Odds and Ends: 5,000 Roubles to Win (1957)

The Odds and Ends column from the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

5,000 Roubles to Win

Rumour has it that another Purge is on the way in Soviet Russia. No! It’s not likely to be Khruschev or Gromyko. Its going to be those wicked jockeys at the Moscow race course.

According to Sovetskoya Kultura not only are students and young workers losing their money—and, more important—taking time off from work and study, but it appears, some of the jockeys have been "fixing” the races and making fortunes by betting on certain winners. But this is not all! Some of toe Muscovite tipsters have been tipping losers, much to toe consternation of the punters. And besides that the officials at the Moscow race course, it seems, have been violating the law by selling “hard liquor.”

Such wicked “bourgeois” goings-on! And in a “Socialist” country!—so the Communists tell us. Like workers in Britain who think they can emancipate themselves by having a little “flutter" on the 2.30 or filling in a football coupon, the Russian workers also think that betting will get them out of their poverty position.

It looks as though Russia will soon be going to the dogs!

Where do they find the cash?

In this fairy-land of the Welfare State, the News Chronicle has discovered a class of people who can afford to pay between £5 and £10 at the hairdressers; who live in apartments where the rent is between £5,000 and £10,000 a year—plus ground rent and service costs of £600 to £7,000 a year; and who own a Rolls Royce or a Jaguar costing £5,600.

The News Chronicle then tells us that “of around 23 million working-people in Britain, nearly 20 million are wage-earning. And as most of us know, on a pay-as-you-earn tax system, wage-earners never see quite a whack of their pay packets.” (21/10/57.) '

After discovering the rich—the class that enjoys all these luxuries—the Chronicle asks :—

  "Now where do the rich people who keep these markets going get their money? And how?"

Now this is where the Socially can help the News Chronicle. We have been explaining how, and where, the rich—the capitalist class—get their money for a long time. The rich get their money through the exploitation of the working-class; from the unpaid labour of the workers. In a given period the workers produce more than they receive back in wages or salaries. They produce a surplus—what Marx called “surplus value” which is the basis of rent, interest and profit. And because the rich own the means of living—i.e„ the land, factories, etc., through share and stock holding, and the workers own little or nothing of these means of life, they remain the rich, become more and more prosperous during boom periods, and are able to afford all the luxuries that the News Chronicle speaks of; whilst most of us have to put up with the 10 guinea suits or a cheap 'perm.'

One wonders how long the workers will let this state of affairs remain as it is.

Marx and Christianity

The somewhat lengthy correspondence in the Socialist Standard on religion has prompted this writer to read again the early writings of Marx on Christianity. Although he had far from developed his ideas and attitudes towards the then developing capitalist society, and although today his writings read a little archaic, his views on the Christian religion are more than valid today. In 1847, writing in the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung, he says: “The social principles of Christianity justified slavery in the classic world and they glorified mediaeval serfdom, and if necessary they are quite willing to defend the oppression of the proletariat even if they should wear a somewhat crestfallen appearance the while. The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and an oppressed class, and all they have to offer to the latter is the pious wish that the former be charitable. The social principles of Christianity transfer the reparation of all infamies to the realms of heaven and thus they justify the perpetuation of these infamies on earth. The social principles of Christianity declare that all the villanies of the oppressors against the oppressed are either the just punishment for original or other sin, or tribulations which God in his inscrutable wisdom causes the elect to suffer. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-abasement, resignation, submission and humility—” (quoted from Karl Marx by Franz Mehring, p. 131.)

The principles of Socialism teach courage, confidence, pride and the understanding of capitalism and the need for a new system of society—Socialism.

Marx and the Trade Unions

The following merits repetition:

 “ . . . the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their insistence against the encroachments of capital,, and abandon their attempts of making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. .. . 

At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate workings of these every-day struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing the direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never-ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the Conservative motto, “A fair day's wages for a fair day’s work” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system! ” . . .  

Trade unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.” (Value. Price and Profit, pp. 92-94.)

Peter E. Newell

"I am going to have breakfast in bed" (1957)

Book Review from the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

One day in November at the Royal Albert Hall 1,250,000 poppy petals were dropped from the roof at a ceremony attended by the Queen.

"One for every British serviceman killed in action from August, 1914 till today,” says the Sunday paper.

Twelve years have passed since the end of World War II. This allows fair time for Generals and “Statesmen” to retire to the safe security of their generous pensions, and eventually “die in bed,” as Sassoon wrote in the first lot.

