of building fell away, from 1841 to 1891. Last of all, a period from 1891 to 1911, during which the greatest effort in absolute numbers by private enterprise to supply this fundamental human need was made." (P. 17.)

At no time, however, could it be said that all the working class were decently and adequately provided for. Mr. Barnes states that, in 1801, the estimated number of “surplus families" (i.e., “the family for which no structurally separate dwelling exists, which can only find its shelter by inhabiting the home of another family, a result producing, in innumerable cases, the deadly social evil of overcrowding") was 320,000. By 1911 it had risen to nearly 900,000. (See p. 18.)

He wrote (p. 18):—

Year by year during the century it is seen that there has been a steady falling short of the number of houses required to be provided.

And again (p. 37): —

The housing shortage of to-day is not something that comes like a bolt from the blue . . . . but is rather the slow accumulation of a century, suddenly and terribly increased by the conditions arising out of the war.

As early as 1835, when elected local councils were set up, these new municipal authorities "began to obtain private acts empowering them to demolish insanitary dwellings and to impose stringent regulations upon the builders." (See Houses for All, by E. D. Simon, now Sir E. D. Simon, Pub. Daily News, Ltd. 1923. P.3.) But it was the Shaftesbury Act of 1851 which brought local authorities into house building in an endeavour to make good the declining supply of working class houses. It will be noticed that 1851 was ten years after the year in which house building began to decline. The number of houses built in 1851 was only about three-fifths of the number built in 1841. (Barnes, P. 37.) The position was, of course, that the workers could not afford to pay a rent which would make the building of new houses as profitable to the capitalist as it was to invest his money in industrial and commercial buildings, or in mining, iron and steel, railways, etc., at home or abroad. Between 1851 and 1914 many other Acts were passed with the object of promoting the building of working class houses, and in 1884 the whole subject was inquired into by a Royal Commission.

The period 1891 to 1911 was a period of great activity in house building. The reason was the trade depression: Capitalists found their investments in industry yielding only small profits, and the consequent glut of money forced down the yield on Government stocks, so they turned their attention to houses until such time as trade revived again.

Yet, in spite of this burst of building, and in spite of numerous Housing Acts and the activities of local authorities, we have Mr. Barnes' admission referred to above, that in 1911 the number of families without a home of their own (rented or owned) was nearly three times as great as in 1801.

The Effects of the War.

Then came the War, during which every other activity had to give way to the needs of the fighting forces. House Building practically ceased for five years or more, and in 1919 the position was far worse than in 1911. Mr. J. G. Martin, Secretary of the National Housing and Town Planning Council, in a letter to the Morning Post (January 14th, 1927) quoted an official estimate that there was a deficiency of 800,000 houses, that being the number required to restore the pre-war position. It was also estimated that at least 100,000 new houses are needed each year to replace wastage due to the demolition of old houses and the demand caused by growing population. (See Houses for All, E. D. Simon. P. 4.)

This does not mean, of course, that only 100,000 houses would be needed to satisfy the requirements of the population, but that 100,000 new houses are needed each year to satisfy that part of their requirements which the workers can afford to pay for—a very different matter.

When the census was taken in 1921, 9.6 per cent, of the population in England and Wales was living in a condition which corresponds with the official definition of overcrowding. (See How to Abolish the Slums, by E. D. Simon. Longmans. 1929. P. 13.) In Manchester the percentage was 7.9,% in the County of London 16.1, in Bermondsey 23.2, and in Shoreditch 32.

E. D. Simon, in the above-mentioned book, questions the value of the official definition of overcrowding. According to that definition, a house is only overcrowded if there are more than two adults to a room (two children under ten count as one adult). Simon suggests a standard of two-and- a-half persons per bedroom, or a standard which holds a house to be overcrowded unless it enables the parents to have one bedroom and enables boys and girls over ten to be separated. (P. 7.)

On either of these standards the percentage of overcrowding would be shown to be far higher. They would, for example, show the overcrowding in Manchester to be at least 25 per cent. instead of only 7.9 per cent.

The Great Post-war Housing Schemes.

All three of the big political parties have had a hand in “solving" the housing problem. The Tories began with the 1851 Act, and the Times (March 25th, 1927) boasted that the Tories had a record of achievement in this direction extending over seventy years. The Liberals and the Labour Party both claim credit for several Acts under which house building has been helped by the Government, through subsidies or otherwise.

