Dial 118 for Murder (2003)

From the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

BT’s 192 directory enquiries service is closing in August, and we are told to be grateful for new competing services. Instead of an easy-to-remember 3-figure number, there’ll now be dozens of companies offering over 300 different 6-figure numbers beginning with 118.

Have people really got the time or inclination to work out who’s best by comparing all the different charges for land lines and mobiles, standing charges, minimum charges and costs per minute? And what’s the point, they’ll only keep changing in the rivalrous pursuit of profit, just as credit card companies keep trying to take more market share with constantly altering offers.

118??? callers will, doubtless, have even more of their precious time within capitalism used up by time-wasting tactics, resulting in bigger dividends for shareholders from higher per-minute charges for users. Yet more time will be wasted as newspapers fight for our attention with adverts, and TV and radio broadcasts fill our heads with ‘catchy’ images and inane jingles. “One-one-eight — four-three-two — buy from us brain-washing you”, probably won’t be heard.

Capitalism tells us that competition offers us more choice and lower prices, but it’s lies. Sure, companies like BT, having switched call centre jobs from the UK to India, where wages are as little as £5 a day compared to around £5 an hour in Britain, will cut costs. But these savings will be used to increase profits. And after years of this wearisome ridiculousness involving constantly changing prices, 118 business competition will have knocked out the weaker firms leaving just one or two dominating, who will not then be under pressure to sell cheaply.

A competitive society does not benefit the exploited working class majority. Even if capitalism could maintain pressure on businesses to always sell at the lowest possible prices, capitalists would still be the winners, as market forces also apply to employment. With less money needed to buy goods and services, workers’ demands can be supplied by lower pay, and that’s precisely what a competitive work market brings about, leaving most people, as always, constantly struggling through life until they finally get to rest, in their coffins.

There is no so-called “freedom” to “shop around” for competing businesses offering directory inquiries, credit cards, gas, electricity, telephones, insurance, loans, life insurance, car insurance, home insurance etc. All this activity is actually a debilitating cancer that eats away at those parts of your life not already consumed by profit-taking capitalists, or by time spent bill checking, bill paying, bank statement checking, tax form filling, benefit form completing, cash till queuing and all the other money-associated madness.

And while people maintain a junkie-like addiction to moolah, comparing RRP resin, using COD crack, sampling APR angel dust, getting high on HP horse and regularly dropping ATM acid into wallets and purses, they will be easy prey for the profit-taking, parliamentary and advertising pushers forever telling them they’ve got just what they need. And those totally hooked will fail to see or care that money peddlers control them, or how, and so will just go on feeding their habit by selling themselves and their acquiescence for a wage or state handout.

Stop making those attempts at complex monetary calculations which companies deliberately make complicated so customers can’t easily figure things out, and give up, submissively paying out to avoid stress and hassle. Dial 020 7622 3811 for details of real socialism.

Max Hess

Letter: Initiative & Incentive (1959)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

The August edition of the Socialist Standard fell into my hands, and, being more than slightly interested in Socialism I read it closely. Naturally the article “To a New Reader” caught my eye. In this article you make certain claims and statements on which I would like to pose some questions.

“It (the owning class) takes no part in social production and is unnecessary to it." From the context it would appear that by owning class, you mean anyone who owns property. If you must pigeonhole everyone into a “class," I am, 1 suppose, of this class, as my father, by saving, has bought the house in which we live. But the income of the household (I am a chartered accountant's articled clerk) is far, far less than that of many what is laughingly termed “working class" households which exist in rent subsidised houses. Why then are we evil to the Socialist? As to being socially unproductive, my friends of this drone class include one chemical engineer (B.Sc.), one electrical engineer (B.Sc.), one agriculturist (B.Sc.) and two capitalists, one of whom arrived in this town four years ago with 30s. and a kitbag of dirty washing. By way of working an eighty-hour week he now has a thriving timber business employing seven men. Very much the same applies to my other capitalist friend except that he has a plastics factory. Yet you also say “Initiative and inventiveness will have a chance to thrive." Has initiative no chance now?

“Production will expand to correspond to the people's needs." Surely production is vastly in excess of the people's needs as it is. I think “wishes" should be substituted for “needs." But then this would be nonsense because production cannot expand to give everyone what he wants.

"Cut-throat competition for jobs will no longer exist." But does it exist now? Surely the best man gets the job? Does Socialism mean that any incompetent can get any job? Besides which the above statement would appear to contradict “Initiative and inventiveness will have chance to thrive, etc."

Finally, on page 121 you are appealing for funds. On page 116, under “Wages by Cheque," you say “Snatching the payroll could, by present ethical standards, be considered more a transfer of property than theft." Your problem solved?

Yours faithfully,

A. L. A.

Horsham, Sussex.

Reply:

The “class who own the means of production" does not include everyone who owns property; buying a house does not change the class of the buyer. The working class consists of men and women who own nothing—or so little—in the means of wealth production that they must sell their abilities to an employer in order to live. This includes people like chartered accountants, engineers and agriculturalists and people who own a house, whose economic interests are the same as other workers. The capitalist class are people who—although many of them do work—own enough of the means of wealth production to live without working for a wage or a salary. Because one of these classes buys labour power from the other, their interests are in conflict. Neither the capitalist nor the working class is evil, for they are both inevitable products of the historically necessary capitalist social system.

Of course, initiative and inventiveness have some sort of a chance under capitalism. So has dishonesty. But not everyone can be an employer—the majority must remain in the working class, where a person's initiative and inventiveness only find expression if he can sell his energies to an employer.

Modern society is capable of satisfying human needs, which include lots of things which our correspondent would call “wishes." But capitalist production is regulated to exploit the market, which need have no relation to people's needs. That is why the National Coal Board is reducing output, whilst pensioners are in need of coal. Socialist society will have no market to take into account,  "production will expand to correspond to the people's needs,”—the only sane productive motive.

Because the size of a person’s wage limits his access to wealth, workers compete among themselves for the better paid jobs. Sometimes they indulge in the "cut throat competition” of toadying to the boss and so on. In 1938. when To a New Reader was first published, this competition was often for employment regardless of the wage. It is naive to think that, in these conditions, the best person always gets the job. Indeed, a lot of people are doing work which is quite unsuited to human abilities. Our correspondent must be familiar with the monotonous employment which healthy young men are doomed to in chartered accountants’ offices. And what about servicemen? Are they actually suited to killing and being killed?

Socialists think that we are capable of better than this. We want a world where only socially useful work is done, producing the very best to enrich the world’s common pool of wealth for the benefit of humanity and not for some ephemeral personal advantage.

Editorial Committee.

Education under capitalism (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The education system functions to serve the needs of the capitalist society in which it resides. Its objective is to produce educated and competent workers, including managers and military personnel; in addition, knowledgeable, sophisticated members of the capitalist class. The subjects and training cover a vast complex field that assures the owners of a qualified workforce that can do everything that is necessary to produce, distribute and market commodities for sale and profit, in line with existing technologies.

Of vital importance is the fact that a working class is produced which accepts capitalism socially and politically. The majority of students, when their formal education has been concluded, embrace the wages system without question. Their labour power is ready to be marketed. They, in turn, are willing to conform with docility and eagerness to all the standard norms of capitalist society which, in effect, will maintain their rulers in power in contrast to their own subservience.

