News in Review: Two classes (1963)

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

At Home

Two classes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting to know you

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

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

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

Labour and the TSR2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abroad

Guiana must wait

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, this is unlikely at the present.

Jews in Russia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business

Investment, profit, wages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogger's Note:

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

I’m alright, Alec (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ivan

Letter From Vienna: Postscript on Skopje (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I learned of the earthquake in Yugoslavia and the terrible fate of the victims, it brought back to mind my own terrifying experiences in Vienna, as it must have reminded millions of others in the world, who survived the bombing of their homes and the carnage in the 1940s. The blind forces of nature could not then be blamed for it. No, these deeds were unspeakable crimes perpetrated by deliberate human design, scientifically organized and directed by the managers and other hirelings of capitalism, supported and blessed by the church!

That 20 years later this ogre of capitalist war should still have been able to stalk the earth, openly parade his armour, and boast of the ever-growing destructive power of the megation bombs and Polaris craft, will probably be one of the phenomena incomprehensible to a future society no longer afflicted with political mental inertia.

The suffering of the survivors of the earthquake in Yugoslavia has been temporarily mitigated, as usual under capitalism, by charity. Collections and other assistance have been organised by many countries, but when these helpful channels dry up, the surviving victims will, as usual, be left to their wretched fate.

Some details in connection with this disaster should be put on record, if only to nail the lie and show the hollowness of the assertion that capitalism has been abolished somewhere and replaced by a new and better social system. You may indeed ask how the mass of the people in Yugoslavia can be made to now accept a regime of despotism equal to that of Hitler—the squashing of democracy, the setting up of a Yugoslav Gestapo, forced labour camps, and prison for political opponents of the regime, supply the answer to that question. It is fear of persecution—the fate of Milovan Djilas' (seven years’ prison for free expression of opinion and publishing a book The New Class) it is government terror that makes people under ruthless dictatorship acquiesce in the horrible regime of State capitalism masquerading under the name of communism.

Among the many helpers of the earthquake victims, neighbouring Austria showed a quite remarkable zeal in assisting the great efforts to alleviate the distress. even though there is at all times great poverty, homelessness and helplessness in her own country. Poignant tales of human misery' and tragedies fill the columns of the daily Press. Who here has not read of evicted families with eight and more children seeking to spend the night in public parks or in ruined houses before being removed by the Police to some barracks? Every autumn every house in Vienna carries a big poster appealing for funds to help the needs and destitute by supporting the innumerable charitable institutions up and down the country. Our letter boxes are constantly filled with appeals for assistance to the countless local poor. But how much greater is the poverty behind the iron curtain and the helplessness in emergencies such as an earthquake!

So, in addition to all the funds the Viennese business firms and newspapers collected, and the trucks full of clothing, bedding, blankets, tents and toys sent to Skopje, a Welfare organisation under the auspices of the Arbeiler-Zeitung also invited seventy orphans to come to Vienna, where they would be taken care of as the guests of the organisation. Everything was prepared down to the minutest detail, and the children duly arrived at Marburg on the iron curtain border, where Austrian officials had previously arrived to receive the children and see them safely to Vienna. Here also the children were to have a grand reception by the Bürgermeister and a staff of welfare officials.

But—sad to relate the orphans never got beyond Marburg. Instead of proceeding to Vienna, they had to go back to the communist paradise. Not that there are no wonderful places in Yugoslavia, but these are not for the poverty-stricken wage slaves or the victims of earthquakes—they are for the new class, the new bourgeoisie.

Why had the orphaned children to be sent back?

Apparently the Yugoslav dictator and his close circle had been too busy with the preparations for a right royal reception of their Soviet visitors to he able to supervise and check up on all arrangements made by their underlings. Anyway, when the higher quarters learned of these particular welfare arrangement, the children’s exit from the communist paradise and their journey to “capitalist Austria” was stopped. The underlings in charge of the Skopje victims had received their instructions, plus lessons in communist superior “statesmanship" and diplomacy, the orphans had to remain in Yugoslavia, and Tito's preparations for his trip abroad (this time to America) on his luxury yacht, as befits a ruler, could proceed without further worries. What does the disappointment of poor children—not to speak of the zealous welfare organizers—matter to communist despots with axes to grind?