Those holding top-jobs then, can now blow the gaff, give the game away, always providing, of course, that it exonerates them and incriminates the others.

Despite the shocking straits to which inflation is supposed to have reduced the rich, there are still a few with 25s., 35s. or 45s. to chuck away on some bag of tripe purporting to reveal war time secrets.

This makes it quite a tasty racket, especially if you’ve nothing much else to do except fish salmon or grow cacti.

More than one ex-general has turned to tales out of the War Cabinet school, for a little bit of extra.

Actually, they’ve really nothing much to say. It may have taken a little longer, but the pattern of recrimination after the Second approximates to those of the First.

Then it was Lloyd George sacking Douglas Haig, this time Churchill doing Wavell. (Threatening “to have him shot”). After Churchill himself had saturated the market with whitewash, there was a chance for smaller fry to lick up a crumb or two.

Lord Alanbrooke and Sir John Kennedy (Director of Military Operations 1940-43) are among those for whom the pen is now meatier than the sword.

Kennedy, in his book The Business of War, 25s. (was ever a book better named?), reveals what took place at the week-end parties at Chequers, the P.M.’s country residence from which the War was actually run.

If his tale is to be believed, the dining and wining
 was usually accompanied by sundry angry outbursts by Churchill denouncing and upbraiding the daft generals in charge of the British Armies.

His chagrin at Wavell's inability to deal with Rommel did not prevent him, it seems, from doing justice to the liquor. “Churchill continuously called for more champagne” (while the men in the Western Desert were drinking their shaving water). “He remarked that it was very good stuff—he said he had thought of giving up cigars until the Germans were out of Cyrenaica—but changed his mind a few days later. Why should he give up cigars or snuff for any German.” (Evening Standard, November 4th, 1957.)

On May 26th the Prime Minister sent Wavell a stream of telegrams urging “active measures,” read headlong attacks.

“Victory in Crete is essential,” “Hurl reinforcements into Crete.” “What about a stroke in the Western Desert,” etc.

According to this General, the Prime Minister was in the habit of telephoning junior officers at M.I.5, or some other secret war department and enquiring, behind the back of those in charge, how things were going. It was somewhat after the manner in which the late Mr. A. W. Gamage used to snoop on his staff at his store.

“At the evening at Chequers,” Kennedy says “After dinner Churchill walked up and down.”

“My plan for winning the war is this,” he said a little later, “One thousand tons of bombs a night on Germany—we are only averaging 50 now—and 20,000 tanks or so ready to land all along the coasts of Europe.”

“At about 3 a.m. Churchill announced that it was time for bed, and coming up to me, he said, “I am going to have breakfast in bed—I advise you to do the same.”

“I certainly came out of this evening very badly,” says General Kennedy.

Eventually Churchill did sack Wavell and placed Auchinleck in charge.

When the tumult and the shouting dies, a little bit of the truth comes out. We are afforded a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes, through the cracks.

That great military strategist Churchill, like his Russian counterpart the self-appointed military genius Stalin (not to mention Zhukov) has been debunked by the generals. The same thing went on in Germany with Hitler and his generals. Churchill’s empty threats to have Wavell shot were obviously inspired by German practice and Nazi usage. Churchill was the more fortunate because generals who know that they are to be shot as political scapegoats, try to blow Fuhrers up with bombs.

Even appreciating attempts by wartime generals to do a Mark Antony on Winston Ceasar Churchill, our knowledge of the intrigues of the First World War, and the events in the enemy camp during the Second bear out the substance of the case.

While Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were sacking generals in their blind fumblings to find a winner, like an old lady doing football pools with a darning needle, thousands of ordinary working folk were enduring the unspeakable horrors of modern war.

What are the qualifications for these “great men” except cold calculation, tireless loquacity, and a supreme egotism based on endless contempt for those who produce the wealth they so wantonly squander.

Like Napolean, who is supposed to have exclaimed as his heavily loaded Guardsmen sank into the icy Beresina, “Look how these toads struggle for their miserable lives,” he rates the working man at his own evaluation.

The spectacle of this phrase-monger, with his old brandy and choice cigars, at a time when his own experts declared that the war time ration of those doing the work had reached the limit; uttering wild statements at his dinner parties at Chequers, like his—

“My plan is to drop 1,000 tons of bombs a night on Germany.”

