The smokescreen of prices (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The prices shown for delivery on online platforms do not tell the full story of the goods and services we buy. The amount we pay for delivery does not tell the tale of low pay for drivers, fragmented work, and daily risks on the road. The visible cost is only the surface: a simple figure that hides the real human and material costs.

Nor is this limited to delivery. More generally, the market price of a good or service rarely includes all the costs of producing it. A significant part is shifted elsewhere: onto the environment, workers, society, or the future.

Many low-cost products depend on production chains that use natural resources with no attention to environmental impact. Deforestation for non-essential goods, intensive use of energy and water, and pollution generated in production have no direct impact on the selling price. The same is true of working conditions – low wages, insecurity, and limited safety – which remain outside the cost on the market.

Another layer of this smokescreen lies in product design. Planned obsolescence and poor reparability, especially in electronic devices, shift costs onto consumers over time and increase waste. The initial price may seem low, but the overall cost—economic and environmental—is much higher.

There are also less immediate effects: impacts on health, as with ultra-processed food; the growing burden of waste that is hard to recycle; and the degradation of ecosystems. These costs are largely borne by society, often through public spending or a loss in quality of life.

This does not result from a single actor deliberately hiding costs. It is a feature of a system in which firms compete to lower prices and raise margins, while many indirect costs—so-called externalities—are not properly accounted for.

The result is a distortion: what is cheap in the market can be costly for society as a whole. Price acts as a smokescreen, simplifying and concealing, and making it harder to judge the real consequences of our choices.

A more radical approach is to question the system itself. If market prices tend to exclude social, environmental, and human costs, then the issue is not only how to correct the system, but whether it should be replaced.

In a system oriented to human needs rather than profit, production will not be driven by returns to investors but by social usefulness and sustainability. This will require forms of planning—more or less decentralised—able to take real costs into account from the start: decent working conditions, environmental limits, durability and reparability, and health factors.

In such a context, price will be abolished as a means of access to goods and services, making them freely available. This would not mean a lack of coordination, but a different kind of coordination. Production and distribution will be organised through planning, shared priorities, and participatory decision-making, giving the ability to deal with both potential abundance and real scarcity. The production of unnecessary or harmful goods will be reduced – not because it is unprofitable, but because it is recognised as socially and environmentally unsustainable.

This raises important questions. How can complex systems of production be coordinated without prices? How can inefficiency, concentration of power, or rigid bureaucracy be avoided? How can innovation and flexibility be maintained? These are not trivial issues. But the tools and knowledge to make costs visible—and to organise production differently—already exist. The issue is not technical, but political and collective. It requires not only awareness, but a conscious and collective decision to reorganise society on a fundamentally different basis. The sooner we begin to take this seriously, the sooner we can stop treating as inevitable what today may appear ‘natural’ but is simply an expression of the way society is organised at this particular point in time.

Gian Maria

Letter: Are business and trade inevitable? (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are business and trade inevitable?

Dear Editors

I liked the short story (Socialist Standard September) even if it was a bit contrived. What this was called in other places in the world before and the decade after the war was industrial sabotage and the offenders would be given a safe passage to a labour camp or shot as an example. Now it’s approved government policy in certain countries.

What this does is waste material and man power/labour. It is a pointless activity. What we need are businesses that produce goods to last and to sell other types of goods so that they are never short of work. Also profit by whatever support service is necessary to maintain product longevity. There is competition and there is just plain stupidity.

Business or trade will not and cannot cease whatever type of government we choose to have or win by armed force. It’s a matter of maximising trade within countries and between countries, maximising the general benefits. Business must never again run its own affairs. It should have a non-cabinet minister within the wider Trade and Industry Department. Government has a wide range of responsibilities. It isn’t only business that serves the people and country. Finance and Taxation and Regulation and everything in fact is to serve not dictate to government. Government is the servant of the whole people.

Elijah Traven, 

Hull

Reply: 

You appear to believe that business and trade are inevitable. This is a common view and understandable given that our entire experience today is one of buying and selling (trading). This assumption, however, is only true of societies which organise themselves around certain private property relations. And these private property relations are not inevitable. Given our modern technological ability to provide for the world’s needs they are not even currently necessary.

In modern capitalist societies we have to engage in buying and selling to satisfy most of our needs. This is a recent development over the last few hundred years. Not so long ago buying and selling formed only a small part of most people’s economic activity. The majority of those who lived by their work were self-sufficient, and only traded their small surpluses for a few items they did not themselves produce. Neither, at this time, did most people sell their labour power to others in return for a wage. To be sure, trading has existed in many societies since states first appeared some six millennia ago, but not in all. Many societies before and since have existed without private property relations and therefore without any buying and selling. These societies had quite different forms of organisation from those we are familiar with in our own world.

The way forward for the working class today is not private property which produces a multitude of problems for the majority, but common ownership and the free association of all people. Only in these circumstances can we eliminate the negative consequences that capitalism so reliably produces and which are so often mistakenly assigned to ‘human nature’. Without capitalism, our current experience of conflict, exploitation, economic instability, the enormous waste of both resources and human labour, the multitude of insecure, unfulfilled lives, the ever present threat and actuality of mechanised warfare and the inability to solve our common problems as one global people, could all become things of the past.

You mention labour camps and the practice of shooting people for engaging in the production of goods designed to have a restricted lifespan – planned obsolescence. You seem to be referring here to states such as the Soviet Union and China which were or are ruled by authoritarian political parties calling themselves socialist or communist. Societies of this kind, just like those in the West, are founded on private property relationships. They trade internally and on the world market. Their goal, like that of Western capitalist societies, is to accumulate capital. While it is true that countries with authoritarian governments and with state control of capital are more directly able to suppress destructive business practices such as the use of planned obsolescence, we see no evidence that this kind of society is sufficient to overcome the multitude of pressures that capitalism imposes on the working class or upon humanity. Indeed, they add problems of their own. Moreover, as the EU is currently demonstrating, Western style capitalist governments are capable of suppressing these practices, at least in part, whenever they threaten to harm the future of capitalist interests more generally.

Capitalism is capable of functioning under a variety of governmental types. Eliminate capitalism however, and government loses its primary function. There is no need for it to continue to exist. So we don’t start by asking what kind of government we want. We start by asking how we want to relate to each other as human beings, and how we want to produce the things we all need. We can then ask: given our current circumstances, what kind of society can we create to meet our needs? The answer is that we can do a lot better than what we have at present.

We are glad you liked the article. You say, though, that you found its short story form ‘a bit contrived’. We can agree. All prose forms are contrivances of one kind or another, including those of conventional articles in magazines like the Socialist Standard. In this respect, the difference between them is that we are more familiar with some written forms than others and take their contrivances for granted. The short story form of the article in question was in fact based on an incident and two conversations that took place in the real world. The article was, in fact, a slice of real life. The virtue of this kind of storytelling is that it allows us to connect the way a capitalist economy actually works with everyday life as we experience it. This is part of the Socialist Standard’s purpose: to witness and explain the often less obvious workings of a capitalist economy, its businesses and its trading economy, for those of us who currently have to sell their labour power for a wage or a salary – Editors

Just another day (2025)

A Short Story from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘You know that’s bullshit, right?’ Kelly looked up from his coffee and gave me a hard stare across the kitchen table.

I closed my eyes. I wanted sympathy, not a political debate.

‘Actually, no. I don’t think that at all,’ I said. And damn! I sounded querulous.

Kelly and I had been mates from childhood, messing around together, and propping each other up through life’s inevitable traumas. He was funny and loyal and caring, always willing to lend a hand. He was the brother I never had. And yet, at times like this, I didn’t actually like him much. We had never been on the same page politically but in the last five years he’d become a convert to so called “libertarianism”, and turned starry-eyed by the so-called magic of the market. Whenever he got political these days, he showed a callous streak, and it always came as a shock when I saw it. People have more defensive layers than there are geological strata in the Grand Canyon – layers cemented together by the anxiety of living in an unnecessarily insecure and unsociable world. It seemed to me that Kelly had grown to be at odds with his own nature.

