These FoolishThings . . . (1995)

The Scavenger column from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger, who will publish the best.

Corporate loyalty

“In El Segundo, California, just before Christmas, Mattel, the toy manufacturer, made some announcements. Dividends would increase, the company would have record sales and earnings for the sixth year in a row, the balance sheet was strong and getting even better.

“Also, the company would eliminate 1,000 jobs, about four per cent of its work force . . . The deal most workers thought they had — that their jobs would be safer and wages higher if thing were good at the factory — is over”. New York Times.

True courage

“I wore my fur coat to Salisbury's at the weekend and one lady came over to congratulate me on being so courageous,” says Aliza Claremont, director of a lingerie company. Robyn Opie, proprietor of a West End nail salon, says: “I have a full-length silver fox — a serious fur coal — that I walk to work every' morning, and I haven’t had the slightest bit of hassle". Mail on Sunday, 15 January.

Dazed and confused

Paratrooper Lee Clegg who was convicted of shooting and killing a joyrider in a stolen car in 1990, said: “The irony is that, if war broke out tomorrow I would have been willing to lay down my life for these pillars of society who have sent me to prison for life for acting in accordance with my training and regulations.”

Learning

From a local headmaster’s newsletter to parents: “Behind these crimes [junk culture] against education are the profits of big business — large firms and their shareholders . . . They are also the people whose voices are loudest in complaining about education standards. Hypocrisy rules.”

“It’s a free country”

“Britain’s prisons are behind the state of play in our security conscious department stores and town centres . . . Seeing how the outside is actually becoming more like an open prison, the prison system will have at least to try to catch up”. Nigel Burke, Guardian, 19 January.

The Scavenger

Observations: Santa on the spot (1986)

The Observations Column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Santa on the spot

Playing Santa Claus can be an extremely disagreeable way of contributing to a Christmas party. It's not just that all those robes and false whiskers make you feel like the pudding in the steamer, nor the physical assaults which must be uncomplainingly absorbed from impatient, disappointed or inquisitive children. There's also the fact that you're being set up to work a deception on people who, by their age, are assumed to be nicely vulnerable to it.

Whatever the hazards faced by the amateur Santa Claus they are as nothing compared to those of the professionals, those derelict actors who seem ready to take almost any risk for the sake of a bit of work in the Christmas spending spree. This year it promises to be even worse; if there are any Santas getting job satisfaction by resisting the idea that Christmas is a vast festival of commerce, 1986 should make them change their minds.

The pressure is on, in all the big stores, for the jolly Santas to turn in higher sales figures and some decidedly unromantic methods are being used in the process. Harrods, where Santa has always wandered freely about the toy department chatting with the kids, are now confining him to his enchanted castle because, the store say, the old method was too random to ensnare all the possible children. Hamleys, where they have never had a Santa before, now have three of them working shifts in a magic forest where the time and motion people roam among the clockwork animals. Each child is allocated 25 seconds to state their dearest Christmas wishes and the Christmas sport of mishearing the child's name, traditional but time-consuming, has been eliminated through a system of name cards.

It is worse outside London. In Glasgow and Manchester Santa had to bid perilously for publicity by shinning up a 100-foot ladder, amid exploding fireworks, onto the roof of the store. In Chester he was winched up to a high window by the fire brigade. For all this, of course, youth and fitness are needed; Santa, like so many other jobs, is no longer for the older man.

None of this is calculated to bring a magic sparkle to a child's eyes, but to enliven the sales figures. Selfridges are planning to process a quarter of a million children through Santa's grotto this year — a quarter of a million spenders, that is. Maximising customers, to use the stores' jargon, means maximising profits, which is a nice seasonal present for the shareholders.

It gives a new meaning to the old saying about Christmas being for the children.


