Cooking the Books: Outdated measures (2026)

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

The Communist Manifesto was published on 21 February 1848. The Morning Star, the paper run by nostalgics for the former USSR, chose that date this year for an editorial headed ‘The Communist Manifesto is as relevant today as it was in 1848’. Yes, most of it is. It is a brilliant description and analysis of the development of capitalism, its role in history in bringing into existence a working class struggling against exploitation and to replace capitalism with a society based on the common ownership of the means and instruments of production. It remains today a good introduction to socialist ideas which those interested in understanding the society we live in should read.

However, it was not this part that the Morning Star considered ‘relevant today’ but the ten measures listed at the end of Chapter 2, which include: abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes; a heavy progressive or graduated income tax; centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly; centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state; extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; and free education for all children in public schools.

The Morning Star sees them ‘as a series of direct demands which challenge the material basis of existing society’, as reforms which the working class should campaign for under capitalism. But this is a misinterpretation as the context, both textual and historical, makes clear. The preceding paragraphs indicate that they were measures that the working class should implement after it had won control of political power. One of the measures — the ‘confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels’ — doesn’t make sense except in that context.

The historical context is the uprising that had broken out in Germany against autocratic dynastic rule. Marx and Engels thought that this ‘bourgeois revolution will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution’. In other words, they were measures for the working class to implement on winning political control in 1848. This didn’t happen and, in exile in London three years later, Marx and Engels recognised that they had been mistaken and that this was never really on the cards. So the listed measures weren’t relevant even in 1848, let alone today 178 years later.

Some of them, such as a progressive income tax, a state bank, railway nationalisation, and free education, have since been implemented under capitalism; which rather undermines the Morning Star’s claim that they ‘challenge the basis of existing society’. In fact, that claim reveals that those behind it envisage existing capitalism being gradually transformed into state capitalism by a series of reforms and nationalisations.

But the killer quote that disposes of the Morning Star’s misinterpretation is what Engels wrote in the Preface to the 1872 re-edition:

‘The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today’ (Our emphasis).

Today of course they would be even more differently worded, not that it would make sense to draw any up today since we don’t know what the conditions will be in which the working class will assume control of political power. But we can safely say that they won’t need to include any of those listed in 1848.

Marxism and United Fronts (1939)

From the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists recognise the need for working class unity; we are enthusiastic supporters of a united front. But we cannot, and will not, support unity at all costs. It is true to state that a real united front of the working class can only come into being when it is based on the solid foundation of Socialist knowledge. We are, therefore, according to our Socialist principles, obliged to oppose united fronts of the character so often presented, because the object which is aimed at is not of a Socialist character, nor is the basis of the suggested unity Socialist knowledge. Our battle-cry is, therefore, not unity at all costs, but unity on Socialist principles, the unity of an intelligent, politically organised, and determined working class for the overthrow of class society.

Some people may think that this is a very nice ideal, but it is not practical—it is not possible to get a majority of the working class to act along the lines indicated; therefore, it is essential, in order to stimulate activity, to seize upon some issue on which temporary agreement can be obtained between the various parties. In order to justify this form of activity our opponents often quote the Communist Manifesto (wrongly, in the sense that the Communist Manifesto never referred to the modern united front). “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties . . .” (page 21, M. Lawrence edition). This section of the Manifesto is assumed to provide the justification for all kinds of absurdities in connection with the class struggle in general and unity in particular. It is put forward as the Marxian basis of action in the form of an unchanging truth, a dogma. It is inferred that, were Marx alive to-day, he would urge affiliation to the Labour Party and united fronts for everything and anything, as do our misguided friends, the C.P. and I.L.P. In passing, it might be to the point to add that it seems strange that people who are continually changing policy and tactics on the ground of being dialectical should fail to see (or is it refuse to see ?) that, by virtue of the dialectic, that which was applicable during 1848, and even remained so until 1870, is no longer suited to meet the needs of 1938 (so far as advanced countries are concerned).

If one reads the Communist Manifesto carefully that is made clear, e.g., the joint preface by Marx and Engels, 1872, states (Section 4): —

“… Although in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties therein enumerated.”

Since Section 2 deals with the same matter, it is also included in the joint remarks of Marx and Engels.

We accept the Marxian case, not because of any blind homage to either Marx or Engels, but because they discovered social truths the correctness of which history has proved up to the hilt. The Marxian approach to the social problems places a key, or tool, in the hands of the working class, by which they can understand past social history, the present, and from this glean valuable knowledge to guide their future revolutionary actions, and thereby accomplish the task of overthrow more quickly.

When Marxism is applied, not as a dogma, but as a beacon light to illumine the proletarian highway, then it will be realised that no fixed and unalterable tactics are possible, and also that the particular conditions in any given situation will determine the details of the course to be pursued. Sections 2 and 4 were, and still are, suited to meet the requirements of the infant proletariat in their struggles in countries which have still to overthrow feudalism and establish capitalism. If we view past history we find that man’s development socially was in proportion to the development of his tools. At the stage where private property became established classes were born and class struggles commenced. The ruling class were always the most important class economically. The rise of the modern capitalist :class made them economically the most important class. But they, in order to perform their function, i.e., carry social development a stage further, were compelled to establish their political supremacy in order to permit the breaking down of the feudal fetters which restricted further social progress. In other words, the historic mission of capitalism is to create a great proletariat, eliminate the peasant, establish social production, and centralise control. To accomplish this task the capitalist class had to carry out the revolutionary overthrow of feudalism. If we keep in mind the fact that under the feudal system there were several classes, e.g., aristocracy, peasants, capitalists, and the then developing proletariat, we will see that the class struggle assumed a fourfold aspect. Further, it would not have been possible for the modern master class to have fought its battle with the feudal aristocracy without the aid of both peasants and workers. Again, capitalism was a necessary phase of social development; it therefore represented progress. In addition, so long as the class struggles were of a many-sided character, the issue between the capitalist class and the working class could not become really clear. By way of indicating that this was the view of Marx, a quotation from “Revolution and Counter-Revolution” may serve : —

“The working class movement itself never is independent, never of an exclusively proletarian character, until all the different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered political power, and remodelled the state according to their wants. It is then that the inevitable conflict between the employer and employed becomes imminent and cannot be adjourned any longer . . .” (page 8).

When the capitalist class have attained their political supremacy, then the class conflict is speedily reduced to the clear issue between the two great classes, the last two classes to appear in social history. When one considers that the Communists then in existence were merely a handful, and also that the establishment of capitalism would provide the social, economic, and political conditions which would make the Socialist proposition understandable to the working class; then the correctness of the urge to the Communists to assist their enemies, the capitalist class, in the destruction of their enemies, the feudal aristocracy, to put it in the words of Marx : “In short, the Communists everywhere support all revolutionary movements against the existing social and political order of things” (i.e., the abolition of feudalism). The Manifesto also makes it clear that the Communists should not conceal their aims, i.e., the abolition of capitalism; also that their independence should be preserved.