I hadn’t intended to call on him that morning. After breakfast I’d headed into town on foot on a mission to replace my old, and now defunct, washing machine. Did I say, ‘old’? I’d bought it eight years ago and I wasn’t happy that it had died already. My previous machine had lasted me 35 years with barely a hitch.

It was a drizzly Saturday in February, the sort of day that makes you feel bleak inside. Passing the corner shop at the entrance to Kel’s road, I remembered that his wife, Margaret was up in Aberdeen for the week helping her sister care for an elderly father with dementia. Kel would probably be at home on his own. I turned aside and headed downhill towards his house. When he opened the door he was looking tired. We went through into the kitchen where he’d been working. He swept aside a pile of paperwork on the table and closed his laptop. We sat down.

‘Tax returns?’

He pulled a face.

We drank coffee, and talked of personal issues, of music and motorcycles and eventually of washing machines. I tried to avoid the topic, but you know how it is. It was like suffering a state of general inflammation. The topic emerged as a moan, the moan hardened into a rant, and I was soon well into it. The machine had broken down at a bad time. Only a month earlier I’d forked out a lot of cash to replace my failed boiler. Now there was this.

When it broke down at first, I wasn’t too bothered. I called Frank. He came over later that afternoon wearing the same tool belt he’d had for decades. He pulled the machine out from under the counter, prodded inside for a bit, grunted and then gave me a sympathetic look.

‘It’s the…X’ He said,

‘What’s an X?’ I had no idea.

It turned out to be something small but vital. The crucial detail however was that it was sealed inside the drum. That meant the whole drum assembly would have to be replaced as a unit, and that was going to cost me an arm and a leg. It would be more economical just to replace the whole machine. I trusted Frank. He’d been doing jobs for me for decades. He leaned up against the counter with a cup of tea and launched into a well-rehearsed diatribe.

Thirty years ago, he told me, manufacturers of domestic appliances made available a full range of replacement parts through their own repair people and through independent businesses. These days, once a new model went on sale, replacement parts for the old one became rare as hen’s teeth. Not that it often made any difference. In washing machines, it was common practice, these days, to spot-weld the drums, sealing components inside them and making them inaccessible when they failed. Customers were forced to buy new machines while their existing ones were still largely in good working order. Frank looked me straight in the eyes and grimaced. I nodded. I’d heard a depressingly similar story from the Gas Safe engineer who had been unable to source parts for my boiler.

After I’d shown Frank out, I got online and checked out a number of consumer magazines and independent repair companies. I was soon scribbling away in a notebook. The average life of a washing machine these days is seven years. Seven! Apart from the expense to the customer this represented immense wastage of resources and employees’ labour when they could have been doing something more useful. ‘Criminal!’ Frank had called it. Independent maintenance companies were reporting components designed to break down after a certain number of washes (a remarkably small number in some cases).

Kel sat listening while I spilled all this out across the table. He looked increasingly sceptical. This was going to result in an argument, but I was too far gone to stop.

‘Planned obsolescence is everywhere these days’ I said.

My words worked on him like some kind of dark magic.

‘C’mon, that’s left-wing bullshit,’ he said. He was trying hard to keep his tone moderate but there was a snarl in his voice.

We had hit a familiar impasse. Kel wore Free-Market Economic Theory like a cloak of invulnerability. I often wondered in these moments how our friendship survived. I gave him a crooked look.

‘It makes no sense,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘Why would a business do that? Companies aren’t stupid. If something ends up being a piece of junk, who’s going to buy it again?’ He stopped and stared at me. ‘We’ve been through this before…’

‘Yes we have.’ I sighed. ‘There’s no point pretending it doesn’t happen when it plainly does. What about the Phoebus Cartel.’

‘Not that again! Socialists always trot that one out.’

‘And that kinda means it didn’t happen?’

‘It only lasted a few years’.

‘That’s not true!’

The doings of the Phoebus Cartel are well recorded and it’s an often quoted example of ‘planned obsolescence’. In 1925 light bulb manufacturers across America, Europe and Japan got together and agreed to make bulbs that lasted a maximum of 1,000 hours, despite their having lasted up to 2,500 hours before that time. The cartel was intended to last 30 years, but was forced to break up in 1939 at the onset of war. For a long time after the war, however, manufacturers continued independently to produce bulbs designed to fail after 1,000 hours. Even without the discipline of the cartel, they realised it was both individually and collectively in their interests (and very much against the interests of their customers) to carry on doing this. An individual company might win more customers by doubling the life of its bulbs, but they would sell only half the number they had before, not just to new customers but to their existing ones as well. And if one company did it, capitalism being a competitive system, other companies would be forced to follow suit. Kel’s idealised formula for how perfectly the market works in the customer’s interest failed to represent reality.

He scowled at me. ‘Washing machines don’t last as long these days because customers want cheaper products, so that’s what they get. What do they expect?’

‘Well that’s true, but people have limited incomes,’ I said. ‘They have always wanted cheaper products. So why weren’t they being produced cheaper before? And besides, how does that explain the use of sealed units’.

Washing machines are cheaper today for a variety of reasons, all to do with the profit motive and market economics: technology has advanced and the costs of manufacture have fallen. The market for white goods has become hotly competitive in recent years, which is driving down prices. And many of the components used are now being outsourced to low-wage economies.

In Kel’s ideological world customers control the market. Companies, it is argued, only produce what customers want. It follows, in theory and in Kel’s mind, that if washing machines don’t last as long as they used to, then it must be the working-class consumer’s fault for demanding cheaper goods. What a surprise. It is extraordinary that no matter how free-market economics theorises a problem, by some magic it invariably turns out to be working people’s fault.

‘C’mon Kel. Major companies have even admitted introducing all kinds of ways to limit their product’s lifespan, or making them unrepairable. Apple and Samsung for instance.’

‘Apple and Samsung don’t make washing machines,’ he snapped.

I threw up my eyes. It was Kel now who was sounding querulous.

‘We’re not just talking about washing machines. Obsolescence is widespread. It’s a consequence of the capitalist market system. There have been lawsuits taken out against companies in the EU for it. Against Epson, for instance. You’re clinging to a theory that justifies your belief in capitalism but doesn’t represent reality. Competition is built into the system, which means that if one company introduces a degree of planned obsolescence, they all have to.’ He said nothing, just pulled a face to show how stupid I was to believe anything so irrational.

There are multiple ways manufacturers have of manipulating consumer purchases. Back in the day Henry Ford figured out that by bringing out new models of cars regularly, he could stimulate public desires for novelty and get them to dump their old machines before they needed to. Mobile phone companies do the same today, producing new models every year, often with only minor improvements, or with a ‘new’ look which gets marketed as the latest must-have item. Newness is sexy. At the same time as new models appear, companies flood the market with adverts extolling their virtues, and people start to notice their existing phones are running unaccountably slow. Owning glitzy new things indicates status. It fills the emotional hole left inside us by the loss of community and closeness.

Kel stood up abruptly and left the room. I stared at the rain running down the windowpane and sighed. No matter how hard we tried to avoid these confrontations, they kept occurring. It was a couple of minutes before he came back. He stood in the doorway. His frown deepened for a moment, but then he exploded into laughter. I smiled and shook my head.

‘Sounds tough. Do you need some cash,’ he asked? ‘I’m not badly placed at the moment.’

I looked down at his tax returns. Even if true, I knew it was a half-truth at best. His work was seasonal. This was not his best time of year.

‘I’ll get by. I’ll need to economise for a while. No extras. Right now, though, I need to go and buy this bloody machine or else I shall start to stink.’ I got up, and we walked to the front door.