The late Mr. Wheatley, prominent member of the I.L.P., was responsible as Minister of Health for the Labour Government’s Housing Act in 1924. Imposing figures have been presented showing what has been done. Up to November, 1932, over 1,800,000 houses had been built since January, 1919, 1,096,387 with State aid and 797,249 without aid., (See Manchester Guardian, November 2nd, 1932.) The cost to the Government in respect of subsidies is now over £13 million a year, with another £3 million paid out of local rates. (Manchester Guardian, November 12th, 1932.)

As long ago as 1928 the Conservative Party, in a leaflet called “Conservative Social Reform," claimed that their Government had been able "to wipe out the housing Shortage by building nearly 650,000 houses in less than four years."

And yet, after the problem has been “solved" many times during the past century, and after all the chief reformist parties have had a hand in it, supplemented by innumerable philanthropic and semi-philanthropic efforts, the evil is with us still, as huge and as devastating as ever.

Let us see what some acknowledged authorities have to say about the position now or within the past year or two.

The Problem Still Unsolved.

It is true that between 1919 and January, 1927, 768,000 new houses had been built, but most of these were needed to meet the ordinary wastage and the demands of the growing population. Mr. J. G. Martin, Secretary of the National Housing and Town Planning Council (Morning Post, January 14th, 1927), said that less than 100,000 of these 768.000 could be counted towards wiping out the abnormal shortage caused during the War. In January, 1927, therefore, there were still 700,000 houses needed to restore the pre-war position (as compared with 800,000 needed in 1919).

The utmost that can be claimed for the new houses built between 1927 and 1932 is that they have been sufficient to catchup the war-time arrears and restore the pre-war position.

The Eighth Annual Report of the Scottish Board of Health for 1926 said of Glasgow slums: —

The majority of the houses were dark, many of the tenants having to burn gas all day, winter and summer . . . Everywhere we noticed an almost total lack of sanitation. Ceilings are falling down, woodwork is rotting away, there are holes in the walls of houses through which the street can be seen. The houses are a hunting ground for vermin of every description. The tenants complained that they could get no peace from these pests. . . . .

In addition to the insects which I have mentioned we found evidence of a perfect menagerie of animal life, including rats in great numbers, mice, snails and even toads. Can it be wondered that such places breed an unhealthy and discontented people?

(See Morning Post, June 21st, 1927.)

Lieut.-Colonel Freemantle, Medical Officer of Health, in The Housing of the Nation (see Times, March 25th, 1927) said: —

For a large section of the working-class there is really no such thing as home. Home life has no meaning for them. They have no part or lot in such things.

. . .Herded together, family upon family, in the same tenement, in the same room, what chance have they of life worth having in houses, meanly built, crowded round courts, dark, dingy, and out of repair, too often dirty and verminous from generations of tenants past, destitute of life and air, devoid of the necessary equipment for domestic needs, packed tight to help pay the rent that even such accommodation can command.

Mr. F. N. Kay, Medical Officer of Health for the L.C.C., in his report for 1929, said (Daily Herald, October 16th, 1930): —

There are about 30,000 basement dwellings in London which are considered unfit for human occupation.

. . . No worse housing conditions exist anywhere than in the underground rooms of the Metropolis.

The Times editorial (March 25th, 1927), which acclaimed the Tories' seventy years' work for housing, had to admit that the problem was still unsolved, and that even after the war-time shortage had been removed “there will still remain the problem of the slums, and the housing of the people in our great towns."

The Bishop of Southwark (in an article in the Evening Standard, November 9th, 1929), wrote:

On a moderate estimate, that of the last census there are 3½ million persons living in overcrowded conditions; but the standard adopted by the Registrar-General is a very low one . . . If a rather higher standard is adopted, one and a half persons per room, no less than 9,000,000 would be living in overcrowded conditions.

He said that on a very moderate estimate there are over 100,000 persons in London living in insanitary houses or areas.

He said that the subsidised building of houses since the War has—

not drained the slums of their occupants. . . . They have had no appreciable effect on the worst and most overcrowded districts. . . . Usually the new houses are too far away, the slum dweller cannot afford the long journey to and from his daily work. More serious still is the fact that he cannot afford the higher rent required for these houses.