Contrast this with the programmes of the Labour Party, I.L.P., and so-called Communist Party, who, if they ever had any Communist aims, disdain to reveal them. Their aims are, and always have been, such as any Conservative or Liberal could, at a pinch, vote for. To take a few of the more prominent issues : Work for the workless, 40-hour week, defend Austria, Czechoslovakia, democracy, etc. These are issues which the modern master class are interested in from time to time; there is nothing revolutionary about any of them.

Suppose we put the question: Was feudalism abolished here? The answer is yes. Were the social and political conditions necessary for working class emancipation created ? Again, yes. 

Then it follows that the possibility for the organisation of the working class on an independent basis, and of an exclusively proletarian character, have been in existence for many years. Our task is, therefore, clear: to organise the working class for overthrow, to create proletarian organisation based upon Socialist knowledge for the purpose of social revolution. Instead of doing this our united fronters are even fanatical in their avoidance of revolutionary activity. They squander the courage, enthusiasm, and generosity of the working class in the advocacy of Labour programmes which are essentially Liberal in character; then, on special occasions, become the brazen defenders of British capitalism. It is interesting to note that Engels, in a letter to Bebel, expressed strong views on the question of unit)? at all costs: — 

“Unity is quite a good thing so long as it is possible, but there are things which stand higher than unity. And when, like Marx and myself, one has fought harder all one’s life long against the alleged Socialists than against anyone else, one cannot greatly grieve that the struggle has broken out” (this refers to the party split) (page 402, Correspondence).

The letter dealing with immediate claims, by Marx and Engels jointly, to Liebknecht, Bracke and others, deals scornfully with the suggestion of dropping the issue of Socialism in order to attract the workers with a programme of immediate aims. Quoting the German S.D. programme as follows, “Let no one misunderstand us. We do not want to give up our party and our programme, but we think that for years hence we shall have enough to do if we concentrate our whole strength and energy upon the attainment of certain immediate aims which must in any case be achieved before the realisation of the more far-reaching ends can be thought of . . .” Engels replies as follows, “The programme is not to be given up but only postponed — to an indefinite period. One accepts it, though not really for one’s self and one’s own lifetime, but posthumously as an heirloom to be handed down to one’s children and grandchildren. In the meantime one devotes one’s ‘whole strength and energy’ to all sorts of petty rubbish and the patching up of the capitalist order of society, in order, at least to produce the appearance of something happening without at the same time scaring the bourgeois.”

How that fits exactly the so-called Communists to-day is self-evident. The Socialist Party refuses to be drawn into this campaign of peddling rubbish; our opponents, who are bankrupt of a case against us, can only resort to abuse and such absurd assertions as: “The S.P.G.B. do not take part in the day-to-day struggle,” etc.

When the question of the day-to-day struggle is examined, it is evident that no member of society, irrespective of whether worker or master, can escape the day-to-day struggle; it is the class struggle, in its non-revolutionary aspect. We, as members of the working class, are very much concerned about such things as the means test, slums, poverty, etc. We realise that, even within capitalist society, our poverty can be aggravated, hence the reason why we endorse the need for the working class to struggle against the encroachments of capitalism where possible. We also know that even the most diehard Tory Government must introduce reforms from time to time; and that, even were all that which has been promised to the workers by Tories, Liberals, Labourites, or so-called Communists (even in their wildest days prior to their extreme Conservatism), granted, we would have poverty, slums, unemployment, etc. As Socialists we want much more than they will ever give, viz., Socialism; consequently we logically concentrate on the quickest means of obtaining it. It is not our job to assist the master class in running society; in the course of doing so, national and local legislation and administration is essential. It is true to state that to-day possibly 99.9 per cent. of the time of Parliament and town councils are concerned with affairs of no interest or concern to the working class; this is so, irrespective of the personnel who form the Government.

We are Socialists, not careerists; therefore, we take our stand on the need for spreading Socialist knowledge. Keeping this in mind, we know that, in proportion to the growth of Socialist knowledge, the working class will find that they will be even more successful on the question of conditions of labour, etc. Try and visualise a May-day demonstration of Socialists, one hundred thousand strong; their banners bearing revolutionary slogans, their ranks the living manifestation of solid unity based upon Socialist knowledge, their action indicative of determination to abolish capitalism. Because you are intelligent, strong and united, you are feared, therefore respected; meantime you are politically ignorant, disorganised and weak; consequently you are not feared, but despised. When the working class are so organised then the words of Marx, “Let the ruling class tremble at a Communist revolution,” will be fully realised. The ruling class, in their panic, will be ever more ready to concede your demands; you will be in a position to demand. Now, in most cases, you only beg. The remedy for all the ills, unemployment, slums, poverty, war, etc., is Socialism; it should be established at the earliest opportunity. To accomplish this it is essential that a majority of the workers become Socialists. We, of the S.P.G.B., are doing our utmost to convince the workers of the need for Socialism; our task is made more difficult by the propaganda of confusionists who call themselves Socialists; however, we will win in the end. The importance of this task should not be under-rated. As Engels said (“Socialism, Utopian and Scientific”): “To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historic mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions, and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.” In other words, make Socialism first, then the rest (unity) will follow, and the working class will soon get rid of capitalism.

John Higgins

Beware the bogey-men (1986)

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when hard-pressed parents sought to control their high-spirited children by threatening that, if they were not "good" (willing to conform to parental convenience). the bogey-man would get them. The owners of newspapers use the same device to frighten their readers into conformity with ruling class ideas and. on occasion, to create a willingness to die in their defence.

The earliest bogey-man the writer can remember was the "Hun" — the subject of fear and hatred during the first World War. This was the name given to the Germans of that time in spite of the fact that the Huns last swept across Europe from Central Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries. However. "Hun" was a convenient alternative to "German" since the British Royal Family were related to Germans.

Then, with the Russian revolution of 1917, a new bogey-man appeared on the horizon. He was known as a "Bolshy" and, although this was an abbreviation of "Bolshevik", meaning "one of those forming a majority", this in no way detracted from the horror with which people were persuaded to regard him. This bogey-man was unique in having an alternative name: "Red", which was on occasion applied to members of the Labour Party as well as supporters of the Communist Party.

But then, when Hitler disappointed the British ruling class by deciding to invade the West instead of the East, the "Nazi" became the biggest bogey-man of all. "Nazi" was an abbreviation of Nationalsozialist — meaning National Socialist — and workers should bear this in mind when others lay claim to being socialist when they represent just another form of capitalism.

However the bogey-man of the 1980s is certainly a "Marxist" — often a "hard-line Marxist", whatever that means. Now. presumably a Marxist is one who agrees with the main economic and political ideas of Karl Marx. So it might be as well for those members of the working class who might be frightened by this latest bogey-man to find out exactly what his ideas were.