The superstructure of society, is determined and conditioned by its economic base — the dynamic for its existence. Capitalism is a social organization wherein a minority own and control the means of production and distribution for the purpose of capital accumulation through the realization of profit based upon large-scale wage-labour. The education system is locked into this process in every conceivable manner both directly and indirectly.

The whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an atmosphere of competition and stress together with a weeding-out process which segregates those with supposedly superior talents from those less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, examinations, and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon ultimate occupations and potential earnings. Such an environment prevents the pleasurable pursuit of education as a primary end in itself. The young find themselves involved in an intensive training programme, presented under the guise of education, which will ultimately affect the price of their labour-power and in many instances can prove disastrous health-wise.

As the pressure of schooling is mounting in the western industrial societies and Japan, child suicide has increased. Japanese authorities offer two reasons: (1) The country’s competitive education system in which the road to success in later life is linked to passing difficult examinations to enter the leading universities; (2) The reaction of some children to the mounting pressures of excessively regulated lives. The education pressure in Japan is unremitting and not only causes ulcers in children but in many cases leads to suicide.

The perpetual conflict within the educational system is the attempt to produce the desired results at a budget price, within a competitive, stressful environment harmful to both students and teachers. The teachers themselves, in similar fashion to their students, have been graded and selected to perform at certain levels in different categories. Their own education has been in many instances limited by economic and material circumstances beyond their control. They find themselves frustrated by rigid guidelines that apparently do not bring out the best in their students, especially those who come from broken, poverty-stricken homes.

In addition, just like their fellow workers, they are faced with a never-ceasing variety of seemingly insoluble problems which relate to the economic considerations of a cost-conscious administration and mean that the individual needs of the student rarely, if ever, get priority. Instead, education receives the same approach as that given to commodities which have to be produced in a given period of time, at a certain price, for a particular market, with a quality-control that leaves much to be desired.

There is an interdependence, a direct relationship, between the educational system and the business world. Starting with first year children, a concept called "career education" has been used to permeate all academic subjects at all levels of education, from nursery school through junior college.

Is there an alternative to this market-orientated education system? Yes, in a sane society, real education, whereby the pupil learns in an environment without stress and competition, where time is not at a premium, where financial considerations are non-existent, where individual needs are in harmony with society’s, has never been given an opportunity to work its potential wonders.

Education properly organized under these conditions, will be a continuous one that will not commence and finish at a given age, but rather will be recognized as a never-ceasing quest for individual improvement throughout our lives.

In a socialist society it should be obvious that education will not be prostituted to the needs of a class minority or the demand of a market place — because neither will exist. All healthy individuals will be able to satisfy their desire for knowledge unhampered by economic restrictions or barriers. The whole of society will in a sense become a perpetual seat of learning wherein studying, travel and the productive process can become beneficially interrelated. In socialism, the world itself can become "The class room".

Michael Ghebre

Cooking the Books: The waste of competition (2005)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Supporters of capitalism praise competition to the skies, seeing it as a means of keeping prices down and of ensuring that “consumers” get what they want.

Socialists, on the other hand, have always seen economic competition as being (besides the cause of modern wars) an inefficient and wasteful way of distributing what people need and want. For a start, it involves an unnecessary multiplication of productive units and distribution outlets with all the extra resources this uses up. Then there are the resources used up in marketing and advertising, which is aimed merely at persuading people to buy from one firm or shop as opposed to another and which adds absolutely nothing to the amount of wealth in existence.

No wonder Marx commented on capitalism’s “way of distributing products through trade, and its manner of competition” being “very wasteful of material resources” (Volume III of Capital, chapter 5 on “Economy in the use of constant capital”).

So it was rather surprising to hear the head of a profit-seeking capitalist enterprise, Charles Allen, chief executive of ITV plc, echo this socialist criticism of capitalism in the evidence he gave on 7 June to a House of Lords committee looking into the renewal of the BBC’s charter. Asked by the Bishop of Manchester (yes, it’s part of the “democratic deficit” in Britain that bishops of the Church of England are automatically members of parliament) about possible co-operation with the BBC in the North-West, Allen replied that he was all in favour of the BBC, ITV and others sharing the same programme-making studios, adding:

 “A lot of money is wasted through duplication: we have our own studios; they have their own studios; we have our own transmission; they have their own transmission; we have our own infrastructure; they have their own infrastructure. What I am really keen to do is actually get the money on the screen rather than wasted in infrastructure” (www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld/lduncorr/bbc0706.pdf).

Wasted in infrastructure! True, but this applies across the board to all manufacturing industry, services, shops and supermarkets. There’s wasteful duplication (triplication, and more) there too.

What Allen apparently wants in broadcasting is the same sham competition as exists in the supply of electricity, gas and telephones. There’s only one infrastructure here too – only one national electricity grid, for example – with competition limited to firms wasting resources on trying to steal customers from each other.

In socialism resources can be saved to produce needed and useful things by only having one type of distribution outlet in neighbourhoods and only one factory producing computers, cars, washing machines, etc in any one region. Then, we really could concentrate resources on producing best-quality useful things rather than wasting them on duplicated infrastructures.

What's so good about the market? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone seems to be falling in love with the market these days. From all over the political spectrum people are saying that it's the best way of deciding what's produced and how it's distributed. The Communist Party, the Labour Party. Mr Gorbachev. Mrs Thatcher—wherever you look more and more people are saying that the market system is efficient and allows us freedom to decide what to buy, where we live, and where we work. Everyone seems to be a convert to the new religion of competition; even the countries of Eastern Europe are now shifting away from the equally abhorrent state capitalism. Yet the human cost of all this supposed freedom and equality is barely ever mentioned. In reality the "free" market hides the most blatant inequality, oppression and wastefulness behind its mask of equality, freedom and efficiency.

Unequal Shares for All

In theory we all have the freedom to buy a flat in Mayfair or a forest in Scotland—even if we don't speak with a plum in our mouth. But you don't get far without money. And some people tend to have a lot more money than others. For example, it was recently announced on the TV news that the people of Ethiopia stood on the verge of a famine of worse proportions than 1984 when around a million people died. We see pictures of beautiful children dying—robbed of their right to even a life of poverty. Now take the Earl of Cadogan. According to the Sunday Times, he is worth £450 million due to land owned as a result of marriages in the 18th Century. Or what about Alan Sugar? He is judged to have £432 million—rather more than the Korean women and men who produce the computers that bear his company name—Amstrad. What explains the gap between those who struggle and those who become multi-millionaires?

The Great Divide: Class

Class is not about your accent or your school tie: it's about what you own and whether you have to work for your living. Just because Robert Maxwell was once poor, it does not mean that he is somehow still a member of the working class now he may be worth up to £675 million. You needn't be an economist to see that millionaires (and. indeed, billionaires) will have a bit more choice than the poor of Eritrea.