‘Give my love to Margaret’ I said when we reached the hallway. ‘When is she due back?’

He sighed. ‘Depends how long she’s needed. Her sister is pretty exhausted looking after their dad. He wandered out of the house by himself last week and got lost. They had to call the police.’

‘Ouch!’ I knew that situation from personal experience.

He shrugged and then nodded. ‘It is what it is! We cope.’

I said goodbye, pulled up my hood and walked down his path into a February drizzle. For a while my head was full of messy thoughts and feelings. Money, property, competition: they screwed up all our relations. Capital value dominated our lives. Kel, though, was a good friend, whatever differences we might have. That was something of real value to hold on to. I pulled myself back to the here and now. The road on either side was lined with a jumble of small businesses, pubs and tiny Victorian terraces built originally for railway workers. They looked shabby now. I skirted a few gathering puddles, dodged some pedestrians hurrying towards the station, and prepared myself mentally to do battle with sales staff eager for a sales commission.

Hud.

How we live and how we might live - Part 8 (2025)

From the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last month)

‘[The claim] that every individual is required to work is a social convention and disciplinary apparatus rather than an economic necessity’ (Kathi Weeks, The Problem With Work).

The post-capitalist society being argued for here is one where productive activity is taken up voluntarily by individuals, and access to the social product is open and free. Last month we showed how an objection often made that members of such a society would prefer to lie down and starve rather than do anything to meet their needs was unfounded. We can now look at the many immediate benefits that the structure of such a society would bring even before it developed more elaborate institutions. We have already seen how a system of free access would render ‘greedy’ behaviour pointless or counterproductive. We can now show that the same system of society would undermine the lazy-person argument.

The most immediate impact a free-access society is likely to have on its members would be a huge reduction in the amount of effort they would need to put in to sustain it. Capitalism is immensely inefficient in its use of human labour. Its system of corralling individuals, families and businesses into independent and competing property units, and then routing production through the profit motive, requires a gigantic social apparatus to sustain it. Not only does it force capitalism to maintain an elaborate monetary mechanism, it also requires a means of managing the resulting inefficiencies. Moreover, the competitive nature of the system creates much duplicated effort, and results in a great deal of labour being devoted to the production of useless and shoddy goods.

Wasted labour

In almost all capitalist states large numbers of jobs are dedicated to the management of a central banking system which, besides making valiant attempts at stabilising capitalism’s financial system, concerns itself with the production and issue of money. Upon this foundation whole industries have developed to finance business operations and to service the system’s property relationships. The pensions, insurance and brokerage industries are three of the largest of this kind. Out of a total UK working population of 43 million people well over one million are employed in this sector alone.

The property system also requires capitalist governments to employ armies of civil servants and local government officers to devise and administer welfare and unemployment payments to maintain the workforce through periods of unemployment, to provide for those unable to work, and to top-up the incomes of those whose wages are inadequate. Governments also employ workers to register ownership of land and property, assess and collect taxes, enforce weights and measures, etc. These systems require not only labour for direct planning and administration but also for the production and development of equipment such as computer hardware and software, buildings, stationery products, transport systems and sources of energy.

The bulk of capitalism’s legal systems, its judiciaries and police forces, is dedicated overwhelmingly to adjudicating property contracts, property disputes, and property transgressions, along with crimes against people motivated by monetary gain. Businesses based on gambling like casinos, amusement arcades, bookies, betting shops and stock exchanges flourish in the win-lose system that is central to capitalism. Capitalist states consume labour in the production of armaments and military hardware, for sale to others as well as for their own use. They maintain military personnel to further the interests of businesses within their territories in the international competition for markets, resources, trade routes, and the ability to project power and manoeuvre strategically to secure these essentials. In the aftermath of conflict labour is then deployed for rebuilding what has been destroyed.

Monetary tasks

In the world of business, firms of all kinds must dedicate labour resources to monetary tasks such as bookkeeping, accounting and debt collecting, while the demands of profit maximisation through competitive sale on the market forces them to devote huge labour resources to the advertising and marketing of brands and products. Companies work ceaselessly to bombard us with advertising online, in newspapers and magazines, on TV, at the cinema, on roadside hoardings, on the sides of lorries and buses, on bus shelters and railway platforms and on every available space. Capitalist companies employ labour to research and implement sophisticated psychological techniques for creating artificial wants in consumers. We are pressurised into buying by limited time offers, or into believing we are getting a bargain by supposed discounts, or into purchasing a lifestyle or an identity through branded items. In-store lighting, music, shelf placement and shelving layouts are designed to exploit our instincts and vulnerabilities. ‘Product placement’ on our favourite video channels keeps goods relevant to our interests in the forefront of our minds. Online ‘organic communities’ built around brands proliferate to keep us talking about a company’s products. PR consultants like the notorious Frank Luntz gleefully explain in their writings the techniques used to manipulate the public by a careful choice and placing of words and images.

And we submit to all of this because capitalism’s restless search for profit has uprooted or unsettled our communities. It has isolated us emotionally and economically. We buy stuff to fill up an emotional void. A halo of excitement surrounds each new product on the shelf or online platform and entices us to buy. At home, the excitement persists for a few days or weeks, but then fades and the exciting object becomes just one more thing we have. Our new possession morphs into junk or household clutter, or it falls apart or goes out of fashion. Still hungry, still unsatisfied, we dispose of it to make room for more. And more labour is then eaten up in transporting and disposing of the waste.

Planned obsolescence

Since the 1950s capitalism’s drive to maximise profit by ramping up sales has increasingly taken on various forms of planned obsolescence, so much so that it is now a regular sales strategy. Companies produce cheap products that soon fall apart and have to be quickly replaced. Parts or whole products are entombed in plastic or in spot-welded metal casings rendering them inaccessible and unrepairable. Companies use screws with proprietary heads that cannot be removed with an ordinary screwdriver. Spare parts are quickly withdrawn from sale, or they are sold at exorbitant prices that make it cheaper to replace the whole item. New components are designed to be incompatible with old ones. White goods that once were built to last 30+ years now break down in six or seven. Fashion houses rush out new fashions weekly or even daily. Smart phone manufacturers introduce new designs every year, simultaneously swamping public spaces with advertising, while about the same time punters begin to notice that their old phones are unaccountably starting to go slow.

A great deal of labour in capitalism’s competitive society is mopped up in the production of consumer goods that originate not in the spontaneous wants and demands of the population but in the requirements of profit making. In the mid-20th century, pundits predicted that rapidly advancing technology would result in a rise in the productivity of labour. As a result, they believed we would have to work fewer hours in the future. As early as 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes declared that by the millennium, when his generation’s grandchildren had grown to adulthood, no one would have to work more than 15 hours a week. Keynes was right about capitalism’s drive towards increased productivity. He was wrong, however, about the forces that drive capitalism. In a profit system capital takes on a life of its own. It becomes ravenous. It must constantly seek out new outlets for investment, new ways of creating ever more capital. Inevitably this means that new products, new services are constantly being puffed into existence. Instead of reducing the work needed by society, the profit motive keeps us at work generating ever more ephemeral stuff. So we get not just the kind of unproductive work that the late anthropologist David Graeber referred to as ‘bullshit jobs’, but jobs dedicated to producing bullshit products, and then to marketing them to the ‘consumer’.

Eliminating the profit system

By eliminating capitalism’s class system together with its profit motive, huge amounts of unnecessary labour and whole industries would cease to exist. In the same move, the direct connection between production and consumption would be restored. The quantity of social effort required to meet social need would plummet, and the population would gain a new level of social control over its labour time. It would be free at last to decide how much effort it wanted to expend on production and how it wanted to use it.