With humble expressions of regret, but undeterred by this snub, the Arbeiter-Zeitung sent all the clothing in a big truck-load to the Yugoslav children who of course were overjoyed with the gifts. According to a reporter, the coats and other garments were the first they had had in their lives. Obligingly, hardly any other newspaper commented on this episode and on the embarrassment of a so called communist government in its utter failure to cope with an emergency. With the exception of belatedly refusing the foreign help offered to the seventy Skopje orphans, this “communist ” government was not too proud to decline other western assistance and gifts to its poor people.

If, after 46 years of existence, further evidence was still needed to show the cold-blooded swindle, and demolish the impudent assertion that Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania and China are communist, recent developments and experiences there should provide that final evidence. Or will the working class, of Czechoslovakia, for example, for ever ignore such almost unbelievable episodes as those of the nine of the eleven prominent Czech communist politicians hanged in 1952, and now rehabilitated as not guilty of the accusations levelled against them 11 years ago? And will the fiasco of the Moscow so called Ideological Conference also be passed over in true capitalist style, like world-wars, as all in the days work?

Rudolf Frank

Finance and Industry: For the record (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the record

Britain's industrial revolution was powered by coal and forged in iron. It was the Darby's of Coalbrookdale, a family of ironmasters, who pioneered the technique of first coking the coal which in turn enabled the use of English ores; in less than half a century, coal and iron between them had transformed the face of England. Since then coal has lost ground to oil, but iron and steel continue to dominate the economy of world capitalism.

It was iron that provided a material strong enough to stand up to steam and so paved the way for Watt’s engines. Industry was able to get away from the rivers and streams and its dependence on waterwheels. Hundreds of miles of canals were built in no time to cope with the increased demands of the blast furnaces for coal. Roads were built to carry away the manufactures.

In the I850's, iron gave way to steel with the developments introduced by Bessemer and Siemens of using “blowers” to raise the furnace temperature and get rid of the impurities in the iron. Since then there have been further improvements, using electric furnaces for special steels and, very recently, the use of oxygen instead of air for the blast. At the same time, as the industry has grown bigger and bigger, more use has been made of the integrated plant principle whereby all the processes of steelmaking are concentrated on the same site- hence the growth of the huge complexes which are the dominant feature today.

These installations need vast capital resources. United States Steel, the biggest producer in the world, has a share capital of over £1,000 million and its nearest rival. Bethlehem Steel, more than £500 million. The world is now scoured for iron-ore; mountains of it are literally taken away and transported thousands of miles to the furnaces. Marvels of engineering construction are built to load and unload it and bulk carriers of up to 100,000 tons ply a ferry service across the oceans. More and more, the furnaces are migrating to the coast to eliminate transport costs—the result is the huge new plants at Newport and Dunkirk, and the proposed giant complex at Rotterdam.

In the Darby’s time, a firm was big if it produced a thousand tons of iron a year; nowadays it is in economic danger if it produces less than a million, or even two million, tons. Steel is still one of the pillars of capitalism’s economy—it is still the barometer that can forecast whether the economy is set fair, or there are storms ahead, or just a period of doldrums.

As usual under capitalism, the tendency is towards bigger and bigger units. There are still absorptions and amalgamations going on, and more and more does an annual output of 2 million tons seem the minimum unit for present day efficiency and competitiveness. In the following table, showing the “top twenty” producers in the world excluding Russia and China, the minimum is actually about 2$ million tons a year.

The most striking impression from the figures is, of course, the overwhelming preponderance of the American firms, particularly U.S. steel, which on its own has a greater output of steel than the whole of the U.K. It is also interesting to note the apparently greater fragmentation of the British industry. United Steel is the only British firm to appear, in the table and there is only one other, the Steel Company of Wales, in the next ten, whereas there are three further German companies, three French, and one Japanese.

We hope to take a further look into the international steel industry in a later issue.

Rivalry v. Safety

We do not need to labour the point about the intense competition existing at present in the aviation industry. What with the excitement over Australia’s decision to buy American TFX's instead of British TSR-2's, the race between the Anglo/French Concord and the U.S. Mach 2 airliner; and the current struggle of B.A.C. to get their V.C.-10 into the air commercially before the Douglas D.C.-9; the aeroplane manufacturers must really be having a worrying time of it.

It was thus a major setback for B.A.C. when their prototype V.C.-I0 crashed recently, apparently as a result of trouble with the tail assembly.

As is well known, the V.C.-10 carries on a technique, engines set well back in the rear, that was developed originally by the French company, Sud-Aviation, with their Caravelle. And it is with Sud- Aviation that B.A.C. are developing the new supersonic Concord.

