Cooking the Books: All workers’ parties now? (2026)

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

‘We’re now the workers’ party’ proclaimed the headline of an article by Nigel Farage in the Times (10 May) following his party’s gains in the local council elections. A week or so earlier on May Day, Zack Polanski had declared that ‘the Greens are the new workers’ party’.

So, who are ‘the workers’? Capitalist society is divided into two basic classes: a class that owns the resources needed to produce what the members of society need to survive, and a class, without such ownership, whose members are obliged to try to sell their working skills to obtain money to buy what they need to survive. The vast majority of the population are members of this working class, irrespective of what job they do or whether they work in an office or an industrial unit.

Farage wrote about ‘guys wearing orange jackets working for local councils, paid-up trade union members, or the self-employed’, which suggests he is thinking more of manual and industrial workers. That is certainly a common usage of the term ‘working class’, defined by occupation rather than exclusion from ownership of productive resources. There is evidence that many such workers who traditionally supported Labour have switched to Reform.

But if a party is to be judged a workers’ party because of the number of workers who vote for it, any party which has substantial support would be a ‘workers party’ as the vast majority of voters are workers. The Tories, the Liberals and the Scots and Welsh Nats would be workers’ parties too.

Polanski’s claim that the Greens are now the workers’ party is based on promising measures to benefit workers in the workplace. He sounds like a Labour politician of yesteryear:

‘The reforms introduced by Margaret Thatcher nearly half a century ago began the long march downwards in the balance of power and wealth in our country — from those who produce and do the work to those who profit from it …. We will address the massive imbalance in our workplaces and give control back to workers’.

His claim that the Greens are the new workers’ party is in effect a claim that Greens are the new ‘Labour’ party. But why does he think that the Green Party would be any more successful in shifting the balance of power and wealth in favour of those who produce the wealth? Why does he think that the Labour Party failed to do this? And, incidentally, when did workers ever control their places of work?

The Labour Party started off as a trade union pressure group to get legislation passed that would benefit workers. At best it could be seen as a party that aimed to improve the position of workers within capitalism but, although some reforms can do and have done this, capitalism can never be made to run in the interest of the working class, because it is a profit-making system and profits come from the unpaid labour of those ‘who produce and do the work’. It is an anti-worker system and no government can change that.

Farage’s claim that his party is a workers’ party is laughable in view of its openly pro-capitalist policies. Polanski’s claim can be dismissed as vote-catching rhetoric by an opposition party that has no chance of being called to honour its promise — and, if ever it was in that position, it would fail just as the Labour Party has done and for the same reason. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the workers.

A real workers’ party is one that advocates political action to bring about the immediate common ownership and democratic control of productive resources.

So They Say: Labour's guidelines for Capitalism (1975)

The So They Say Column from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour's guidelines for Capitalism

Following his meeting with the Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry in January, the well- known non-Socialist, Mr. Denis Healey, has been increasingly forcing some of the facts about capitalism and how the Labour Party proposes to run it down the throats of the working class. Speaking at the Electrical Contractors’ Association in London on 11th February, he said:

If we price ourselves out of jobs by excessive wage increases, there will also be even greater cut-backs in new plant and machinery. That too means more men and women out of work, both now and in the future. None of this need happen. It will not happen if workers, not just in the union headquarters but on the shop floor too, stick strictly to the guidelines for wage negotiation laid down by their own leaders in the TUC last year.

We recall the uproar in the House of Commons not long ago when Labour MPs were clamouring for remedial action to be taken after British companies were found to be paying black South African workers below “officially recognized” levels. The Labour Party has consistently subscribed to the utopian view that wages can be fixed at some “fair” level which will be mutually beneficial to both capitalist and worker. Such a view has nothing to do with Socialism and we advise members of the working class to examine and reject the concept that a system of exploitation can be run “fairly.”

Closing his eyes and opening his mouth

Before Mr. Heath reluctantly vacated his position as leader of the Conservative Party in February, he put forward as neat a piece of mumbo-jumbo as one might expect. In a desperate attempt to appeal to all men everywhere, he undertook a dazzling rebuttal of the view that capitalist society is divided into two classes. Speaking on his ability to lead the Conservative Party he said:

It is not just a question of looking after the middle class, which of course has very great problems particularly under this Government, and we should do our utmost to help it. But it is not just a question of class at all. I loathe the word class. I do not believe in class. It is a question of ensuring the prosperity of the nation in which everyone can share.

(Financial Times, 31st Jan. 75)

Well, Mr. Heath may not believe in it, although after almost ten years as leader of the Conservative Party he has had as good an opportunity as most to realize that the interests of the workers and capitalists are opposed, but his beliefs are neither here nor there. The class position of the individual is not determined by the beliefs of anyone, but by the relationship between that individual and the means of production. Whatever aspirations some individuals may hold to the contrary, those members of society who do not own any of the means of production or distribution form the working class. This is the vast majority of the population and it is through their efforts alone that the “prosperity” Mr. Heath refers to is created, not for the benefit of “everyone” as he would have it, but for the benefit of those individuals who do own the means of production and distribution, the capitalist class.

A Goodly Wizard

One of the inevitable reactions to the continuing barrage of propaganda from the capitalists that Britain is going bankrupt, that this crisis must be surmounted, that we must all make sacrifices — ad nauseam, is that the heavenly thoughts of the Christian sorcerers get another outing. They are always at hand to tell us that “God moves in mysterious ways”, but the reality is that whichever way he moves, it always seems to serve the need of the capitalist class. This is no accident, there being a clear link between the scriptural injunction “Servants obey your masters” and its application to the working class.

The Very Rev. Horace Dammers, the Dean of Bristol, has recently launched a movement entitled “Life Style” which apparently already has several hundred members. The Dean underlined the Christian ethic of frugality (for the workers) so much beloved by the ruling class through the ages:

I think we have found a realistic way for ordinary people to make a positive contribution to the good of mankind.

Apart from monthly meetings where the members get together in order to “analyze each other’s incomes” or discuss ways of “using their money in ways which they consider to be less socially harmful”, some members are

planning to share cars and lawnmowers, and to cut down on food and insurance, and are thinking twice before buying new clothes, and even pets.

(Sunday Telegraph, 2nd Feb. 75)

If the Dean genuinely wishes to make a “positive contribution to the good of mankind” he should exorcise this bogus brotherhood, and start to study Socialism.

Honest Profit

It is usually advantageous for capitalists and the politicians representing their interests to refer as little as possible (in public) to the mainspring of capitalist production — Profit. Some appear to view its mention with a hurt concern, preferring to talk about the “creation of prosperity,” or “economic growth.” Others are more brazen:

No-one now believes that profit is a dirty word, if profit is honestly earned and put to proper use.

(Mr. Denis Healey speaking at the CBI’s annual dinner at the Hilton Hotel on 14th May 74.)

However, according to a report in the Financial Times on 11th February, ICI is one company which is afflicted with a certain "self-consciousness” in this regard. The fact that the company had produced a profit of £375m. over nine months caused the Public Relations Dept, of ICI to commission a survey from Documentary Research of Bristol, in order to gauge possible public hostility toward profit announcements. The survey team interviewed 1437 people and one of its findings was:

There appeared to be no understanding of the fact that a very high percentage of profit was paid out by companies in tax; only 6 per cent acknowledged that tax was paid at all.

As a result of these findings ICI laid new emphasis on tax in its financial advertising both internally in the company newspapers, and in the National Press.

All good stuff for the Public Relations men to play up at every opportunity. We can imagine the copy now — "Yes the profits may look big, but you want to see the size of our tax demand.” Nevertheless we place no importance on the amount of tax a company pays. The report went on to say:

There is no great antipathy towards profits. ‘We might not have put profits at the top of our advertisements before,’ said ICI. But the survey has shown up some other areas of misunderstanding and mistrust which will take more than simplified advertising campaigns to overcome. There are strong suspicions that results are not presented honestly.