Marx maintained that in an advanced capitalist country the population was divided into two main social classes whose interests were diametrically opposed: the capitalist class and the working class. He pointed to the fact that, because the capitalist class owned the means of production of wealth (the land, factories, railways and so on) the working class was dependent on selling to the capitalists their only asset, their ability to work, in order to live. In this process he explained the exploitation of labour, the inevitable poverty of a majority of the working class — and the origin of profit:

The fact that half a day 's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and the value which that labour power creates in the labour process, are two entirely different magnitudes and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power.

(Capital Part III Chapter VII)

Marx also held that the only solution to the poverty of the working class was for them to make the means of production of wealth the common property of all mankind:

When therefore capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transferred into social property.

(Communist Manifesto)

In the above statement he was also answering those critics who asked what would become of personal belongings. The result however of the change from private ownership of capital to common ownership would, Marx pointed out. mean the cessation of buying and selling since this can only occur if wealth is privately owned:

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying (free trade) disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying and all the other brave words of our bourgeoisie [. . .] have no meaning when opposed to the communistic abolition of buying and selling

(Communist Manifesto)

It would also mean the end of the wages system by which workers were exploited:

Instead of the conservative motto: "a fair day s wages for a fair day's work" they [the working class] ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: abolition of the wages system.

(Value, Price and Profit) 

Finally, he maintained that the establishment of this form of society must be achieved democratically by the working class itself:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

(Communist Manifesto)

and

Thus socialism was. in 1847. a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. [. . .] And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself, there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take.

(Preface to the Communist Manifesto)

So what can we conclude from the above quotations? Firstly that members of the working class — and in this group we include those who think of their wages as "salaries" — should have nothing to fear from this latest in a long line of "bogey-men": the Marxist. The true Marxist brings the key to the emancipation of all people from poverty and conflict.

Secondly the above quotations should enable us to distinguish the true Marxist from the many who assume, or are given, this title Reading back over the quotations, we can ask whether the self-styled "Marxist" explains the economics of capitalist exploitation, believes that the means of wealth production should be the common property of all. explains that this means the abolition of buying and selling and the end of the wages system — and whether the revolutionary change from capitalism to socialism (or communism) must be the democratic act of a majority of the working class.

Or does the "Marxist" represent an élite who claim they can lead the working class — offering reforms on the way — to a form of society in which they see themselves as the new ruling class? If so. here is your true bogeyman.

John Moore

Letter: Silent professor (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Silent professor

Dear Editors,

I have just been reading the introduction to The Communist Manifesto by A.J.P. Taylor. Some of the criticisms he uses against Marx and marxism 1 have come across before and I disagree with him. However, he claims that the Labour Theory of Value has been discredited (p.37 in the Introduction). Having read Volume I of Capital. I find it hard to believe that the value of a commodity is not created by the labour power of the workers.

Could you please let me know what theory/argument Mr Taylor has in mind when he says the Labour Theory of Value is no longer credible and whether or not it has any validity (which I doubt).

S H Lodwick 

Plymouth

Reply:

S.H. Lodwick has a point; where do famously learned people like A.J.P. Taylor find the evidence to support their sweeping condemnations of marxism and its explanation of the workings of capitalist society?

To try to answer this question we wrote to A.J.P. Taylor, some two months ago. telling him that we can't answer our correspondent's enquiry and asking for his help in finding the sources his opinions are based on. But on this point Professor Taylor, who is not famous for any reticence in publicising his views, remains mysteriously silent. We have not had a word from him. by way of reply or even acknowledgement. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

Editors.

Getting Socialism. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much misunderstanding as to the meaning of the phrase “The coming Social Revolution” as used by Socialists. Many inquiring workers, befogged by the teaching of the I.L.P. and of other reforming bodies, complain that they cannot conceive of a comparatively sudden or “catastrophic” change carrying society from Capitalism into Socialism. Hence, it seems, some of the attempted justification of a “palliative” program—a means of sliding into Socialism while the masters are not looking, you know. (Socialism to come upon us “as a thief in the night,” was Mr. Keir Hardie’s felicitous phrase, I believe.)

This misunderstanding would appear to arise largely from an over-consumption of Blatchfordian “rational Socialism,” and of “Looking Backward”-”News from Nowhere” Utopianism —though these, perhaps, are the least noxious of I.L.P. teachings. Certainly, to wake up one morning in Capitalism, do a barricade “turn” and go to sleep that night in Morris’s blissful “Nowhere” is not what the Socialist means by “the coming Social Revolution.”

Say Marx and Engels in the “Communist Manifesto,”

“The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as a ruling class (italics mine); and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

“Of course in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production ; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.”

Also in recent years Kautsky has said in his work “The Social Revolution” :

“It is therefore, the conquest of the powers of State by a hitherto oppressed class—in other words, the political revolution, which is an essential characteristic of the social revolution in its narrower sense, as opposed to social reform.”

Now to “raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class”—”the conquest of the powers of State,” is conceivable.

That by dint of economic pressure and of Socialist propaganda and organisation the workers can vote themselves into “the position of a ruling class,” is conceivable.

That, given an organised, prepared, Socialist proletariat become the ruling class, its delegates can proceed to the enactment of transition measures (necessarily temporary) which in the aggregate will knock from under class-divided society its basis—private ownership and control of the means and instruments of production and distribution, thus causing the disappearance of classes, is, we hold, conceivable.

Given the common ownership and control of the means of production, the consequent disappearance of classes, dominant and subject, and the time necessary to get things working smoothly, and Socialism (Industrial Democracy; the Co-operative Commonwealth) is here: the Revolution is accomplished.

Now how about the other alleged practical and “common-sense” method described by Keir Hardie and Co.? Is it conceivable that the workers’ emancipation can be gained by an accumulation of reforms? Let us see.

Noisily trumpeted, apparently palliative reforms are at present dispensed—old age pensions on the cheap and devil-take-the-weak-and-old workmen’s compensation—and are pointed to as proof of the triumphant policy of our I.L.P., S.D.P., etc., etc. reformers. But we point out that a million such reforms, with a little municipalisation and nationalisation of capital thrown in, will still leave the workers poor, subject to competition and unemployment—still a subject class. The bridge that can alone span the chasm between Capitalism and Socialism remains as ever—the acquisition of the control of industry by the working class.

Now the present controllers of industry are certainly not less aware of this fact than are the Socialists ; and since they find domination sweet, and since history records not an instance of a dominant class voluntarily and of sweet reasonableness abdicating its controlling position, it follows that our capitalist masters will defend their control of the means and instruments of production by every device at their command, from reform dispensing to massacre. Long established privilege is not to be so easily abolished. Certainly, that our masters will kindly vote us, and hand over, one after another, the different industries, thus committing suicide as a class, is not conceivable.

The advocacy of reforms is mischievous because it does not prepare the workers for the tremendous task of beating the master class out of power, but rather teaches them to look to the masters for crumbs and, on Keir Hardie lines, for the piecemeal concession of Socialism.