All of this belies the claim that the market is in any way "democratic" and that we have somehow got equal "votes" under it. Some people have many times the influence of others in choosing what they do in the world. How else can we explain the production of luxury yachts alongside the failure of the system to provide adequate food to millions? It doesn't matter how much people are crying out for food and shelter; without purchasing power (money) the needs of the poor will stay unrecognised. Producing food for the penniless will never be a big money earner—it won't sell. And the pressure towards holding wages down to allow firms to be "competitive" will ensure that even many of those in work will be unable to influence significantly what is supplied on the market in order to meet their needs. Some democracy!

As we go to the market place to make money to live, most of us sell only our ability to work by getting a job. Yet others have got a bit more to fall back on. income from their capital. Even if they somehow "deserve" wealth, why should such talented people enjoy continued advantage? If they're so good they could succeed all over again from nothing! And why do some people have millions of pounds? Is it that they are a thousand times better than you or me? Can someone really work a hundred times harder than a nurse or an ambulance driver? Supporters of the market think so. "The market rewards hard work and enterprise," they say. How is this measured? Is a company director s greater wealth worked out with the aid of an "Enterprisometer”? In reality their rewards are legally stolen from the efforts of ordinary women and men. The capitalist's reward— profit—is no more than the unpaid labour of working men and women.

Now, the capitalist press say that everyone is free to set up their own companies and to become capitalists. But we can't all get rich by owning companies—to begin with, who will we all employ (read "exploit") in the companies? And we can't all compete with Murdoch's empire. To become cost-effective in the era of trans-global corporations a company must meet the huge costs of entry which exist in most areas of business. You need the ability to sustain a loss for the initial period—how else could Sky Television have survived?

You also need the power of money to influence customers through marketing and advertising. In Murdoch's case, it has been a bit of a help owning five national papers in Britain to persuade the unconverted to buy satellite TV. In short, you need money (capital) to make money. Despite the Enterprise Culture in Britain, real economic power is not in the hands of a few window cleaners undercutting each other's prices on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. Record numbers of small firms went bust last year in Britain and it's no surprise when you realise what they're up against.

Wealth, Waste and Want

Yet it's so much more than a question of unequal shares. The whole rationale of production is skewed by profit. People's real needs are not taken directly into account when firms decide what is to be produced. Even if we had a "share-owning democracy", and everyone had an equal stake in society as Mrs Thatcher tells us we've got. even if we divided all the money out with "fair shares for all", the whole system would still be a roller coaster that is not amenable to rational and democratic control. This is because the market system is geared towards production for profit, stimulated by advertising, marketing and credit. The whole aim of the system would still be production for profit and all that this entails—even if there were not the sickening levels of inequality that we now experience; we would still have wasteful hyping of competing products, banking and built-in obsolescence.

The market system has provided the impetus for technological developments but doesn't allow us to take full advantage of them. In a sane society everyone would benefit from advances in technology. Under capitalism research is duplicated and advances in technology are restricted by the patent system. All in the name of the great god—Competition. The market system is characterised by superficial rationality and efficiency within individual firms, but global insanity when all these unco-ordinated and anti-social decisions are added together and seen in the light of the needs of the whole world population. And under this supposedly efficient system there is also the huge waste of unemployment where people living on a pittance are robbed of a chance even of wage slavery. There can be no democracy when decisions about work organisation and how to provide goods and services are made on the basis of profit. Trying to meet the needs of five billion people through the clumsy workings of the market is like performing microsurgery with boxing gloves on.

Working to Stand Still

In a world where buying and selling dominate. there is a complete disregard for the experience of people in the workplace since the whole emphasis is upon what is produced and whether it can be sold. Wages, health and safety and work satisfaction will always come a poor second best to the need to make a profit. Much welcome discussion about "Green" issues and "quality of life" has managed to avoid one of the main limits upon our real quality of life—the lack of control and creativity that most people experience in their work. Environmentalism has been seen to be largely about buying the right sort of consumer goods. Important though this may be, it leaves aside the fact that the whole reason for capitalist production is not production for need, nor for the satisfaction of the people in the workplace, but production to make a profit on the market.

This is at the very centre of capitalism; and the consequence is that decisions about how goods and services are made are still in the hands of the large corporations. The system cannot gear itself to producing fewer useless goods, producing them in a more satisfactory way for the workers, or democratically deciding how to solve a problem globally.

For example, the market will never get round to planning and producing a truly safe and comfortable public transport system. The vested interests of oil and automobile corporations ensure that it is biased towards producing and promoting private cars. As an afterthought we're asked to use lead-free petrol to limit the havoc caused by everyone pursuing their "individuality" as we sit in ever-increasing traffic queues of mass-produced cars. And Cecil Parkinson still sees more roads as the solution!

Under the market, the answer is always "more” rather than a sane alternative. “Make a fast buck" and "Leave the competition standing," we're told. All this obscures the fact that we need more than ever to collectively decide how to deal with the increasingly global problems that we all face. It's no game: life and death decisions are being decided behind our backs by the harsh workings of the market. We have been played a huge confidence trick. Beneath the talk of efficiency and equality the market is out of control. We need to abandon this crazy system which dominates our lives and organise to bring about a wholly new society; on which has never  even been tried—socialism. But that's another story . . .

Ken Aldred

Sport mimics warfare (1980)

From the August 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win . . . At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests and seriously believe—at any rate for short periods—that running, jumping and kicking a bill are tests of national virtue.

George Orwell

Blogger's Note: 

This short quote from Orwell really should have been tagged onto the end of Paul Bennett's article, 'The Olympics: sport as warfare', but I missed it at the time. I'm now making amends.

The quote itself is from Orwell's 1945 essay, 'The Sporting Spirit'.

Competition (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was, perhaps, inevitable that during my regular participation in a pub quiz, whilst exhibiting some competitive zeal fuelled by good ale, a friend would ask ‘does this behaviour not represent a contradiction to your socialist principles?’ My response is always: ‘That’s where competition belongs – in sports and games. Importing the infantile competitive ego into the adult world of economics and politics is, however, quite a different matter’. A fairly convincing, if not comprehensive, retort to this particular accusation of hypocrisy I have always thought. Upon reflection I have pondered why I still retain, at least in this minor respect, any competitive urges at all. Perhaps it’s what remains of the cultural conditioning that we are all subjected to as children? Or perhaps the ‘infantile ego’ as I call it, does have a role to play in adult life after all – a disquieting and possibly heretical thought for a socialist!

Presumably for good evolutionary reasons children are born somewhat egocentric – they have to learn the social skills that make us such a successful species. There is no need to go into the psychological processes that transform the infant into a functioning social being but it is obvious that some achieve it more thoroughly and successfully than others. The retention of the ‘infantile ego’ can be due, in some part, to the conflicting values inherent in capitalist culture. At school we are told to both conform to social values through cooperating with other children and teachers etc but also to regard others as competitors on every level. This contradiction runs through the very heart of every subsequent social organisation that the individual will encounter during their lives – work, relationships, social clubs, sports clubs, etc. The one exception to this, naturally, is when you become a member of the Socialist Party where no ego conflicts are encountered (loud sound of the clearing of throats). The immature nature of capitalism in turn causes immaturity in its citizens and all of its institutions. Part of reactionary ideology proclaims that competition breeds excellence. We have never seen much evidence that truly talented people were created by a climate of competition – rather the reverse, in that they will usually point to the support of family, friends and teachers as reasons for their success. The need to continually feed the ego by competing with others is corrosive and, ultimately, very destructive. All of this is self-evident to socialists but what about the contention that the infantile ego might have a positive role to play?