The newspaper report concludes:

One wonders, would the results (of the survey) have been different if the respondents had been less ill- informed about the ultimate destination of profits?

Its ultimate destination is irrelevant to the working class who have created this surplus-value. By the time Profit is counted, the worker has been paid. What workers should usually do is not concern themselves where Profit goes, but to examine where it originated.

Specialist Purposes

An explanatory note on the Times report of 6th February regarding the Ingram 9mm. sub-machine guns recently purchased from the USA by the Ministry of Defence is required:

The Ingram is said to be well suited to undercover operations. But the ministry is emphatic that the guns, bought for “specialist purposes” have not been used in Northern Ireland. The silencer differs from the conventional kind. Instead of slowing the bullet as it leaves the muzzle it allows it to reach full supersonic speed. The enemy would hear a crack as the bullet passed him, but it would be impossible to tell where it came from.

We can reveal that the “specialist purposes” to which the Ministry vaguely refers are that the guns will be issued to those members of the working class within the British armed forces so that they may fire them at other members of the international working class when the interests of two groups of capitalists collide. The report is misleading in suggesting that “the enemy would hear a crack as the bullet passed him”. This defeats the purpose of the bullet — the truth is that the “enemy” would hear nothing as the bullet passed through him.

Alan D'Arcy

Class War (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

What class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two basic classes: those who own and control the means of production and those who own no productive resources apart from their ability to work.

The working class in capitalist society is made up of all those who are obliged through economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. If this is your position then you are a member of the working class. The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.

In Britain over 90 percent of the population are members of the working class. Of the rest only about 2-3 per cent are members of the exploiting, capitalist class who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class over and above what they are paid as wages and salaries.  The others are the self-employed—small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people—whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer. And many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the "middle class”? The existence of such a middle class is one of the greatest myths of the twentieth century. In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle” class.

The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do—and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it. .

It is not just the Daily Mail persists in believing that there is a middle class. So does the SWP which has come forward with a theory of the “new middle class”. This “class” is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role.

To adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. Socialists have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all jobs, including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done (occupation) than to the economic necessity  of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class.

Of course not everybody who receives an income in the form of a salary is necessarily a member of the working class. Some capitalists chose to manage their own businesses and pay themselves a “salary” for doing this. Although a part of this might correspond to the price of labour power (the part corresponding to what the capitalist would have to pay to hire a professional manager to do the same job), usually most of it is only a disguised way of distributing some of the surplus value at the expense of the other shareholders. What makes a salary-earner a member of the working class is not the mere receipt of a salary but being economically dependent on it for a living.

Having to work for an employer was not only how Marx defined the working class. It is also, and more importantly, the view of many workers who have never heard of Marx. When asked, as in a number of recent radio broadcasts, a surprising –and pleasing –number have replied that anyone who has to work for a living is a worker. Which makes them more sensible than both the Daily Mail and the SWP.

Adam Buick

Fraud or Fool? An Open Letter to the Bishop of London. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Lord Bishop,—The Press reports you as saying recently, at a meeting convened by the State Children’s Association, that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had the brains and power.”

The most charitable construction that can be put upon this startling announcement is that you lack information, and since you are in a position which could readily enable you to obtain such information, you are a fool. As you should have learnt from one of your own textbooks, “A fool despises instruction.”

The inability to definitely posit you as fraud or fool by no means demonstrates that you are neither. In the hazy atmosphere compounded of episcopal mendacity and aristocratic thickheadedness which represents your mental equipment, your public utterances loom up tinged with varying proportions of the murky ingredients which gave them being.

The moral kink treads hard upon the intellectual twist. Folly and Falsehood were ever twin monsters of one brood.

I will not press you to give your definition of the word “power.” The habit you have fallen into of using sounding phrases which may haply disguise insincerity of heart, and clearness of mind, precludes you from giving precision to terms which cry aloud for such treatment at your mouth—”blind mouth,” Milton would have said. Your formal adherence to creeds and doctrines which you dare not examine, your futile juggling with the metaphysical niceties of an outworn creed, your £10,000 a year, are a bar, an ever increasing barrier, between yourself and intellectual candour.

What of your Ordination Oath, when one of your own clergy brazenly proclaims the prostitution of his office and of his intellect ”in his own pulpit at St. Margaret’s Church,” by declaring he mouths “formularies to which, as an individual, he cannot ex animo subscribe” ?

“Power”! Your statement with regard to the word in question simply means that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury if he could manage to do the trick.” “Any boy can punch his neighbour in the eye if he can.” “What will happen will happen.” 0=0. Startling conclusion ! Cerebation extraordinary—which brings me to the question of

BRAINS.

I understand from your utterance that you hold intellect to be one of the main necessities for success in life. That is a fair inference from your statement. You give adhesion to the taradiddle which declares to the French youth that every private carries in his knapsack the baton of a marshall ; you hold that the humblest clerk in the Admiralty, by strict attention to duty, may one day “become a ruler of the King’s navee”—inferentially that your exalted position is owing partly to an extra dose of grey matter.

A bitter fool !

I wonder what the assembled company in Park Lane thought. Did none wince at that nonsensical nullity of yours concerning “power”? I know naught of Lady Buxton, eke of Lady Courtney, but Mrs. Barnett ? The good lady who so severely takes the servant girl to task for her lack of coherent thinking, who has deplored the lack of “light” among the class which she vainly endeavours to sugar ! And the “secondary and elementary school teachers” present ! Peradventure, the secondaries and elementaries were at Park Lane on strict business bent. “Les affaires sont les affaires, n’est’ce pas.” If the question is not personal, did the presence of those same purveyors of specially doctored capitalist lore afflict you with a sort of sympathetic itching ? On the grounds of a common humanity, sharply and inevitably opposed as you and I must be, my Lord Bishop, on the political field, I sympathise with you for any discomfort you may have felt in the direction indicated. The creepiness of the “secondary” and “elementary” is of so loathsome a nature that a bishop should be spared that infliction.

Perhaps a quotation from Ruskin may help you to grasp my view-point on the question of Success and Brains. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not swear by Ruskin. It occasionally, perforce, swears at him. But, at any rate, he did see certain isolated facts clearly, if he failed to correlate them, and made a kaleidoscopic colour smudge of what was intended to be an ordered harmony. “In a community regulated only by laws of supply and demand” successful persons are “industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, unimaginative, and ignorant.” Not much room for brains here. Per contra, “the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the entirely merciful, just and godly person.” Eh ! Ruskin wasn’t orthodox ? You repudiate him as witness ? My Lord of London, Right Reverend Father in God, bland participator in the profits distilled from the life’s blood of the workingman, reeking with the shame of the unsexed working woman, bloody with the agony-drops of children,—will ye accept the ruling of the phantom figure which you and yours have exploited in your own interest for so long, and whom you have solemnly declared to represent the highest attainable wisdom ? You are never tired of telling us the “His Life” was the highest teaching, irrespective of precept. So. And yet your Incarnation of Highest Truth, your Very-God-of-Very-God-Man made a sorry hash of his life, reproaching the Unbegotten-Very-God-of-Very-God in his dying agony. I beg pardon. You say, ha ! He attained the highest success. M’yes, but that was not the kind of success you contemplated when beaming on the Park Lane assembly. The archbishop’s throne, the bishop’s chair, have not, of recent years, been associated with martyrdom. What you indicated was, that the poor little worker’s kiddy stood an excellent chance of collaring the £15,000 a year attached to the “throne” of Augustine’s successor.