It has also been known for some time that the V.C.-10 has been running into snags with this particular tail assembly—only a few months ago B.A.C. announced publicly that they had had to modify it. Strong rumour also has it that the Caravelle went through similar troubles in its early development stages. What more natural, then, that B.A.C. should ask Sud-Aviation—after all, their collaborators in the Concord—for details of their earlier experiences of putting engines under the tail?

And what sort of an answer do you think they got? A very dusty one, according to an Insight report in the Sunday Times of October 27 -“Sud-Aviation would disclose nothing.”

A few months later, the V.C.-10 crashed, killing all its crew. There may conceivably be other crashes before the makers discover what is happening to the tail assembly.

In the meantime, the Caravelle flies on, with hardly a competitor. And the longer the V.C.-10 takes to get commercially off the ground the longer will Sud-Aviation enjoy this happy state of affairs. Co-operation may be all very well but under capitalism one must be very careful not to carry it too far.

Stan Hampson

50 Years Ago: The taxation of land values (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In dealing with the question of Taxation of Land Values it must be remembered that the advocates of this measure, from Henry George to Joseph Hyder, always assumed the retention of capitalism in all its other features.

Under such conditions there is no difference in principle between taxing land and taxing lace. Both are cases of the Governmental powers being used to take wealth from members of society for general purposes—as wise old Benjamin Franklin saw.

Taxation is, of course, necessary under capitalism, and the only question is, how shall the “burden” be apportioned among the taxpayers—the capitalist class. The land-owning section are quite sure the “burden” should not be placed on them, while the industrial capitalists are equally certain that they should not be called upon to pay. Hence the minor quarrel between them over taxes.

But under capitalism the joining together of these two sections into a land-owning industrial capitalist group is steadily increasing. For them the problem is solved. From the general capitalist standpoint the portion of wealth best able to bear the “burden” of taxation is land, as it disturbs the production and distribution of commodities— the great factor of capitalism—less than any other method of raising the sum required. Hence large landowners who happen to be still more largely interested in industry, favour taxation of land values, to the great bewilderment of “the man in the street,” who finally explains a landowner being in favour of taxing land by the theory that he is ”a good man.”

Except, then, as an indication of the development of capitalism, and the concentration of both land and industrial capital into fewer hands, taxation of land values, even up to 20s. in the £, no more leads to Socialism than would taxation of toffee. On the contrary, it would merely be one of the steps in the more efficient organisation of capitalism for the benefit of the capitalists.

['The Forum: Taxation of Land Values' by Jack Fitzgerald, December 1913 Socialist Standard.]

A Tory View of China (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article in the Sunday Times on October 6th Sir Fitzroy Maclean, M.P., described the conditions he found on a recent visit and expressed the view that the peasants are better off than they were before the Communist Party got control of the government:

It is true that by one method or another they are regimented and made to toe the line. But they do not, as they used to, have the fear of actual starvation always hanging over their heads. Nor are they perpetually harassed by the rent collector and the money-lender or by the marauding war lords and bandits who caused such havoc.

He sees China developing militarily and economically and aiming to dominate Asia. He also noted that, despite the abuse the Chinese and Russian Communists hurl at each other there is one thing both countries (and all other countries) have in common:

In China, as elsewhere, how you live and what you buy depends on how much money you have. And who, it will be asked, has the money? The answer, as in the Soviet Union, is: the privileged classes, Officials, high-ranking officers, scientists, technicians, skilled workers and so on. But to those must be added a small and peculiarly Chinese category: the Communist Capitalists. These, surprisingly enough are the former owners of, for example, factories, whose enterprises have been taken over by the State and who receive annually from the State as compensation a percentage of the capital value of the enterprise. As they are also very often employed as managers of the factory, some of them are extremely well off.

Edgar Hardcastle

BEA’s hidden profits (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In case any of our readers should misunderstand the intention behind the phrase “ . . . B.E.A. pointed out how generous a deal its shareholders have got . . in October’s News In Review, we publish the following clarification.

There are no shareholders or stockholders in B.E.A. or B.O.A.C. so there are no individual investors who have an interest in whether the corporations make a profit or loss.

Under the Air Corporations Act 1949 Sections 9 and 10 the corporations were authorized to issue stock (subject to permission having been given by the Treasury) and the stock carried Treasury guarantee for interest and capital. Both corporations had issues of stock. For example, B.O A. 3% stock 1960/70, B.O.A. 2½% stock 1977/82. However, under a later act, the Finance Act, 1956, the corporations were permitted to raise money by means of loans from the Exchequer with the result that these Exchequer advances have replaced the old arrangements of stock issues.