Apart from sports and games, where some element of competition may exist, what other parts of life can benefit from the naivety of the childlike emotions? Perhaps the arts are a candidate –  show business is often described as infantile. Adults dressing up and playing characters on TV, the theatre and movies has a very childlike element to it. But there is a distinction between childlike and childish –  the former retains naivety for the purposes of creativity and the latter illustrates behaviour motivated by immature egos (it can be observed that the two are very closely linked within the character of artistic personalities). A naïve perspective is one way of undermining cultural conditioning which is an essential component of creativity (and something we find so endearing about children). In the fine arts a naive eye, seeing the world as if for the first time, can greatly aid a fresh and sometimes subversive perspective.

Some have said that the concept of socialism depends on the naivety of a liberated imagination that trusts in human potential. Of course it depends on a lot of other elements including the study of the dialectical processes within historical development but I would agree, that initially, the liberation from cultural conditioning does depend on the ability to imagine an alternative. Perhaps therein lies the secret to this paradox – capitalism has harnessed the infantile ego so that the individual feels obliged to continually compete to feel legitimised and to do so he must play by their rules – you cannot win if you do not participate in the game. He is trapped within this vicious circle which takes up all his energy and time and so never allows him to develop the concept that the game is not worth the winning and that there is no need to play it at all! Antithetically socialism is initially trying to harness the other part of ’the inner child’ that has the potential to liberate the imagination and so break through the illusion of maturity that in capitalism simply means conforming to rules based on the insecurity inherent within the infantile ego – a potential synthesis of contradictory elements within the human psyche.

We have deliberately not divided the psyche into the traditional Freudian division of Ego, Id and Super Ego because, although a great deal of psychological analysis originates from this  we do not want to base our observations purely on psychology. Politics is the greatest of all multi-disciplines and must include psychological dimensions as it does those of economics, history, philosophy and so on. The contention is simply that the infantile ego that brings us pleasure in games but pain in almost every other area of life is the same entity whose naivety can liberate the imagination and so be the first step in creating the world’s first truly mature culture – socialism. 

Wez.

A highly adaptable animal (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compared with a lion, a gorilla, or even a horse, the human animal is weak, slow and defenceless. And yet homo sapiens has become the dominant species of the planet. Our species developed none of the specialised attributes that have fitted other creatures so perfectly for their environments. Physiologically, we have hardly evolved at all since we became a distinct species. Whereas other species have evolved to fit their environments and the available food supplies, human beings have remained unspecialised, but very adaptable. Instead of their bodies altering to suit their environments they have altered their environments to suit themselves.

Human beings spread across the surface of the planet, occupying tropical rain forests, deserts, temperate regions and even Arctic ice. They lived upon virtually every type of food possible, from seal fat to tropical fruits and desert insects. And from this variety of life-patterns arose wide differences in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Almost every conceivable kind of belief and behaviour has been adopted by some human beings at some time somewhere. Although we are one species, from the jungle of New Guinea to the streets of New York, the inhabitants of different places may think and act in quite dissimilar ways.

And yet a baby, carried across the world from New Guinea to New York and brought up there, could become a complete New Yorker, with the accent, the food preferences, the personal habits, the love of baseball and the Stars and Stripes, and the average tendency towards obesity, heart disease, divorce and crime. The basic animal is the same, but all behaviour patterns are shaped by the society in which the child is brought up.

Making a living
But if societies mould individuals, different types of society are themselves shaped by a number of external factors, as well as by the activities of individuals and classes within them. The basic needs of the human animal are, like those of any other mammal, food, drink, warmth and sex; but these needs have not been easily met. For most of human existence the lives of the great majority have been dominated by scarcity. The methods of making a living from the land and sea have therefore been the major influences upon the sorts of lives people have led, the types of society that have been formed, and the attitudes and behaviour of the members of those societies.

The development of gathering roots and fruit, organised hunting and fishing, the growth of herding with its nomadic pattern of life, the emergence of agriculture, encouraging settlements, and the growth of towns and cities — all this has repeatedly modified relationships within societies. It has modified the material conditions of life and led to the accumulation of riches for some and poverty for others.

The discovery and utilisation of metals, and the development of more and more complex tools and machines have often gone hand in hand with progress in methods of making a living, increasing the amount of wealth produced per head of the population many times over; but the benefits of these improvements have not been shared by all members of society. After the rise of settled townships on an agricultural base in Mesopotamia, trade between localities developed; for the first time the product of hands and brains took on an alien life as commodities to be bartered, and then bought with that abstract commodity — money. Property, realised at the boundaries between tribes, began to impinge within. Laws of inheritance were formulated and the first property society developed when people came to be bought and sold as slaves.

Chattel slavery gave way to feudalism, and feudalism to capitalism; and still all the land and factories and mines and transport are owned by a small minority of the population, who make the laws to protect their wealth, and employ the majority to work for them.

Employers and employees
The fundamental division between workers and employers in the structure of modem society affects all the relationships within it. It affects feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and has a fundamental effect upon the personality of every individual. The child brought up in a family owning a few million shares, a few thousand acres, and four or five houses to live in has a completely different outlook on life from that of the child brought up in the average factory or office worker's semi-detached house on a housing estate. The children born into a family with adequate capital realise as they grow up that they are part of an élite with the freedom to chose how they occupy their lives. They may also realise that, although they will not necessarily do the hiring and firing themselves when they grow up. and may never even see the mines, factories and offices where their wealth is made, their inheritance of capital will make them employers of other human beings. The vast majority of children, on the other hand, become aware that their future depends upon being able to find someone to employ them. If they want to succeed in this, not only their education but their dress, their manners, their attitude to authority, even their political opinion must conform to the standards laid down by employers.

The employment they must seek is a fundamental part of a society in which the market, the price mechanism, the profit motive have come to dominate almost every aspect of life. There is a tendency for all relationships to be reduced to that of buyer and seller. And the interests of buyer and seller are opposed to one another. Good business consists of getting the better of someone. Competition means winning by fair means if possible, by foul means if necessary. The fictional heroes are gangsters, ruthless tycoons, spies "licensed to kill”, or policemen using the same kind of unconventional methods.

Contradictory values
This, therefore, is the atmosphere in which most children grow up. We are born essentially the same living beings as our ancestors of thousands of years ago; but we learn to think and feel and act from what goes on around us. From school, the newspapers and television, we take in the knowledge of the world's hunger and disease. At other times we learn that “butter mountains" are being piled up. milk poured down quarries, wheat burned, or crops ploughed back into the ground. We may not bring these facts together in our mind to raise questions about the system by which society is run indeed we are actually discouraged by the schools and the media from doing so. Instead we are persuaded to believe that the present organisation of society is eternal — even divinely ordained — and that it is ordinary people like ourselves with our selfishness. laziness and greed, who are to blame. And so. unresolved, these contradictions remain at the back of our mind, causing confusion, frustration, and a vague sense of guilty helplessness.