Eliminating the profit system would transform the whole nature of work. When society is founded on common ownership and free access, work ceases to be ‘work’: the sale and exercise of labour power on behalf of an employer, and becomes productive activity, a voluntary social act, undertaken by individuals for social purposes. The aim of production would no longer be maximisation of profit by competing firms, but the meeting of social needs. And social needs include those of the producer as well as the consumer. Under capitalist conditions, unpleasant, mindlessly repetitive work often conducted in unhealthy conditions, with unsociable hours and overseen by a harsh disciplinary regime, is the product of the individual capitalist firm’s need to minimise costs. With the profit system removed like a glitch in software, only one social purpose for productive activity remains: the meeting of social needs.

Social psychology has known for decades that extrinsic ‘rewards’ or ‘incentives’ like wages and salaries are poor motivators for action. And to say this is already to miss something important. To a large extent, wages and salaries in capitalism are not primarily rewards or incentives. For the majority of the population they are an imposed necessity. The motivation for doing a task – any task – comes principally from intrinsic rewards, that is, from the rewards which arise out of doing the task itself. Human beings are primarily motivated by three things: by the ability to control their own lives; by the desire to master skills; and by social belonging. These are incentives that capitalism is very bad at providing. As we argued earlier, it provides intrinsic incentives only occasionally and only in certain industries where profits are temporarily above average and where there are shortages in the labour market.

In a post-capitalist world of common ownership and free access where class conflicts of interest are eliminated, communities engaged in productive activities can organise their work to meet those human needs for control, for mastery and for community. They can provide themselves with conditions of work that maximise their own satisfaction, and not the profits of their employers. Under these conditions productive activity becomes not a sacrifice of time and effort for an extrinsic wage, but a collective activity carried on for collective ends and as a seamless part of a community’s social life.

The final article in this series next month will dive deeper into what motivates human beings and answer the question of who will do the dirty work.

(A representative list of tasks required by capitalism’s money system is given in Chapter 3 of the SPGB’s pamphlet: ‘From Capitalism to Socialism: How we Live and how we Could Live').

Hud.

Proper Gander: All over the shop (2025)

The Proper Gander TV column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Netflix released Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy just before the Black Friday spending bonanza, since when we’ve also had the pre-Christmas push to shop and the post-Christmas sales aligning with retailers starting to stock up for Easter. While the documentary engagingly describes how capitalism turns us into hungry customers and consumers of short-lived commodities, predictably it’s not as subversive as it wants to appear.

As is the norm, the programme starts with a quick-fire round-up of what’s to come, which is largely interviews and clips of stock footage, archive news and content from vloggers. Between these are CGI scenes of panoramas of piles of rubbish (an idea recycled from the 2008 film Wall-E) and billboards displaying words like ‘buy’ and ‘consume’ (an idea recycled from the 1988 film They Live). AI is also invoked with the presenter being Sasha, apparently a disembodied expert on ‘how to succeed in business’. Sasha outlines ‘the five most important lessons in profit maximisation’, which provide a framework for the documentary, although ‘her’ presence quickly becomes annoying, perhaps deliberately.

The first of these lessons is ‘Sell More’, in which we’re introduced to the people interviewed throughout the programme, including ex-employees of corporations who became disillusioned after realising what the brands they were promoting really represent. Some particularly interesting contributions are made by Maren Costa, previously a ‘User Experience Designer’ with Amazon. She talks about her initial excitement at creating new ways to make products tempting (right down to the most effective font colour) and easier to buy (with ‘one click’), until she realised she was working within ‘an intentional, complex, highly refined science to get you to buy stuff’. Although the focus was on selling Amazon’s stock, Maren says ‘I don’t think we were ever thinking about where does all this stuff go?’ Buying tech or clothes tends to involve getting rid of whatever has been replaced, as described in the second section ‘Waste More’. Producers have known for a long time that shortening the lifespan of a commodity means that a new one will be bought sooner, increasing sales further. The most notorious example of this planned obsolescence was when the durability of incandescent lightbulbs was set by a cartel of companies in the 1920s. Another approach is to make it impossible to mend broken appliances, such as when the fixings on the cases of Apple iPhones changed so their backs couldn’t be unscrewed. Gadget manufacturers have even filed lawsuits against organisations such as iFixit to prevent their devices from being repaired. Items are often thrown away before they’re even used, as shown in footage of Amazon employees destroying serviceable goods because it’s cheaper to do this than redistribute them.

The third lesson ‘Lie More’ covers how we’re encouraged to believe that products are or can be recycled to distract us from their real environmental impact, not only how they end up adding to piles of waste, but also the CO2 emissions caused by their manufacture. If we have the impression that a brand has green credentials, we’re more likely to buy its merchandise. The practice of ‘greenwashing’ – pretending to be eco-friendly – is, according to Maren, a ‘double evil’ as companies are not only harming the environment, but also pacifying people. In the fourth section ‘Hide More’ we’re told about how the amount of waste generated by commodity production is disguised through the irresponsible ways it’s dealt with. Discarded items are moved across the planet to where it’s cheaper for them to be disposed of, such as countries without much legislation about handling hazardous scrap. Unfortunately, around this point the documentary loses momentum. The fifth section ‘Control More’ is very brief, despite it hinting at explaining the word ‘conspiracy’ in the show’s title. Maren says that staff at the highest level have to commit to ‘backing the company no matter what’, so after she spoke out about Amazon’s carbon emissions, she lost her job. ‘They don’t want anyone disrupting that story’ which presents a company as admirable even though it reinforces the damaging normality of pushing out more and more shoddy products which often end up littering beaches in Africa.

After over an hour of vividly highlighting problems, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy doesn’t have much to say about solutions. It winds down with each of the interviewees giving glib optimistic lines which brush over the detail of what they previously described. The views of the writer and director Nic Stacey don’t seem to be any more thorough. When asked about how the problem of waste could be resolved, he said ‘companies need to creatively think about ways that they can extend the lives of the products they make. And we need policy change; governments can help put legislation in place to manage the end of life of a product’ (tinyurl.com/3fsuuenh). This hasn’t happened because it hasn’t been in the interests of the capitalist class which owns the companies, although their role isn’t explored in the documentary. There is little explanation of the overriding need for production to accumulate profit for those capitalists, which leads to practices such as manipulative advertising, planned obsolescence, greenwashing and making more refuse than can be handled. Nor is the wider economic context of the global commodity market sketched out, even though this underpins how companies have to operate. Two of those prominently criticised in the show are Apple and Amazon, and their Siri and Alexa virtual assistants sound similar to the dislikeable virtual presenter Sasha. Both companies are rivals of Netflix, who stream the documentary: Apple TV and Amazon’s Prime Video division compete with Netflix for subscribers, even though for many years, Netflix has relied on its data being hosted by the Amazon Web Services cloud. As Netflix is part of the same media market, it also has to follow ‘the five most important lessons in profit maximisation’ outlined by Sasha. So, it isn’t going to broadcast anything which delves too deeply into why.

Mike Foster

And then the roof fell in! (1958)

From the July 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American Slump

The beginning of a recession is like intoxication: the patient gets worse—but he feels better. British and American capitalism has been looking and feeling better for two years, but now the symptoms are beginning to show. Business has been booming, problems of shortages have been overcome, and for the consumer—with the end of the “sellers’” market, inducements to buy in the form of better quality, better service, better packaging or even lower price: all these have made life seem better and easier.

Buy now and pay later

Since the War the credit buying was expanded greatly in this country, but it has never reached United States proportions. The legal restriction on hire purchase trading that we have here (minimum deposits, etc.) does not apply in the U.S., and consequently, as selling became more difficult, “easier and easier” credit terms were offend. Not only is credit buying respectable in America, but almost a national custom. Whatever the income range—from the lowest paid to those executives whose blood pressure would suffer considerably at the thought that they wen “workers’’—all buy houses, cars (a new one every year if possible), refrigerators, holidays, and all the gimmicks of the American Way of Life, on credit.

