A Look Round. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Weekly Times and Echo is a Liberal newspaper. Between elections it plays to the Labour Gallery, prints articles from prominent Social-Democrats and Labour men. But at elections it supports the Liberal (which, of course, includes the Progressive) candidates, and should therefore be regarded as an enemy by those who claim to be Socialists.

***

“He that is not with us is against us,” used to be recognised as a truism by the S.D.F. But recently things have been altered. On the front page of the Weekly Times and Echo for March 17, 1907, appears an advertisement by the Edmonton Branch of the S.D.F., addressed to the Electors of Edmonton, and announcing a mass meeting in support of S.D.F. candidates for the District Council. In the advertisement the electors are advised not to blindly vote for “the man your landlord thinks the best, and who is selected by the landlords themselves.”

***

This denouncing of the landlord, while ignoring his companion, the capitalist, is an old Liberal dodge, but I hardly expected to find it in an S.D.F. Advt.

***

The advertisement concludes : “Take in this paper weekly. It is the best for all workers.”

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So the S.D.F. are now reduced to urging the workers to be taken in by taking in a paper which appears several times during the week for the greater glorification of the Liberal section of the capitalist class !

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What Judge Emden described as an extraordinary state of affairs was revealed at the Lambeth County Court on March 13, when a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners named Murphy sued the Society for £50 which he claimed as accident benefit. Counsel for the Union submitted to the Judge that as the Society was an illegal society for the purposes of restraining trade, the Court had no jurisdiction to try it, which was proved by section 4, subsection 3, of the Trade Union Act of 1871. This provided that members of the Society, or vice-versa, shall have no power to resort to a court of law for the purpose of enforcing any agreement between them.

***

After a lengthy legal argument the Judge decided favourably to the Union, dismissed the action, and at the request of the Union’s advocate, gave costs against the Union member.

***

The plaintiff’s advocate described the Union as a “swindle” and was promptly reproved by the Judge. But the irony of it ! The workers are urged to join their Trade Unions, in order to make provision, amongst other things, for sickness, old age, accident, etc. And then the Union into which they have paid, week after week, a large proportion of their earnings, resists claims by its members and defeats them by the tactics detailed above.

***

The Liberal Government at home are mouthing threats against the House of Lords, mainly because they claim that “it thwarts the people’s will.” At the same moment they have established a second chamber in the Transvaal with the definite object of thwarting the wishes of the elected Assembly.

***

The scandal of the Upper House nominations, writes the Daily Chronicle’s Johannesburg correspondent, must be remembered in estimating the political outlook. The people elected a majority pledged to the repatriation of the Chinese, and Lord Selborne has nominated a Progressive Chinese majority in the Upper House. Consequently it is premature as a result of the elections to predict the peaceful elimination of the Chinese, since the power to precipitate a crisis and thwart the policy of the Assembly and the home Government by voting such legislation as is essential to repatriation is placed in the hands of the puppets of Lord Selborne and the mining houses, as, in case of a deadlock, the Governor can dissolve the Assembly without calling a joint sitting of both Houses.

***

“Improvements in administration, chiefly in the interest of the middle-class ratepayer, improvement even in the status of organised labour, does not take us far on the road to genuine Socialism. It is reform certainly, and it has, in some respects, a good effect in so far as it shows the way to better things. But, on the other hand, palliatives are likely to obscure the main issue and the idea itself of the maintenance of municipalities, and the raising the status of wage-earners, stunts the revolutionary intelligence and restricts the area of economic foresight.”

H. M. Hyndman, November, 1895.

***

“To get a little they must ask for the lot, if they ask for a little they will get nothing. As he was growing older he was beginning to feel the futility of crying for reforms when you find yourself face to face with a system which makes all reform impossible.”

H. M. Hyndman, March, 1904.

***

Those who will carefully read the above Hyndmanisms, and then read through the addresses issued by S.D.F. candidates at recent elections will not need to subscribe to the Daily News edition of Punch.