A word in conclusion. Your cant and rant have no longer much weight with the class that has worked religion for all it is worth, in the only way that it could be worked, viz., for the befooling and undoing of the worker. But you need not therefore despair. If your class has its philosophic doubters, its ethical philanders, its Cheynes and its Hensons, there are still the

PIOUS LABOUR LEADERS;

there are still the “Socialist” bleaters who find such solace in a quiet hour on their knees that they become permanently afflicted with housemaid’s knee on the brain, meek firebrands, valiant worms, revolutionary P.S.A’ers, to whom you may still address your pagan patter and mushy moralising. A tip, my Lord. Next time you address a gathering on a similar subject, why not invite a few of the meek-eyed crowd herein indicated ? That you may bore each other to mutual damnation is the final wish of

Yours,

SNOGGY

What Bernard Shaw thought 60 years ago (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The division into classes with various standards of comfort which always occurs among slaves, and which is due to the necessity for educating and maintaining the slave who is a doctor or barrister very much better than the slave who is a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, makes the highly skilled slave despise the unskilled, the unskilled hate and envy the skilled ; makes the upper regard classification with the lower as an intolerable degradation, and the lower spurn classification with the higher as a hypocritical effort to reconcile him to his inferiority. Organisation of the proletariat, and recognition by them of their common interest, is thus defeated by class feeling, which is always bitterest among the worst off. It is doubtful whether dukes habitually despise beggars; but it is certain that butlers despise scullions, artisans labourers and professional men tradesmen. The solicitor’s daughter must not know the young lady from Peter Robinson’s nor will the “amalgamated engineer” permit his wife to demean herself by visiting the spouse of the carman. The proprietors, on the other hand, though their properties vary in size, seem to understand that they belong to the same class ; and so, whatever petty jealousies and disputes as to precedence may arise between them, they are always united against the proletariat. There is a saying that a man can be no more than a gentleman (a gentleman being one who lives by robbing the poor). There is no such saying as that a man can be no more than a worker : there is on the contrary, a widely spread feeling that he cannot be much less, short of being a convict or a pauper. Hence the proprietors succeed in maintaining their privileges against enormous odds in point of numbers. The proletariat, excepting the fragment in the trade unions, are a mere mob ; and even the trade union regiments seem to mistrust one another far more than they hate the enemy, to whose ranks everyone of their individual members is eager to desert if a commission there be offered to him.”— (George Bernard Shaw in “Our Corner,” September. 1887).

News in Review: Two classes (1963)

The News in Review column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

Two classes

We are still, the government anxiously assured the voters in the recent by-elections, living in the Age of Affluence. Very well. As the Conservatives promise that their new government will bring in a more vital, more prosperous Britain, as the Labour Party bid for our votes with a vision of this country as a vast test-tube, what is the latest from the poverty and riches front?

The Co-operative Permanent Building Society reported that half the people who buy homes through them earn less than twenty pounds a week and that a quarter earn less than sixteen pounds a week. Two-thirds of the houses bought through the Co-op. cost less than £3,000. Anyone who has lowered himself into the perilous pit of working class house ownership will appreciate what these figures mean in terms of size and quality of houses and of struggle to pay off the loan on them. House owners are supposed to be among the most affluent of the working class but the Co-op's report shows that none of them live in a castle and that buying a house relieves nobody of the usual working class battle to get by.

Housing of another sort cropped in one more of those conferences—this time of the National Housing and Town Planning Council. Dr. Eric M. Sigsworth, lecturer in economic history at the University of York, said that there will be three million unfit houses or slums in this country by 1973. Now this is after the promised speed up in slum clearance. Perhaps they would clear more if they slowed down?

Many workers think that the road out of poverty, bad housing and the like, is one of loyal obedience to their employer. Among other firms, the Ford Motor Company have encouraged this idea. They give silver and gold badges to the men who have done long service, and who have kept essential machinery going when there was a strike on. They also give these men certain staff and pension privileges. But Fords are now in the midst of another efficiency drive and what account does that take of loyalty? The drive has meant that four of the gold and silver badge men have been sent back to the factory floor, which means that they have been demoted and that they have lost their privileges. If they did not like the way the company was repaying their long service, the lour men could have accepted dismissal. Which must have caused some hard, rueful, thinking in the loyal heads of Dagenham.

Everything very normal, in other words, for the working class. Nothing changing, either, for their social betters. The will of Sir George Usher, an industrialist who died last October, showed that he was worth over £2 million at the end of his life. Each of his sons inherited over a million pounds which must have come from somebody's hard work, but not theirs.

The Finance Accounts for the United Kingdom 1962-3 showed that it is still a paying business to be a figurehead for British capitalism. Annuities paid to the Royal Family amounted to £166,000 during the year. Not bad for reading out speeches which somebody else has written for you, shaking hands and generally doing as you are told.

Will the household budgets of any readers of the Socialist Standard be affected by the increase in the fees of Eton? Anyway, it is instructive to hear about them and to ask whether every child really has the equal chance in education the politicians are always promising. Eton has gone up to £554 a year. If you can't run to that you can try for Harrow or Winchester (both £498) or Charterhouse (£492). Or there is always the local Council Primary, which costs a little less and has other differences besides.

Getting to know you

It is a common fallacy that a Minister who is familiar with the problems which his department has to deal with is able to solve them that much more easily. And, of course, it gives a boost to people's morale if a Minister appears in their midst, looks at their conditions and clicks his tongue in sympathy. They forget that when he gets back to Whitehall he is so often quite powerless to do anything about the conditions.

So it has come about that successive Ministers of Housing have always made an early tour of the worst of the slums as if looking at them would make the slums go away instead of increasing, as they in fact do. And so it was that Lord Hailsham (as he then was), when he was put in charge of the unemployment problem in the North East, went straight off to tour the area—cloth cap and all. But any personal experience which Hailsham might have gained about the North East was wasted, because Douglas-Home replaced him with Edward Heath.

Now Mr. Heath is supposed to be a very astute man. Did he, then, abandon the pretence about the usefulness of a personal appearance? One of his first appointments was to fly off to the North East to see for himself what unemployed men and their families, and idle shipyards and factories, look like.

Labour and the TSR2

One of the latest babies of British capitalism, proudly wheeled out by its doting parents, is the TSR-2.

This aircraft, it is claimed, can do almost anything by way of airborne destruction. In its ability to perform the most horrifying deeds, in the range of its destructive power, in its diabolical versatility, the TSR-2 is something like a precocious, delinquent child.

These horrors are going to cost something like a couple of million pounds each. Commenting on this, Mr. Denis Healey, the Labour M.P. (who put the cost at £20 million each), asked what this sum represented in terms of schools, hospitals, and so on. This is a common complaint, whenever the amount of money which capitalism spends upon weapons is discussed. Yet what do the Healeys expect? Capitalism has a list of priorities to which it allocates its resources and human comfort is not near the top of it. This was as true under the Labour government which Mr. Healey supported as under the Tory one which he attacks.

Indeed, Mr. Healey showed how small are the differences between his own party and the Tories on the issue of armaments when he went on to say that the TSR-2 is a waste of money, which could better be spent on military helicopters and other transport aircraft and on the Buccaneer, a naval strike ’plane which is already in service.

The best, then, that the Labour Party offers us on the matter of armaments policy is to look after the purse strings more carefully than the Conservatives have done. They will try to make sure that every penny the British ruling class spend on their weapons gets value for money.

And perhaps they will succeed. Perhaps, under Labour, there will be no more Blue Streak fiascos. British capitalism will still have fearfully destructive armaments, the waste of human knowledge and resources will go on, but it will all be presided over by a Labour M mister of Defence who will make sure that it is done at the market price and not a penny over. Does this encourage us to believe the hypocritical Labour claim to stand for peace and progress? It does not.