At school and at home we are repeatedly told that kindliness, cooperation and constructiveness are the guidelines of good social behaviour, but the films about war. robbery and violent crime that form one of television's staple diets teach very different lessons: there are always "baddies" against whom violence is not only justified but necessary and even enjoyable — Nazis, terrorists. Apaches, criminals, mad scientists. Martians, agitators. Russian spies, and so on.

We are taught that hard work and thrift are the recipe for success in our future "career"; and then occasionally we see members of the ruling class in the news, who never do a day's work in their lives and spend money like water, playing at fox-hunting on their ten thousand acre estates, or racing ocean-going yachts, or shooting grouse on their Scottish moors, while our hard-working, thrifty parents get worn out before our eyes with years of work and worry. Our potential for behaving with affection, generosity, trust and creativity is made to seem naive and ridiculous up against the power of wealth in a society of ruthless competition.

There are many different reactions to the disillusionment (sometimes called 'maturity") that this causes, and none of them is good for the individual. The commonest, because it avoids conflict with authority and the forces of law and order, is an almost complete refusal to be concerned with the problems of society. Workers who take this line silently or openly admit that they cannot make sense of what goes on; and they absorb themselves energetically in their darts team or football supporters' club, hobby or garden, trying to remain unaffected by the drudgery of their daily job. or the threats of unemployment or nuclear war.

The original ad from the March 1986 issue.

Others look for scapegoats to blame: black people (if they are white), white people (if they are black), men (if they are women). Jews, foreigners, atheists, trade unionists, and so on. The fashions change from time to time.

Still others become completely cynical turning to crime or something close to it. in an attempt to beat the system and to get hold of the only thing which seems to have any value money. The use of tranquillisers is widespread and the number of people who receive psychiatric treatment at some time in their lives has risen rapidly. We behave like this because we are forced to live under conflicting pressures which, as individuals, we do not have the power to resolve.

All of us. whether we remain relatively sane or not. are inevitably contaminated by the social values that provide the real motive power of capitalist society. The behaviour of capital in its urgent, relentless drive to make profit, which can be reinvested as capital to make yet more profit, regardless of human need or suffering, is the essence of avarice or greed. The very structure of modern society, in which the minority own and control all the means of producing and distributing wealth — and employ all the powers of the state to preserve their monopoly this class-divided structure has insecurity and self-interest at the foundations of society. None of us can fail to be affected by it.

Yet, adaptable as we are, we cannot completely fit the pattern that modem capitalism demands, because it is inconsistent and, at times, directly contradictory. Articles and advertisements regularly appear in magazines and newspapers explaining how we can become rich by setting up in business and applying "hard-headed" (ruthless) business principles. But when workers, especially those organised in trade unions, apply such principles in wage negotiations there is a chorus of condemnation from the press. We hear, only too often, that "there is no sentiment in business"; but as workers we are exhorted equally often to be "loyal" to the company we work for. Modern wars are fought over power and wealth — as becomes only too clear when the truth comes out afterwards — but they are always presented to the working class as fights for freedom of one sort or another, in order to persuade us to risk our lives in killing workers from other countries.

This inconsistency is inevitable. Capitalist society is not a collection of individuals with common interests and a common set of guiding principles, it is a society deeply divided, at odds with itself. Class conflict was built into the foundations and shows up every day in its workings. To criticise workers as being selfish, greedy, unco-operative, deceitful, violent, when these are the main characteristics of the nations and the businesses with which we are compelled to be involved all our lives is to add insult to two hundred years of injury. Certainly these are anti-social forms of behaviour; but then this is an inhuman social system. As long as we, its working-class majority, allow it to continue, we can expect nothing better.

(An extract from our most recent pamphlet From Capitalism to Socialism: How We Live And How We Could Live.)

The Price of a Life (1978)

From the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone asked to think of a product of capitalist society that is designed to kill would probably think of armaments, in all their many forms. But if it were suggested that capitalism also produces quite ordinary products such as motor cars, deliberately calculating that they are going to kill a certain proportion of their users, most people would not believe it. But it happens to be true.

One thing most workers would agree on, though, is that everything has its price; work, play, necessities, luxuries, food, drink etc. — all have this in common. Although most workers don’t realise it, above all capitalism prices a worker’s labour-power; the price being of course, wages. But capitalism does not stop at pricing a man’s ability to work, it also prices human lives themselves. In a remarkable legal case in the USA the horrifying fact was revealed that the Ford Motor Company decided it was cheaper (more profitable) to kill and maim people than incorporate a small design change in one of their models; a design change which would only cost something between $9-11 for each model.

The full details of this story of capitalism’s gross inhumanity in the search for profits was revealed in a report of the case in The Sunday Times (12/2/78). The Ford Pinto is one of a number of smaller American cars. It appears that the fuel tank for this car was (and in the case of those cars already on the road, still is) placed right at the rear. This meant that if hit from behind, even quite gently (a common accident) there was a strong chance of the petrol tank buckling, the petrol spilling out and the car bursting into flames. Several reports in the 1970s had pointed this out, and Ford were well aware of the risk. The car in which 13-year-old Richard Grimshaw was travelling was involved in just such an accident. The vehicle was hit from behind, the petrol tank exploded, and the driver was burnt to death. Richard however was “lucky” — he survived. Now 52 operations later (with more still to come) and horribly scarred for life, he has won his court case against Ford.

The jury in the case awarded Richard $128 million (roughly £66 million), punitive damages. That is, they not only gave Richard compensation for the injuries he suffered; they also punished Ford, imposing specially heavy damages. They did this because it was shown that Ford had killed and maimed deliberately. The Californian jury were presented with some shocking evidence, the results of detective work undertaken by Richard’s lawyers. In order to obtain this huge sum of damages it was not sufficient to show that the car had a design fault. Ford knew all about this and anyway they had a defence — the car met all government safety standards at the time. (This would not have been sufficient to prevent Richard getting a more normal level of damages — the current rate against Ford in the USA for this sort of horrible injury seems to be between $500,000 and $1 million). But Richard’s lawyers discovered that not only were Ford aware of the potential hazard of the car, but that they deliberately calculated the cost involved in altering the design, and the cost involved in terms of personal suffering) if they did not alter the design.

Ford’s calculations were that approximately 180 deaths and 180 serious injuries a year would result from the faulty design (though some estimates put the figure nearer to 1800 deaths a year and one journal estimates the death rate at 5000 a year). They then worked out the likely “cost” of each death or injury. They did this by adding up such items as victims’ pain and suffering ($10,000) fatal burn injuries ($67,000) medical expenses, loss of future earnings etc. Based on these grisly figures (and not forgetting the costs of damage to the car!) Ford put the total benefit (“savings”) of a design change at slightly less than $50 million. Let The Sunday Times take up the story of how this particular capitalist enterprise calculated from there:

 The figure of $50 million was set against the costs— $11 million worth of modifications per Ford vehicle sold—of $137 million. That, Ford engineers observed, was almost three times greater than the benefits, even using a number of highly favourable benefit assumptions! They could not envisage any development which would make compliance . . . cost effective.