No ! we cannot reform into Socialism because the capitalist class will not abolish itself, while if we gain the power to take reforms we should indeed be foolish to halt on the road and try patching up capitalism. Our clear duty would be to expropriate the capitalist class and re-organise production and distribution as the common interest dictates. That is to say, establish Socialism.

J. H. Halls

Cooking the Books: Did Marx respect the rich? (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Even Marx respected the rich more than Reeves’ was the headline of an article by Sunday Telegraph columnist Michael Mosbacher (18 May). He accused Reeves of putting up taxes on the rich because she believes it immoral to be too rich. And quoted Marx as having written in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 that ‘the bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together’.

It is true that Marx did regard capitalism as historically necessary and, for a while, progressive. He respected – if that’s the word – the bourgeoisie not because they were rich (their opponents, the landed aristocracy, were too, even more so in fact) but for when they had played a revolutionary role. Capitalism has long since fulfilled its role of developing the material basis for a world socialist society, so capitalists are no longer revolutionary or necessary.

More generally in his analysis of capitalism, Marx regarded capitalists as essentially personifications of capital whose role was to accumulate more and more capital for re-investment and from which their life of luxury was a deviation. As he put in the Preface to the first German edition of Das Kapital:

‘I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests’.

Mosbacher went on to say about Marx:

‘Marx believed that capitalism’s overthrow would come about through its own success. The market – and this is where old Charlie got it spectacularly wrong – would eventually satiate all bourgeois demand. Overproduction, and counter-intuitively mechanisation (he was also quite wrong about this), would reduce the capitalists’ profits. Marx’s adoption of the labour theory of value – the idea that the worth of any good is determined by the amount of work put into it (…) – meant that the bourgeoisie would only have one option to maintain their riches. And that is scalping a larger share of what the workers’ labour has produced. The eventual result of the proletariat’s consequent immiseration would be world revolution’.

Did ‘Old Charlie’ hold that ‘the market… would satiate all bourgeois demand’? Mosbacher is not expressing himself very clearly here. He probably meant that production will eventually exceed what can be sold under capitalist conditions, whether to workers or capitalists, and so capitalism comes to suffer a permanent crisis of overproduction.

Marx never held that capitalism would end up in that situation. He did, however, hold that capitalism would overproduce in relation to market demand from time to time, though not for the reason Mosbacher gives. It was because, when the market was expanding, competing capitalists all plan to benefit from it and end up by producing in total more than the market can absorb. But this would not bring capitalism to an impasse, just to a temporary slump in production, which would eventually create the conditions for a recovery. It was cyclical not terminal.

Did Marx say that ‘mechanisation … would reduce the capitalists’ profits’? Here Mosbacher seems to be referring to what Marx called the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This was connected to mechanisation insofar as mechanisation resulted in proportionately more capital being invested in machinery than in employing wage labour. This would tend to reduce the rate of profit as only the part of the capital invested in wage-labour yielded a surplus value whereas the rate of profit was calculated on total capital.

Marx called this a ‘tendency’ because there were also counter-tendencies which might prove stronger at times and pointed out that a fall in the rate of profit did not necessarily mean a fall in the amount of profits. It wasn’t the iron law that Mosbacher makes it. Capitalism is not going to break down from lack of profits any more than from lack of markets.

The spectre of communism (1951)

From the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over 100 years ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels jointly produced the most famous of all political pamphlets “The Communist Manifesto.” In the prefatory paragraphs they wrote:—

“A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. . . .

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties as well as against its re-actionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.

II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself."

(S.P.G.B. edition, p. 59) 

When these words were written capitalism was developing in Europe. In England and France the capitalist class had obtained political power and the working class were making demands for political liberty. In other countries the workers supported the rising capitalist class against the feudal aristocracy. The hopes, dreams and aspirations of the more advanced workers were expressed in vague utopian communist ideas. This made the rising capitalist class “tremble in their shoes” and drove them to seek alliance with the feudalists powers.

It was Marx who made the discovery

“that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it form the basis upon which is built up and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of the epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited; ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles form a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction and class struggles." 

(Engels Preface to 1888 Ed., Communist Manifesto, S.P.G.B. Ed., p. 56).

With Engels, Marx applied this theory to the changes taking place in society and brilliantly sketched an outline of this development in the "manifesto.” 

They pointed out how the voyages of discovery in the latter part of 15th and the earlier part of the 16th centuries created a world market, giving incentive to the growth of industry and commerce. The inability of the existing methods of production to satisfy the demand forced the rising capitalist class to seek political power for the abolition of the restrictions which feudalism placed on production. Methods of production kept developing. The new methods, wherever they took root supplanted the older methods uprooting the old way of living and its traditional beliefs. The development of the means of production concentrated property into fewer hands, driving more people into the ranks of the working class, reducing society into two classes—the capitalist class, who own and control the means of production and the working class who, having no property in the means of production, must sell their labour power to live. The workers, due to the pressure of the circumstances in which they find themselves, must struggle to better their conditions. This struggle will ultimately lead the workers of all countries to realise they have a common interest, the abolition of capitalist society, which is based on the private ownership of the means of production—the source of their exploitation—and the establishment of socialism, which is based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Today, 100 years after the publication of the pamphlet, the area has extended. The spectre of Communism is no longer confined to Europe. It haunts the world. Again the “nursery tale of the spectre of Communism ” must be met.

Communist still remains one of the most common terms of abuse. Defenders of free speech in the Western democracies, brigands in hills of Greece, bandits in the jungles of Malaya are all classified under this epithet.

The terms socialism and communism mean the same thing, a classless form of society. Marx and Engels chose to use the term communism because it was associated with the working class movements of the time whereas socialism referred to utopian movements, composed of reformers, and men like Robert Owen who thought the change must be brought about from above by the “educated classes,” while Marx and Engels maintained the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves (see Engels Intro to Manifesto). At the present time, the term communist usually refers to those who claim that Russia is a socialist country and endorse the Leninist-Stalinist interpretation of Marxist theories. They claim that socialism is the transitory stage to communism.

But according to the Chinese Communists the change taking place in China is “generally speaking, still a new-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism, and not a revolution of a socialist nature " (The Economist, Jan. 20th, 1951). Capitalism is developing in Asia, breaking up the age-old customs and beliefs, bringing with it Western ideas. The Chinese Communists are more truthful than their Russian predecessors and teachers, who stated that in Russia, at a similar stage in social development, a socialist revolution had taken place.

The underlying theory held by those who call themselves Communist, whichever nationality they claim, is that the working class can be led to socialism. This idea is principally the same as that of the “utopians” in 1848. It leaves out of account the economic conditions and the political development of the working class, and. therefore, it contradicts the fundamental Marxian theory quoted earlier in this article in Engels own words. The development of Russia since 1917 shows how this idea that socialism can be installed from above is false. Lenin regretted the need for the inequality of income which has now given rise to rouble millionaires. The law of inheritance was abolished and in later years restored. After the revolution, education was free, then later could be had at a fee; divorce laws were relaxed, and divorces easy to obtain, but now these laws have been changed and only the more privileged section of society can afford divorce.