Bus de-regulation

The recent de-regulation of buses is absurd even by the warped standards of capitalism It is the latest outcome of the Tory Party's central economic tenet: "If it's profitable then privatise it”. The result: total chaos in many towns and cities outside London as hundreds of private bus operators compete for a limited number of profitable routes; inner city streets in towns like Glasgow congested with hundreds of almost empty buses looking for passengers, while on the outskirts of the city and in rural areas people stand at bus stops waiting for buses that no longer run. paying the price for living on "uneconomic" routes.

For such people some form of public transport will still have to be provided: employers will still expect their work force to get to work on time. So the local council will be obliged to lay on public transport on these "uneconomic" routes. In other words the state will still be involved in public transport provision, albeit on a more limited scale.

The reason why utilities and services like transport, gas. electricity and water were nationalised in the first place was because it was recognised that it was more efficient and cost-effective for the state to run certain essential services than private capitalists. But it looks as if the Tory obsession with privatisation now means that that lesson must be learned all over again. In the meantime it's workers who will suffer as a result of the chaos — capitalists may run bus companies, but they certainly don't have to travel by bus.


Undeserving poor

In the nineteenth century the Poor Law made a distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor. The "deserving" poor, people like widows and the long term sick or disabled, were granted Poor Law relief: the "undeserving", especially the able-bodied unemployed, were subjected to the workhouse test to see if they were really desperate or just shiftless scroungers. The idea was that only the really desperate who had no other alternative would put up with the brutally punitive regime of the workhouse.

That same mentality has always been present in the modern system of welfare benefits (hence the different benefit rates for unemployed and other claimants). So the government's latest "available for work" test is just the last in a long line of methods for sorting the "deserving" from the "scroungers" (with the added bonus of bringing down the embarrassingly high unemployment figures before the next election).

The unemployed are to be required to fill in a new questionnaire when they claim benefit to enable (according to Lord Young) "a proper assessment to be made of a person's entitlement to benefit". The claimant will be asked a series of trick questions: if they give the wrong answer then they are likely to have their benefit suspended. Questions like:

• Are you immediately available for work? (Correct answer: "Yes")
• What wages will you accept? (Correct answer: "I'll take anything, no matter how low, that is offered me").
• Do you have children or a disabled relative to care for? If so can alternative arrangements for their care be made immediately? (Correct answer: "A neighbour or relative has promised, that in the event of my being offered a job. then they would be prepared to step in to look after baby/granny/disabled relative").
• Are you prepared to accept work in another town? (Correct answer: "I'll get on my bike and go anywhere just so long as you 'll give me a job").

Although the government has dismissed claims that they are merely trying to fiddle the unemployment figures Kenneth Clarke. Paymaster General, said that if the new scheme reduced the number of claims allowed by less than two per cent then it would pay for itself, including the £14 million cost of employing 1,400 extra benefit staff. A senior civil servant wrote a letter to all regional benefit managers saying: "We may be able to deter two to four per cent of fresh claimants who are not serious about looking for work and disallow another two to three per cent who are not available".

The Genius of Mr. Jack (1969)

From the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Julian Critchley wrote on January 6th, 1969 in The Times about the founder and joint managing director of Lesney Products, the makers of “Matchbox” range of toys, lorries and cars, a certain Mr. Jack Odell. To quote Julian Critchley: “Mr. Jack, he’s very popular. He’s one of the lads—or at least a driver employed by Lesney Products told me.” Between Mr. Jack and the rest of the lads there is a little matter of £35 million, the personal fortune which he has amassed since Lesney Products was founded by three ex-servicemen in 1947 with a capital of £600. For the record, the first factory was founded in the “Rifleman”, a disused public house in London’s Tottenham. There are now said to be 13 factories; a million square feet of manufacturing space in Hackney Wick and Leyton. The firm employs 6,000 people. In East London such has been its growth, it is popularly known as the "Lesney Wick” or the “Hackney Empire”.

Lesney Products is a business success story of classic simplicity. It sells 150 million toys a year. Its profits in 1967 were £3m. after tax. It has twice won the Queen’s Award for Industry, 1966 and 1968; 75 per cent of its production is exported, selling to nearly every country in the world, including such natural competitors in the field, as Japan and Hong Kong. Return on capital employed is 56 per cent and profit per employee is £500. The value of the company is £250m. (Vickers is less than £100m.).