“I am going to have breakfast in bed.” Sixteen years later, when it has now got to the stage where some “Leader-Genius” or the other can exterminate an entire community by pressing a button, there are still far too many working people supporting poppy dropping and Remembrance days. Although they may have the very best motives, they unwittingly support Capitalist-Nationalism and the system which keeps them in Poverty and Peril, while generals denounce and expose politicians in past wars but not future ones.

Small comfort to the widow, great consolation to those children whose father happened to be one of the pawns (they call them “the prices”) that we paid a penny or two for a paper poppy, or stood still for two minutes on Sunday, when most of us are off work, so that the guv'nor doesn't lose the time.

The folly is to continue, after all this, one and a quarter million dead, plus all the illness, disease, and aftermath of war to go on supporting capitalism whether Churchill’s, Eisenhower’s or Khruschev’s.

In the world Socialist society people will not kill each other—they will help each other.

Until that day the sacrifice of those killed in wars will be futile.

Horatio.

Wake Up! And Live (1957)

From the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Soviet scientists who claim to have found a Rip Van Winkle deep method of prolonging animal life far beyond normal expectation, are to start experimenting on humans.
  Their biggest success in experiments so far is a small white lapdog called Mika. He was brought to them in 1950. aged 16, with all the symptoms of advanced senility, and was expected to die at any moment. 

Long sleep.  

Mika was immediately put to sleep with drugs and not awakened for three months. The dog lived until April 1957, claim the Russians, nearly seven years above his normal life expectation.

  The Soviet scientists stumbled on the method while carrying out experiments investigating the devastating effect of lack of sleep on the living organism. So far experiments have been on animals only. Work on humans is to be carried out at the Longevity Institute of the Moscow Medical Academy.” (Sunday Express, 23/6/57).

The writer has long been aware of the devastating effect on his own and other people’s health of the vicious scream of the alarm clock, forcing one out of a nice comfortable bed, blinded with sleep; to stumble downstairs, snatch a hurried “cuppa” and race for the bus; to arrive exhausted at the place of work, to do another “stint” of profit-making for the boss. What a lousy life!

Spare a thought, however, for the poor capitalist. Maybe he has been making a mistake. Perhaps if these experiments prove successful he may realise it. Indeed, he may campaign for a shorter working day so that wage-slaves may get more sleep, live longer and produce more profits. They may even raise the retirement age to ninety—that would save them millions! “A delightful thought, eh! Ponsonby? ” “Why yes, my dear feller!” On the other hand, the workers, given more time to think, may get wise to the swindle of Capitalism and decide to put an end to “Wage Slavery,” and to live long and happy lives in a Socialist society. They may, indeed, WAKE UP AND LIVE. 

Phil Mellor

The Phoney Revolution - Part 2 (1957)

From the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part One

The Managerial Revolution

The Managerial Society is now part of popular mythology. Even in Marx’s time it seems to have been a commonplace, for he quotes Dr. Ure as saying in 1840, that not the industrial capitalists but the industrial managers “are the soul of our industrial system.” (Capital, vol. 3, pp. 454/5).

It is of course true as the managerial theorists say that the unity between owners of capital and the actual direction of production has been ruptured. In fact Marx himself acutely analysed in the third volume of Capital the reasons for this and showed it to be intimately bound up with the concentration of capital (the continuous enlargement of the productive units) and the centralisation of capital (the amalgamation of a number of smaller capitals into a single capital). The centralisation of capital was considerably helped by the tremendous growth of the credit system and with it the emergence of the joint stock company.

When Marx speaks of the credit system he includes the whole financial machinery of capitalism, i.e., banks, finance houses, security markets, etc. It is via the credit system that scattered capitals can be deposited in vast amounts and made available for large scale capital investment. In this way said Marx it “transforms itself into an immense social mechanism for the centralisation of capital.”

The Absentee Capitalist

Joint stock companies (corporations) operate not merely with their own capital but other peoples. Of them Marx says, “Capital … is here directly endowed with the form of social capital … as distinguished from private capital and assumes the form of social enterprise as distinguished from private enterprise. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the boundaries of capitalist production itself.” Marx adds, that it leads to the “transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, and administrator of other peoples capital and the owners of capital . . . into mere money capitalists.” (Capital, vol. 3, pp. 516/17.)