But, even under the old arrangements there were no investors who had any interest in whether the corporations made a loss or a profit. Though the stock bore the name of B.O.A. or B.E.A., they were fixed interest stocks and the interest and capital were guaranteed by the Treasury. In this respect the air corporations were following the arrangements which are fairly general throughout the nationalised industries.

Editorial Committee.

Unemployment in Yugoslavia (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of people have asked us for the source of the figures on unemployment in Yugoslavia given in the September SS. The figures were taken from the International Labour Review's statistical supplement, June 1963. According to the supplement the figures show registered unemployed from "employment office statistics". It is interesting to note that Peking Review (27'9/63), an English language magazine from China, gives the following figures in an article on Yugoslavia. “According to official statistics,” says the article, “ in February, 1963 the number of the unemployed reached 339.000, or about 10 per cent of the number of the employed. In addition. every year many workers go abroad seeking work.”

Adam Buick

SPGB Meetings (1963)

Party News from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not enough gold? (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are being asked to concern ourselves with another crisis, caused this time by the decline in the American gold reserve and by the steps the American Government proposes to take to stop the loss.

The alarm was sounded in an article in the Economist of July 27 of this year, and the problem has since been discussed at conferences attended by financial authorities of ten leading industrial countries at Washington in October, followed by meetings in Paris last month.

A natural reaction of those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of the problem is to leave it to the experts to tell us what to do. Unfortunately for that view the “experts” are unable to agree on the solution, or even on the problem. As recently as a year ago the late Per Jacobsson, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, speaking in Washington, said there wasn't anything to worry about. The Daily Telegraph on September 18, 1962, reported him as saying that “there were indications the world was approaching a state of economic equilibrium solid enough to withstand monetary tension." In particular he believed that it would be possible "to assure a stable exchange rate structure without altering the price of gold," and that "the ample monetary reserves of individual countries, together with central bank credits, and the increased facilities of the Fund, provided formidable lines of defence against any pressures that might arise.”

But the Economist article, referred to above, denies everything that Dr. Jacobsson said and demands early action to do the things he said were not necessary. It also threw in the interesting titbit that the banking experts do not know their job at all—"The difficulty lies with bankers all over the world who still do not really understand modern monetary economics.” (It will be interesting to look later at some of the odd economies of the Economist),

The Financial Times on September 9th added the further observation that the central bankers (who according to the Economist don't understand what they are doing) cannot ever agree among themselves. It pointed out that while the bankers of the Bank for International Settlements "dismissed the problem of international liquidity as artificial,” the other lot in the International Monetary Fund "takes a very different line," and the paper calls on governments to take action to stimulate demand. The Financial Times actually quotes the late Dr. Jacobsson as having urged courses the reverse of those he was advocating in September, 1962. So much for the experts.

What then is the problem? It is a truism to say that the exports of goods and services of all the countries in the world balance the imports of all the countries in the world: two ways of looking at the same thing. But in practice any one country may at a given time be exporting insufficient to pay for its imports, or may be exporting more than enough to pay for its imports: again, the total “surpluses ” of exports over imports balance in amount the total "deficits."

What then happens to a country which is importing more than it can pay for by its exports? If it had large gold reserves or reserves of dollars or other currencies it might use them to pay for the excess of imports. Or it might pay for them out of loans or gifts or capital investments from one of the countries running an excess of exports over imports: the United States is such a country, in spite of which it is in difficulties. American exports do exceed its imports, but the amount of American money spent abroad in aid, loans, investments, tourist spending and the maintenance of armed forces has been so great that the huge American gold reserve has been running down at the rate of $3,000 million to $3,500 million a year, and the American Government proposes to cut its foreign spending deficit by that amount. The Economist admits that in theory this should not matter because other countries running a surplus of exports could themselves step up their own foreign loans, investments and did to the countries running a deficit. "But everybody knows that the pattern of deterioration will not work itself out with this marvellous neatness, and that all the finance ministries of the world are not sufficiently enlightened to react to it with absolute logic."

Instead, thinks the Economist, the developed countries which could step in to fill the gap will not do so but will start cutting their imports and production to protect their own reserves of gold, etc.; and the underdeveloped countries will have to cut their own development programmes because the capital they need from outside will not be forthcoming. Then there could be a general world lessening of trade, with an increase of unemployment as has happened so often in the past century and a half.