***

“Who aims a star, shoots higher far

Than he that aims a tree.”

***

On Saturday, London had spoken for the forces of reaction, and had played into the hands of the Harmsworth family once again, said our Lady of Warwick at the East Ham Town Hall on March 4. As London had to choose between a majority of “Progressives” and one of “Moderates,” both of whom serve the interests of the capitalist class, it is evident that her Ladyship would have hailed the victory of the former as a defeat of the forces of reaction.

***

According to the Burton Evening Gazette, something of a sensation has been caused by certain staff changes at Messrs. Allsopp & Sons’ Offices. A number of clerks, some of whom had given life service to the firm, were dismissed peremptorily, but with their salaries in advance, and the incident, although it is merely an elaboration of a policy which has unhappily long been in progress, caused much comment by reason of the position of the parties concerned and the length of their association with the brewery.

The lady clerk is to make her appearance at the desk, and she and her class will very largely take the place of those gentlemen who have been sent adrift. It is contended that the somewhat drastic changes which are now in progress in Messrs. Allsopp’s internal affairs are dictated by the demands for a strictly economical working plan. Whatever may be the verdict of the general public on the matter, it cannot be denied that much resentment is expressed locally at the continued dismissal of clerks, and this has especially made itself felt within the past few days.

A representative of the Gazette had an interview with Mr. C. J. Stewart, the chairman of the Board of Directors, who stated that the policy of economy had been going on generally since he commenced his tenure of office. “A considerable saving has,” he said, “been effected in the administrative staff in accordance with that policy.” He had had experience of lady clerks in other capacities, and he thought that they would be very suitable for the work it was proposed to give them. It would be merely a matter of figures, and what might be monotonous for men would not be so in the case of girls. In fact, it was really women’s work to do that sort of thing.

***

Of course, “it is really women’s work to do that sort of thing,” and any other sort of thing whereby the wages bill can be reduced.

***

As we have so often pointed out, the displacement of men by women and even by children is incidental to the capitalist system and must and does take place in offices as well as in mills and factories. The writers of some of the letters that have appeared in the Press concerning this particular case have made some extraordinary suggestions and have mostly shown a lamentable ignorance of things as they are. They have appealed to the “feelings” of the Directors, etc. In days gone by, when businesses were small, when they were personally superintended by the proprietors, there no doubt did exist some feeling of friendship between the employer and his employees, but since the advent of the large concerns, the joint stock corporations, where often the employees never see the actual proprietors, where the departmental managers are expected to make their respective departments “pay,” sentiment is entirely out of the question. Business is not carried on for philanthropy but for dividends.

***

It has also been suggested that the lesson, to be learnt by the clerk is that there is still room for him if he will make himself an all round competent man. But there are plenty of these today working for a mere pittance, and plenty even dossing nightly at Booth’s hotels. Moreover, the only practical school for acquiring efficiency in office routine is the office itself, and the conditions of modern offices render it impossible for the necessary experience to be obtained. The “From Powder Monkey to Admiral,” “Office Boy to Proprietor” fiction is long since exploded. In the small office, say with manager, cashier, clerk, junior and office boy, the “yob” certainly did have an opportunity, provided he were smart, of acquiring a general and particular knowledge of the office routine and of the business transacted, but as the small offices gave place to the mammoth concerns now so common in commercial centres, the work became departmentalised and all-round knowledge rendered unnecessary for the majority of the staff. The newcomer, however proficient he may have made himself at commercial schools and similar institutions for extracting fees out of would-be Pierpoint Morgans, finds himself set to work which, as Mr. Stewart says, is “merely a matter of figures.” Usually, his only hope of promotion is to become the head of the department, or one of that worthy’s ”coppers,” but between him and the coveted post intervenes an array of a score or more all anxious for advancement and all as little likely to secure it. His knowledge is useless because his only prospect is to remain at one particular job, at work which could be done by any other fairly correct person, male or female.