Marx, unlike our modern theorists, did not believe the development of the corporation to be a step towards Socialism. Collective capital, he said, although it gave impetus to the social character of wealth production could never overcome, but only intensify the antagonism of socially produced wealth and private appropriation. He also added that the development of the corporation and “the credit system, brings a new set of parasites . . . promoters, speculators …  a whole system of swindling by means of corporation juggling, stock jobbing and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.” (Capital, vol. 3,, p. 519.)

The hired managers

Marx also dealt with the replacement of the capitalists as industrial entrepreneurs by managers. The early capitalists, while not producing surplus value, supervised the activities of those who did. This appropriation of unpaid labour was called the profits of enterprise. The economic apologists of the day also called it the wages of superintendance. With the vast growth of capitalism the function of the capitalist as a representative of capital became delegated to managers, whose wages of superintendence was fixed at the market price and was but a mere fraction of what the capitalist had appropriated for such work. Managers are then agents for the capitalists and hence agents for capital.

The so-called Middle Class

Managers constitute the elite of the amorphous mass called by some people the new “middle class.” It includes civil servants, professional workers, office staff, salesmen, etc. They are also known as the salariat. The requirement of large scale capitalism has brought about a considerable increase of these types of employees. Labourites and Tories have claimed that the growth of this group of the working population has falsified Marx’s prediction of the decline of the middle class. When Marx spoke of the decline of the “petty bourgeoisie” he was referring to independent handicraftsmen, small traders and those living on small fixed incomes. This prediction holds good. Such people constitute small property owners. The salariat are not an expanded form of these lower sections of the historic bourgeoisie. This “new middle class” is in substance not a property section but a propertyless section of the community, forced to work for a livelihood. The term middle class is not based upon an objective evaluation of the position of individuals in the economic structure of society but on a subjective assessment of one’s occupation, residence, and general cultural qualifications.

The census of classification of occupations (1951) ignored these finer nuances by classifying sections of the working population as industrial and non-industrial. The census also tells us that in this country there are approximately 750,000 managers. Of these 185,000 are termed general managers and directors. Some of these directors will have been appointed to boards of concerns as top ranking technicians, administrators or because they have big names and influence. Some of these directors will be big stock holders who have got themselves appointed with the additional advantages of expense accounts. The general managers for the most part are not substantial shareholders—what ever they hope to become. It is these with the overwhelming bulk of managers the 700,000 or so who are under orders for the concerns for which they work. As such they are representatives of the capitalists, operating in a capitalist environment and working for capitalist objectives. As such they do not form a separate class with aims and economic interests different and in opposition to those who employ them. It is these, along with the highly placed technicians, who constitute the hard core of Burnham’s and the new look Fabian’s alleged managerial class, who they claim have replaced, or are in process of so doing, the capitalist class.

What is a Class?

Having used the term “class” in the context it is perhaps necessary to define it more precisely. In the first place a class is not merely a question of social origins. An individual born in the working class may enter the capitalist class and vice versa. Nevertheless a class tends to perpetuate itself along the lines of its social origins. It is also true that individuals are influenced by the ideas and attitudes of the class to which they belong. But ideas and attitudes do not determine a class structure.

Nor as is popularly supposed is a class made up of people getting near enough the same income. Some highly paid workers may get as much or more than some small capitalists. It does not mean therefore that they have an identity of interests. A civil servant and an aircraft mechanic may both earn £1,000 per year but it does not give them a class affiliation as against those who earn double or half of that amount. Although differences of income are a feature of classes, it is not the size of the income but the source of income, common to a number of individuals which is more important for the purpose of analysis. But to say no more than this would leave the question up in the air.

To discover the real nature of class structure one must go to the roots of a social system and that must be sought in the social relations of production i.e. the way one set of individuals stand to another set of individuals in the process of producing wealth. Using this criterion we can say that social classes are characterised by those who own the means of production and those who work for them and who provide above the general cost of their maintenance, surplus labour for the former. The appropriation of surplus labour has always exemplified class society of which capitalism is historically the last form. In capitalism the social groups consist of the ruling section who own the wealth producing agencies and the subordinate class—non-owners—who work for them and the surplus labour takes the form of surplus value. The essence of class privilege being the appropriation of unpaid labour, the individuals who make up the ruling section will have a common interest in perpetuating a social order upon which the survival of its privileges depends. An antagonism of interests is then a feature of class society.

It is true that people can be classified in innumerable ways, dependent upon the purpose in view. But if we wish to know from whence profits are derived, what determines wage levels and the impetus of capital accumulation, in short what makes the system tick, then only the Marxist classification is relevant for such purposes.