Mr. E. D. Simon (now Sir E. D. Simon, formerly Lord Mayor of Manchester, / Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health in the National Government, and Chairman of the Manchester City Council Housing Committee), writing in the Manchester Guardian (August 10th, 1927), pointed out that as regards workers' houses rented at 6s. to 8s. a week:—

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that nothing has yet been done to help these people--just those whose need is greatest.

And further:—

The overcrowding in the low-rented houses is no less than it was in 1919, while the larger houses are under-tenanted.

The same authority on housing conditions (in a letter to the Times, February 12th, 1931) wrote: —

According to all the available evidence there has on the average been no reduction whatever in the terrible overcrowding in the slum areas: the houses are steadily deteriorating; the position of the slum- dwellers is worse than it was ten years ago.

Sir Raymond Unwin, President Royal Institute of British Architects, and formerly a housing official at the Ministry of Health, admits that the houses built since the War have not done more than make up the deficiency of the War years, and that:—

In some ways the housing position is worse than it was in 1921. (M. Guardian, 2 Nov., 1932.)

Mr. Norman McKellen, Secretary of National Federation of House Builders, in a letter to Manchester Guardian (November 12th, 1932), wrote: —

Notwithstanding the annual cost of subsidies, little or nothing has been done to house the poorer working classes; and the National Housing and Town Planning Council, a body largely composed of representatives of local authorities themselves, are reported as saying: “It is lamentable that 14 years after the conclusion of the war medical officers of health should find it necessary to report that there is still a large amount of gross overcrowding, that indecent occupation of sleeping-rooms is not infrequently met with, and that many unhealthy basements are being used as dwellings by the poorer families. Moreover, only the fringe of the slum problem has so far been touched.

Now we have the Government, as an economy measure, stopping the payment of subsidies except for slum clearance, although, in common with the Liberals and the Labour Party, it has hitherto proclaimed subsidies as the only way of tackling the problem. In addition, the Government is negotiating with the building societies for them to take on house building, on condition that in future there shall be twenty instead of twelve houses to the acre—a definite worsening of the standard.

As in the period 1891-1911, the world depression is making the capitalists turn once more to house building owing to the decline of profits in other fields of investment.

Socialism the only Remedy.

There is no remedy except Socialism. There will always be a working class housing problem so long as there is a working class, that is a class producing wealth not for themselves but for the capitalists. None of the schemes of the reformers will touch the problem. The late John Wheatley himself had to confess that his Housing Act was only “patching up the capitalist system," yet his I.L.P. worshippers claimed his Act as the outstanding achievement of his life! What a confession for alleged Socialists to have to make. Municipal and State owned housing estates are no solution at all. The recent eviction case at Dagenham illustrates this. A widow was thrown out of her house by her landlords, the London County Council, in spite of resistance organised by local “direct actionists." In the struggle several were injured on both sides and several workers were imprisoned. Yet it is this municipal capitalism on the Dagenham and other L.C.C. housing estates of which the I.L.P. in its Socialist Annual, 1925, boasted as being instances of “Socialism."

As an actual fact, Judges in the East End of London have several times declared in court that the municipal authorities are more harsh than private landlords in their treatment of tenants who cannot afford to pay their rent.

Cases have come to light of the London County Council refusing to let their houses to workers employed in the Post Office (the institution which the I.L.P. describes as “Socialism in practice"), on the ground that their pay is too low to enable them to afford the rent.

The most damning indictment of capitalism and of reformism is the recent discovery that some houses condemned by Engels as unfit for human habitation in 1844 (see Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844) are still inhabited and overcrowded to-day. (See Some Housing Conditions in Chorlton on Medlock, May, 1931.)

Part of the post-war shortage of new houses is due to the Rent Restriction Acts, which, by keeping rents low, reduced the margin of profit to be made by house building. Thus—as is usually the case— the attempt to reform one evil effect of capitalism creates or aggravates another evil.

The working class should decide to waste no more time and energy on the Liberal-Tory-Labour reformists, and to organise for Socialism. Not till then will the housing and other aspects of the working class poverty problem be solved.