To Socialists this is just another demonstration of what an anarchic, unstable and wasteful system capitalism is, and of the need to end it and get the world operating on sane lines. Not so to the Economist and the rest of the experts. For the writer in the Economist, “the best and most idealistic method” is not the commonsense one of ending a system which does on repeating crises of this kind but the idea of establishing "some new international central bank that would create some $3,000 or $3,500 millions a year of new deposits with itself which it could put to the credit of underdeveloped countries."

This makes sense to the Economist because they believe that it is all due to there not being enough money, but while the Economist waits to form still another bank to offer to lend still more money, the Guardian city editor on September 30 was reporting that one of the existing two international bodies, the World Bank, is facing the dilemma of having money to lend but not being able to find borrowers to whom it is safe to lend it:

  The problem is not a lack of money but rather a lack of borrowers—at least of borrowers who can meet the stiff terms on which the bank has so far always insisted when making loans.

Despite this the Economist believes that there is not enough money about and that this is due to scarcity of gold:
 There is at least some element of truth in the ridiculous thought that if some aged prospector in Australia in the last century had made a luckier strike in the outback, or if the ancient Egyptians had given the first mystical monetary significance to some commodity which had subsequently proved to be more easy to produce than gold, we would not now face quite the same danger of unnecessary restriction of world production and trade as we face today.

Which goes lo show how little the Economist understands about the capitalist system which it defends so stoutly. During the past 150 years capitalism has boomed when gold production was rising and when it wasn’t, and slumped into depression when gold production was rising and when it wasn’t. And in the course of history governments have indeed tried some other commodities, including silver, without in any way avoiding booms and slumps.

What the Economist does not recognise is that the exchange rate between commodities, including gold and silver, depends basically on their values. The total world output of silver, measured by the tonnage produced, is six or seven times the output of gold, but the value of gold (on the current price relationship) is about 28 times the value of silver, ounce for ounce. So if the world used silver for its reserves instead of gold, or if gold were so plentiful than an ounce of gold could be mined as cheaply as an ounce of silver, the gold or silver reserves of the world would need to be something like 28 times as large by tonnage as they are now, the price of each ounce being one twenty-eighth of the present price of gold. The Economist would consequently still be saying, during recurrent balance of payment difficulties, that it was all due to the insufficiency of the then not-so-precious metal.

In the meantime, the Russian Government is helping to lessen the immediate problem by using the hundreds of millions of dollars of its gold reserve to buy wheat in Canada, U.S.A. and elsewhere because of the failure of the Russian harvest. This throws light on the real nature of the problem. Vast quantities of wheat and other foodstuffs have been produced in those countries and held in store because it was surplus to market demand and could not be sold profitably.

Russian gold has been there all through the years that the American Government has been holding the unsaleable stocks, and the Russians could have bought if they had wanted to. They didn't want to because they, too, had surplus foods in years of good harvest. And all the lime, side by side with private hoarders who hold enormous quantities of gold, there have been hundreds of millions of people (including some in America and Russia) who would have been glad to have more food but lacked the money, and they lacked the money not because of a mistake by the ancient Egyptians but because capitalism divided the population into owners and non-owners, into rich and poor.

The ideal and only practical solution to a problem that capitalism cannot solve (except in the temporary fashion of each expansion of production and trade being followed by a contraction) is to get rid of production for profit and for the market.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is Socialism? (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is often criticized for not being “practical ” or for not putting forward any proposals for today. But this is not the point.

The Socialist Party does not exist to campaign for petty reforms within the capitalist system. It is the instrument which the working class can use to gain control of the machinery of government. Once in control the workers can use this machine to dispossess the capitalist class by declaring all the means of life the common property of all society. This will allow the workers to take over the industries and to keep production going in the ways they will have worked out beforehand.

As soon as the last capitalist has been dispossessed then classes will have ceased to exist. It will no longer make sense to speak of a working class and a capitalist class. Everybody, including the ex-capitalists, will have the same status as free producers. Not that things will immediately be startlingly different from what they were before. Production will have to be kept going. Although such jobs as bank clerks and ticket inspectors would disappear, engineers would remain engineers and, perhaps, railwaymen, railwaymen.

The main point is that we today don’t know and can't really imagine what conditions will be like immediately prior to the capture of political power so that we can't say exactly what the problems that will have to be faced afterwards will be. But we earn say this. The conversion of the means of life from the private property of an exploiting class to the common property of society will establish the framework within which can be solved once and for all the problems which the working class face today precisely because they are the working class. Even today we can see that the world is quite capable of producing enough for everybody if only production were arranged with this object in mind. Socialism will allow this to happen.