Production of surplus value is the life blood of capitalism. It provides capitalists with their personal incomes and is the source of extended capital accumulation. In a society in which two classes face each other as owners of the means of production and wage workers owning only their working capacities the way control is exercised over the agencies of production is evident. That is why capital is not just another name for means of production, as some woolly minded Fabians think. For the capitalist the means of production represent a sum of values which take the form of investment. The capitalist is not concerned with means of production as such, but as capital and the only function capital has for him is to expand.

Expand or go under

In a world where monopolistic, quasi monopolistic, or free market competition is the order of the day (plus capital depreciation due to technical changes which tend to depreciate capital values) the self-expansion of capital becomes the essential condition for successful survival of the capitalist or combination of capitalists. Capitalism is a social organisation where production and distribution of wealth has to follow certain rules. Capitalists, and the management, must conform to these rules on pain of elimination. Because capitalism was bound up with, (and the outcome of), a past economic evolution, it constitutes a definite stage of historic development. For that reason the aims and motives of capitalists are proscribed within the social framework. Not for nothing did Marx state that his view “can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.”

If production of surplus value and the self-expansion of capital are the dominant drives of the system, then whether capitalists run their own concerns or have them run by managers they must both act as functionaries of capital. And whatever other motives, capitalists or managers may or may not bring to the direction of enterprises they are all subordinate to the over-riding compulsion of the self-expansion of capital in a profit motivated economy. If they are not successful in capital accumulation they cannot be successful in anything.

Having defined a class as the position individuals occupy in the economic structure of society in relation to other individuals, i.e., as owners and non-owners of the means of production it may be asked in what way do managers constitute a class. In what way do they stand to the relations of production in contrast to the owning class and the non-owning class. What economic function —not occupational or technical—have they separate from employers and employees? What objectives do they pursue which are not capitalist objectives and what is the system they are supposed to be operating which is neither capitalist or socialist? It is precisely on such issues, crucial to the claims of the managerial theorists that they become vague, and even obscurantist.

The Place of the Technician

There is a variation of the managerial theme which holds that the complex character of automation will produce a race of technicians upon whom the capitalists will be so utterly dependent that they and the managers will be able to hold the big capital owners to ransom and impose their own terms upon the system. In substance these arguments were put forward by technocrats thirty years ago. They argued that the ever-growing complex technical evolution of the system would result in the power of control passing to technicians and administrators, who would be small and compact enough to hold the capitalists to ransom. Experience shows, however, that the technical requirements of capitalism have never failed in the long run to bring about a generous, sometimes over-generous supply of necessary technicians, and there is no reason to suppose that automation technicians either now or in the future will not be as liberally forthcoming as they have been in the past.

The Bureaucracy

To the structure of this alleged new ruling class there has been added another component, the bureaucrats. Although what role they are supposed to play in the economy and in what manner they fuse with the managers, is never made concretely clear. Hitler’s Germany is often used as the classic example of managers, bureaucrats and political adventurers usurping the capitalist ruling class. But as was pointed out in a previous article on the “managerial revolution” there was never the slightest evidence to show that an economy other than capitalism had emerged or was emerging under the Fascist regime. It is true that the development of what is known as Monopoly Capitalism has been linked with the expansion of the economic functions of the state which in turn has engendered close contacts between the organisations of big business, chambers of commerce, etc., and the various state departments. Again large scale State investment for the provision of cheap raw material and essential services for the economy as a whole, has brought about an interlocking between parts of the state apparatus and industry. All of which reflects itself in capitalist parliaments and governmental policies. But this has not led to the elimination of the capitalist economy, nor has it led to its undermining but rather to its underpinning.

But even if the assumption was granted—and there is not any evidence for so doing—that managers, top ranking technicians, and boards of directors have displaced or will displace the big capital owners, does it follow that they constitute a new ruling class? Having defined class within the context of the subject, we have seen that a class is not merely a set of people organised around certain interests but a group of individuals who occupy a certain position in the economic structure of society, and so stand in certain relationship to another group in a specific mode of production. And the ruling group are those who via ownership are able to exercise control of the means of production. In what way then would managers who ousted the former owners constitute a new ruling class. The answer is that they would not. The social productive relations would remain unaltered. The essential features of the capitalist economy would remain and the production of surplus value and extended accumulation of capital would still be the dominant motives of those who now occupied the leading positions in the economy. In short they would still function as representatives of capital. It would still be the ruling class as we have defined it. All that it would mean is that the dominant section would be made up of different persons, and no more significant in fundamental change than the replacement of Jewish capitalists by Aryan capitalists. On such slender threads rests the grandiose assumptions of the managerial theorists. The claims put forward by Labourites and Tories on behalf of managerial society are rooted in political and propaganda purposes rather than in genuine investigation. But this and other matters must remain the subject of another article.