Edgar Hardcastle

The “Co-operative” Cure. (1905)

From the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the “pure and simple” unions have had rather a bad time lately, owing to the large number of members seriously depleting their funds through unemployment, certain of their members have considered the unemployed, problem, and found a “cure” for it. It is not “back to the land,” “reafforestation,” nor yet “reclaiming the fore-shores,” but it is the brand new “co-operative cure” à la Crooks. Seeing larger sums that would be jeopardised were they to strike, they have come to the conclusion that if all these sums of the various unions were pooled, they would have sufficient money to start a co-operative concern and employ the unemployed workers, and so solve the unemployed problem. This sounds very well in theory, but its proposers seem to have forgotten that they are living under the capitalist system, and that no matter how they may attempt it, they cannot evade the conditions that control that system. The capitalist method of production demands that a profit must be made out of the product of labour. As the amount of wealth in all capitalist countries is continually growing, it is obvious that there is an increasing sum waiting to find a reproductive outlet, i.e., a constantly growing amount of wealth in the hands of the capitalist-class, available for profitable investment.

With these facts in mind, let us examine the “co-operative cure.”‘ Let us suppose, for example, that the Operative Bricklayers’ Society decide to start a co-operative building concern. In the first place there would have to be a quick return on the money or the unemployed bricklayers would not benefit much. That is to say, they would have to find a piece of land that was situated where there was actually, or soon would be, a demand for housing accommodation. Here in the open market they would be subjected to a severe competition with the speculative builders at once. But supposing them to have secured the land in the face of competition, and to have proceeded with the erection of their houses. Within the London district such firms as Patman and Fotheringlmm, or Lovett, could buy land and erect houses cheaper and quicker than the union could. Their houses would be ready to let sooner, and unless the demand was very large indeed, the union co-operative concern would not stand at all.

The same difficulty would present itself in any other trade along these lines. If the unions had their co-operative concerns running and began to seriously compete with the capitalists, it would only be necessary for the large capitalists to flood the market at cutting rates, and prices would soon be depressed below the level at which the union could work, and the scheme would be killed. The co-operative slate quarries which were started by Lord Penrhyn’s locked-out men have practically reached this point. They may pick up the crumbs of commerce, like the non-trust firms of the United States, but as soon as they get troublesome they have to go.

If the case of the ordinary co-operative society (which is simply a kind of joint-stock company) is taken it will be found that in a large number of cases prices are higher than the usual shop prices. As more and more machinery is introduced, and the army of the unemployed is increased, the wages of those in work fall. The worker has a still smaller purchasing power, and has to buy goods, knowing them to be inferior, because he cannot afford any other, even though the co-op. charges were but a little higher than those of the outside dealer. There has been no great improvement in the workers’ condition through, co-operative concerns in any country where capitalism is well advanced to the trust stage. The only concerns that have paid well are those run on approved capitalist lines,—sweating and violation of the Truck Act included. The workers cannot fight capital with capital, because the larger capital is bound to win, and the workers do not control it. The Socialist Commonwealth is the only cure for the unemploted roblem. Help us then to realise it.

E. J. B. Allen

By The Way: Concern for Workers (1944)

The By The Way Column from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concern for Workers

As everyone knows, there is a most terrible housing crisis in London now. The newspapers are full of appeals to the authorities to get something done about it. The Government has brought thousands of building workers from the provinces and arranged for them to work a 65-hour week, Mr. J. J. Mallon, the Warden of Toynbee Hall, has written to the Times pointing out that long hours under modern conditions do not make for greater production.

Let Mr. Mallon speak for himself: —

HOURS OF WORK. 

To the Editor of the Times, 

Sir,—It is disquieting to learn that building operatives are to work 65 hours a week on first-aid repairs to houses in the London area. Even though the arrangement is to apply only for three weeks, it is deplorable and against the teaching of all industrial experience. The Regional Joint Committee for London express the view that the Government is “ill advised to propose such hours,” and suggest “that the maximum hours of work should not exceed 60.” Sixty hours are also too many. If 55 or even fewer hours are worked more will be done.