The economic problem which Socialist Society will have to solve is that of organizing those able and willing to work to produce the food, clothing, houses and all the other articles men need to live. This problem is by no means small and it is important to realise what the problem involves. It has three aspects:

First, what articles are to be produced? Clearly there will be room for a wide choice here. Socialist society will have to decide what it needs most.

Second, how shall these articles be produced and by whom? There is also a wide range of possibilities here: mass production, handicraft and the many combinations of both.

Third, how shall those articles produced be divided among the world’s population?

Though capitalism faces the same problem these questions are not consciously asked and the answer has always been provided by the impersonal workings of capitalism's laws. Socialism will allow society to ask and answer these questions consciously. This is what planning means. Men will have control over the means of production to use them as they think fit. Under capitalism there can be no genuine planning as the market is the real king. Firms turn out goods and hope the market will absorb them. Socialist society will estimate what will be needed in advance and then produce it. Allowances for changes in taste and natural disasters can be made by producing more than is needed as a kind of insurance.

One of the most important problems to be faced is how much of production should be articles to be consumed directly by the people and how much should be devoted to renewing and expanding the factories and places where the other articles are produced. The point is this: the same problems which the laws of supply and demand and capital accumulation arc supposed to solve under capitalism will still have to be faced by society under Socialism. However, the abolition of private property and the conversion of the means of life into the common property of mankind will allow society to set about tackling questions of economic organisation in a scientific way. This emphasis on planning means that the information available will have to be the most accurate possible. Social planning will also raise the question of how much social control should be exercised from the centre and how much from the locality. This is a further problem Socialist society will have to meet. Socialism will not, of course, be a static society. Changes in ways of producing things, ways of living and behaving will continue. Just as living patterns have changed under capitalism in the last fifty years or so with the invention of television, wireless and the like so will there be similar changes under Socialism.

As soon as the capitalist system has been abolished distribution will be direct. This means that money will not intervene. It will have become redundant as soon as common ownership has been established.

How articles are distributed will to a large extent depend on how many articles and of what sorts there are to distribute. It may well be the case that for a short time it will not be possible for people to take as much of every article as they think they might need. The reason for this is simple, it takes time to produce articles and even longer to build factories and cultivate fields so as to be able to produce more. In this situation it would be for people to adjust their requirements to what was available, recognising that such shortages were temporary anyway and that eventually production would match up with distribution as the new society progressively removed the obstacles left over from capitalism.

Another change will be in the field of “government." Government of people will disappear. This means that those parts of the government machine which actually make it a government machine, namely, armed forces, law courts, etc., will disappear as soon as possible after the capture of political power. This does not meant that all administration will disappear; on the contrary; the idea of social control is essential to Socialism. It just means that the coercive government machine will have been transformed merely into a clearing house for settling social affairs. This clearing house will be a part of the administrative machinery through which the economy will be managed.

With the disappearance of politics and the political state will disappear also political parties. This does not mean there will be no disagreements; of course there will. Men and women will directly participate in discussing and organizing production for what they consider to be their own benefit. This is why the Socialist Party insists that you cannot have Socialism without the great majority of people desiring it and understanding its implications. The working class will establish Socialism themselves; they cannot rely on leaders and “experts." So, in addition to common ownership. Socialism means that there will be democratic control of the means of life. Democracy is just as much a fundamental part of Socialism as is common ownership.

This, then, is the Socialist alternative to capitalism. Socialists are not Utopians. We know that such a system is possible. Everything necessary is present save one thing: a desire on your part to have such a system.

Adam Buick

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in the past, we are making an urgent appeal to Members and sympathisers, to ensure that as many people as possible obtain and read the Socialist Standard. This special appeal is made each December and the subscription form in this issue is a simple way in which to fill in names and addresses, and send off to Head Office with the appropriate postal order. Many of us have saved a few extra shillings to spend, as most workers have some days off at the end of the month. Why not spend some of the savings by sending somebody a years supply of the Standard? It is hoped that new readers will not only pass on their copy, but will order copies to be sent elsewhere. It is well worth trying.

Mid-Herts Group are holding two meetings—one on Thursday, December 5 and Thursday, January 2. Details with Meeting Notices. Recently the Group held a meeting attended by the Central Organiser. It was decided not to form a branch at present, and to attempt to increase activities, e.g., fortnightly meetings (instead of monthly), alternating between Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City, perhaps with the assistance of Wembley Branch members.