Having really warmed to his subject Julian introduces us to Mr. Jack’s early life and since genius is nurtured by environment, it should perhaps explain the engineering skill of “Our Jack” (to be on familiar terms), and similarly the marketing flair of his partner, a certain Mr. Leslie Smith.

Says Jack, “In my obituary I want it said, I was a damn good engineer”. Our genius is 48 and was a working class lad born in East London. He was expelled from his council school whose name he can’t remember, at the age of 13 years, 9 months. Vague as to the reasons for having been expelled, he is sure it wasn’t for theft or for chasing the girls—“Let’s just say I was a bloody rebel.” At 14 he went to work for Simms Motor Unit and from then until the age of 20 he drove a van, worked in an estate agent's office and was a cinema operator. Note, up to now no hard slogging to acquire engineering skill for our rebel genius. In 1939, where we seem to have lost a year, Jack joined the Army serving in the R.A.S.C. "The Jam Stealers”, and in the R.E.M.E. Within the short space of five years the high rank of staff sergeant was achieved with the responsibility of repairing and maintaining fighting vehicles—what a pity they were not matchbox size, since they could have stolen up on Rommel without being seen on the desert terrain.

It is however a private on 3/- a day that we catch a glimpse of that developing engineering skill that was one day today to take British Industry by storm and set an example to all our working lads. Instead of living it up like his fellow squaddies in the notorious night spots of Cairo and Alexandria he took care to buy up spare parts for primus stoves, since, we are told, for a soldier a useless primus is a disaster, nothing can be cooked and nothing can be brewed up. Jack became a spare time primus repairer and by the end of the war had saved up by hard graft £300 with which, on returning home he was able to marry. Let’s hope you get the point. The secret of the British Victory in the Middle East was not due to “Monty” but to repaired primus stoves. And if you think this is stretching it a little there is more to follow.

On demob Jack takes a job with a small die casting firm in North London, not as a skilled engineer but as a floor sweeper at 3s. 6d. an hour, to learn the business. What better position is there in which to learn the business. What better position is there in which to learn how other people make it, and to quote Jack, “If they could make it on the quality of engineering they turned out, I could do better." So our hero bought some moulds and set up on his own.

Now at about this time, by the grace of you know who, there enters into the story, a childhood acquaintance of Jack’s, a Mr. Leslie Smith, who no doubt will not object to us being on the same familiar terms and calling him “Les". Les had set up business with a relative, Rodney Smith, and when the council refused to allow Jack to manufacture on his own premises (we are not told which premises, perhaps his two up and two down, back to back) they joined forces, Jack taking his moulds to the “Rifleman” in time to save the infant company from disaster. The firm set out to manufacture die castings for the electrical and car industry, making toys merely as a fill up for quieter periods. We are told that toy moulds struck up in 1950 were prevented from going into production because of government restriction on zinc due to the outbreak of the Korean War. With the lifting of restrictions in 1952, a toy coach suitably gilded heralded in a new Elizabethan age for Les and Jack, alias Smith and Odell. It cost 2s. 11d. and over a million are said to have been sold. Time follows, and to-day a range of 75 toys sell at a standard price of 2s. 3d.

In addition to toys Lesney’s make over a million castings a week for industry which includes such companies as Plessey, Vauxhall and A.C. Delta. 1960 dawned and this was Jack's year to realise an ambition, the fruition of all that hard work and engineering skill learned while playing in the streets of a working class neighbourhood, under the hot sun of the Middle East and on the shop floor of that small die casting firm so long ago. In 1960 at the age of 40 Jack became a millionaire. "I made it with a few days to spare." The company went public; today Jack's stake is 6½ million 1s. shares which at the present market price is about £35 million. The offer to the public was 400,000 5s. shares at £1 each, if you please; the grateful public we are told oversubscribed 15 times. Leslie's climb from rags to riches was no less spectacular than Jack’s but Les is the poorer, being worth only about £34 million.