For nearly 40 years as a member of innumerable trade boards and other industrial bodies I have had to do with hours of employment. When these hours are excessive they tend to lessen rather than increase production, to add to illness, accidents, and absenteeism, and so to fatigue the worker as to do him cumulative injury. The reduction of excessive hours always leads to greater production. Surely the example of America, where miracles of war production have been achieved, should not be disregarded. Early in their associated war efforts the relevant American Government departments decided in favour of an eight-hour day and a 18-hour week “as the best working schedule for sustained efficiency in most industrial operations.” The results of their decision fully justify it. The Government should reconsider the 65 hours proposal.

Yours sincerely, J. J. Mallon, 

Toynbee Hall, 

28, Commercial Street, E.I. July 26.”

—(Times, July 28, 1944.)

Mr. H. C. Harland, the President of the Master Builders’ Association, has written to the Times to confirm Mr. Mallon’s verdict. The point that Socialists are concerned with is that Mr. Mallon and his apparently kindly well-meaning fellow Lib.-Labourals are not really worried about the worker, as such, at all. They reduce hours and give medical treatment, holidays, music while you work, etc., in the same way as one puts expensive oil into a motor engine—to make it run better.

They are not the first or the only ones to realise that the old big stick methods of treating the workers are out of date.

Even King Farouk of Egypt is busily running round telling the tale to the workers—a very good reference for Egyptian workers, incidentally. The Times for July 31st records his “visit to the M.I.S.R. Co.’s spinning and weaving (cotton) works, where he had an enthusiastic reception from 26,000 employees.” “In an address to the board of directors he emphasised the importance of the Egyptian worker, and impressed upon them the necessity of providing better living and working conditions. He invited representatives of the workers to the royal table and made a gift of £1,000 to their benevolent society.” “King Farouk is missing no opportunity of establishing closer and more personal relations with the humbler classes of his subjects.” (Times, July 31st.)

Naturally, British capitalists don’t call representatives of their workers to their table to present them with £1,000. They get Sir William Beveridge to do it. The idea is always the same—to get the workers to work better. “All that glitters is not gold.” Working men who allow this talk about concern for them, by capitalist Lib.-Lab. politicians, to delude them into supporting reforms of capitalism will get improved capitalism, not Socialism—that is, increased exploitation and relative poverty.

* * *

“How U.S. Airmen are Taught New Technique"

Under this heading a London evening paper reports that mobile training units, miniature technical schools on wheels, are now following U.S. airmen as bases move deeply into France. “Though airmen are fully trained before coming to Europe, continual aircraft modifications due to experience in battle make it necessary for mechanics to study constantly.” The training has speeded up aircraft repair so much that the director of the training units has sent mobile units to every war theatre in which U.S. aircraft are fighting.

What is happening to-day on the battlefields happens yesterday and to-morrow in industry. The complex nature of the productive methods developed by capitalism force mechanics to “study constantly.”

When mechanics are studying constantly nothing on earth can prevent them eventually contacting and completely grasping the Socialist idea—which is the application of study to problems of society. The reply to those who claim that “the workers will never learn,” is “look around you”—the workers are learning at aeronautical speed, every day, at their work.

* * *

Last Days of the Barricades

A great deal has been written and said about the insurrection in Warsaw. That the plight of the insurgents is rather pitiable can hardly be disputed.

Most ironical of all, the high-priests of insurrection, at all times, in any places, during the past twenty-five years, the Moscow politicians, are supporting their own special Committee of Liberation as against the British sponsored Council of National Unity of the Polish Government in London. Incidentally, the London Council of National Unity is more “radical” than the Committee of Liberation, making play with the phrase “socialisation of industry.”

For this reason, Pravda says that “the Red Army has always warned people against such risings. Handfuls of men armed only with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.” (Our emphasis.) (The Observer, August 20th.)

To this the Poles reply that the Soviet radio had, in fact, on several occasions shortly before the rising, called on the Polish people, and especially the people of Warsaw, to rise against the Germans.

Apart from this, such statements from the Bolshevik leaders of to-day are the clearest confirmation of the Socialist Party’s repeatedly expressed view on insurrection. Years were spent proving how the Russian Communists were distorting the writings of Engels—for example, in his well-known preface to “The Class Struggles in France”—to try and justify their unprincipled attempts to embarrass foreign governments by riots and street fights.