Belfast Branch (WSP) has agreed to contest at least five seats in the Municipal Elections to be held next May. Candidates have been selected for three wards—Duncairn, Shankhill and Pothinger. Two other Wards are under consideration. Shankhill and Duncairn have been contested by the Party before, but this will be the first attempt at Pothinger—a Ward where a lot of effort has been concentrated and where Socialist Standard sales are very good. There will be Labour, Unionist and Communist opponents and the Party will take the opportunity of putting the Socialist alternative to all the reformist groups. The campaign has already started with literature sales drives and the distribution of leaflets.

Open-air meetings in Customs House Square are well established with audiences averaging 50 each Sunday. Questions are good and the meetings continue until dark. This behoves well for the Spring and Summer when the party hopes to hold week-night meetings there. The Sunday meetings now commence at 3.30 p.m. Despite weekly challenges, none have been accepted by the Labour or Communist Parties. The local organiser of the N.C.L.C., Mr. Andrew Boyd, has agreed to a Public Debate in the New Year-- "Which Way to Socialism? " Further details in January.

Swansea Branch is active, more so now that several members are settling in the vicinity which makes it easier for the work to be done. Comrade Harris recently gave a talk to the Students of Swansea University College on "Why Socialists should Oppose the Labour Party.” Several articles have appeared in students magazines, written by Party members. Comrades Mellor and Brain recently attended an open-air meeting of the Nazi-Panzer Group and distributed Socialist Party literature. It is hoped, in the near future, to combine a talk in the University with a public meeting in the town. All in all the Comrades in Swansea are optimistic and looking forward to much future activity.

Phyllis Howard

Editorial: Claims and counter claims (1963)

Editorial from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is traditional that all sides put a brave face on it at election time. Only rarely does a defeated candidate admit that he has taken a beating; it is more usual that, after a bit of smart juggling with the voting returns, he claims some sort of victory, or at least a portent of a future victory.

This is what happened at the first of the by-elections to be fought since Sir Alec Douglas-Home came to power. Luton was a sore blow for the Conservatives; after all, the voters there have, by their restricted standards, done not too badly under Tory rule. The only comfort the new Prime Minister could offer over the Luton result was that his party had suffered similar defeats at by-elections in 1958 yet had won all the seats back at the next general election.

The Labour Party had the same sort of job to do over Kinross, where Douglas-Home got a vote rather better than he probably expected. The Tories said that the result marked a new chapter in their fortunes. Mr. Wilson preferred to remind us that Kinross was a safe Tory seat anyway and to claim that Luton was the more significant result. He may well turn out to be right.

All round satisfaction, then, and all round confidence that both sides are sure to win the next general election.

But one of them, of course, has to lose. The mock confidence which politicians assume when they discuss their chances of forming the next government is nothing but a smoke screen; they all believe that to concede defeat before the count has been taken will discourage their supporters and so cost them a lot of votes. So they whistle, albeit sometimes in the dark.

Thus the merry game of claim and counter-claim goes on. And for what? During the Kinross by-election, Douglas-Home gave out what the press was pleased to call his manifesto. He intended, he said, to “ . . . regulate imports of cereals and meat to produce a steadier and more stable market.” (Kinross, of course, has a lot of farmers). He will ". . . bring our industries up to date and make our railways and roads the best in the world . . .  see that higher education is open to every boy and girl in Britain who is qualified to take advantage of it . . . speed up the rate of house building, slum clearance and modernisation . . .  continue to look after pensioners and all those in need.”

All very familiar. All very much as expected. No politician dare enter the arena without a brief case full of such promises. Political battles are largely a matter of which side can offer the most attractive sounding programme without leaving themselves open to the counter-punch line that they are irresponsibly cadging for votes.

But whichever side wins the battle, the end result is to all intents and purposes the same. The needs of capitalism itself often wipe out many of the promises and those that survive and come onto the Statute Book have little, if any, effect upon the lives of the people who have been persuaded to vote for them. Capitalism grinds on, leaving the mass of its people to be exploited by a privileged few, who do very well out of the arrangement.

The key to social progress is the level of knowledge and understanding which the masses attain. When they begin to see through the promises and the posturing of their leaders, the first gleam of hope for the better life will be on the horizon. In the meantime, there is unaltering comfort for capitalism. As long as there are results like those at Luton, Kinross, Dundee and the rest capitalism will continue; whether under a Labour or Conservative government is unimportant.