Abroad

Guiana must wait

It was by something like a slick trick that Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys brought the recent British Guiana constitutional conference, which was supposed to discuss ways of granting the colony independence, to a close.

The British government has rejected the idea of early independence for British Guiana. Instead, another conference will take place after fresh elections next year. The significant thing about the election is that they will be run on a proportional representation scheme which will probably break up the present party groupings. At the last elections the Peoples' Progressive Party, led by Doctor Jagan, got 43 per cent. of the votes, but 60 per cent. of the seats, while the opposition Peoples' National Congress, with 41.5 per cent. of the votes, got just over 36 per cent. of the seats.

This sort of result is common in the direct electoral system which British Guiana, and this country, has worked to. The fact that Mr. Sandys thinks that proportional representation is a good idea for British Guiana does not mean that he is thinking about advocating the same thing for Great Britain. The two big British parties do too well out of the present system for that.

The latest Sandys plan was, bluntly, a tongue-in-the-cheek trick lo impose Whitehall's own wishes upon British Guyana. Dr. Jagan described it as “ dastardly and unprincipled," which is just the expression which other people might have used about the Doctor's own action last year, when he called in British troops to suppress a rising in the colony.

In spite of Jagan's fulminating, the people of British Guiana seemed to have taken the news quietly. It would be good news indeed if this meant that they have come to understand that capitalism is full of diplomatic double-crossing and that in any case the Guianese working people have no more to hope for from independence than they had under British rule.

Sadly, this is unlikely at the present.

Jews in Russia

From the Soviet Union comes more indications of the recent trend there of persecution of the Jews.

The latest example comes in the October 20 edition of Izvestia which reports, and comments, upon the alleged crimes of a number of men but most prominently upon two called Shakerman and Roifman, both of whom are Jews.

These men are accused of embezzlement and bribery, of setting up a profitable racket in the produce of State factories and farms. The full story reminds us of the vast enterprise of Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22; they are said to nave been running a knitwear factory which embezzled machinery and with wool which they had diverted from collective farms. The produce, say the prosecution, was sold on the black market.

Izvestia is furious about these allegations, and raves that the men had amassed thirty million roubles in cash and a hundredweight of gold, diamonds and platinum. The paper has also assumed that the accused are guilty before their trial is complete.

Whether these men are criminals or not, there is mounting evidence of a campaign in Russia to use the Jews as scapegoats to excuse the country’s recent economic difficulties. This is a nasty subterfuge which has often been used in the past. Ignorant workers who are suffering the brunt of capitalism's problems are usually only too ready to blame some racial or religious minority for their troubles.

There need, then, be no surprise that this is happening in Russia. In any case, how is it that economic crimes arc possible in a country which is supposed to be Socialist? How can a country where everyone stands equally offer the chance for a criminal to amass enormous wealth while the rest of the people suffer hunger and other hardships? How can a society where wealth is owned in common have any sort of a market, black or white?

It is impossible to answer these questions, and to explain anti-Semitism in Russia, unless we face the facts. The Soviet Union is not a Socialist country—even supposing that such a thing as Socialism in one country were possible. It is a capitalist country and one where precious little democracy exists at that.

When we have got that straight, every thing else about the USSR falls neatly into place.

Business

Investment, profit, wages

The big mergers in Top Industry continue. Imperial Chemical Industries, who last May put up £10 million with Courtaulds to finance the acquisition of Tootal, have now lashed out another £13 million on Viyella International Ltd. Viyella have interests in spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing.

Viyella were not planning on any big capital investment in the near future but will obviously be able to use ICI’s money. ICI are probably interested in Viyella’s use of synthetic fibres, which now account for about half of its business. Industry is always seeking for ways of safeguarding its interests, but capitalism upsets its plans. Even a giant like ICI is no exception to this.

J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., the teashop firm, is another in the merger field. Its latest venture is in frozen food, the home market for which is estimated to be worth about 72 million a year.

Lyons are tying up their frozen food branch (Frood) with that of Associated Fisheries (Eskimo) and Union International (Fropax). This merger, it is hoped, will result in a combine which will initially command 16 per cent. of the market.

The move is presumably aimed against Unilever’s Birds Eye group, which at present claims two-thirds of the British retail market.

Capitalism is described, by its defenders. as an efficient social system. Yet it would be dillicult for them to find anything efficient or beneficial in the waste of the continual war which rival companies must carry on against each other over the carve up of a market.

The object of it all is, of course, bigger and bigger profits. A company which has succeeded in this past many expectations is Marks and Spencers, which since the war has been transformed from a rather dull chain store group into a bright, hard selling, and very profitable, concern. The very epitome, with its staff welfare schemes and its split second, split penny operation, of a “progressive’’ capitalist company.

The sales of M&S rose to £95.5 millions in the six months up to September this year. This was a record and with the Christmas rush to come, sales are expected to reach £200 million for the year —for the first time in the company’s history. To mark the occasion, shareholders got an extra 1¼ per cent, on their interim dividend.

And what about the people who make these sales, and mergers, and profits, possible? What do they get out of it? The wages of the working class are a constant worry to their employers, for the simple reason that higher wages mean lower profits, and vice versa.

That is why governments are always trying to control wages. Usually this control is described by a smooth phrase which is meant to persuade the workers that their wages are not being held down, and that nobody is trying to do so. Some industrialists, although they recognise their need for wage restraint, think that it should be done more subtly than has been the case in the past. This is what Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board, said on the subject when he spoke at last month’s Annual Conference of the Institute of Directors:

Whether we like it or not, the most sensitive spot in all our industrial relations is the size of Friday’s pay packet. That is why I deplore the continual use since the war of such phrases as "wage restraint,” "wage freeze,” and "pay pause" . . . .

A national productivity drive hasn't a hope of success if it is accompanied by phrases like that.

Their very sound puts a chill down a workman’s spine and they merely create ill-feeling and bitterness between management and men . . . 

Some sort of "guiding light” is essential if we are to rationalise the present chaos of wages settlement.

Inevitably, we must ask whether Lord Robens, when he was an M.P. supporting the 1945-51 Labour government—and later a member of that government—ever expressed so freely his dislike of the term ‘‘wage freeze”. He had plenty of chances too; it was the Labour government which invented it. Presumably, in the days when the Labour government was fighting to check wages, and using every euphemism in the book to do so, Alf Robens preferred to hold his peace.

Blogger's Note:

The aforementioned novel, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard by 'Ivan' (Ralph Critchfield).

I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways, the selection of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as the new Tory Prime Minister made political history. What Macmillan called “the usual processes of consultation” will one day be the subject of countless essays, articles and hopeful theses on the techniques of political dealing. In the end, Home’s succession was a surprise to most of the observers who are supposed to be able to forecast such things.

But in one way—a way that will not be mentioned in the histories—Home’s appointment came up as expected. It was certain that whoever got the job would do so in a smokescreen of what can only be called nonsense. There was, in fact, a different sort of nonsense for each of the candidates. Hailsham was said to be tough, colourful, impetuous—just the man to give some stick to Khruschev or, darkly hinted the Labour Party, to press the button in a disastrous moment of irascibility. Butler was smooth, remote, soft on coshboys. And so on.

The nonsense which was put out about Home was influenced by his peculiar circumstances. There was the usual stuff about the new Prime Minister’s amiable manner, about his propensity for chatting with Foreign Office chars, about the way he eats his breakfast porridge. We have grown accustomed to such stuff and have come to assume that it is all meant to prove something.