As if the Soviet’s statement on the futility of insurrection in Warsaw were not enough, further confirmation is to hand from Paris : —

“The Patriots had a very had time, but they recovered and managed to form a defence line in the streets near the building with the aid of barricades built of anything they could lay their hands on.

The barricades were not strong enough, backed by our small arms, to hold the tanks. The German armour smashed them down, then went through the Patriots, firing right and left and affecting shocking slaughter. We had not the weapons to prevent them. . . . All Paris is waiting for the Allies to enter the city and clear out the German tyrants.” (Star, August 25th, 1944; our italics.)

It may be added that in Paris, as in Warsaw, practically the entire population was in support of the revolt; arms had been freely distributed by parachute by the Allied Air Forces. Yet both failed completely, though the circumstances could not have been more favourable.

The Editors of Pravda are quite right. “Handfuls of men with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.”

In other words, without the all-powerful State machine, with its complex armed forces, revolts are doomed to disaster. And yet there are still “direct action” maniacs in public places urging the workers to commit suicide in barricade revolts.

The statement of Pravda will be chalked up for those post-war C.P. and “Unemployed” fire-brands who will once again urge workers to bash their heads against the State machine.

The Socialist Party urges the workers to think before they act, and then vote intelligently for Socialism, thus giving incidentally an infallible indication of the progress of the Socialist idea and the intellectual development of the working class.

With a Parliamentary majority it is the capitalists who will be faced with the prospect of illegal barricades, which the Socialist controlled army and air force will go through like cardboard, if they ever get put up.

To those who claim that the capitalists will close down Parliament before the Socialists can attain the majority, the reply is that’s their funeral—if they are ever stupid enough to do so.

* * *

Easier for Lord Latham

The evening papers (The Star, September 7th, 1944) inform us that one man whose task has been easier by the relaxation of the black-out is Lord Latham, who since 1940 has been mainly responsible for Civil Defence in the L.C.C. area. He is Chairman of the L.C.C.

By the queerest coincidence, in addition to being Chairman of the L.C.C. and in charge of Civil Defence in London, Lord Latham happens to be Chairman of the London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves, Ltd. Lord Latham, as Chairman of the L.C.C., is very concerned in the re-planning of London. According to the Evening Standard (August 29th), Lord Latham is also very interested in the port of Havre. The Company of which he is Chairman owns about (about) £1,000,000 of property there. “It is the largest shareholder in an oil installation, a hotel, and wharves. Now the shares, like those of other concerns with interests in Occupied Europe, are on the rise.”

Following is the City Editor’s report on the Company (Evening Standard, August 28, 1944) : —

London and Thames Haven 

Feature in the market recently has been the further rise in the shares of London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves. These 4s. shares are now up to 15s. 6d., which compares with a low of 1s. 1d. in 1941. This price gives the Ordinary shares a market valuation of around £3,100,000, which compares with a market valuation of around £5,700,000 in the years when the company was paying tax-free dividend of 10 per cent, plus a less tax bonus of four. Since then the capital has been written down to provide for losses.

The company has paid no dividends for six years, but secured earnings last year of 3.8 per cent. tax free. The prospect is that the company will shortly recover the property which it owns at Le Havre. It has been improving its position steadily and has reduced its bank overdraft to £331,000. The directors are considering issuing more capital to pay off the bank overdraft, and no doubt, once the French position is more clearly seen, some action may be taken along these lines.

Mr. Churchill has a word for this. He said the war “as it progresses becomes less ideological.” In this case about £1,000,000 less.

* * *

Lend to the End (of What?)

Peace Savings Soon.—Sir Harold Mackintosh, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, said last night at the jubilee dinner of Birmingham Municipal Bank that the time would soon come when the war-savings campaign would become a peace-savings campaign.”— (Manchester Guardian, September 2nd, 1944.)

* * *

“Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings”

The New York Times Magazine, April 30th, carried an article by a young British evacuee, Anselm Acker, describing his impressions of American life, in the course of which this schoolboy says of New York: “The sight in the subways, when the people are returning from work, sitting and standing like sodden bales of hay with their mentality apparently all drained from them,” displeased him. Good for you, young Anselm, you are a perspicacious youth, whose keen eye will assist him much in penetrating the surface to see the real nature of the things beneath.