Then is also a growing inability and reluctance to repair anything. When that brand new car—or fridge— or house—starts giving trouble, well then, just throw it away and buy another one. Last year Time magazine, which usually has on its cover the effigy of a Great Man (or film star), featured “The American Repair Man.” and the article dealing with the cover story showed in amusing detail the situation of the American worker, surrounded by mechanical appliances which would save him a lot of labour if only he could get them to work again. 

Throw it away!

But, of course, the advertisers have the answer: buy another one. Buy this year’s model: be in the fashion: your old green refrigerator is out of date—red is the colour this year1

In fact, there is only one thing wrong with buying on credit, and that is that you have to pay for it even if it is later rather than sooner, and this is rapidly being brought home to those millions of Americans who are now unemployed.

Unemployment

The present situation in America is that there are over three million drawing unemployment benefit. The actual number of unemployed exceeds this figure, since the benefit only lasts for a maximum period of 39 weeks and many have been out of work long enough to be now disqualified. This puts them “on relief,” paid for by their city, and they come out of the statistics of “ unemployed.” Arising from this lack of work (and consequently, lack of pay) the furniture and other items bought on credit are being repossessed by the sellers, mortgages are in many cases being held over temporarily and stealing of food from self-service stores has increased noticeably in those towns that have been forcibly hit by unemployment. 

The “land of opportunity” is receding for the unemployed worker whose home and way of life is in danger. Suddenly, the insecurity of capitalism is made real.

This problem will be aggravated since we learnt recently that the American car factories are shortly to shut down production of 1958 models for several months to give dealers time to sell 760,000 1958 cars now unsold. The industry always shuts down every year in order to retool for the next year’s cars, but this year the closure has been brought forward many months.

Too Much

Everywhere the terrible cry goes up—surpluses. Too much food, bumper crops; too much oil; too many cars and other goods on the market: too much production of raw materials from South America and Asia, causing world prices of raw materials to drop drastically: too many unemployed, not able on the benefit to buy more of these commodities and seeing those that they have “ bought ” taken back by the finance companies.

Add to this catalogue the statement by Mr. Khrushchev last November: "We declare war on you in the peaceful field of trade.” Thus Russia, a new competitor, enters world capitalism on a large scale as a rival to the older established powers.

Capitalism's Answer

What is the answer? In May there was a meeting of the National Industrial Conference Board in New York at which economic and business experts gave their remedies. Cut taxes to encourage business they say: but the man on relief does not pay taxes and has not business been “encouraged” too much? Produce better values, they say; but the man on relief (or in danger of it) will be unable to buy anything other than necessities, good or bad value. Bring back the lost art of selling, they say: but again, if you haven’t got the money you can’t buy, no matter how slick the salesman. Introduce high tariffs against foreign imports? but that will only aggravate the bankruptcy of countries like Bolivia, Chile, Indonesia and others, and will have a profound effect on countries like Britain, which depends largely on car exports to the U.S. It has been estimated that a 4 per cent. drop in key prices in undeveloped lands cancels out all the funds supplied by the United States in economic aid. In many cases the drop has already exceeded that amount.

It may seem strange that those who support capitalism most volubly—including those workers now unemployed—are those who understand its workings least. Or perhaps it is not so surprising since if they did understand it, would they still support it? See the great surprise of the American worker who finds it hard to realise that all that bustling prosperity founded upon these great factories—such permanent things—all this should suddenly collapse into what is now politely called a “recession.” A recession, mark you, that shows no signs of getting better yet. The National Industrial Conference Board which met in New York this month (referred to above) received a “report from businessmen pointing to a further decline in spending for plant expansion that will last into 1959.” And recently a top building-industry economist, speaking to the New York Society of Security Analysts said that the recession will last “through I960"

Our Criticism

Socialists are opposed to capitalism and we are opposed because we do understand the basic workings of the system. The broad cycle of slump and boom will continue due to the basis on which production rests. This basis, this “ incentive ” that is thought so admirable by anti-Socialists, is the competitive urge to profit. But this incentive can work both ways—if the production of a commodity does not appear profitable, then it will not normally be produced. On the other hand, distribution has no relation to the needs of people but only to the ability or otherwise to pay the price.

Generally the picture of the world commodity market today—of which America is only a more dramatic example—is of too many goods unsold, in store, production being restricted. And, at the same time, too many people needing those goods and without the money to buy them.

It's Falling

This is always the picture in capitalism and is only brought out more clearly when, as at the present time, there is a growing world recession. To those who support capitalism, this system of fake individualism, financial enterprise and dog-eat-dog competition, we say. this world as you see it now is the society that you perpetuate.

We say further that this is not necessary. The energy and enterprise that goes into attempts to solve insoluble problems and to stabilise an unstable system, and the techniques of production that produced these vast crisis-making surpluses—all these could be used perfectly well for the benefit of the whole community, in a society where goods were made to satisfy peoples’ needs and not for the profit of the producers.

With Socialism, economic security would be a reality.

As one of the unemployed said, in Bristol, Connecticut, where now nearly one worker in four is unemployed: “ It seemed set to last for ever, and then the roof fell in.”

L. B.

Letter: A pretty kettle of fish (2023)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

This letter of complaint written by a very disgruntled electric kettle customer was sent to a consumer affairs television programme.

Dear Editors,

Four years ago I bought a Russell Hobbs electric kettle. I chose this one because this is a popular brand and I thought that it would be reliable and give me years of good service. It came with a 2-year guarantee, so now that it is 4 years old the company that manufactured it is not under any obligation to replace it for me.

The fault is quite trivial. It still boils the water but it has developed a leak. I looked inside the kettle and saw that there is a small nut that needs to be tightened, but it is behind the element so I can’t get at it to fix it. I took it to the registered appliance agent who told me that it cannot be fixed because the element cannot be removed. He advised me to throw it away and buy a new one. The kettle is made of stainless steel, a durable material which should last forever. If I bought a stainless steel cooking pot and boiled water in that, it would last forever, but of course, we all want a kettle because it uses less electricity to heat the water than having to put a pan on the cooker. I remember when electric kettles and electric jugs were made with parts that could be replaced, for example, elements could be replaced when they wore out.

My issue is not just, in this instance, with Russell Hobbs, but with the capitalist system which forces manufacturers of all appliances to make their goods so that they have a very short lifespan and have to be replaced every few years.

What a terrible waste of the Earth’s resources!

Shall we continue to fill up our rubbish tips with appliances that have been designed to break down after just a few years?

In a capitalist society manufacturers have to be seen to be making a profit. The only way they can do this is to make sure that we have to keep on buying their goods and replacing them on a regular basis. And to hell with using up all the Earth’s valuable resources and filling the rubbish tips with stuff that is non-biodegradable!

Until humankind changes the current exploitative system, of both workers and consumers, with one where goods are produced for use, not profit, I think that it should be illegal to manufacture anything that cannot be repaired.

Yours Faithfully,

Moggie Grayson

Reply:

We have dealt comprehensively over the years with the deliberate act on the part of manufacturers to ensure that their particular commodities are made not to usefully last for a long time but to wear out in a relatively short space of time. Why are things not built or made to last? Because longevity is the enemy of profit – which is the raison d’être of capitalism.

‘In 1960 Vance Packard (certainly no socialist) wrote a book called The Waste Makers which caused a minor disturbance at its publication because it dealt with what he termed “planned obsolescence”. Packard showed how firms made shoddy goods, designed to wear out quickly so there would be a market for new ones. He wrote of radios, car parts and television sets which their designers and manufacturers knew could easily be made to last longer. There have even been instances of workers being fired because they took the time to do an excellent job, and so were not profitable’ (‘Waste and want — the insane logic of capitalism.’ World Socialist, April 1984).