What was unique about the Home propaganda revolved around the fact that he was the latest of a long line of Scottish noblemen. The first of these was created a peer by James III, although his gratitude at this was not enough to dissuade him from later joining a rebel movement against the king. That particular peer died in 1491 later holders of the title met a grisly end or figured in a long feud with another Border family. The amiability for which the last Lord Home was famous could easily be due to the serene security in which he has always lived and to the curious reasoning by which some aristocratic families convince themselves that they hold their superior situation in life as a favour to the less fortunate masses.

This, as we might have expected, was meat and drink to the Labour propagandists. Just as they were basing their appeal on a drive to modernise and stimulate British capitalism, just as Wilson was telling us that the future lies in a disturbingly scientific Britain, the Tories make themselves appear outdated, obsessed with the old school tie, by electing the inheritor of an ancient Scottish earldom as their leader! How can such a man, demanded Mr. Wilson, know anything about the problems of kids taking the eleven-plus, or of a couple who are paying the mortgage off their house?

How indeed? But then, even if we accept that Home does not know anything about these things, would there be any advantage for us if he did know? The Labour Party have always tried to present an image of themselves as men who have come up the hard way and who are therefore, familiar with working class problems. Today they may pose as the party for young graduates who are bursting to get their hands on a computer and start driving the deadwood out of the boardrooms; not so long ago they were full of ex-miners who talked about getting the bosses off our backs. Yet what happened when the ex-miners came to power? The 1945 Labour government had many men like James Griffiths and Ernest Bevin whose early lives had been of appalling hardship. Did that government run the affairs of British capitalism any more humanely for that? Did they ever shrink from taking measures which, although essential to the interests of the British ruling class, were harmful to the very people whose votes and work had raised them to power? They did not.

The humble beginnings of some of the Labour ministers did not prevent them running British capitalism in the established manner, with all that that means. Indeed, perhaps there were times between 1945 and 1951 when miners, or dockers, or some other group of workers, may have wished that they were being governed by people who did not know so much about their problems—and about their methods of trying to alleviate them.

For all that, Wilson’s thrust at the fourteenth Earl was typically shrewd and may have set the tone for Labour's future attacks on Home. The Tories’ reply was enough to show that they are as concerned as they need be about the aristocratic lineage of their new leader. Heralded by Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservative machine set out to convince us that Home’s selection proved that a man can become Prime Minister on his own ability, and in spite of the fact that he is an Earl. This, in some peculiar way, is supposed to mean that we are developing a classless society in which all Britons are equal. Home himself made his own version of the point when he commented that the Labour leader is probably the fourteenth Mr. Wilson, which was joyously trumpeted by the Daily Telegraph as the best crack for a long time.

We can see, then, that the elevation of Home has released a flood of nonsense not just about the man himself but about the class to which he belongs and about the class division of society. Class, we know, is something of a dirty word, Every capitalist party strives to assure us that they do not stand for the interests of any one class and that their policies are designed to benefit us all. At the same time they work hard to convince us that their opponents' schemes are class-inspired. The Labour Party damns the Tories as the rich man’s party; the Conservatives sneer that the Labour Party is obsessed with class bigotry. That is not the end of the confusion. Some people think that classes do not exist, others believe that they do exist but they are not sure where the divisions between them begin and end. They talk about lower middle and upper-working class and other, equally meaningless, divisions.

Now the only way to clear up confusion is to present the facts. What, first of all, is a class? It has nothing to do with how much a person may earn, nor the sort of job he does, nor the school he went to. A class is a group of people who are united, whether they admit to it or not, by a common economic interest. This means that in modern capitalist society people are split into two classes, each of them with opposing economic interests. In this situation, it is nonsense to talk of a middle class—a class with “middle” interests somewhere between the two. The two classes which exist today are, on the one hand, those who have to work for a wage for their living and on the other those who can live without having to go out to work. The first of these—the working class have virtually no property in the means of producing wealth and for that reason are forced to rely on their wage to live. They sell their working ability to the other class —who, because they own enough stocks, shares, bonds, and so on, can live very well without having to work. The interests of capitalist and worker are opposed because one is a seller, and the other a buyer, of a commodity—the working ability of the worker.

It is a common fallacy that the gap between the classes is growing daily smaller. Yet there is obviously a pretty big gap between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and the working people of Scotland—the miners, the dockers, the clerks, the farm hands and the rest. The evidence, in fact, says that the gap is as large as ever. The Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey for 1962 gives some idea of what it means to be a member of an average working class family. In the year under review, the ‘families which had a weekly income of between £15 and £20 spent an average of £1 14s. 4d. a week on their housing, £5 7s. 10d. on food—and made what the Survey calls a “net loss” of 4s. 4d. on betting. We know, because these figures are pretty general for all of us, that this sort of expenditure does not allow a very opulent life. But that is all that the average member of the working class can afford.

On the other side of the gap it is a very different story. Last September a young heiress lost her life m a sailing accident off the South Coast. Although she was only 21 when she died, she left a net amount of £82,309—which is far more than any worker can ever dream of earning. A classless society? The Earl of Harrington recently put up for auction his family seat, Elvaston Castle, and the 4,500 acre estate that goes with it. This estate includes three villages. This sale, which was worth over a million pounds to the Earl, will not leave him homeless. He owns 5,000 acres and will be going to live in his other place in County Limerick. These are only two glimpses at life on the other side of the gap. We may not exactly know, but we can take a guess, at what that life is like and at the sort of expenditure the people, on that side can afford. It will not be anything like that of the average family under the Ministry of Labour's microscope.

It is obvious on which side Sir Alec is. He is a member of the capitalist class who also happens to lead a government which avowedly stands for capitalism. The Labour Party may not have many leaders to compare with Home's aristocratic background, but this does not alter the fact that they also stand for capitalism. In fact, what matters is not whether the men who run the private property system of society are blue-blooded or bear the blue scars which prove that they once sweated and suffered down a coal mine. Experience has told us that the ex-miner runs capitalism as ruthlessly as any Tory nobleman. The important thing is what each of them stands for.

Capitalism, by its class ownership of the means of living, its inequalities and its privileges, perpetuates the class system. It is hypocrisy for a party to say that they are opposed to class privileges while they stand for the social system which fosters them. And all the capitalist parties are guilty of this. All of them, in whatever accent, pay lip service to human equality. And all of them in fact support the world in which the masses are condemned to the paltry and the shoddy while a small minority own the land we walk over, the things we work with, almost our very lives themselves. This minority live, to put it mildly, very well off the masses. Perhaps, of a night, they offer up an extra prayer—I’m alright, Alec; do your best to keep it that way.

Douglas-Home has no proposals to alter this state of affairs and neither have his Labour and Liberal opponents. If class society is to be brought to an end, the first essential is that the nonsense has to stop. But capitalist parties thrive—indeed they live—on nonsense. If the working class were to see through it all—now that would really make history and Alec would no longer be alright.

Ivan

So They Say: Protests too much (1977)

The So They Say Column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protests too much

An article in The Spectator of 12th November entitled “The irrelevance of class” which attempts to justify its title by showing how various important men have risen from what are discreetly referred to as “humble births”, reminds us that the class war still prompts professional hacks (and quacks) to issue it, at regular intervals with a formal death certificate. The entire irrelevance of class structure within society led the writer of the article to over 50 column-inches to make his point and if The Spectator is prepared to pay for and publish this sort of thing, we have high hopes for our own submission entitled “The irrelevance of air—hot and cold.”

The inconvenient obstacle to the claim however is one of fact. Obstacles of this nature may or may not impress Spectator’s writers who are prepared to spend a good deal of time apparently in dealing with what they consider “irrelevances”, but it cannot seriously be denied that capitalist society is divided, on the one hand into those who own and control the means of life and on the other, into those who must work for a member of the owning class in order to live. If this class division were non-existent, or irrelevant, we could only express surprise at the great deal of verbiage mustered to assure us of the claim.