***

What the clerk has to do is to drop his cant of respectability and to recognise that economic development, which has reduced the skilled mechanic to a casual labourer, has also affected him. The growth of large concerns, the aggregation of capital, the increased use of mechanical appliances, in offices as elsewhere, the subdivision and departmentalisation now generally in vogue, have effected vast changes in the status of the wage and salary earner, of those who have to sell their abilities, physical or mental, to the master class. Under capitalism, production per head of the population tends to increase continually, but production per head of the actually employed workers also increases. Thus the army of the unemployed will be an evergrowing one and we ask our opponents to show how the problem can be dealt with, apart from a re-organisation of industry—apart from the substitution of Socialism for the present system.

J. Kay

Blackpool Lights (1981)

From the August 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

An event of some interest to 400,000 members of the working class took place at Blackpool in May. It received a bit of coverage in the daily press, although this was mainly concerned with matters that had little to do with the supposed purpose of the event. There was the speech by Denis Healey, headed in the Guardian (13/5/81) “The Enemy Within”, designed to further his bid for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. There was also the odd mention of the “nasty Left”, “little Stalins”, and “dogmatic sectarians”. Oh no, you may cry, not another Labour Party meeting or Left Wing gathering. No indeed. The event was in fact the Bi-Annual Conference of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunication and Plumbers Union—the EETPU, a trade union of 400,000 members.

The Conference was one of those stage-managed affairs that anyone acquainted with the majority of non-socialist organisations soon gets used to. The daily press, while seeing fit to cover Healey’s speech, showed little interest in the fact that 5,000 members of the union in Birmingham were without any representation at the Conference because the Executive had decided to suspend the meetings of Midland Branch 18 months before. Nor was much print given over to the similar plight of London Central Branch, whose 7,000 members made the mistake of wishing to elect their own delegates to the local Labour Party; their main Branch activity soon became the collecting of members’ dues. Then, of course, there was the compositing of motions, weeding out those that might rock the boat, all helping to ensure that the Conference ran smoothly, without any significant opposition. Finally, there were the lost resolutions. No, not those lost through voting those resolutions lost in the post, that for some strange reason never reached the Conference at all. Like the one from Worcester Branch about Branch suspensions and—coincidence of coincidences—their delegate did not receive his credentials in time for Conference either.

There should be no illusions about democracy under capitalism. It’s ten to one that the word will flow from a politician’s or trade union leader’s lips whenever they mount a rostrum, but more often than not it’s a smoke screen for a power struggle over who is going to help run capitalism. The dispute between Benn and Healey in the Labour Party is mirrored in trade unions like the EETPU. The form of elections and voting is structured by those with power for the purpose of furthering their positions, and keeping any opposition out. While in the Labour Party the struggle is over whether MPs or the block union votes should dominate the election of the leader, in the EETPU it has been over whether Branches and local union organisations or the central executive backed by the periodical voting of the members should be the main decision makers. The latter sounds more democratic, but in reality little opportunity to put their case is given to those who wish to stand in opposition to the executive council backed candidates. The executive of the union have control of the union media, the EETPU paper, plus greater access to the national press. Besides this, any opposition that is elected stands a good chance of being ruled out of order for infringing some rule or other.

But these internal struggles for power and the manipulation that goes on cannot be divorced from the fact that the majority of the union members take little active interest in its affairs. For many, the union card has simply become a job ticket. Further, some of the traditional benefits of trade unionism, such as unemployment payout, have been taken over by the state. On top of this, the bulk of union funds is now spent on administration. Even when members are in a dispute they often find they have to fight the union as well as the employers.