The further evidence that Richard’s lawyers were able to produce to support their claim for punitive damages came from — a “star witness”. This was H.F. Copp, a retired senior design engineer, who had worked with Ford for 20 years. (The fact that he had retired was rather important — otherwise presumably he would not have dared give evidence against Ford for fear of being unemployed for life). This is how the Sunday Times continues its report

  Copp had worked on Ford’s successful Capri range in which the petrol tank rode, saddle-style, above the back axle; he was certain this was the safest design. . . . What could a designer like him do, Richard’s lawyers asked, if “corporate management” specified the location of the petrol tank? “Follow corporate policy” Copp replied. Had Ford’s top management, in fact, issued a design directive for the Pinto’s tank? "Behind the rear axle, beneath the floor.” Could he estimate how much extra it would have cost to place the Pinto’s tank above the axle? “About $9 more per car."

So why didn’t Ford introduce the safer design that Copp (and others) advised? Quite simple really — a Ford engineer explained that in the “ferociously competitive small-car market” Ford had to be extremely price-conscious (price here referring to cars of course — not human lives). The car was governed by the 2000 limit: “. . . it was not to weigh more than 2000 pounds and not to cost more than $2000 . . .  An increase in production costs could price a compact car out of its market”.

So there are the simple economics; no frills, no attempts to hide it, no subtlety. Naked concern for sales means that the price of a human life is weighted in the scales against the price of a car; in this instance the human life is found to be the lighter.

Of course the very heavy damages awarded are little comfort to Richard. As poor Richard himself said after the case: “If I had a choice of whether to take this money and go through all those burns and stuff or just lead a normal life, then I’d lead a normal life”. The lesson for the world working class from this story is obvious. A society that coldly evaluates the cost of killing or maiming a human being (quite apart from the horrors of war) and decides that it is more profitable to do so than to spend a miserable $9-11 a car is no society for human beings at all; it is a society OF human beings FOR profits. If the tragedy of Richard Grimshaw and many others teaches this lesson, then perhaps his sufferings have not been totally in vain.

Ronnie Warrington

Competition: a race to where? (2018)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing the English Summer is, for once, not merely an oxymoron; it has enabled a multiplicity of sporting delights. Tennis at Wimbledon, cricket at Lord’s, motor racing at Silverstone and (not dependent on English weather) world cup football from Russia. Whilst listening to the England v. Panama football match I overheard the commentators debate something which, unusually, is of interest not just to soccer enthusiasts but to those intrigued by the politics of competition. During the committing of one of the game’s innumerable fouls a commentator wearily concluded that the Panamanian team and its supporters could only interpret any such event through biased eyes; his colleague, however, objected to this stating that he believed most of the fouls were obvious infractions of the rules that anyone with any honesty could see.

In these cynical times it was refreshing, although somewhat naïve, to hear someone articulating the possibility of a level of objectivity overcoming sectarian bias. He may well have been unaware of the political implications of this insofar as it undermines the ‘my country, right or wrong’ ethos of nationalism/patriotism. We might go further and say that competition itself necessarily excludes any kind of objective fairness. If this is the case then it exempts capitalism from any moral or rational concern for justice because it depends on competition from top to bottom. Can there ever exist something we can call ‘fair competition’?

Competition between nation states, corporations, scientific researchers, academics, artists, politicians and even between individuals is endemic to capitalism. We are told that competition breeds excellence when in reality those who proclaim this will do everything in their power to circumvent the rules to get an advantage over their competitors. So what are ‘the rules of the game’?

 Like all forms of competition there is a continual attempt to impose rules that will benefit all those involved by creating a ‘level playing field’. The capitalist class invests heavily in legal frameworks for trade, financial institutions, property ownership and employment but the overriding need to be competitive and thus commercially successful creates a continual tension that often leads to corruption, trade wars, monopolies and militarism; a dangerous contradiction exists between the recognition by the bourgeoisie of themselves as a class with their shared political interests and their need to compete with each other to survive in the cutthroat business environment. The media is full of stories of corporate greed and corruption that focuses on the immoral and illegal acts of individuals (scapegoats) as if, somehow, it is always ‘human nature’ that is to blame rather than the structure of corporate and political institutions. Dialectically we can say that when the quantity of these cases of corruption become so numerous and continual they then become a quality of capitalism itself. 

 Some may object to this cultural understanding of competition by pointing to ‘nature’ and its inherent struggle for survival. It is a favourite manoeuvre of reactionary ideology to attempt to incorporate Darwin’s theory of evolution in its bastardised form of ‘the survival of the fittest’ to justify economic competition. Any such recourse will however serve to prove the opposite of such an assertion because we are a social species and our success is due primarily to our cooperative abilities. Males may compete for the right to procreate in nature but in a human cultural context we know that the ‘successful’ members of our society are far from being the ‘fittest’ either physically or intellectually – just look at the ‘rich list’. Inherited wealth and status are still the predominant elements of ‘success’ within a capitalist context, that or the dumb luck of winning the lottery. Again those who seek to defend capitalism might point to the sporting elite who have had no advantage other than that of a talent honed by competition. Here we return to how we began with a consideration of the relationship between sport, politics and money. 

 Ever since the invention of private property we have had wars over its retention and extension between ruling elites. From ancient civilisations we have evidence of the origin of sports being an arena for practising the arts of war. The original Olympic Games provided an opportunity for both competition between Greek city states and a celebration of a shared culture or ‘Greekness’. The individual athletes would be pampered and admired by their ruling classes because they were representatives of the power of the respective states. The modern Olympiad was also motivated by ideas of the world as a community. Inevitably, like everything left in the hands of capitalism, it has become a celebration of the tribalism of nation states combined with the marketing of consumer goods.

 Today’s elite soccer players are commodities who are occasionally called upon to masquerade as symbols of national pride in contrast (although a good international performance will enhance their value) to their normal existence as money making machines for the football industry. With all of these pressures it is not surprising that any rules are a remote secondary consideration compared with winning.  Once the phrase ‘it’s not cricket’ could be used as a universal condemnation of any rule bending but now even this bastion of gentlemanly behavior has been witness to the sordid phenomenon known as the ‘professional foul’.

 Rules of behaviour (not the logically innate structural and procedural rules) in all areas of human activity are only necessary when pressures exist that create confrontation and potential violence. Competition is one such pressure and that is one of the reasons that socialists believe it should be confined to sports. If identity is dependent on feelings of superiority rather than community we have a recipe for the distress and violence we see around us in capitalism. Another reason is that all of that egotistical infantile energy is so wasteful and counterproductive. If you can imagine a world where competition is confined to the entertainment of sports where its child-like qualities can be embraced with humorous indulgence then you are a long way towards becoming a socialist.

Wez.

Competing for Capitalism (1989)

From the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

During August, the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham was host to the 1989 International Youth Skill Olympics. 450 apprentices and young trainees up to the age of 22, took part in internationally-agreed work standard tests enabling the countries taking part to compare techniques and training. As in the sporting Olympics, the winners received gold, silver and bronze medals. Working to strict timetables, the competitors were tested in some 34 skills ranging from bricklaying to hairdressing.