These regressions demonstrate that it is impossible to construct socialism before certain conditions have arisen. These conditions arc a sufficiently developed means of production, which could provide the requisites for a comfortable living for all members of society and a working class, the majority of whom understand that only by the common ownership of the means for producing wealth can a comfortable living for all be obtained. Capitalism is run from top to bottom by the working class. If any socialist transformation is going to take place, the workers must want the change and know how to make it The change can’t take place in the face of their opposition. Society is a group of people with ideas in their heads; if it isn't socialist ideas then they will have non-socialist ones.

The task before the asiatic workers is the assimilation and the dissemination of socialist knowledge. Capitalism will look after the development of the means of production. Let these asiatic workers look after the other necessary condition for socialism, a majority of workers who know what socialism means and want it

And the task faring the workers in the more advanced Western world is the same. Learn what socialism is. When the workers in both Eastern and Western countries gain that knowledge they will obtain political power, and collectively set about to establish such a society. The main obstacle in the way of Socialism is that the workers don’t know what it means. Once they do, the obvious advantages of this system will compel the workers in the advanced countries to bring it about, and will bring their more backward brothers in swift pursuit.

J. T.

"More spectres haunting Europe" (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the Communist Manifesto was written nearly a hundred years ago, spectres have not only been haunting Europe, but indeed the whole capitalist society. Since the beginning of the 20th Century Europe, as well as the capitalist world, has endured and suffered from these spectres. Since the end of the First World War, there was the economic blizzard of 1921, the rise and fall of the first Labour Government, which was followed by the so-called General Strike of 1926. Then there was the rise and fall of the second Labour Government in 1929 to 1931, and another economic blizzard. More spectres have been haunting Europe and capitalist society since then.

We have witnessed the rise of the Hitlerite regime in Germany in 1933, and culminating in the Second World War of 1939-1945. Now with the war hardly finished, there is yet another spectre haunting society, the prospect of yet another economic blizzard which may well surpass that of 1921 and 1931. The irony of it all is that the rulers of the great capitalist powers cannot exorcise these spectres, whether they have a holy or unholy alliance with each other or not. The mechanism of the capitalist system is beyond their control, and furthermore the ruling class do not understand the workings of their system.

Is there any way out? Yes there is only one way out. It is that the working-class, not only of Europe, but of the whole world; must thoroughly understand the real causes of these spectres of poverty, squalor and war. They must fully realise that no leader or groups of leaders, however well intentioned, can free us from these spectres. No Redeemer or Saviour can emancipate us from these spectres. In short it means, as laid down in Clause 5 of our Declarations of Principles, that the work of emancipating the working-class, must be that of the working-class itself. It means that the working-class must organize politically and consciously, to obtain possession of that piece of machinery known as the State. Then they must use it for their own ends, namely to dispossess the owning and ruling class of their ownership of the whole world and the fullness thereof. Likewise the working-class must take possession of the means of living, i.e. factories, railways, steamships, etc.

Instead of producing and distributing wealth for the benefit and profit for a few, then wealth will be produced for the benefit of the whole of society without distinction of colour or sex. When they commence to do these things, then they will cease to be a working- class. There will also cease to be what is known as a ruling or privileged class. Then those spectres described above will be exorcised and banished for ever and ever. The new social order will come into existence. It will be known throughout the world as Socialism.

N. Posner.

The National Health Service (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-labourers."

Thus wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto 101 years ago; it is still just as up to date now as when written. The doctors in those days was a wage-labourer as to-day, in spite of the fact that many looked upon him as a minor capitalist. The doctor was dependant for his livelihood upon the sale of his labour power, his ability to work, to give advice, to dispense, to diagnose, to operate and to heal. For these services he received his rewards whether he worked as a private physician, or whether he sold his services to a local municipal council, or worked for a hospital or institution.

The National Health Service of the Labour Party has not changed the doctor’s economic relationship to society one iota, except that it should have made it plainly visible to the doctors themselves that they are members of the working class, whose wages can by Government decree be drastically reduced.

When the Labour Party decided to inaugurate the National Health Service, which means in effect the Nationalisation of medicine, Bevan approached the doctors to ascertain what the average General Practitioner was earning. The representatives of the doctors were not a little concerned with such a question, knowing that some form of nationalisation was in the air. If they plugged for high wages (or salaries) by stating they were earning let us say £3,000 to £4,000 a year, their income tax returns could easily be investigated; and if it were discovered that they were paying income tax on, let us say £1,000, the ministry would know at once what was happening. The long and protracted negotiations between the Minister of Health and the medical profession were not a little due to this awkward position which the doctors very reluctantly had to face. In the struggle the Labour Party won, and Bevan triumphantly proclaimed to the doctors that the State would pay them a salary commensurable with that which they were earning, that is what the doctors said they were earning. That being done, they became pafd wage labourers of the State, Civil Servants of a type.

It is quite well known that every doctor formerly lost a large percentage of his fees by bad debts. Although doctors have the legal privilege to sue for unpaid fees, very rarely did any doctor take advantage of such facilities of the law. If Doctor Brown sued poor old Mrs. Jones (who let us say was bedridden and poverty stricken), his name would be mud in the district, and his fellow-practitioners would soon scoop up his practice. Under the National Health Scheme, since the Government collected the cash in weekly instalments that everybody must pay, a guarantee could be given to the doctors that there would be no loss of fees. This did not appear to enthuse the doctors who sulked and acted as if they were getting a raw deal. Is it possible that they were taking cash and forgetting (it is easy enough) to record it for His Majesty’s Inspectors of Inland Revenue?

The net result of all this is that many of the doctors are not very interested in the National Health Service, which has been witnessed by thousands who have consulted doctors under the new plan. For the nationalised physician it means more work for less fees, hence the reason why they have discussed the possibility of mass resignation at an early date.

Another economic aspect of the National Health Service must not be overlooked. Since its introduction a year ago, the value of the shares in all the drug companies has increased and record profits have been made. At the recent shareholders’ meeting of the Boots Drug Stores, the chairman declared that “they had had a record year with profits over £600,000 and that had they had more staff to cope with orders, they would have done a great deal better.” It is, therefore, no accident that the National Health Insurance has been introduced. In actual fact it is no insurance at all from the workers aspect, but a national disease treating scheme, whose real function it is to get workers back to work as soon as possible. It means that the big problem of absentee-ism has been tacked nationally. No longer can a worker offer an excuse that he was ill and could not get a doctor or afford treatment. If the Health Insurance insures anything, it insures that the worker is got back to work in double quick time! Strange is it not that this peculiar service has been introduced at terrific costs in time and labour, by a political party which has been shouting itself hoarse to get increased production! The net result is lower wages for workers by compelling them to pay insurances, lower salaries and more work for doctors, and larger profits for the big drug houses.