Democracy is only as powerful a tool as the desires and aspirations of those who have access to it. It is not much use having the vote if it is not used, nor is it much use if its potential is not appreciated. While workers go on electing and believing in leaders, whether in unions or in government, then voting systems will never be more than potential means of creating a democratic society. But past experience shows that at election after election Labour or Conservative governments have been returned to run an economic system that operates against the interests of the majority of people. And, whether because of scepticism or a general recognition that it doesn't make much difference who runs capitalism, many don't bother to vote at all. The position in the EETPU in many ways reflects this, with only a small percentage of members bothering to vote at those few elections that do take place.

Frank Chapple, the General Secretary of the EETPU has a long history of participation in the internal power struggles of the union. He was a member of the Communist Party in the 1950s at the time when the CP took over many of the posts in the then Electrical Trades Union. The electrical trades being at the heart of most industries, this influence inside the union gave the CP a degree of power to disrupt large sectors of production. The union only had to get a few members to stop work for a short time and whole industries and areas could be brought to a standstill.

In the 1950s the revelations about Stalin’s atrocities in Russia led to many former believers abandoning the myth of Russian socialism. Frank Chapple was one of the the ETU members who left the Communist Party and who, along with political figures such as Woodrow Wyatt, worked to get rid of the CPers. They eventually succeeded, with the help of the law courts, in exposing cases of ballot rigging.

For most members of the union there was little immediate change. The exposure of ballot rigging and the subsequent change in leaders made little difference. The new executive council said it would ensure that democracy in the union was upheld, traditions respected—the usual rhetoric. All this happened in the early 1960s. Then changes were made. Certain members of the executive went to the
USA, were influenced by the business type, centrally organised unions there, and came back with big ideas. In 1965 major changes in the rule book were made. In the years that followed the streamlining measures included the abolition of area committees and the appointment by the executive of what were formally elected union officials. Members were sent voting papers which, on the face of it, appeared to be concerned with with wage rates, but in fact included changes in rules and conditions. Union members found themselves voting for all manner of things even though their main concern would be the increase in wages. On one of these votes even tea breaks were abolished (this writer remembers one socialist, at that time a member of the union, who on hearing of this decision tore up his union card). The last 15 years have been a constant process of movement toward a highly organised, bureaucratically controlled union, centralised to the point where nearly all correspondence has to circulate through the General Secretary.

What then has Denis Healey’s speech, at Blackpool, and the power struggle in the Labour Party, got to do with defending the wages and conditions of workers in the EETPU? Precisely nothing. It shouldn’t be surprising then that such Conferences are used as political platforms for expressing the views of one side or the other in the Labour Party’s power struggle. And just as “unity” is the constant call of all sides in that struggle (while they stab each other in the back) so “unity” in union affairs means keeping those who oppose the present leaders outside of the Conference. That is in fact where they were.

MD

A New York cable states. (1904)

From the October 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New York cable states: 

  “A law which comes into operation to-day (Sept. 1st, 1904), makes it bribery for an employer to pay money to a labour leader to avert a strike. Hitherto blackmail of this kind has been exceedingly common.”

Monopoly (1966)

Book Review from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Capitalism is the system under which profit-seeking is the main purpose of men's undertakings; self-interest is the motivating force that drives them. Each person seeks his own maximum gain in an unending struggle. Seller is pitted against seller in the eternal rivalry of the marketplace.
  Under this system men would rather see their fellow human beings, women and children, die, rather than forgo any profits. They will, knowingly, sell poison or lethal weapons—provided there is money to be made.
  Self-styled respectable businessmen use known gangsters in the struggle for survival. They throw away food in order to reap gold. They lie, cheat and bully with one end in view: profits.

It is rare that we Socialists can take such an indictment of capitalism from the writings of a politician who actively helped the capitalist world go round upon its bumpy axis; a member of the American House of Representatives for nine years, and after that a U.S. Senator; even, in 1956, the Democrats' candidate for Vice-President.

Yet from a book by the late Estes Kefauver, and with neither unfair quoting out of context nor exaggeration, the indictment of the first three paragraphs above has been taken. His analysis of monopoly power in America, In A Few Hands, has just been published here for the first time as a Pelican Original (price 6s.).