Employment' Secretary Norman Fowler said about the event:

If this country is to become world class, training is of the essence. This is why the Skill Olympics are so important They focus the attention of employers and public alike on this nation's performance and allow them to compare it with its competitors. Individuals, employers and the nation in general stand to benefit from them. (Employment News, February 1989)

Fowler was being slightly economical with the truth in his remarks. In the present system of society, capitalism, it is the working class, the vast majority who are forced to sell their labour power to a minority property owning class in order to survive, who have all the skills necessary to run capitalism on behalf of capitalists. The capitalists have the political and economic power necessary to ensure that workers continue to produce commodities for profit rather than for need.

Capitalism is a world-wide system where there is intense competition between different capitalist economic units, or countries, to appropriate as much profit as they can from their particular working class. The value-creating unpaid labour of the working class is converted into money-wealth when the commodities produced are exchanged on the market. The ability of the working class to generate technological advances for their capitalist masters, thus reducing the cost of commodities and increasing profits, is of great importance to capitalists.

Fowler's attempt to invoke national pride on behalf of British youngsters "going for gold" has more to do with the ruling class's need to accumulate even more capital than in any real pride in the youngsters abilities and talents. If capitalism can no longer exploit them for a profit the winners of any medals will be thrown on to the scrapheap. even when a real social need exists for their skills.

Treated Like Mushrooms 
The personal roads that lead to becoming a socialist are many and varied. None of us tumble from the womb shouting. "Hey mum. I'm a socialist." For some the route may lead from activity in one of the political parties committed to reforming rather than abolishing capitalism. Others, active in trade unions perhaps, come to realise that although it is necessary to fight the everyday economic battle against the capitalist class, the war will only be won through concerted political action on the part of a class-conscious working class. Some, like myself, start off as apolitical, but when confronted with the case for socialism agree with that capitalist class fighter, Mrs Thatcher—there is no alternative.

Once engaged in the struggle for socialism, it soon becomes apparent that hundreds of years of capitalist conditioning cannot be easily overcome within five minutes. Every new socialist experiences the shock of discovering that others fail to agree that socialism is the only viable alternative there is to this insane capitalist society. However, attitudes and opinions do change, and it is capitalism itself which creates socialists.

It is normal capitalist practice for small businesses to be swallowed by larger ones. This has just happened to the company which buys my labour power. During the time preceding the take-over. I and the rest of the wage-slaves here were treated, as usual, like mushrooms—kept in the dark and shit on from a great height. Although my work-mates hold deeply entrenched capitalist values, royalist, nationalist, racist and conservative, the threat to their livelihoods from the takeover has resulted in a drastic change of attitude. This doesn't mean they have all become socialists. Far from it. But they have done something which a few months ago would have been unthinkable for them. They have joined a trade union.

If a class struggle between a minority who own most of the wealth, and a majority who are forced to sell their labour power in order to exist, was not taking place then trade unions would be unnecessary. Despite all the capitalist propaganda to make unions unpopular with a large number of the working class, and the futile involvement of the unions themselves in political action through the Labour Party, the only wav that the working class can even the odds a little is through economic strength and solidarity.

Socialists, wherever possible, belong to unions. Besides needing to defend ourselves as workers against employers, there is a need to balance the overwhelming insistence on the part of most trade union activists that support for the Labour Party is the only thing that is in the interest of the working class. The Socialist Party does not, unlike Leninist-Trotskyist organizations, believe that workers are only capable of attaining a "trade union consciousness”. but we don't believe either that it is industrial struggle that will politicise workers. While unions are still fighting for a fair day's pay for a pay day's work, socialists fight for the abolition of the wages system.

Dave Coggan

The Waste of Competition. (1907)

From the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

[From "The Industrial Revolution," by Charles Beard, preface to second edition.]

  While admitting that our present maladjustments are the outcome of the “social form of production and the individual form of appropriation and exchange,” I contend that this system wastes more wealth than it contributes to landlords, capitalists and moneylenders. The statistics are not at present forthcoming to prove this statement, but a few figures will illustrate my point.
    Mr. Edson Bradey, vice-president of the Distillery Company of America, recently estimated that between producer and consumer 40,000,000 dollars were annually lost mostly in competitive attempts to secure trade. Upon the combination of the competitors of the distilling business 300 travelling salesmen were discharged, and a saving of 1,000,000 dollars effected in this one department of enterprise. The American Wire and Steel Company, formed of competing concerns, dismissed 200 salesmen who bad been engaged in “ heckling” customers. It is stated that 3,000 salesmen lost their positions through the formation of the American Tobacco Co., and that the Continental Tobacco Co. discharged 330 travellers in one day. The (I'JOO) Report of the American Travellers’ Protective Association stated that probably 350,000 travelling men had lost their positions through the workings of monopolies and trusts, and estimated that the latter saved 6,000,000 dollars daily by limiting advertising and concentrating industries.
  The recent American Combination of Laundry Machine-makers discharged 30 per cent. of the employees as unnecessary to the production of all the machines demanded in the market, and effected a saving of 780,000 dollars annually in working expenses. Mr. Gates of the Wire and Steel Co. stated that his concern saved 500,000 dollars yearly in “cross freights" through combination and organisation of shipping. A prominent railway manager in the United States estimates that 200,000,000 dollars would be saved annually if all railways were worked from one centre. Professor Ely says :
  “It is useless to attempt any precise estimate, but it may not be an extravagant estimate if we claim that the loss due to competition in the railway business in the United States from the beginning of our railway history to the present time has been sufficient to furnish all the people of the United States with comfortable dwellings, provided all the houses now in the United States should be destroyed." To read this statement with the recent “Report on Tenement conditions in Chicago" is enough to rouse the most indifferent. The annual waste on railways, advertising and telegraphs in the United States is estimated at 698,000,000 dollare while the waste on separate railway management in England is set at £30,000,000 yearly.
   It is calculated that there are in London two and a half times as many shops as are necessary for convenient and efficient distribution.
   Business men struggling with one another waste an enormous amount of wealth, and capitalists and workmen fighting each other waste a great deal in addition. For example, in 1897-98 25,636,000 working days were lost through labour disputes arising out of the inevitable antagonism existing in the modern industrial system.

Artificial scarcity (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone's needs already exists globally and has done so for many decades. Yet needs continue to remain unmet on a massive scale. Why? Quite simply because scarcity is a functional requirement of capitalism itself.

Production today is not primarily geared to satisfy human needs but "effective demand"--when "consumers" are able to buy goods at a price which will enable enterprises producing them to realise a profit. If what people can afford falls short of what they need, increasing output to satisfy the latter would cause prices to fall--to the detriment of profit. So the need for profit conflicts with the satisfaction of human needs.

Profit is not essentially a measure of technical efficiency. It is sometimes argued that the market's "hidden hand" guides enterprises towards the most efficient allocation of resources by bankrupting those failing to respond appropriately to its price signals. According to this argument, resources are inherently scarce and the market provides the best, if not the only, available mechanism for ensuring they are not wasted (which would aggravate scarcity). But the yardstick of "efficiency" used here is not something external to capitalism but intrinsic to it. An enterprise is judged to be "efficient" to the extent that it is profitable.