Thus does the Labour Party in but another field not only carry on the task of running capitalism in the interests of the real ruling class (the capitalists) as we have consistently claimed, but does it more efficiently and effectively than previous capitalist Governments.

Horace Jarvis

The Socialist Forum: Communism and Socialism. (1933)

From the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communism and Socialism.

Reply to C. L., Vancouver Island B.C.

Engels in his 1888 Preface to the “Communist Manifesto" explained why in 1847 Marx and he called their Manifesto "Communist" and not "Socialist." It was to distinguish the revolutionary working class movement from the middle-class utopian movement, which at that time called itself Socialist. Later on this method of distinguishing the two movements ceased to be necessary, and Marx and Engels habitually used the terms Socialist and Socialism to indicate what they had formerly indicated by the terms Communist and Communism.

The Third (Communist) International called itself by that name to distinguish itself from the Labour parties and their International. They now use the term "Socialism" to mean the stage of development which in their view is intermediate between the future Communism and the present mixture of State and private capitalism as it exists in Russia. Thus Leontyev in his "Towards a Classless Society" (Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R , Moscow, 1932) writes:—

The classless socialist society which we must build during the second five year period, represents only the first, the lower phase of Communism.—(Page 25.)

When the Russian Communists want to indicate something approximating to what the S.P.G.B. defines as Socialism, they use the term Communism.

With regard to the withering away of the State, see January Socialist Standard. 

Ed. Comm.

In Commemoration of the Communist Manifesto (1948)

From the February 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years ago a small group of political refugees, mainly German, along with a few other radicals published to a world that hardly noticed it the most famous document in working class history, the Communist Manifesto. A few weeks later the adherents of the Manifesto had scattered to participate in the revolutions that shook Europe during 1848; revolutions upon which they had built hopes that were rapidly dissipated. The document they had produced, however, after remaining in obscurity for a time began to travel round the world, giving hope and inspiration to the exploited and laying the foundations of the scientific Socialist movement. The appeal of the Manifesto and its growing influence were based upon its clear and accurate analysis of the foundations and the trends of the Capitalist system, whose development was still in its early stages.

The face of the world then was vastly different from what it is today. A large part of Europe still fretted under relics of Feudalism, although in the West, and especially in England, Capitalism was making great industrial strides. The blind passion to accumulate wealth for its own sake had taken complete possession of sections of the privileged class and factory production was taking heavy toll of its victims, which included women and children. At the same period the growth of trading was invading and weakening the old State demarcations and urging the privileged sections of subject groups to acquire self-determination. Thus the fight of the monied class for power and the fight of subject nations for political freedom were the all absorbing questions of the day. Agriculture was still the dominating industry and the peasant and the small producer were the most active and vocal of the non-privileged groups. Even in England, the foremost industrial country, the working class proper was still a minority of the population. It was impossible for the writers of the Manifesto to entirely escape the influence of the conditions of their environment; it is amazing to reflect upon their clearness of vision and prophetic insight in the midst of contradictory currents that made the trends of Capitalism so difficult to follow.

The principles developed by the Manifesto and the way in which it characterises the capitalist method of production, as well as the materialist conception upon which it is based, are as fitting today as when it was written. The clearness, verve, and felicity of phrasing have never been surpassed. This is the more astonishing when one remembers that the writers, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, had neither of them yet reached the age of thirty.

The Manifesto contains four sections, the first of which is concerned with an analysis of society. This section opens with the sentence, “The history of all hitherto existing society [civilised society] is the history of class struggles,” and later follows with a description of Capitalism:

“The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruin of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature – it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”

“The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.

“The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”

“Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitations distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.”

How true, sweeping and trenchant is this description of Capitalism! Yet it was written a hundred years ago when the all-embracing ugliness of the system was only emerging. The position of the worker as a wage slave is clearly set forth, as is also the necessity of the capture of political power by the workers in order to achieve their emancipation. The first section concludes with a paragraph that makes clear the inevitability of the triumph of the working class:

“The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between labourers. class is the formation and the augmentation of capital: the condition of capital The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers (due to competition) by their revolutionary combination (due to association). The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

The succeeding sections of the Manifesto are concerned with the practical means to achieve its object, but these are based upon the conditions of 1848; conditions that have long since passed away. These parts of the Manifesto are, therefore, now obsolete, but they are just the parts that have been most frequently used as guides by reformers and those whose impatience has made them blind to changing political conditions. The writers were pioneers mapping out new territory, and territory whose configuration was in process of change. That they should have been over-enthusiastic about the nearness of social change or the nature of the particular steps to be taken to accomplish the change at a time when Capitalism was still undeveloped is as understandable as it is remarkable that their outlook should have been so clear fundamentally. But the writers saw farther and clearer than their associates and the main body of their successors. Hence the weaknesses instead of the strength of the Manifesto have made the greatest appeal and have led the social democratic movement they started into the mire of futile reform programmes. The Manifesto was like a small craft on a stormy sea with its compass set in the right direction, but succeeding helmsmen were unable to read the compass properly.

The working class movement from the date of the Manifesto followed two divergent courses; the first, the scientific course, remained a thin small stream, while the second, the reformist course, grew in volume until it reached torrential power. This is explained in part by the two aspects of the Manifesto – the theoretical and the practical. It was upon the practical side, that is the temporary and weaker side, that the movement concentrated more and more, as it grew in volume, until the theoretical basis became completely submerged in the “practical” questions of the day or, in other words, reformist policies and programmes.

We are no worshippers of leaders or “great men” but we recognise the magnificent work done by Marx, Engels and other contributors to the scientific socialist movement which began with the publication of the Communist Manifesto. We stand on the shoulders of those past workers who have helped us up and we profit by what they have done to make our social vision clearer. We are members of the working class and hold, with the writers of the Manifesto, that “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” We hold further that this world can only be won by the workers prosecuting the class struggle unremittingly, spurning all attempts to seduce them into support of reform programmes, abandoning the worship of leaders and depending upon their own efforts alone.

The best tribute to Marx and Engels is to recognise what is permanent in their work and put aside that which was dictated by the confused and temporary circumstances of the time in which they wrote. It is in this spirit that we commemorate the publication of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 as one of the greatest events in working class history.

Gilmac.

Blogger's Note:

In 1948 the SPGB published the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the Last 100 Years. I believe the text was written by Gilbert McClatchie ('Gilmac.').

Voice From The Back: Outdated Marxism? (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Outdated Marxism?