No wonder American magazines carry ads. for “No-Dozies,” guaranteed to keep you awake. And the comic strip of the Philadelphia Tribune shows a small child asking its mother : “Mom, what do these candies do to me ? Nothing, Son. What, don’t make me regular? No, Son. Don’t make my complexion clear? No, Son. Don’t make my breath sweet? No, Son. What! you mean I can eat ’em because I like ’em? ”

All the most simple elementary things of life are utterly commercialised and distorted. Everything is “packed,” “processed.” American troops are issued “Energy” crackers. Ham becomes Spam. Life is in a packet or carton.

If you would like to turn up the writings of a man who never went to New York, Anselm, by the name of Karl Marx, who wrote over sixty years ago, you will find that he said :—.

"Within the capitalist system all methods of raising the social productiveness of labour are bought at the cost of the individual labourer . . . they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process, in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power : they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital: as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his pay high or low, must grow worse."—(“Capital,” Vol. I., chapter 23.)

Nowhere is this clearer in the world to-day than New York.

Horatio.

Voice From The Back: Outdated Marxism? (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Outdated Marxism?

One of the oppositions to Marxism is that it is so out-dated, it is so 19th century. So let us get up-to-date. “The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) is to ballot its members on industrial action over pay, the first time in its 125-year history that such a move has been made. ..The decision to ballot 23,000 midwives, taken at an RCM council meeting last night, follows the government’s announcement that midwives and nurses would get a 2.5% pay rise in two stages, amounting to 1.9% across the year.” (Guardian, 20 July) It just shows you how outdated Marxism is, after all in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels wrote, “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourer.” How outdated, they never even mentioned midwives did they?

Loads Of Money

The Wall Street Journal employ Robert Frank to record the comings and goings of the super-rich, so he has decided to publish his findings in his book Richistan; A Journey through the 21st Century Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich. This was reviewed by Tim Adams who came up with a couple of statistics that should interest all workers. “There are many statistics that attach themselves to Richistan. These are two telling ones; Wall Street’s five biggest firms paid out $36 billion in bonuses in 2006; and while in the Seventies the average American chief executive typically took home 40 times the wage of his average employee, he now pockets 170 times that of his typical minion.” (Observer, 22 July) As a “typical minion” how do you feel about that?

Worked To Death

We are all familiar with the old saw “hard work never killed anybody”, but it just isn’t true as can be seen from the following report. “The number of people killed at work has risen to its highest level in five year, according to figures released by the Health and Safety Commission, whose strength has been cut by 1,000 over the same period. Of 241 fatalities in the last year compared with 217 the previous year, the greatest number, 77 – up 31% – were on building sites. Sir Bill Callaghan, the HSE chair said the increase was disappointing. The TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, said each death was preventable. ‘Increasing the likelihood of a visit from a safety inspector would make a real difference.’” (Guardian, 27 July) Why increase the expenditure on safety? It cuts profits and capitalism hates that.

Same The World Over

“Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, who is estimated by some calculations to be wealthier than Microsoft founder Bill Gates, said Thursday he did not care if he was the world’s richest person. …In July, a journalist who tracks the fortunes of wealthy Mexicans said Slim was worth an estimated $67.8 billion and had overtaken Gates as the world’s richest person. Slim hit the No. 1 spot after a recent surge in the share price of his America Movil, Latin America’s largest cell phone company, according to Eduardo Garcia of the online financial publication Sentido Comun.Garcia said that made him close to $8.6 billion wealthier than Gates, whose estimated worth was $59.2 billion. …In Mexico, a small elite holds most of the country’s wealth and about half the population lives on less than $5 a day.” (Yahoo News, 3 August)

Homeless Heroes

We are all familiar with cheering crowds applauding soldiers as they march to war and the praise of politicians as they fall over each other in adulation of service veterans, but the reality is far different. “One in 10 homeless people in the UK are former members of the armed forces, a charity working with veterans says. A survey in 1997 by the Ex-Service Action Group on Homelessness suggested that 22% of people who were street homeless had a military background. Veterans charity, the Sir Oswald Stoll Foundation, said that efforts by the government and the voluntary sector had brought that down to about 10%. It fears the numbers may rise because of service in Iraq and Afghanistan.” (BBC News, 7 August) “When Johnnie Comes Marching Home” may have been an old popular song but today there is no home nor house either.