Kefauver, who died in 1963, learned his facts about American Big Business as chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Sub-committee on Antitrust and Monopoly. His book presents the essence of this committee’s extended hearings.

Evidence of the behaviour of the biggest drug firms is especially dramatic, for here we are dealing in human life. For instance, some years ago a drug called Orinase (its trademark) was invented, an oral anti-diabetic drug. Not only is this obviously easier to take than regular injections of insulin; it is also much easier and cheaper to make. But the manufacturer, Dr. E. Gifford Upjohn, kept the price of Orinase at 14 cents per tablet, the same price as insulin. That was his rival, so although the drug cost him 1.18 dollars to produce (for a month’s supply), the patient paid around 12.50 dollars per month. Dr. Upjohn shrugged this price difference off as “just a matter of pennies” before the Senate Sub-committee.

Doctors are constantly bombarded by American drug manufacturers with advertising and inducements to prescribe drugs by trade name, otherwise pharmacists may provide the much cheaper, possibly foreign-produced but equally effective, version. The detail men who visit doctor's surgeries to persuade them to use particular makes of drug were actually told of one drug, whose effects were known to be fatal in certain circumstances: ‘‘Chloromycetin’s toxicity should not be introduced unless the physician brings up the subject or unless you know that he has ceased prescribing the drug.”

It has been widely publicised of late, thanks to the efforts of Ralph Nader, that most American cars are death traps. Kefauver writes witheringly: “The dictates of the styling engineers take precedence over everything else. Even safety of operation—not to speak of fuel economies—is subordinated to the whim of the fashion experts.”

He is referring here to the “non-price” competition that takes place between America’s few giant car firms.

By contrast, in the bread industry what appears to be real price competition is in fact a rigorous campaign by big, nation-wide bakers to oust smaller local firms. The giants, four of whom already control 22 per cent of the market, will undercut wildly, even making a loss in one area, in order to force the small baker out of business. Other techniques include: acquiring detailed knowledge of the small firm while asserting a serious intention to buy it; using the two American unions notoriously run by gangsters, the Teamsters and the Bakery & Confectionery Workers, to give labour trouble; deliberately making piles of loaves, much of which can only be wasted, for if the small baker competes he faces heavy losses on returns of stale bread, and if he does compete his sales may decline anyway—housewives are attracted by big heaps of bread in the supermarkets.

The establishment of a giant in a town whose industry was formerly run by smaller, local capitalists revives the old story of company towns. Although these are less ugly, and perhaps less crudely run for the company's benefit than those of 30 and 50 years ago, they become worse places to live in nonetheless.

Local bankers, insurance companies, suppliers of all kinds, lawyers and accountants find themselves supplanted by the men at head office. The few studies of modem “company towns” that do exist show that areas dominated by a few absentee-owned firms suffer from worse housing, schools, and other civic projects. Councils attempting to raise local taxes are warned that the firm will close down, putting most of a community out of work.

Kefauver believes that the cure for monopoly is adverse publicity, government admonition, and keen competition among all capitalists.

Yet he also states: “Under a system of free enterprise it is basically illogical to expect businessmen to subdue the acquisitive urge of their undertakings. Profit-seeking is the accepted purpose of their undertakings.”

He could not see how it is the very nature of capitalism that brings about monopolies. One firm defeats its rivals, and swallows them. How would he stop this? By abolishing free enterprise capitalism? But that is exactly what he wants to see maintained.

A giant is indeed stalking the world today: the ogre of capitalism. Men like Estes Kefauver, who think they can run it are afraid of it. The majority of mankind. the workers, live in its shadow. Few indeed are even aware of this. But only when the workers of the world understand what lies behind their agonies, the cruelties and the wastefulness of capitalism, when they have determined democratically to establish Socialism, only then will the shadow be removed from all our lives.

A. Pottersman