To describe the early life of Leslie, since it closely resembles Jack's, is pointless and anyway if the reader is at all interested, no doubt the Times will oblige with a back copy of the paper in question. One gathers from the article by Julian Critchley the tremendous drive, energy and skill of these two men—Jack's down to earth untrained but inspired skill in engineering and Leslie's genius as a super salesman. The way in which our two friends see eye to eye with each other is also interesting. Julian tells us that until last year both Jack and Les were entitled to draw £100,000 a year in director's fees and emoluments; neither did so, preferring to draw up a new contract of £25,000 a year for five years; what is more, and this should interest those workers tied to an incentive bonus, their Directors' fees were tied to profits as an incentive. "For," said Jack, no doubt in all humility, "when our contracts came up for renewal this year we thought we should adjust them to a realistic figure. After all no man is worth £100,000." Probably Jack was thinking that the dividends from his 6½ million 1/- shares would help to offset his wage cut.

Now it may be thought that the 6,000 workers employed by Lesney's just sit around all day and watch the two partners get on with it and that as far as Julian Critchley is concerned they don’t exist. Not a bit of it, for although we are treated to more of the activities of the two friends who, when all is said and done, with the warmth and colour of their personalities, are the real subjects of the story, some mention is made of the workers who are indebted to the foresight of the founders of Lesney Products, so popular with them.

Of the 6,000 workers employed by Lesney's we learn that none of them are in Trade Unions; there have been attempts to form them but so far such attempts have come to nothing. Jack and Les work an industrial democracy of their own, whatever that means, with every department electing representatives to a works’ council. They have been completely strike free. "We have not lost a day’s work in 21 years.” How’s that for a 21st birthday present from the workers! The company pays well and although we are not told how much, we are led to believe it is sufficient to dampen any enthusiasm for Trade Unions. Surely the result is a lesson for Barbara Castle — with more firms like Lesney's she would have no trouble at all from the Trade Unions. As Julian Critchley says "Lesney’s growth has been steady, its products with their low unit cost do not seem to have been affected by the ebb and flow of demand, or by the vagaries of Government policy."

Now, the above is all we are told about the working class comrades of Jack and Les. These working people for instance don't hobnob with Jack and his family in Jack’s 10-roomed house, which incidentally Jack didn't build as he was too busy making match box toys. This 10-roomed house has a swimming pool and an acre of ground. For holidays Jack takes 4 weeks a year in Barbados. He drives 3 cars, one of which is a Rolls Royce—"good publicity for the firm." Apart from the foregoing Spartan existence, Jack appears to have no other life than that provided by his business and a little golf. "Pleasure passes the time, but work fills it." What a glorious example he sets his six thousand workers. The real corker comes when questioned about his political views. He votes conservative but "remains a Socialist at heart." Now as one socialist to another I would like to remind Jack that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is in need of funds and a little of his £35 million would greatly help to achieve his heart's desire.

A. A. A.

Season of Goodwill (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s that time of year again. The colour supplements are full of advice on how to avoid making a fool of yourself at the office party, while at the office party insecure, immature males attempt to take advantage of female colleagues whose only encouragement to these would-be Lotharios is being in the same building.

Normally friendly colleagues can be observed watching each other closely each time a visiting representative brings in his company’s bribes. Hell hath no fury like a recipient of a bottle of scotch last year who receives only a bottle of sherry this year.
Speaking of drink, the result of alcoholic over-indulgence can be induced without recourse to the spirit bottle. This state may be attained on December 25 by using your gift-wrapped calculator to add up the amount of money that the ’celebration" of some Palestinian's birthday has cost.

Another method of inducing nausea is to tune in to the annual broadcast by a London pensioner named Betty. Betty's recipe for a happy life is to have millions of pounds in the bank and to take lots of holidays during the year.