Ted Wilmott

Link to Part Three

The Soldier and Accountant (1957)

From the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a film about the building of a bridge by a campful of British prisoners in Japanese hands during the last war and about the commando expedition to blow it up.

There is a scene set in Ceylon, when the commandos are foregathering to choose the last of the four officers for the adventure. They call in a young Canadian — a Lieutenant Joyce—and the senior officer asks him what he did in peacetime. “ Sir,” replies the Canadian, “I was an accountant. That is, I was articled to an accountant. I sat all day adding up columns of figures and checking them. Somebody had already checked them before me and somebody checked them again after me.” The audience laughed. They were meant to laugh.

CROONERS

The lieutenant was, as they say, on to a good thing, for the stiff collar, stripe pants fuddy duddies sitting in banks and' insurance offices and accountants' chambers are easy enough meat for a little fun poking. Even the crooners have tried their hand at it. “There’s nothing.” sang Bing Crosby, “ Quite as grotesque as a man at a desk, looking outside at the sun!” and went on to ask. “Does he think that he’s having fun?" Of course, he is not; the man at the desk is merely doing a job which, although humdrum, is very necessary in this highly commercial world. (Banks pay their clerks to handle money because society today needs to have it handled. Likewise, the accountant is important (he often gets enough money to be very important). His job is to check a company’s books, to make sure that stocks and balance sheets are straight, that nobody is fiddling the guvnors and that the guvnors are not fiddling the shareholders. He is a man with years of training behind him and when he certifies a company balance sheet it is usually accepted without question by the shareholders, for the accountant is generally a man of a high standard of professional probity. (Although a few are not above a shady deal and some spend a lot of time working out ways in which their clients can slip through loopholes in the tax laws.)

Boring

As the young lieutenant pointed out, there is a lot of boring work involved in the accountant’s business. Worst of all, perhaps, is what is known as “calling,” when a clerk reads off amounts of money from one ledger whilst a companion checks a corresponding entry in another ledger. Articled clerks are doomed to this, day in and day out, for several years. The unlucky ones do not even have the break of travelling around checking the books of different companies, for some are so large that as soon as one check has finished it is time to start another.

The young men who take on this work seem to conform largely to a type. Many have an air of precarious gentility ; they sport umbrellas, with the approved cane handle. Often in conversation they hint at a sophistication which is not really there; with better luck, it seems, they might have been doctors or lawyers. That is the clue to it. Many of these fellows have been to fairly expensive schools but their parents could not afford to send them on to university. To people of their background it is essential, often for snob reasons, to “become a member of a profession" as apart from “getting a job.” Missing university has meant that law and medicine cannot be considered; the cheap way out of the dilemma is to take out articles to an accountant. (In most parts of England this can be done without putting up any money and the clerk gets some sort of a wage during his period of articled service.) So these young men for several years get an apprentice’s pay but unlike the apprentice they cannot make a cheerful display of their penury. Behold them any Saturday evening, drinking bitter in the local Rugby club bar; or any morning on the Tube into the City. Observe the seedy suits and the Daily Telegraph, meticulously folded underarm.

Unfair

When Lieutenant Joyce first appears in The Bridge on the River Kwai he is hungry for action, eager to do something exciting which he considers socially beneficial. At such times an accountant’s job does seem pretty poor stuff; no wonder Joyce is scornful. But really, the film is unfair. Consider the facts. This is a world where the necessities and luxuries of life are bought and sold, where nothing is made unless it can be sold. Because of all this buying and selling we have money. Because we have money we have banks, with clerks to keep the money flowing smoothly so that wages can be paid and goods exchanged. We have accountants to keep the books and see that nobody gets up to anything; we have policemen for the accountant to call in if anybody is up to anything. We have soldiers like Lieutenant Joyce to fight for the markets where the goods are sold and for the places where they find the raw materials which go to make the goods.