That means its revenue exceeds its cost. However, this can create the illusion that profits are made in the market--by raising prices to more than cover costs. But capitalists cannot just arbitrarily raise their prices--that could mean losing business to their competitors. In any case, one enterprise's price increase would constitute another's cost increase (insofar as enterprises supply each other with the inputs they require), with the resulting reciprocal losses and gains balancing each other in the long run.

In fact, profits are made in the sphere of production (but only "realised" in the market). The source of all wealth is human labour applied to natural resources. Those who apply their labour to create this wealth today (the workers) are employed to do so by the owners of the means of wealth production (the capitalists). The value of the wealth workers create necessarily exceeds the value of their working abilities for which they are paid a wage (or salary)--the difference between these two values being "surplus value", the source of the capitalists' profit.

So profit depends on restricting workers' consumption to what is needed to develop and maintain their working abilities at the level required. More than that only adds to the wages bill without producing a commensurate increase in productivity. But what is so vital about profit that makes this necessary? Not only does it afford capitalists a lavish lifestyle; more importantly, it is the source of their capital. The more capital they can accumulate out of the profits accruing to them the more effectively can they compete--by investing in more productive technologies to undercut their competitors--and thus claim a larger share of the market for themselves. If they did not do this then their competitors would, and could knock them out of business.

So economic competition between enterprises fuels the drive towards capital accumulation. This in turn necessitates profit maximisation which expresses itself as a continuous downward pressure on wages (reinforced by competition between workers on the labour market), insofar as these constitute costs which subtract from the capitalists' profit. This downward pressure on wages was once widely thought by Leftists to lead to a chronic and ever-deepening depression. According to this theory of "underconsumption", the development of the productive forces would result in increasing quantities of consumer goods swamping the market which workers would be unable to buy back, thus precipitating capitalism's collapse.

However, any decline in the workers' share of total wealth must represent an increase in the share appropriated by the capitalists and hence also their potential demand for consumer goods. It might be argued that rather than increase their consumption of consumer goods the capitalists could divert more of their wealth into investment instead, thereby enhancing the productive capacity of industry. But since such investment will only proceed when there is the expectation of profit this presupposes the existence of consumer markets capable of absorbing the potential increase in output.

Nevertheless, while growth in productive capacity and market demands tend to balance out in the long run their normal state is one of "disequilibrium". This generates a continuous process of mutual adjustment which takes the form of the capitalist "trade cycle". In the run-up to a boom enterprises expand their productive capacity to meet the surge in market demand. However, blind competition between them leads to overproduction in some sectors of the economy at first, resulting in falling prices and a squeeze on profits. Workers are then laid off in these sectors thereby reducing their demand for the goods provided by other sectors. A ripple effect is thus created which takes its toll on an expanding range of industries resulting in a generalised recession which only comes to an end when the conditions for profitable production are restored. As Marx put it: "the last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces in such a way that only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit" (Capital III, p.30).

Artificial needs

As well as desiring things we need, we are also encouraged to desire things that we do not need. Indeed, insofar as there is theoretically no limit to what we are capable of desiring this allows pro-capitalist economists to argue that scarcity is the "condition of the world". To question why we should desire such things over and above what we need is to encroach on territory that falls beyond the scope of traditional economics; it is thus deemed inadmissible from the blinkered perspective of the economists themselves.

Not that that prevents them from adopting the assumption that human beings are fundamentally driven by insatiable desires. In fact, the attempt to universalise that assumption by grounding it in the very nature of human beings was, as Marshall Sahlins argues in his Stone Age Economics, the ideological by-product of an emerging bourgeois society. Not coincidentally, it went hand-in-hand with the attempt to downgrade and dismiss earlier cultures as "primitive" and "backward" for not exhibiting the insatiable desires characteristic of bourgeois society itself. As Sahlins points out, the bourgeois axiom of scarce resources and unlimited wants can be neatly reversed in the case of our hunter-gatherer forbears for whom an excess of possessions was not merely disapproved of but viewed as a positive encumbrance to their nomadic way of life.

It was with the appearance of private property, particularly in its individualistic capitalist form, that the ideology of scarcity took root. In his perceptive book To Have or To Be, Erich Fromm notes that private property derives from the Latin word privare meaning "to deprive of" because "the person or persons who own it are its sole masters, with full powers to deprive others of its use or enjoyment". It is such deprivation that engenders the pathological desire to possess. For within this individualistic world-view it is through one's possessions that one attains the power and freedom to be oneself; one's sense of self-identity and self-worth--in short, one's social status--is tied up with, and expressed through, one's possessions. This is what Fromm means by a "having" mode of existence as opposed to a "being" mode.

Crudely speaking, this means that the better-off one is materially speaking the more status one accrues. However, since it is not the absolute amount of one's material possessions as such that determines one's position in this status hierarchy but rather what one has compared with what others have, it follows that economic inequality is a basic precondition for such a system of status differentiation to effectively operate. In this respect, capitalism not only provides the yardstick by which this concept of status is measured but also works to ensure an unequal distribution of wealth, enabling such a system to operate.

So it does not matter how modest one's real needs may be or how easily they may be met; capitalism's "consumer culture" leads one to want more than one may materially need since what the individual desires is to enhance his or her status within this culture of consumerism and this is dependent upon acquiring more than others have got. But since others desire the same thing, the economic inequality inherent in a system of competitive capitalism must inevitably generate a pervasive sense of relative deprivation.

What this amounts to is a kind of institutionalised envy. This is ironic inasmuch as socialists are often accused of being motivated by the "politics of envy". Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, such envy is merely the flip side of the same coin as greed. And it is the idea of greed which underwrites the myth of scarcity which, in turn, serves to justify the existence of a market which socialists oppose.

Socially useless production

Socially useless production constitutes a large and growing proportion of economic activity within capitalism and, as such, contributes significantly to the perpetuation of artificial scarcity--in this case from the standpoint of supply rather than demand.

Of course, capitalism does not and cannot distinguish between socially useful and socially useless production. The reason for this is that both are functionally necessary for the realisation of profit. So for anyone not looking beyond the parameters of capitalism such a distinction will remain obscured.

If socially useful production comprises any form of activity that goes to satisfy real human needs, socially useless production represents any activity that does not satisfy such needs. The needs that the latter satisfies are the system's needs. These include not only status needs but operational needs arising from how the system operates. There is a tendency for capitalism to develop towards ever-increasing complexity with the consequence that over time its operational needs tend to soak up ever-larger quantities of resources and human labour. This is exemplified by the growth of money-based activities to facilitate market transactions (from banking to retailing), reactive/remedial activities to cope with the social problems thrown up by capitalism (from social workers to trade unions) and coercive activities to protect or promote the interests of capital (from weapons research to security firms).

Estimates vary as the proportion of total labour and resources devoted to systemic needs but there can be little doubt that, particularly in the advanced capitalist economies, well over half the total labour force is involved in one or other form of socially useless production. This represents a massive waste of human effort and resources which, if redirected towards socially useful production, could effectively eliminate scarcity as far as the satisfaction of real needs is concerned. To eliminate scarcity, however, requires a fundamental switch from production for profit to production for use--from capitalism to socialism.

Robin Cox