A gap of over a 150 years separates the following two quotations, but they surely give the lie to the notion that Marxism is now outdated. “Paris: Junior doctors in France went on an indefinite partial strike in protest at their long working hours. Members of the ISNTH union, which represents 8,000 junior doctors, said they will refuse night shifts or be on call at home until demands are met.” The Times (20 November, 2001) “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” Communist Manifesto 1848

The wasteful society

Socialists are always arguing against supporters of capitalism that it is a wasteful and destructive society. A recent item from the Herald (26 November) illustrates our point very well. “Every time a single B2 Spirit stealth bomber makes the gruelling 34 hour round trip from its base in rural Missouri to unload its precision-guided payload over rural Afghanistan half a world away, it costs the American taxpayer more than £2.5m in fuel for the mission. Each laser-guided bomb dropped adds another £50,000 to the bill.”

The fearful society

It is often said by sociologists that social trends that first surface in the USA eventually appear in the UK. If such were to prove true about crime and punishment then the future is very gloomy indeed. According to the journalist Simon Jenkins writing in the Times (28 November) the US have a real problem. “What is known is that America now imprisons a staggering 700 people per 100,000, against 124 in Britain and 89 in France. One in three young black males in American inner cities is in prison or on parole . . . Meanwhile, half a million Californians feel they must live in armed and gated estates.”

Progressing backwards

Amidst the phoney euphoria of the Labour Party’s electoral victory of 1997 the British working class were promised an end to poverty or “social exclusion” as Labour prefer to call it. But what is the reality today? David Plachaud of the London School of Economics in the current issue of the Political Review is quoted in the Guardian (26 November) as remarking: “Child poverty remains higher than it was in 1979.” and “Britain still has the highest child poverty rate of any major industrialised country apart from the United States.”

The unhealthy society

In a revealing article in the Observer (2 December) it was shown that so pathetic is Labour’s running of the NHS that one in eight of the population now have private medical insurance, and that even those without private insurance won’t use the NHS. “Even those without medical insurance boycott the NHS in record numbers. Last year, more than 200,000 people jumped NHS waiting lists by paying for private operations – double when Labour came to power.” The most revealing aspect was the reason put forward for many employers providing health cover. Surprise, surprise it wasn’t the bosses concern for the workers they exploit; it was a commercial one. “Fergus Kee, managing director of BUPA’s UK insurance business, said: “Companies are increasingly recognising the value of medical insurance to get sick employees back to work faster.”

For my next trick

The Rev. Andrew Thompson is concerned about falling Church of England attendances, so he has come up with a super wheeze. He has written a booklet “Gospel Magic” that advocates flaming torches, trick guillotines and disappearing handkerchiefs to get the punters back to church. This has aroused a lot of opposition from more conservative elements in the church but it is difficult to sympathise with them. After all, their main man the Cunning Carpenter was reputed to have been a dab hand at conjuring tricks like water into wine and fish teas for the five thousand.

Bought it fair and square

In last month’s issue we reported that Michael Bloomberg had bought the office of Mayor of New York for $60 million; we were wrong. The official figures are now out and reported in the Times (5 December) – he spent $68,968,185! Even by American standards this is a phenomenal election expenditure for such an office. President Bush spent $193 million on his presidential campaign against Al Gore’s $133 million and Hillary Clinton spent $29.9 million, a record in New York, to become a Senator. Bloomberg spent more than five times his Democratic Party opponent Mark Green, in fact it is reckoned that he spent $92.60 for each of his 744,757 votes. The really staggering aspect of this corruption of democracy is that the Times can report it boldly, under the headline” $69m buys election as Mayor of New York” and that Mr Green’s campaign manager Richard Schrader could say: “He bought it fair and square. By spending a historic amount on television ads, he controlled the airwaves and altered people’s perception of reality.” Capitalism has reduced everything to the cash nexus. Why don’t they just dispense with voting altogether and have an auction for all the offices of power between the capitalists and their puppets? The whole thing has become a farce and has no claim to the term “democracy”.

Capitalism’s facelift?

“All companies must strive to give capitalism a name that doesn’t result in riots. Capitalism is good. But benevolent capitalism is better!” Sir Richard Branson. Yorkshire Post (1 December).

Cooking the Books: Progress and pauperism (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elon Musk supports capitalism. Well, is the Pope a Catholic? In a tweet on 23 October he recommended a new book called The Capitalist Manifesto. ‘This book’, he tweeted, ‘is an excellent explanation of why capitalism is not just successful, but morally right’. We are not concerned here with the contents of the book, by Johan Norbert, subtitled ‘Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World’ — another time perhaps — but with a passage in the press release the publishers put out:

‘Marx and Engels were right when they observed in The Communist Manifesto that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined.’

Marx and Engels certainly made the second point, almost textually, writing:

‘The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together’.

But there is nothing in the Communist Manifesto about capitalism creating ‘greater prosperity.’ On the contrary. If anything, Marx and Engels went too far in the opposite direction, ending the same section:

‘The modern labourer (…) instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth’.

The complete pauperisation of the working class did not happen in the long run — at the time Marx and Engels didn’t think that capitalism was going to have a long run — but a growth in workers maintained by the Poor Law was an immediate effect of the Industrial Revolution and an accurate observation of the situation in 1848.

In exile in England in the early 1850s, Marx and Engels came to realise that they had been mistaken in believing that a working-class communist revolution had been likely in 1848. Marx settled down to studying how capitalism worked, the result being the publication of the first volume of Capital in 1867.

Nobody who has read Capital, particularly the historical parts, could claim that Marx ‘observed that free markets had … created greater prosperity’. Marx described in detail, on the basis of official government publications, the terrible working and living conditions of workers in a whole series of industries. In section 4 of chapter 25 on ‘Different Forms of the relative surplus population’, he returned to the question of ‘pauperism’.

He now no longer argued that as capitalism progressed all workers would tend to be reduced to below subsistence level, to paupers. However, he still expected that some sections of the working class would be, ‘that part of the working class which has forfeited its condition of existence (the sale of labour power), and vegetates upon public alms’; whose labour power was unsaleable because they were old, sick, disabled or industrially injured, but also because during the slump phase of the business cycle there was no demand for it.

Since capitalism needed a reserve army of labour and ‘pauperism is the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army’, it ‘forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth’.

Marx has been proved right about this. Ever since his day a section of the working class — at least 1 in 10 — has had to ‘vegetate on public alms’ (until 1948 the Poor Law, later National Assistance, then Social Security, now Universal Credit) — and will as long as capitalism lasts. Technological innovations under capitalism may have solved the problem of how to produce enough wealth for everyone but as a system it is constitutionally incapable of distributing it so that everyone’s needs are even adequately met.

What revolution? (2008)

Book Review from the November 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Communist Manifesto’, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Introduction by David Harvey, Pluto Press, 2008. £7.99.