There is a 16th century saying that "Christmas comes but once a year but when it comes it brings good cheer". Christmas certainly brings good cheer to those capitalists who make those commodities considered so necessary for this time of year; plastic Christmas trees, artificial snow, inflatable reindeer and all the baubles that a gullible public buys in the mistaken belief that possession of these "festive" goods will in some way bring a little happiness into their lives. It’s all a bigger con trick than the virgin birth.

"Of course", s/he says, "I'm not bothered about Christmas myself, but it's so nice for the children". Take a walk around a toyshop and see children's confusion at all the attractive objects that they so badly want but are forbidden to them unless their parents can afford them. It might be Christmas but we're still living in a capitalist world.

Christmas is great for reinforcing sexual stereotypes. Do you want your daughter to be just like mummy? Wouldn't your little girl just love to wake up on Christmas Day and find her Wendy House fully fitted with a kitchen, microwave and ironing board? Let's not forget to strengthen her maternal instincts. There is a wide range of dolls to choose from. For the doll who wants everything there are prams, push-chairs, layettes and baby doll care sets. But who would want to buy their child that obnoxious capitalist product, a talking Cabbage Patch Kid?

Do you want your son to become an aggressive, competitive, insensitive person? The sort who sexually harasses women at office parties? If so, the shops have the ideal Christmas presents for him. There is the Laser Tank — "blow the tank into bits and pieces"! The Phaser Force Gun Set; practise shooting a friend. How about the "good and evil" Masters of the Universe type action figures — recommended for instilling respect for leaders, especially those with more brawn than brain.

Toying with Soldiers (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the days when she was a member of the Opposition, Barbara Castle made something of a name for herself by launching a crusade for the abolition of the penny charge for ladies' lavatories. In the 1945/50 Parliament, Jimmy Hudson was famous for his passion for temperance reform. More lately, Leo Abse has become well known as an advocate of easier divorce. Thus do Labour Members, who call themselves Socialists, busy themselves with trivial, although newsworthy, adjustments to the capitalist system.

The latest in this undistinguished line is Mrs. Anne Kerr, the Member for Rochester and Chatham, who on July 4 last moved in the House that “. . . the sale, manufacture, import, export and advertisement of war toys in the press and magazines and on television should be banned.”

Now there was once a theory, well favoured among the Left Wing, that the cause of war was to be found in the conspiracies of the great armaments kings. Mrs. Kerr, of course, was only blaming the firms who make toy armaments. Perhaps it was safer that way; she was not, after all, pressing for the abolition of war itself, nor even of the weapons of war—only of plastic toys that go pop and sparkle and rat tat tat.

Predictably, the motion had the Parliamentary correspondents dipping their pens in laughing gas, and provided a golden chance for every amateur psychologist in the Commons. A thinly attended House heard some novel theories on the cause of war and of social violence. Then they threw out the motion and got down to more serious business.

The whole episode was fatuous enough and only deserves any attention because so many of the false ideas MPs proudly paraded are widely held also by the people who vote for them:

Destruction to many people is fun. At a church fete, for example, they will pay sixpence or a shilling to break crockery. (Mr. Tilney).
. . .  a dangerous motion because it opens a door to legislation to control the right of individuals and their children to think. (Mr. Onslow).

The best thing to do here is to begin at the beginning. It seems too obvious, but so many arguments about armaments ignore the fact that they exist only because war is an accepted way of settling society’s disputes. There has been a steady progression of the destructive power and efficiency of weapons; Mrs. Kerr complained about toy “guns, bombs, flame-throwers and booby traps” but these are among the gentler instruments at the disposal of the war makers.