Not cricket

Although the owning class as a whole have class interests in common, namely the retention of private- property society and they will unite on issues which may threaten this, each member also has individual interests in the day-to-day business of increasing their particular share of the social wealth, and this process obliges them to enter into battles among themselves. Whereas the working class, the non-owners, represent a class enemy to be held off by a variety of means, other members of the capitalist class are rivals and as such require direct attention.

Fresh diplomatic protests have been tendered by the Government over breaches in agreements by Japanese (Motor) manufacturers to hold down sales in Britain.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

The British motor manufacturers claim that the Japanese are carrying out an “invasion” of the British markets contrary to an undertaking given by the Japanese to restrain sales to the UK. It all sounds very reasonable—an arrangement between friends. The Japanese motor men have argued before that it had all been a misunderstanding and they may well do so again. The fact that the British government now argues the case on behalf of its own national manufacturers shows that they are not deceived. Both parties are aware that “undertakings” are weak restraints on the pressures of capitalist expansion.

Making the point, in the same newspaper, was the Chairman of the Welsh council of the CBI who advises his members that British manufacturers can satisfactorily meet Japanese competition by putting in “the same intensity of effort as the Japanese”, by which he means a greater degree of exploitation of the British working class. This gentleman was speaking from experience. He is the chairman of a machine-tool company.

Last year I put one Japanese firm out of business and two other Japanese firms have given up their markets to me.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

It seems probable that the aforementioned Japanese firms may be petitioning him soon to give an “undertaking” for restraint.

Plenty of problems

The Japanese Prime Minister has become increasingly concerned at the economic problems he faces as the yen rises against other currencies and the exporters are finding it more difficult to compete successfully in overseas markets. He now refers to exports as a “negligible factor in expanding economic growth in future.” The new strategy he revealed is to be the stimulation of home demand by increasing public spending, which we seem to have heard somewhere before.

Mr. Fukuda neatly put his finger on one of the major difficulties facing the Japanese, who are by no means alone in the matter, and shows that capitalism, despite the efforts of so-called planning, simply continues to produce problems and contradictions. The profit motive governs production.

The important thing is to create demand in the midst of the problems of overcapacity and unemployment.

(The Times, 11th November 77)

Capitalist ideologies

The Chinese are said to have approached the British government with a view to ordering Harrier jump-jets. Apparently the so-called socialists are faced with a build up of forces on their border with the other so-called socialists, the Russians. The fact that the British government also refers to itself as “socialist” no doubt lends justification to the approach and completes the picture of this happy socialist band who act so differently from the capitalist governments. To an un-trained eye it would appear to be a straightforward business arrangement.

However Britain is a member of a NATO organization called Cocom whose function is to prevent the sale of weapons and plant for producing them, to “communist” countries. America is also a member and it might be thought that they would, as they are entitled, veto consideration of the order. Surely the Americans would not permit any hole-in-the-wall arrangement between all these “socialists". It appears however that the Americans have an un-trained eye in the matter. They have their reasons too.

The fact that there is a company to company agreement between Hawker Siddeley and Macdonald Douglas to manufacture the Harrier under licence in no way interferes with the sale of the Harrier by Britain to other states, I was authoritatively informed yesterday. A non-British member of Cocom’s coordinating committee told me a few days ago that the United States rarely raised any objection to the export of strategic materials to a Communist country if it was produced or manufactured in America.

(Daily Telegraph, 9th November 77)

Redistribution of Wealth (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the war ended the myth has arisen, carefully fostered and well-nourished by every hack of Fleet Street and apologist of capitalism, that the rich are no longer as rich as they once were, that heavy taxes are mulcting the poor blighters white and that there is in fact taking place a general redistribution of wealth resulting in greater economic equality. Never an opportunity has been lost to bring to our notice that this film star or that author or the other well-to-do man were being bled to death by taxes and what was left would in any case be drained away by death duties.

So persistently have these notions been nurtured that many workers have actually come to believe them, presumably on the Mein Kampf principle that if you tell a lie often enough it will eventually be accepted as the truth. To those who do so, and still more to those who believe vaguely that some sort of more equitable distribution of wealth is taking place, we draw attention to some remarks and observations recently made in a British Association lecture by J. R. S. Revell, Dept of Applied Economics, Cambridge University. Dealing with the extent to which wealth had become more equally distributed during the first 50 years, he said:

. . . that the figures conventionally quoted greatly overestimated the extent of the redistribution.

Those figures showed that the wealthiest 1 per cent. of the adult population of England and Wales owned nearly 70 per cent. of the total personal wealth in 1911, and that by 1954 the wealthiest 1 per cent. owned around 43 per cent. The figures were based on estimates of personal capital, which used statistics of estates paying death duties as a random sample of the wealth of the living population. They were deficient in several respects and the deficiencies had tended to increase in recent years. That meant that their use would overstate the redistribution of wealth.

Apparently one of the important of these statistical deficiencies, of ”growing importance," as Mr. Revell tells us:

. . . consisted of creating settled property in a particular form known as a discretionary trust. Under that form of properly the trustees had the discretion to pay income to any of a specified class of persons and to distribute the capital when they thought fit. When the person who had been receiving the income died, the trustees merely nominated another person from the specified class, and there was no passing of capital which could attract death duties.

Certainly these capitalists are not going to allow themselves to be impoverished without a fight!

The effect of this and other tax-evading subterfuges is:

. . . that a large slice of the capital from which individual persons—particularly wealthy persons—drew income did not figure at all in an estimate of personal capital derived from death duty figures. It was almost impossible to obtain any statistical evidence on the amount of property which thus avoided death duties. “but it is likely to be large enough to upset any estimates of personal capital."

Earlier in his lecture Mr. Rcvcll pointed out that, conversely, small incomes were grossly overvalued:

. . . because insurance policies represented such a large proportion of the value of small estates; they were valued for death duty purposes at the sum paid out on death, whereas the greatest value which could be put on them in the hands of a live person would be the surrender value. Thus poorer persons, in short, are worth more dead than alive.

Mr. Revell concludes:

Small estates were thus overvalued and large estates were undervalued in the death duty statistics. Since life assurance and tax avoidance had both grown greatly in recent years, the conventional figures for the distribution of personal capital gave an impression that the redistribution of wealth had gone much farther than it really had. There was no means with present statistical knowledge of estimating what the correct figures should be.

Whatever the truth of Mr. Revell’s last remark, there is one incontrovertible fact arising from all this. It is that in 1954 1 per cent. only of the population owned more, probably much more, than 43 per cent. of the total personal wealth in England and Wales.

Ponder a while on this simple fact and it will give quite a close idea of the nature of wealth distribution in our present-day capitalist society.

Max Judd

Facts for Propagandists (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks a number of questions on matters of general interest to propagandists. Questions and answers are given below.

(1) The Working Class.

Question: "What percentage of the total population are really members of the working class?”

Answer: The working class consists of all those people who, not owning sufficient property to be able to live without working are compelled to sell their labour power, their mental and physical energies, to an employer in order to live. These and their dependents form the working class. As the definition covers not only the industrial workers, but also technical, professional, supervisory and managerial workers it will readily be seen that in an advanced capitalist country like Great Britain the working class and their dependents constitute the great majority of the population.

How large is the proportion of working class to the rest of the population can be seen from the estimate made by Dr. Bowley and Sir Josiah Stamp in “The National Income, 1924" (Published by Clarendon Press, 1927).