Add computers, mobile phones, white goods, microwaves and electric kettles to the items that Vance Packard described.

‘There is no technical reason why solid and reliable electric and electronic appliances with easily changeable and compatible parts and able to incorporate innovations could not be produced. Industrial designers would surely love to do this but under capitalism it is the marketing department that calls the shots, as what is being produced are not simply products to be used, but commodities to be sold on a market with a view to profit’ (‘Organised Waste’, Socialist Standard, May 2011).

An update on Packard’s The Waste Makers was published in 2006: Made to break. Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade (reviewed in the Socialist Standard, October 2009). Slade wrote:

‘Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete. We do that for the soundest reason: to make money’ (p. 153).

Think of the regular introduction into the market of smartphones. Older models work just as well but are eventually made unusable because the operating system becomes unable to support newer applications and support for the older models is discontinued. The same can be said of computers.

The reviewer made the point that the workers, who design and produce these items – and run capitalism on behalf of the elite class – are perfectly capable of making better quality goods and that:

‘This provoked a conflict with engineers, who knew they could make solid products that could last for years, but in the end their reluctance was overcome (they, too, are in the end only hired employees who have to do their employer’s bidding). It is also enormously wasteful as still useable products, and the material resources that went into making them, are simply thrown away’.

The solution to the problem of built-in obsolescence (and to many others) is straightforward. It’s the removal of the cost-saving, corner-cutting, ‘must keep profits as high as possible’ pressures which, by the economic laws of capitalism, all producers are subject too.

The only way to stop it? The replacement of capitalism by socialism where quality will extend to all areas of life. Why, with production directly for use, would we want to turn out stuff made not to last?

Dave Coggan

Pathfinders: Reprap artists are Fab (2008)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

You know what it’s like when you need to buy a tap washer, or a small plastic bracket, and you go to some big hardware chain to find that they will only sell you the product in packs of ten? You know why they’re doing it of course, because it’s not worth their while to sell them individually. You also know that the other nine you’ve had to buy are going to end up, either lost in the back of the shed, or lying fresh and un-degraded in landfill for many times the lifetime of the appliance, or even of yourself, your house, your city or your economic system. While you’re ruminating on this absurdity, your expensive digital camera fails because of a tiny piece of plastic which must have been deliberately designed to break, something that ought to be replaceable but isn’t, except by buying a whole new camera and scrapping the old. Such, you conclude in disgust, are the peculiar and pointless ways of capitalist production and economics. So much energy, so much waste, so little useful result.

 Those with overachieving memories may recall Pathfinders, back in August 2005, excitedly discussing the advent of 3D printers, which heralded the possibility of downloading and printing your very own tap washer, bracket or camera casing. The state of the art back then was less-than-durable wax and plaster, and the cost exorbitant. Well, things have moved on. Now they are working in durable plastic, and last month the Cheltenham Science Festival saw the first 3D printer capable of printing most of the parts necessary to make itself, in other words, a self-replicating machine (New Scientist, June 7). The replicating rapid-prototyper or Reprap, version 1, the ‘Darwin’, can only do plastic, and the metal struts and electronics still have to be bought off the shelf. It is a far-cry yet from the developers’ own dream of creating the first Universal Constructor, an all-singing, all-dancing, cellular-based creation device first proposed by John von Neumann back in the 1940’s. The range of things Reprap can make is hardly enough to inspire enthusiasm in anyone but technogeeks and ironmongers, but the next model being planned, the Version 2 Mendel, is expected to be able to print metal parts and electrical circuits too.

 So why all the excitement, over a gizmo that can knock out the odd plastic sprocket or the various parts of another sprocket-making gizmo? There are several reasons. Innovation and design in an industrial manufacturing environment typically requires a retooling for each new model, and expensive one-time only prototype production costs, thus acting as a huge financial drag on the pace of development. The technology of micro-production in so-called fab labs in the last ten years has changed this, yet the cost of the fabrication machines, in tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds, has still been beyond the reach of most designers. Now that ‘fabbers’ are becoming cheap enough for even home amateurs, the pace of technological design may well accelerate geometrically. And not only that, the design process itself will benefit from Darwinian-type evolution as the ease of try-it-and-see approaches potentially leads to unplanned and unforeseen breakthroughs.

 Another reason why we should be excited is that the designs and specifications for these cheap fabbers are not proprietary but are offered free to anybody under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence, with a view to ‘democratising’ design and construction. If you want one, you can have one yourself, for just the cost of the materials. This is the first time that the Open Source movement has broken out of the digital world into the concrete world of things, and although ‘open source’ isn’t always the same as ‘free gift’, the two traditions of cooperative endeavour and free access are so welded together that this development inevitably raises a new and very interesting possibility, a new spectre perhaps to haunt not just Europe but the whole of advanced capitalism.

 The spectre in question is the potential of free or near zero-cost production, the antithesis of the closed market, slayer of scarcity, enemy of poverty, destroyer of profit. And in case anyone thinks that is just fanciful talk, a quick glance at the Reprap homepage at www.reprap.org shows that the developers of these machines have not failed to foresee the possible long-term radical implications. Describing Reprap, somewhat immodestly, as a ‘project to save the world’, the developers claim as their ringing slogan the words ‘Wealth without money’. Now there’s a socialist idea if ever there was one.

 Even so, the range of likely products issuing forth from this technology is not startling, and socialism will not come about simply because the bottom has suddenly dropped out of the plastic coat hook market. What really needs to happen for capitalism to be under threat is for the machinery to go super-small. An open-source revolution in nanotechnology could quite likely wreck the market system altogether, as it would make possible the production of almost any conceivable item in chemical vats at almost zero-cost, plus the replicators to create them, and most significantly, stupendous amounts of food reprocessed from junk biomass. The difference is that nanotechnology is still hugely expensive, probably decades away from self-replicating machines, and entirely proprietary.

 It shouldn’t really need saying, but technology won’t save the world by itself, and not even a revolution in production will necessarily change anything unless social attitudes change too. Still, the idea of giving not selling is catching on fast, and it’s now spreading beyond the domain of software into the material world. Socialists have long said that there is no need for global scarcity, even with today’s technology. But if tomorrow’s technology further reinforces the potential of global abundance, perhaps we might finally see the world usher its steam-age economic system into well-deserved retirement.

Paddy Shannon

Production Values: the best a Man can Get? (2011)

The Production Values Column from the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sideways glance at capitalism through some of its products. This month: the razor.

It was a nostalgia web-site which first coined the phrase “jumping the shark”. This referred to the decline in the quality of the 1970s TV show “Happy Days” which ran out of ideas and ended up with a desperate episode where the show’s star water-skied over a shark.

The phrase has now entered general usage to refer to the point at which anything gets taken just too far and becomes absurd. Socialists argue over just when capitalism “jumped the shark”: when its dynamic and revolutionary nature was overtaken by its wastefulness and unhumanitarian priorities. It has been after all a useful society in terms of enabling – at least to some extent – society’s productive powers to increase massively over the last 200 years.

It would be churlish to criticise all product developments inside capitalism. Just most of them. A good example of this is the razor blade, the earliest example of which was a long open sharp metal blade. Unlikely to pass product safety regulations nowadays, it nonetheless – in skilled hands – did the job. The development of the safety razor seems to this writer to be a useful advance. Encasing the blade in plastic to minimise the depth of any inadvertent cut, the safety razor was a big hit when first developed.

The market leader Gillette held the patent for stainless steel blades which did not rust so readily, but had not acted on it. Why not pass this benefit onto the consumer? Because they made more profit from selling lots of the inferior carbon steel blades which blunted easily. Perhaps not the best “a man can get”, then.

Similarly the move by Bic and then all manufacturers into disposable shavers meant lower up-front cost for the consumer but larger long-term revenue. In particular the adoption of the cartridge system (separate blade unit from the handle) meant that the manufacturer “locked in” the customer to their brand which – unsurprisingly – wouldn’t fit any competitors’.