From any sane viewpoint, all these jobs are useless and wasteful; only a social set-up which starts from the underlying stupidity of commodity production could find any use for them. The film, of course, accepts without question the rightness of this set-up and is content to mock just one of capitalism’s futile occupations whilst glamourising another.

Madness

After all, if Lieutenant Joyce had survived the expedition and returned to Civvy Street he may have been asked what he had done in the war. “Sir,” he may have replied, “I was a soldier. A saboteur. I crawled and sweated through the stinking jungle, fighting disease and picking off leeches, watching my companions die. All this to destroy a bridge; a beautiful bridge, which had cost a lot of pain in the making. But if we had left it alone it would have been used by the other side in a war. It could have lasted for centuries but we blew it up.” We may ask : What is there to choose, in terms of benefits to humanity, between the work of a saboteur and an accountant’s clerk ?

Perhaps that question is best answered in the words of another character in the film, a British officer who witnesses the Bridge’s end. When it is all over he comes down to the river and looks at the destruction and the Japanese and British lying dead around him. He is furious with it all. “Madness!” he cries, “Madness!”

Ivan

A Social Critic In The Theatre (1957)

From the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

No playwright has been "in the news," in the popular sense, of recent times to the extent of Arthur Miller. His personal contact with two of America's most famous institutions; Miss Marilyn Monroe and the Un-American Activities Committee, has put him before the public gaze in a way that his ability as a writer would not. But for this we might hazard that his name would never have moved beyond the small and inconspicuous criticism. It would be a pity if his achievements as a dramatic writer were obscured by his more publicised activities. This, even at the risk of appearing ungallant to Miss Monroe.

Writers of Mr. Miller's abilities are rare, and those who combine them with a zest for social criticism are even rarer. Arthur Miller therefore is a controversial playwright. He believes in the Theatre as a social force, and deals with certain subjects in a way that might easily incur him the censure of many of those people whom he approaches as an artist.

Such a position for the playwright is far more precarious than for the novelist behind the printed page; the novelist has a public, but no audience, whereas the playwright standing (albeit metaphorically) in full view of them, is on trial for his artistic life and living. For people are less likely to accept what they see and hear as a group, than what they read as individuals.

Among American playwrights of the present day, Arthur Miller occupies a high place. His first successful play All My Sons (1947) was an indictment of war-profiteering and the philosophy of self-interest. Two years later he wrote Death of a Salesman. Here Miller sets out to show the contradiction between what many Americans think and the way they actually live. The "Salesman," Willy Loman, is a failure who, when he is not lamenting his fate, is extolling the virtues of "go-getting," "know-how," and all the other baubles of American jingoism. It is a virulent condemnation of the American way of life with its fetish of personal success at the expense of other values, and well exemplifies the way people can make a religion of social dogma.

When Mr. McCarthy was at his most ebullient (1953) Arthur Miller used the circumstances of a previous witch-hunt in American history, that which occurred at Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, to illustrate in The Crucible how a whole community can be disrupted by fear, ignorance and superstition combined with official dogmatism. The analogy with the Senator from Wisconsin and his inquisition is unmistakably obvious. Here is the same tight-lipped philosophy, the same calculated fanaticism depicted in the character of Deputy Governor Danforth that we have come to associate with McCarthy.

Arthur Miller's dramatic essay, A View from the Bridge, has recently been seen in this country. It is doubtful whether those who do not belong to Theatre clubs such as the 'Arts,' will have the opportunity of seeing it, owing to the restrictions imposed by the law.

That Arthur Miller is no Socialist need not be stressed here. Social critic though he is, there is nothing that could even remotely be considered revolutionary in his work. Nevertheless, writers of his stamp do help to ease the dead weight of social complacency. Even if it is only fractional and relatively of little significance, they at least make a visit to the Theatre more exciting for us than most. We experience the cool breeze of dissent as opposed to the stifling humidity of uncompromising acceptance.

Like many famous writers before him, Arthur Miller has at one time gone the "way of the transgressor" and courted the perils of the road to Moscow. Like them, he has suffered the pain of disillusionment, which has left him a wiser, though not we hope, a sadder man. In his own words, "I had to go to hell to meet the devil."

Unlike them, it is to be sincerely hoped that he will continue in, and develop his aim as a social critic, at the same time enriching the world of drama, and not sit at home with despair on the other side of the fire gate; like Arthur Koestler—waiting for the white mushroom-shaped cloud.

Ian Jones