Let us go on and ask why society tolerates the persistence of war. Here we can find a clue in the reply Mrs. Kerr received from Mr. Darling, Minister of State of the Board of Trade, who said that

. . . the United Kingdom toy industry was one of our most flourishing industries and last year exported £16 million worth of toys.
. . . Generally speaking, the Government wanted United Kingdom toys to be sold increasingly overseas . . .  (Daily Telegraph 4/7/67)

Now this does not apply only to toys, of course; there are all sorts of British industries which are exporting their products, and which the government would like to see increase their overseas trade. But the British government is not the only one with this idea, and British industry is not the only one engaged in an export trade. The capitalist world is, in fact, a mass of competing firms, states, combinations of states, all struggling for what in the end they hope will be some sort of economic supremacy. Sometimes this rivalry can be settled by a trade agreement or some other kind of pact. Sometimes it can be settled only by war.

Under capitalism, then, wars are unavoidable — which means that armed forces and weapons are necessary. But if it is all inevitable and necessary to capitalism, it is also extremely unpleasant — terrifying, dirty, obscene, brutalising. What is more natural, then, than that governments should try to hide the truth by embellishing the military man's life with false glamour?

Soldiers, sailors and airmen who do their grisly job efficiently are not simply successful men—capitalist society regards them as heroes. This line is pushed hard by the Services when they are advertising for recruits:

Don’t talk to Peter Cobb about hotted-up Minis. He drives this nuclear submarine. Wouldn’t you like to?

The glamour propaganda is aimed at young people and of course it has its effect on children. A child's life is full of dreams and expectations, most of them modelled on the adult world. If his parents regard a killer in uniform as a hero, the child will do the same-even more so. When a kid is playing soldiers, perhaps with the toys Mrs. Kerr thinks so odious, he is acting out what he hopes will be his heroic future.

But this is not the only aspect of life in which the kids imitate their elders and in which they prepare themselves for growing up under capitalism. The same shops which sell plastic machine guns probably also sell toy Post Offices and shops, Monopoly sets and so on. These games teach children some of the commercial facts of capitalism — that goods are made to be bought and sold, that survival is a matter of making money, that success goes to the man who can pull off the clever deal.

War toys teach children that organised killing and violence is an accepted part of society today. And since this has its roots in the economic basis of capitalism, there are as many objections to the sale of, say, toy money as there can be to the sale of toy flame throwers. Indeed, the fact that a child spends some happy hours picking off his mates with a plastic machine gun does not place him irretrievably on the path of being a military murderer, any more than winning at Monopoly will make him a future property tycoon.

As long as its people are content that it should be so, it is capitalism which maps out their future. The adults of capitalism fight its wars, and support the whole system which gives rise to them. They do this not because when they were children they played with toy soldiers, but because they are misled into believing that capitalism, with its property rights, its economic rivalries, its wars, is the best of all possible human societies.

No capitalist party—certainly not the Labour Party—ever does anything to end this massive and fundamental deception. Let us be kind to Mrs. Kerr and say that she is muddle-headed. But not every M.P. was so blind; the Member for St. Marylebone, for example, was almost caught out in approaching the heart of the problem:

You will not end wars by stopping children playing at soldiers, although you probably would stop children playing at soldiers if you prevented wars.

It is a rather unnerving experience, to be agreeing with Quintin Hogg. It probably won’t happen ever again — but strange things can go on, when fishes fly and forests walk, when there is blood on the moon or the House of Commons tries to put capitalism to rights.

Ivan

War games (1991)

Book Review from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Playing Them False: A Study of Children's Toys, Games and Puzzles. By Bob Dixon. Trentham Books. £11.95.

From earliest age children’s toys are clearly divided into boys’ and girls’: the boys’ miniturising outdoor pursuits, construction and “manly” activities while the girls’ are based on the kitchen and domestic activities.

Adventure kits for boys as young as three are intended to "make little men out of boys” with gear appropriate to various aggressive roles. Take you pick from, among others, the Para Kit. Assault Kit or Tank Commander. Speaking of tanks. Bromley Council in 1981 purchased for its playgrounds fighter plane and tank climbing frames; on the latter there's a gun which you can fire in the turret.