The wholly disposable razor came next, followed by adjustable heads (the razer that is, not the user). One sharp cookie came up with the idea of having two blades side-by-side, on the dubious grounds that this somehow made for a closer shave. It wasn’t long before the main competitor responded with a three-blade system.

Whatever would they think up next? Crack teams of researchers worked night and day in labs to keep ahead of the competition. They finally came up with “Quatro” – yes, you guessed it, four blades. The careful reader will have detected a trend here, and you’d be right: a fifth blade soon followed.

This is a brief history of just one product. Your own local supermarket will betray a thousand similar stories of artificial restrictions, artificial needs and wasted human ingenuity. Without splitting hairs, while you deliberate as to exactly when you think capitalism jumped this particular smooth-skinned shark, the steel mills of China are ratcheting up production again as news comes in (January 2011 ) of the Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn announcing the launch of … yes, you guessed it… a six-blade device. Happy days!

Capitalism – Waste – Want (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Misusing world resources

One speech for which Enoch Powell is not quite so famous is the one in which he gives vent to his fervent faith in the basic virtue and inexorable efficiency of the capitalist system. It seems, when Powell is talking in this vein, that he has a dream about what he thinks of as pure capitalism, in which the profit motive and the whole business of buying and selling are left to work their ways undisturbed by such things as state intervention, union bargaining power and so on. He thinks that the system of commodity production has such eternal sanity that, left to itself, it will solve all problems — housing, health, economic crises and the like.

Powell is an extreme case but he uses a logic which, although it seems macabre, is consistent enough to anyone who accepts the basis of capitalism. What of these, the less extreme? Every supporter of capitalism must to some degree argue that the system is basically efficient. Even the problems they admit to must have a solution which is never more ambitious than a juggling with, or a deflection of, the profit motive; they can never actually question that motive. Hence the policies, typical of such as the Labour Party, of subsidies for houses, food, transport and so on. These subsidies are of course supposed to stimulate the production of goods; there are others, also inspired by the profit motive, aimed at promoting the non-production of goods. Both, apparently, are examples of the efficiency of capitalism.

What we are concerned with here is the notion that capitalism works, in terms of the efficient production and distribution of wealth and of the satisfaction and happiness of its people. There are two ways of approaching this. The first is to look at examples of inefficiency so blatant that even supporters of capitalism consider them fit subjects for protest. By examining the background reasons for these we can broaden our view, taking in examples of inefficiency and wastefulness which probably only socialists would regard as scandalous.

Every so often the communication media become fascinated by some spectacular revelations of especially obvious waste. It is about ten years since Vance Packard’s The Waste Makers burst upon us, crammed with details of what was succinctly called planned obsolescence. Packard showed how firms make inferior goods, goods designed to wear out relatively quickly so that there might be a market for new ones. He told of portable radios, car silencers, television sets which their designers knew could easily be made to last a lot longer. He also gave evidence of manufacturers regularly changing styles, once more to stimulate the market by persuading buyers that their present model was no good because it was out of fashion. Who wanted to be seen driving last year’s car? Looking at an old-look telly? Better buy a new one, keep up with the times.

Perhaps many of the readers of The Waste Makers hoped that it would have the effect of raising production standards. They were wrong. As anyone who buys a car or a TV set or something similar knows, waste is still being busily made in the factories. Any reader of the consumer reports can testify to the fact that obsolescence is still on the factories’ planning schedules. One small example of this came to light last September. It concerned a skilled joiner, an old man who had been sacked—not because he was a bad worker or a poor time keeper or anything like that. He was sacked because his work was too good to be profitable. A director of the firm concerned said:

  There were no complaints about Mr. Welch’s work. He was a first class joiner, but he was not prepared to use modern methods of work. His unnecessarily high standard meant that the company could not make his work pay. (Daily Telegraph, 16 September 1969)

It is easy to imagine the frustration of a skilled worker in this situation. Then what about the similar feelings of, say, farm workers who watch fertile land being taken out of production in the knowledge that starvation, even famine, is one of the world’s serious problems? It will surprise some of those who are starving, to learn that there is a “glut” of wheat in the world, that leading wheat exporting countries are trying to reduce their “surpluses”, that in America the government has just imposed the third successive cut back in production and has once more increased the financial inducement to take wheat acreage out of cultivation. All the cloudy jargon used to justify this policy can be reduced to one single sentence. Capitalism is here deliberately wasting human and natural resources.

If famine is a touchy, well-publicised problem, so is housing. We are all familiar with the apparently insurmountable obstacles which are in the way of providing decent homes for everyone; we have all heard the politicians and the businessmen telling us about the chronic shortage of materials and resources. This might sound more convincing were it not for the fact that, when there is money to be made by doing so, building materials and labour — even completed buildings — are left unused.

Consider the case of Harry Hyams, one of London’s great property “developers” who, according to the Daily Telegraph (27 June) “controls enough empty offices to house 10,000 workers—11 million sq. ft.” Among the empty Hyams properties are: Centre Point (32 stories, 300,000 sq. ft., empty since 1964); Space House (237,000 sq. ft.); London Bridge House (155,000 sq. ft.). It is no accident, that these buildings are unused. In the past year Central London rents have more than doubled — and as long as rents keep rising faster than interests rates it is actually profitable in the long run to let such buildings stand without tenants. Three years ago Hyams’ fortune was assessed at £27 million; since then, says the Telegraph, it has “inflated like a gas balloon”. Let us be clear that this vast fortune has been amassed partly as the result of a deliberate, planned, organised waste of resources and materials and of human abilities—at the same time as there are millions of people whose housing conditions give them a desperate need for those resources and abilities.

It would be possible, as Vance Packard and others have done, to write a book about such waste. The vital point here is that it is all caused by the simple fact that capitalism produces its wealth not for use but for profit. If Harry Hyams could make another £27 million by building houses and giving them away he would do so. But he, like the wheat farmers of America, like the car and TV makers, like the joinery firm, can actually make more profit by waste. And after all making profit is all that capitalism demands.

This is the thread connecting us to the second part of our case—the part where no breath of popular indignation is ever felt. It is not enough to say that capitalism makes money from waste. The fact is that, unless it wastes a tremendous amount of energy and material, the system simply would not function.

Let us take a look at the way capitalism has to organise its manpower. In this country there is a working population of about 25 million. Some of these are engaged in productive work, some of which is even essential and non-wasteful. But others are doing wasteful unproductive work which is necessary only to capitalism, only needed in a society where goods are made to be bought and sold, in a society with money, with a privileged class and laws to protect those privileges. Here are some figures for those engaged in certain occupations, all of which come under the above descriptions:

• Insurance, banking, finance and business services: 892,700
• Armed Forces                                                           377,000
• Police                                                                          99,135
• Wholesale Distribution                                             545,000
• Retail Distribution                                                  2,008,000
• Clergy, Ministers, Members of Religious Orders        39,520
• Judges, Barristers, Advocates, Solicitors                     35,490

Most of Capitalism’s supporters (which means most people) although they may kick against the waste built into a shoddy car, or into an empty building, think that bank clerks, soldiers, clergymen are necessary. The same way of thinking leads them to approve of the way capitalism tries to solve some of its economic problems. We have already seen how governments will stop wealth being produced, in the interests of profit. They also sometimes try to stop it being distributed.

Currently the American government is raising a storm by its intention of imposing a series of import restrictions, designed to keep some foreign produce out of the country. At present this is confined to some textile goods but other commodities—the rest of textiles and shoes, for example—may be included later. It is not especially relevant to this article that this policy is a direct reversal of the American advocacy of freer trade of not so long ago. The point at the moment is that the goods America is trying to keep out might well be better and cheaper than her home produce. But capitalism cannot apply such standards of judgement; the idea of protectionism, like all the measures which governments take, is to protect—protect profits. In that quest capitalism will actually bolster and protect inefficiency; at one time it will stimulate the movement of wealth, at another stifle that movement.