The publisher’s blurb on the back says: “This book truly changed the world, inspiring millions to revolution.” Unfortunately, this is not true: this book has not changed the world, nor has it inspired millions to revolution. The Manifesto of the Communist Party (to give it its original title) has been republished many times since its first publication in 1848. And now, 160 years later, in this edition it has a new Introduction by David Harvey. The Manifesto needs to be understood in its historical context, in order to sift out the immediate demands of 1848 from its timeless communist content. Marx and Engels emphasised this point in their 1872 Preface where they argued that already part of the Manifesto dealing with immediate demands (at the end of Section Two) had become “antiquated”, a point which was repeated in the 1888 Preface.

Harvey acknowledges this point but then goes on to claim that some of these immediate demands – such as free education for all children in state schools, a heavy progressive or graduated income tax – are still “wholly sensible proposals … to rid ourselves of the appalling social and economic inequalities that now surround us”. But that was then and this is now: however progressive those reforms appeared then, it is clear now that reforms of capitalism do not reduce social and economic inequalities. Harvey argues that eradicating class privilege requires an organised association of workers backed by democratic control of the state, and then adds in brackets “this is as far as the Manifesto goes”. But this is untrue: in the paragraphs preceding the immediate demands the Manifesto calls for the revolutionary “communistic abolition of buying and selling” and other specifically communist demands. Astonishingly, Harvey has nothing to say about this.

Harvey refers to the collapse after 1989 of “actually existing communisms” without irony and asserts that the former Soviet Union succumbed to “capitalist counter-revolution”. But there is nothing in the Manifesto which would warrant such claims. The Soviet Union and similar regimes did not institute the abolition of buying and selling and are best characterised as state capitalist dictatorships over the proletariat. Harvey has an online course “Reading Marx’s Capital” (http://davidharvey.org/), but in this Introduction he alleges that crises can be brought about through underconsumption (lack of effective demand), an economics theory which Marx emphatically rejected. Harvey’s Introduction is very disappointing, but the Manifesto itself is still an inspiring read.

Lew Higgins

175 Years Since (2023)

Book Review from the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto. By China Miéville. Head of Zeus £10.99.

China Miéville is best-known as a science fiction author. He is also a former member of the SWP, and his history of the Bolshevik ‘Revolution’, October, was reviewed in the November 2017 Socialist Standard. Here he examines the writing, reception and arguments of the Communist Manifesto.

The Manifesto was written in 1848. It bears the names of both Marx and Engels, though it is usually ascribed to Marx alone, who certainly authored the text. But Miéville takes the reasonable view that Engels was equally responsible, as he not only influenced Marx but had previously written documents that were ‘a crucial concrete foundation’ for the work. Its German title is more exactly rendered as Manifesto of the Communist Party, but a party at that time was a tendency or current of opinion, not an organised group. The fact that Marx was working against a deadline probably explains why the final section is brief and unfinished.

The first English translation, by Helen Macfarlane, appeared in 1850, but there was rather little interest in the text, in any language, until the 1870s, in the aftermath of the Paris Commune. The standard English translation, by Samuel Moore with support from Engels, was published in 1888.

One point which often surprises those who read the Manifesto for the first time is the extent of praise for capitalism in the first section, such as ‘The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together’, though Miéville sees this admiration as ambivalent, given the suffering that was also caused. The text is understandably unaware of the adaptability of capitalism. The actions mentioned in the second section (including making the means of production state property) were described as already out-of-date by the time the preface to the German edition of 1872 was composed. One reasonable point Miéville makes is that the Manifesto does not pay sufficient attention to the status of women, noting that they are oppressed in the family but not saying much about the relation between gender and class.

One chapter deals with criticisms of the Manifesto, including of course absurd claims that it is responsible for dictatorial regimes such as the former Soviet Union. Miéville argues that the problems there really began with its isolation in the 1920s, which opened the way to the appalling repression under Stalin. But this conveniently ignores the authoritarian policies under Lenin and Trotsky.

This edition also contains the text of the Moore translation, with a few adjustments. The most important of these is the rendering ‘the isolation of rural life’ rather than ‘the idiocy’.

Paul Bennett

A World To Win (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

They have a world to win.

Working men of all countries Unite!”

These are the words of Marx and Engels in their famous Manifesto of 1848, and although that is now 110 years ago, there is a message contained in those words which is of the greatest importance to the working men of all countries in 1958.

In 1848 our present system, capitalism, was just beginning. Although it had existed in England for a considerable time, the last remnants of an earlier system, Feudalism still existed in Europe, and Russia. Most of the rest of the world was still completely undeveloped industrially and was operating under the old feudal order of things. This meant that the working class, a class of wage earners or proletarians, as Marx and Engels called them, had yet to emerge. By far the great majority of people were peasants.

The idea of an international system, the whole world as one community, could not have had any significance under feudalism. The village and farm life of people working on the land and rarely leaving these confines, the scanty means of communication, the general isolation of one part of the world from another, and the inability of most people to read and write, all this would go against any world-wide concept of things.

With the development of trade, once England, the pioneer of capitalism, had broken trail, others began to follow suit. The appearance of capitalism has been sometimes gradual, sometimes more rapid, in various parts of the world. There are a number of reasons for this uneven growth but the important thing is that those countries which have been slow to start, China, India, etc., make rapid strides once they embark on the building up of capitalism.

These rapid strides are sometimes quite misunderstood, and taken to be something entirely different. Many people, including adherents of the so-called Communist Party, believe they can see Socialism in Russia chiefly because of the vast and speedy development of modern industrial techniques.

The fact that Russian industry is run by the State makes the confusion more persistent, but when one realises, as Marx and Engels did, that the State is necessarily a CLASS instrument it is then easy to understand that with wages, buying and selling and profits, not to mention war machines, Russia has all the fundamental features of capitalism and in fact is a capitalist country.

To Marxists it is elementary that the existence of wage-labour means that a class exists which owns nothing but the ability to work.

It is not at all the concern of Socialists to deny the tremendous technical and scientific advances since Marx’s time. It is in fact this very development which provides the material basis for the class-less world of abundance— Socialism. What makes Marx so important is the fact that, with all these technical advances, the workers of all lands are still cut off from ownership in the means of wealth production which they operate for the profit of a privileged minority of owners.

Because of this ownership by a few, and for no other reason, the world, which no longer needs to be a number of isolated parts, is still marked off into absurd frontiers involving ridiculous passports and Customs barriers, with each national ruling class jealously guarding their loot against the others.

So in 1958 the world is a seething mass of tension and anxiety. Vast armaments are poised at bases all over the world, including “H” bombs, in case one ruling class group should attempt to grab the oil, rubber or other economic assets of another. The Hydrogen bomb itself cannot be separated from scientific development under capitalism.

In 1958 it is as true as ever that housing problems, hire purchase, tally-men, and the general struggle to get by are the lot of the productive working class, while their non-productive masters enjoy the best, and follow the sun.

For a world of plenty and happiness without wars and poverty, it remains for the workers of the world to see that they are in the same predicament and that flags and nations do not matter. Then this great potential which capitalism has built, only to stifle for profits, will be a reality and. free from our chains, the world will belong to all mankind.

Harry Baldwin