The first toy soldiers, made of flat tin, were produced in Nuremberg in 1775 and Germany remained the main producer and exporter until the late nineteenth century. By 1893 hollow-casting had been developed in Britain, making the toys cheaper and more widely available. During the 1914-18 war a printed rag-doll soldier called Tommy Atkins became so popular that filename was adopted for British foot soldiers. During the 1930’s khaki-dressed dolls were on sale. Their sophisticated descendant, Action Man, is described in the trade magazine Toys International as “a fully mobile moulded plastic toy for boys which could be equipped for every phase of military service".

IPC have, since 1975. published a comic Battle (now called Battle Action Force). If you grow up thinking that war is a game it will be easier to persuade you to participate in the real thing when you grow up; the war games entered into by certain groups of adults are evidence of this. Even "peaceful" boys’ dolls such as Star Wars. Masters of the Universe. Power Lords or the latest Turtles craze, stress the desirability of toughness, domination and strength. Books, games. T-Shirts and even cakes and yoghurts promote these toys and keep tills ringing.

As children grow older the process continues with games promoting wars. These arc considered OK as long as they don’t get too near home. When they do, there is an outcry— Waddington’s Bomb Disposal and Mayfair's War in the Falklands in this country are examples. Avalon Mill’s USA game about the Arab/Israeli conflict was fine when it came out but. with the present US involvement in the Gulf, would be condemned today.

Board games became popular in Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century and, until the twentieth, were mainly concerned with improving morals and teaching children their "correct" place in life (including the superiority of the male and the subject position of women). The suggestion that poverty is caused by laziness often propounded by these games is mouthed with equal hypocrisy by politicians today. Monopoly and Rat Race are about the "desirable" goal for workers under capitalism—the need to succeed when entering the labour market. Role playing and simulated business games arc encouraged in schools and are often sponsored by interested parties such as the Financial Times or banks.

Eva Goodman

Guns and Toys (2008)

Book Review from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Real Toy Story. By Eric Clark. Black Swan. £8.99.

It is probably not very surprising to learn that the toy industry is very competitive, is driven by marketing considerations and is threatened by children’s growing interest in computers. However, Eric Clark does add some interesting further considerations.

The US toy and doll industry is a $22 billion business and is by far the world’s largest. Two big manufacturing companies (Mattel and Hasbro) and three big retailers dominate the industry, independent manufacturers and toyshops having mostly gone bankrupt or been taken over. The big retailers include Toys R Us and Wal-Mart, the supermarket chain that sells masses of toys as a way of getting kids and their parents inside the shops. Manufacturers are desperate for Toys R Us to survive, since without it Wal-Mart would be so powerful it would drive down even further the prices it paid to the toy companies.

Toys and dolls are also used to entice families into fast-food restaurants; McDonald’s is now the world’s biggest distributor of toys. Girls are apparently less keen on fast food than boys, hence the emphasis on toys aimed at girls being given out with meals for kids.

Toys are relatively resistant to ups and downs in the economy, as parents are reluctant to cut back on buying for their children. A rising divorce rate helps sales too, as both parents will be buying separately. Yet the toy industry has one great fear: KGOY, kids getting older younger and so losing interest in toys. This has been the case, for instance, with Barbie, the doll that now falls out of favour by the age of six or seven. A rival, Bratz, is aimed at pre-teens and features ever-skimpier clothes. As Clark says, this ‘is all part of the sexualizing of younger target groups for marketing reasons’.

Games are mostly made in the US and Europe, since their manufacture is highly automated. But toy production overwhelmingly takes place in China. This is partly because labour power there is cheap, of course: in the case of one electric toy that retailed in the US at $45, just 81 cents were paid in direct labour costs. But it also means that the suppliers, not the US-based toy companies, have to undertake the investment in factories and equipment and bear the risk of idle capacity at quiet periods. All this has backfired recently, however, with reports of toys made in China being dangerous and having to be removed from retail shelves.

Clark also observes that toys nowadays tend to ‘do everything’ and leave less and less to the child’s imagination and creativity. Under capitalism the innocence of childhood takes second place to the demands of marketing and profit-making.

Paul Bennett