Illusion And Reality

Many people imagine that with retirement comes a pleasant period in a hard-working life. Alas, the reality is far from idyllic for many workers. “Pensioners are burdened with debts of £57 billion from mortgages and credit cards, new figures show. One fifth of retired people are still paying off a mortgage and a third owe an average of £5,900 on credit cards and loans, says Scottish Widows, the insurer. The 11 million pensioners who are still making repayments owe an average of £38,000 on their homes, compared with £35,000 last year. One in eight owe more than £50,000.” (Times, 13 August)

Houses off the Conveyor Belt (1944)

From the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The need to resort to a more rapid technique of building, in face of the unprecedented shortage of housing facing us at the end of the war, has occupied the minds of our ruling class, its government and technical advisers, for some considerable time. Houses made in standardised sections, mass produced in factories and rapidly assembled on the site, were being considered. We who may have to live in them have been duly warned of what to expect by articles and reports in the daily papers. Most of these seemed anxious to assure us that the only thing wrong with prefabrication was the name, and that houses built by this method could be every bit as good as houses built by the more traditional methods (our emphasis).

The under-current of support and opposition by various sectional interests need not concern us here. The fact is that the Government has now decided to build factory-made temporary houses during a two years’ period after the war in the hope of weathering the storm which will occur on demobilisation.

Socialists are not concerned with what could be the advantages of prefabrication as viewed in an economic and social vacuum. We do, however, consider it necessary to point out some important aspects of the question as they exist under capitalism.

In announcing the Government’s decision. Lord Portal, Minister of Works, stated that these pre-fabricated houses would be “publicly owned” and licensed for only ten years. (Speech in House of Lords, News-Chronicle, 9.2.44.)

It follows therefore that an attempt will be made to produce these houses at a cost to some extent related to their limited life. Experience so far in this country and America has not shown that by means of factory methods any reduction in cost can be achieved which is at all commensurate with this reduced life.

We can therefore expect a reduction in those standards, such as they are, to which we have been accustomed in new housing. Moreover, the mere issue of a licence is no guarantee that at the end of ten years these houses will be pulled down. If alternative accommodation is not available, it will not be an unprecedented occurrence if the State extends the licence on what would be, after all, in spite of the words “publicly owned” its own houses. Having in mind the halting development of housing programmes after the last war, and the fact that the economic conditions which produced scarcity prices and subsidy cuts will be the same, it seems reasonable to doubt whether sufficient permanent houses will be available at the end of the ten years’ period. The slums of to-morrow may only differ from those of yesterday in the fact that they will be prefabricated.

With regard to prefabrication in general and as applied to ordinary houses, one of the main arguments put forward in its favour has been the fact that cost of production could be considerably reduced if mass production on a sufficient scale were achieved. Experts write as if this would be of some advantage to the occupiers. Some go as far as suggesting that the money saved would be spent on improved equipment or better standards of accommodation.

Let the workers have no illusions. Improved housing will not come by these means. If the cost of housing, and therefore rents can be generally reduced, this will only give our employers an excuse to reduce wages.

The official attitude is well expressed in the following extract from the Report of the Departmental Committee on Housing (Ministry of Health, 1933): —

“In arriving at the suggested figures of subsidy we have had regard to existing levels of cost. We are, however, far from accepting the position that no further economies can be made in planning and construction of working class dwellings. . . . We consider that the position should be reviewed at frequent intervals with a view to reduction of the subsidy. …” (p. 27).

And how would this reduction in cost of production be achieved? By the replacement of skilled labour by unskilled, with its consequent reduction in wages. By a reduction in building time, and therefore of the number of workers required.

In a recent conference report, architects and builders expressed themselves as being “deeply concerned, both as to the future of the industry and conditions with regard to wages and employment if factory operatives and unskilled labour should supplant their building technique and the work of the craftsmen.” (The Architects Journal. 27.1 44, p. 90.)

Reduced building costs means to the workers lower wages and more unemployment. Just as the introduction of factory methods and machinery have always done.

Under Socialism an improvement in building methods would mean better buildings and more leisure—not so under capitalism,

John Moore