On page 12 they estimate that in 1924, out of 20,300,000 “occupied persons," 76 per cent. were wage earners, and 14 per cent. salary earners, total 90 per cent.; leaving 10 per cent, for the rest of the occupied persons. This 10 per cent. was made up of 6 per cent. “Independent Workers" and 4 per cent. “Employers, Farmers, and Professional." ("Independent Worker" means one-man businesses, etc.)

Carr-Saunders and Caradog Jones, in the “Social Structure of England and Wales" (Oxford University Press, 1927) reproduce the above figures (p. 63) and add the illustration that, on an average, there are about 24 employees to every employer.

Some qualifications need to be made. The above estimates refer to “occupied persons" only, and do not include children, wives, and other dependents who are not “occupied." If we assume that the average number of dependents of a wage-earner or salary-earner is roughly the same as the average number of dependents of an employer or of an “independent worker," we can say that the total population of all ages is divided in the same proportion as the occupied persons.

In other words, taking every man, woman and child in the country, 90 per cent. can be described as “working class," 6 per cent. “Independent," and 4 per cent. “farmers, employers, or professional/’ (“Professional" means doctors, barristers, free-lance journalists, etc.)

It is not known how many property owners who need not work actually do so and are reckoned among the above 90 per cent.

(2) Who Owns the Means of Production and Distribution?

The position is that the great bulk of the accumulated property of all kinds (including money) is held by a very small part of the population, either direct, or through their ownership of the shares of companies. A small proportion of shares in companies is owned by workers. There are also independent persons (owners of one-man businesses) who own a small part of the total property.

Carr-Saunders and Caradog Jones, in their “Social Structure of England and Wales," reproduce and comment on various estimates of the ownership of accumulated wealth. They use Sir Josiah Stamp’s estimates to show that in 1919—

about two-thirds of the wealth is held by just under 400.000 people (or less than 1 per cent. of the total population) and one-third of the wealth by 36,000 people (or less than 1 in 1,000 of the total population). (P. 114.)

Taking “occupied persons" instead of the total population, Sir Josiah Stamp’s calculations show that—

about 2½ per cent. of occupied persons over 20 hold about two-thirds of the wealth, and about 2½ in 1,000 hold one-third of the wealth, (p. 114.)

They quote Professor Henry Clay that—

64 per cent., or rather less than two-thirds of the wealth is in the hands of 1.7 per cent. of persons holding property.

These people (“1.7 per cent. of the persons holding property") represent only 0.85 of the whole population (p. 116).

According to Clay, at the other end of the scale—

96.2 per cent. of persons have only 17.22 per cent, of the national capital, (p. 116.)

Sir Leo Chiozza Money showed before the War, in his “Riches and Poverty" (Third edition, p. 72), that—

about one-seventieth of the population owns far more than one-half of the entire accumulated wealth, public or private, of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Hargreaves Parkinson, of “The Economist," in his “The Small Investor" (Blackie aqd Son, Ltd., 1930), shows that the total accumulated resources of “small investors" amount to only about 10 per cent. to 14 per cent. of the total wealth of the country. Under “small investors" he includes the owners of all kinds of savings, including Post Office savings deposits, Trade Union Thrift Funds, Co-operative Society Funds, etc. These “small investors," he says, represent at least 75 per cent. of the total population (p. 110).

In other words, according to Mr. Parkinson, more than three-quarters of the population own only about one-eighth of the wealth. The other seven-eighths is owned by less than one quarter of the population.

(3) What Percentage of all Wealth is Owned by Banks and Insurance Companies ?

We have no means of ascertaining easily what is the total value of all the property owned by Banks and Insurance Companies.

It must, of course, be remembered that the property of the Banks and Insurance Companies is actually the property of the shareholders, depositors and insured persons, and is, therefore, already reckoned in the estimates given in reply to question (2).

(4) The Workers' Wages.

“ What is the average wage of the workers in Great Britain?"

Colin Clark, M.A., in “The National Income (1924-1931)," states that Bowley and Stamp estimated the average earnings of 12 million wage-earners in 1924 at £122, while Clark himself estimated £116 ("The National Income," published by McMillan, 1932, p. 61).

These amounts are equivalent to about 46s. and 45s. a week. They do not allow for deductions for sickness and holidays.

Since 1924 wages have fallen appreciably; according to Dr. Bowley by 3 per cent. up to 1931. This would make the average wage now about 44s.

(5) Unemployment and the Poor Law.

“ What percentage of the population is unemployed and in receipt of public assistance?"

On May 22nd, 1933, the total number of unemployed on the Registers of Employment Exchanges in Great Britain and Northern Ireland was 2,653,852. (See “Labour Gazette," June, p. 207.)

This represented 20.5 per cent. (one in five) of the insured workers.

It represented nearly 6 per cent. of the total population. (There are, of course, an unknown number of unemployed who are not insured and not registered. )

The number of persons in receipt of poor relief in England and Wales (both outdoor relief and relief in institutions) was 1,340,638 at the end of December, 1932.

This represented about 3.3 per cent. of the total population of England and Wales. (See “Labour Gazette," March, 1933, p. 84.)

It includes, of course, a large number of persons registered at the Employment Exchanges as unemployed. With their dependents these number nearly 400,000.

(6) Who are the Buyers of Shares ?

“ Who are the institutions of people who buy or oversubscribe the usual large issues of shares ?"

Except by having inside knowledge of the subscriptions to particular issues of shares it is not possible to have direct information which would answer this question.

A general indication of the position, however, is given by Mr. Hargreaves Parkinson in “The Small Investor." He estimates' that small investors (who, with their dependents, represent over three-quarters of the population) own shares totalling between £500 millions and £750 millions, and that they buy shares in normal times at the rate of between £20 millions and £40 millions a year.

Divided over the whole number of persons these amounts are trifling.

How small they are can be seen by comparing them with the total holdings of shares, and with the total amount of new shares bought each year by the big investors.

"The Bankers' Magazine" keeps an index of the average price of 365 representative securities. These 365, which represent only part of the total number of securities quoted on the Stock Exchange, had a total market price in June of £6,249 millions, i.e., about ten times as much as the total shareholdings of the “small investors.”

The “Stock Exchange Official Intelligence (1931)" states that at the end of 1929 there were 108,698 companies having share capital totalling £5,200 millions (p. 2023).

Whereas the “small investors," according to Mr. Parkinson, buy shares worth only £20 to £40 millions a year, the total amount of capital of new companies registered in 1928 and 1929 was £237 millions and £240 millions (“Intelligence,” p. 2023).

The bulk of the shares are bought and held by Banks, Insurance Companies, trading and industrial concerns, investment trusts, etc., and by wealthy individuals.

(7) Wages and Wealth Production.

“ What percentage of the wealth produced by the workers is returned to them as wages?"

Colin Clark, M.A., in his "The National Income, 1924-1931," estimated that in 1929 the wage-earners received 39.9 per cent, of the total national income (excluding income from abroad, i.e., from foreign investments, etc.).

Salary earners received 22.5 per cent. Rent of land and buildings accounted for 7.8 per cent., and profit and interest accounted for 29.7 per cent. (p. 72).

In other words, the wage and salary earners, who represent nine-tenths of the population, received just over three-fifths of the total national income.

The wage-earners, who represent three-quarters of the population, received only two-fifths.

These figures relate to the whole number of wage earners, irrespective of whether they are engaged in wealth production or whether they are engaged in financial, trading, and other activities.

Taking Manufacturing and Mining Industries only, the Committee on Finance Industry (MacMillan Committee) in its Report (1931) published tables showing that earnings represent just over one-half of the wealth produced in those industries. (52 per cent. in 1906-7 and 55 per cent. in 1924.) (See p. 313.)

In 1924 the average net product per person employed was £220, while average earnings was £120. This means that each person employed was producing a surplus of £100 a year, over and above his own pay and after meeting all the raw material and other costs.