The patent laws are another way in which the profit motive stifles production. Patents are themselves restrictive, confining the production rights of something which might be better and more efficiently produced elsewhere. In some cases patent rights actually work to stop production. The original patent for stereo recording was taken out in 1931. It was soon acquired by some American companies who, seeing stereo as a threat to their established products, use the rights to prevent production. By the late fifties a glut of hi-fi was threatening the market with stagnation. It was then that stereo was released—almost thirty years after its invention—in an effort to stimulate the market anew and so revive some ailing balance sheets. Needless to say, when it was released the event was heralded as a great step forward in human progress. What other ingenuities, one wonders, are mouldering in pigeon holes, market “Not to be Opened until More Profitable.”?

Socialists are hardened by now to meeting the opinion that the system of production for profit is essentially sane and efficient. The opposite is true; in this article we have looked at only the tiniest fraction of the evidence which says that capitalism wastes its wealth and its abilities. The profit motive cannot work efficiently. Capitalism cannot cater for the needs of its people. It produces waste and it produces want and both are profitable only to the minority who hold positions of privilege.

Ivan

Waste Making (1961)

Book Review from the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Waste Makers by Vance Packard (Longmans, 21s.)

Capitalism has solved the problem of production. The system of capitalism, which already exists over much of the world and is rapidly capturing the rest, has given birth to sufficient productive potential to satisfy all the reasonable demands of mankind. All that now remains to be done is to bring in a system in which these potentialities can be realised to the full. For this is where capitalism has failed. 

Mr. Vance Packard’s new book The Waste Makers (Longmans, 21s.) throws lots of useful light on this failure and shows how some American capitalists try to create new markets and increase their profits. Of course, like racegoers betting on the Tote, they can't all win: but they all try. Sometimes an arms race will provide them with markets, and the American upper class realises how important the cold war is in staving off a slump. As Mr. Packard says:

  Financial columnist Sylvia Porter noted that every time there has been a suggestion of a major cut in Pentagon spending “the stock market has gone into a tail spin.” On the other hand, in May, 1960, when the Russian capture of the U-2 plane was followed by the collapse of the summit meeting, Wall Street stock-market prices advanced during seven successive days.

But even the unprecedented spending on arms cannot solve their problems. Mr. Packard says that “during the postwar years, the amount of goods and services that one man can turn out in an hour has increased by about 3 per cent, every year." What effect this had upon human fortunes? One is that consumer goods are deliberately made worse, so that they will wear out sooner, and therefore have to be replaced. Marketing Consultant Victor Lebow made a plea for “forced consumption” in the Journal of Retailing in the mid-fifties: “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing late." Packard quotes General Electric decisions to “change" (without publicity!) the life of a 200-watt bulb lamp from 1,000 hours to 750 hours, and the life of the 2,330 lamp from 300 to 200 hours. The Vice-President of the Chrysler car company is quoted as saying the quality of cars “is not as good as 10 years ago.” A guided-missile expert is quoted as pointing out that there was no technological reason why television sets could not be built to last for eight years without repair; while (according to Packard’s carefully-marshalled evidence) the quality of TV sets was in fact deteriorating.

Another waste-making device is regular changes of style, so that with enormous advertising campaigns plugging the new style, everyone with an older car or refrigerator or set of china is made to feel out of date, and has to buy the newer style to keep up with the Joneses. In this connection the board chairman of the powerful Whirlpool Corporation told engineers at a washing-machine technical conference that “an engineer’s principal purpose as an engineer is to create obsolescence.”

Yet a further means of pushing goods is the never-never. Consume now, pay later. The result is that many American families now have a load of unpaid debts. A survey by insurance companies, says Packard, showed that the average American family was about three months from bankruptcy and for millions of families the disaster was much closer than that. One “solution” is for the wife—including wives with young children—to go out to work as well as the husband. Investigators for U.S. News & World Report found that Americans’ biggest worry was “money,” and “making ends meet.”

  A minister in Cedar Rapids. Iowa, reported that “in 75 per cent of the cases where people come to me with marital problems, money enters in." And a doctor in the same city said many of his patients’ aches and pains were caused by money problems. “You can buy a car on time and stretch the payments over thirty months, and you’ve got a chronic pain. You really have.”

And all this feverish drive takes place at a time when, according to an estimate by ACTION, the American national organization for civic improvement, it would cost about one hundred billion dollars to wipe out United States slums, and when, as Packard says, there are millions of families "unquestionably ill-fed. ill-clothed, ill-housed.”

This is a book which you should get hold of and read. You may disagree with the author's conclusions, hut the whole book is thought-provoking.

Alwyn Edgar

The dope pedlars (1966)

Book Review from the January 1966 of the Socialist Standard

“Planned Obsolescence"—the interesting sounding couplet that covers a multitude of sins, something which has hit the post war capitalist world like a bombshell. Briefly, it means deliberately producing poor quality goods with a severely limited lifespan, so that the market is kept going. For the market is the all important god to be worshipped at all cost, never mind who gets harmed in the process.

Nevertheless, you might perhaps have thought that there were some fields into which planned obsolescence would find it difficult to push its ugly snout —like medicine for example? Well, you would have been wrong, very wrong, and Brian Inglis in Drugs, Doctors and Disease (Deutsch 25s.) would tell you just why. This book is an excellently written survey of the pharmaceutical industry, or rather of that industry's dirty record in the promotion and sale of drugs over the past few years and after you have read it, it will not be so difficult to understand just why such tragedies as the Thalidomide affair happened. Indeed, the wonder is that there have not been many others.

Mr. Inglis points out that it has been the policy of some leading drug manufacturers to push new products onto the market at an alarmingly rapid rate, in many cases well before any adequate tests had been completed—even on animals. In fact, such a profitable market has this become that often a new drug is superseded by another before the bewildered doctor has a chance to carry out any kind of worthwhile clinical tests. The result of all this has been generally to ignore the possibilities of side effects and for the drug companies to get their project before they are discovered. And by then, anyway, they will have put a new drug on the market. 

The cynical disregard for human welfare which this involves, the incessant pressure exerted on doctors by the drug salesmen (often posing as patients), the lying claims in the publicity blurbs, all these and more are dealt with by the author in over 200 pages of searching criticism, liberally sprinkled with the most damaging quotes from the industry's apologists. For instance, John T. Connor, president of the U.S. Company Merck:—

"As in other industries, our driving force is profits. But unlike other industries, the single most effective way to earn those profits is by making existing products obsolete, including our own".

Mr. Inglis draws attention also to another harmful trend in that the general practitioner is less and less able to use his own judgement when prescribing treatment and has to rely more and more on what the drug houses choose to tell him about their products. That they mislead and often lie outright is quite clear, but the doctor has no immediate way of knowing this and by the lime the lies have been nailed and the drug withdrawn, some unfortunate has suffered side effects, some of them serious. Thalidomide (trade name “Distaval") was one of the more glaring and tragic examples, and was strongly suspected of causing peripheral neuritis long before its effects on unborn children were fully appreciated. Yet only a few days before the scandal broke, the manufacturers were still claiming its complete safety in use.

That all medical treatment must run an element of risk, we do not deny—there is no such thing as the perfect remedy after all. But having said that, it is still true to claim that the hazards have been multiplied many times as a direct result of the profit motive. Mr. Inglis makes this point very forcefully, but he is not a Socialist and he does not draw the obvious conclusion from his researches. Instead he plays around with the idea of nationalisation of the pharmaceutical industry—or parts of it despite the black record of nationalisation in other spheres.

E.T.C.