(8) Wealth and Waste.

“ What percentage of workers are engaged in luxury or useless or redundant occupations?"

An attempt to estimate this percentage is made in our pamphlet, “Socialism," to which our correspondent is referred.

(9) The Churches and Property.

“What percentage of all wealth is owned by religious organisations?"

We have no information on this subject.

(10) The Cost of the Armed Forces, etc.

“What percentage of the total income is devoted to the upkeep of army, navy and police?"

The cost of Police pay in 1931 was about £15,600,000. (See Report of Committee of National Expenditure, 1931, p. 42.)

The Army, Navy and Air Estimates for  1932-33 amounted to about £104 millions.

Taking the two figures together, we have a grand total of £120 millions.

Colin Clark estimated the total national income in 1931 at £3,322 millions. Therefore, the cost of the army, navy, air force and police represents about 4 per cent. of the total national income. 

Edgar Hardcastle

So They Say: New Book — Old Story (1976)

The So They Say Column from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Book — Old Story

In an interview published by the Times on 2nd August, Sir Harold Wilson let it be known that he has completed the first draft of a book called The Government of Britain. Apparently the work has much to commend it. “Every sentence was an intellectual challenge to try to remember things which will be useful as a kind of text-book, which in the past have been mainly written by academics from outside.” Such a description suggests a semi-autobiographical account of the attempts to administer capitalism over recent decades, and as such it can only be a commentary on the various acts of expediency employed in order to paper over the basic contradictions. Acts of expediency in our description, governments choose to call them “policies.”

Even Wilson appears to acknowledge that the “Governance” in his title is only alleged when he remarks “In the compulsions of taking decisions, of course, you cannot forecast whether this decision will come off.” Of course. Capitalism is a system of society in which there is no social control over the means of wealth production and distribution. The owners, a non-working minority, allow production to take place only when there is a likelihood of a profit. Wilson and the Labour Party have preferred to tinker with the effects of such a system and shy clear of the revolutionary solution — hence the never-ending “compulsions” they have been faced with. The frequency of the calls upon Wilson’s juggling ability meant that among other things his reading suffered.

I have never even read Marx, couldn’t get past the second page because of that whacking great footnote which bores me every time I ever try to read it. Although I think I have a vague idea of what he was after in his concept, it is not what I understand by British socialism.

Were Marx alive, we feel sure he would concur with the conclusion.

The Devil You Know

George Bernard Shaw wrote somewhat sarcastically that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world.” Recently those most reasonable of men, the Labour Party Tribune Group, have been giving an excellent display of their adaptability. The Conservatives tabled a motion in Parliament for the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s salary (£15,000) to be halved. This amounted, in the words of the Times report of 2nd August, to “a criticism of the public expenditure cuts announced on July 22nd, and a condemnation of the Government’s economic and financial policies in general.” Amid the hot air and other gaseous emissions in that Palace, Tribune group members have been loud in their criticism of the cuts. Consequently the possibility of their abstention from the vote with a resultant government defeat was raised. The time for these men of principle had come.

However, adaptability prevailed. First they issued what we have come to expect from Tribune Group MPs — “a token protest.” The “left” pulls no punches, their amendment called for a reduction in Healey’s salary of £5.00 per annum. Next Mr. Norman Atkinson, one of their leading if somewhat dim lights, explained why his group should not risk a government defeat.

The Government have made it clear that they support the central banks about the use of international credits . . . It seems logical therefore, that all those who seek to sustain the Government in office must accept the bankers' cuts in principle, not in their entirety, but in principle. The only alternative was to force the Government to go to the country for a general election. But such action would make little sense . . . because if Labour won it would be taken as an endorsement of the bankers’ policies and it would mute the left for a long time to come.

This, we understand, is known as keeping all the options open. The Tribune Group wish to preserve the Labour Government because they prefer to mouth disagreement from the government benches. In this way their posturing attracts more attention than it otherwise would. Mr. Atkinson was simply overflowing with sweet reason and “left-wing” principle:

Only the 2 per cent levy on employers through national insurance contributions will attract combined opposition from the Tories, the nationalists and the Liberals, he said. Because the measure must mean at least 50,000 sackings in addition to those already announced, the left must face the sacrifice of jobs to keep the Government in office. We have no alternative, and neither has the Trades Union Congress in four week’s time, that is the brutal reality.

Facing reality must necessarily strike the Tribune Group as brutal, they are more used to dealing in hypocrisy.

Con on Class

While giving a public pep-talk to fellow conservatives in the columns of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Geoffrey Howe MP indicated that times are a-changing. He argued that changes had to be made to the Conservative Party image if the electorate was to be persuaded that the party did not stand “only for bosses, rich people, upper classes.” Unless the common man discarded such misapprehensions, Howe ominously concludes, “This could bode ill for the future.” Apparently he has been inspired to speak out following numerous reports that the typical response to Conservative canvassers has been “We re all Labour voters in this house. We’ve got to be haven’t we? We’re a working class family you see.” We do not deal with this ill-founded statement here, but note the politician’s attitude to it.

It makes it difficult to argue that class is not a significant factor in British politics.

Daily Telegraph, 2nd August ’76

Which is extremely tiresome for politicians no doubt. A class-divided society necessarily produces such handicaps for them. However, Mr. Howe, who thinks that there are several classes rather than two, is ready to throw one of them overboard in his search for conservative voters.

The son of a successful entrepreneur — even the grand daughter of a Prime Minister — is bound to acquire knowledge and experience that will confer advantage in the next generation. But let us certainly reject the suggestion that we favour the concept of a ruling class or anything like it.

But wait, he would only reject the suggestion that they favour the concept. The ruling class, no doubt rattled, can breathe again.

Will He, Wont He?

A glittering exchange took place between Mrs. Thatcher and the Prime Minister shortly before the parliamentary recess. The Conservative leader asked what the Prime Minister expected to be the maximum number of people unemployed in 1976. Mr. Callaghan replied:

The Chancellor has said he expects unemployment to begin to go down by the end of the year. I cannot improve on that forecast. I have come without the figures in any case.

Times, 6th August ’76

After other remarks, Mrs. Thatcher rose again.

The Chancellor did not give any figures. He refused to give figures when cross-examined by both sides of the House. I would have thought that the Prime Minister would automatically have informed himself about one of the main figures, which is the maximum unemployment expected during the next year. Is he saying he has not?

With considerable politeness, Mr. Callaghan informed the enquirer “Yes, I am saying that because I find these forecasts often cancel out . . .” He also had some advice for her.

I would beg her not to take too much notice of forecasts. So many of them often proved wrong over the last six months . . .

The performance and the show (the longest-running in the west and) will continue after the interval.

From Bad to Bad

However there is a time and place for everything, and Mr. Callaghan is not adverse to making forecasts when it suits him. In October 1975 he informed us that over the (then) oncoming year “British families will suffer a sharp drop in their living standards.” His description was “a temporary sacrifice.” We ventured to suggest then that the “temporary” label might be forgotten and apparently it has.

I think industry can say the conditions are present to enable us to have a reasonable bet on the prospects of viable expansion that will continue. I don’t want to boom and bust. The real traumatic period for this country is between now and 1980 and this is the period we’ve got to concentrate on.

Daily Telegraph, 9th August ’76

Members of the working class take note, the traumas will be yours. Unless you are prepared to study Socialist ideas and work for the abolition of the private property system, the only “reasonable bet” to be had here is that shortly before the end of 1980, Mr. Callaghan or his equivalent (we include conservatives) will be telling us that the forecasts had been wrong; the real traumatic period was to be extended until the mid-1980s. In the meantime working-class poverty will continue.

Alan D'Arcy