The Passing Show: "Double-Think" (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

When George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four, he was concerned in particular with what he called “double-think.” This was the term used to illustrate the crazy practice of reconciling one's self to an evil by equating it with its opposite, summed up in such terms as “War is Peace." What impressed Socialists when reading Orwell's book was that some at least of the facets mentioned in it were with us already, particularly “doublethink." Private property society has always had its double-think to help justify its existence to the underdogs, but double-think has become sharpened and enhanced under capitalism to a degree.

Take "War is Peace” for example. Countless times have we been told that we must arm to the teeth to preserve peace, never mind the abundant evidence to show the futility of such action that it does anything but preserve what uneasy peace we may enjoy. Labour, Liberal and Tory parties have all preached the same tragic drivel, and the working class have largely agreed with them.

And should war come, there will no doubt be plenty of them now to urge us to “fight for peace” (another bit of double-think), or rather for the recovery of the peace which their policies have so blatantly failed to preserve. But by then they will have quietly forgotten their previous words. In the meantime, they will continue to vote for “defence” expenditure (more double-think; no power ever has "offence” expenditure), and assure us how much in our interests it all is.

Propaganda goes on the whole time to keep us conditioned to the idea. Sometime, it is more of an undertone, but it is there nevertheless. An example of this was the row which blew up recently over the Australian government's decision to order the American TFX bomber to equip its air-force instead of the British TSR-2. In a subsequent attack on the Tory Government, Labour M.P. Denis Healey said:

  It is said that the whole (TSR-2) programme will cost us about £1,000 millions, which works out at £20 millions for every aircraft ordered . . .  does this make sense in military terms, particularly when the army is still crying out . . .  for helicopters and other transport aircraft which could be bought for only a tiny fraction of the sum? ” (Guardian, 5/11 /63.)

You get our meaning? Mr. Healey did not spend precious minutes arguing a case for armaments as such. The whole assumption behind his statement was that, of course, you agreed they were desirable. It was just a question of which armaments, when, and how much they would cost. Note in addition how you are asked to believe that it is your money which is at stake and that therefore you have an interest in seeing how it is spent.

But in truth, such is not for you. An interest like that is for the capitalist class and their spokesmen, like Mr. Healey, because the colossal sums spent on war weapons as well as other state expenditure cannot by any stretch of the imagination come from workers’ pockets. Workers get their wage packets and the rest belongs to the capitalist class, but strenuous efforts are made to delude workers otherwise. For without their support, armaments are impossible. Indeed, without it, so is capitalism. There’s the lesson to learn.


Hypocrisy

There was once and still is a man called Dr. Nkrumah who was imprisoned by the British but later became prime minister of the new West African state of Ghana. Later still he became Ghana's first president when it was declared a republic.

Not long after his rise to premiership, ugly rumours began to circulate about his dictatorial ambitions. Some of his more outspoken opponents just “disappeared” and threats and intimidation were levelled against others. During his lifetime as premier, the Ghanaian parliament passed in 1958 the infamous Preventive Detention Act which enabled his government to imprison for up to five years without trial, anyone considered a danger to the state.

Now we read that this act has been amended to add yet another five years to the period of imprisonment where the for release under the old act. “A distasteful necessity,” claimed the minister of defence in his support of the new move. Now where have we heard such words before? Ah, yes. In South Africa recently when similar powers were given to the Verwoed government.

And talking of South Africa, this brings us to the whole point. There was another of those demonstrations in Trafalgar Square on November 3rd, this time in protest against apartheid. Among the many messages of sympathy and support was one from none other than—Dr. Nkrumah. Somebody once said that those who live in glass houses should never throw stones, but clearly this does not apply to capitalist politicians. Cant, humbug and hypocrisy are political meat and bread to them. Nkrumah is certainly no exception.


The Duke again

The Duke of Edinburgh certainly gets around and simply loves making speeches. On October 30 he spoke at the Coal Industry Society’s luncheon, on the next day at a flight safety conference, and on November 5 at a nature conservation study group. A record enough to turn any politician green with envy, you might think, though it was the first of these speeches which interested us most.

“How much longer could we go on exploiting every feature of this country for gain?” he demanded to know, and continued : “Is it possible to reconcile the national need to increase prosperity with the national need to use this prosperity for the benefit of the human population?'’ He said he did not pretend to know the answer, but a few thoughts do occur to us.

First of all “we"; if by that he means the majority of us [we] do not, in fact cannot, exploit any aspect of this or any other country for gain. We are the working class, and all that we “gain” from our labours is a wage packet. That doesn’t make us very prosperous. Conversely, of course, there is the other ten per cent., and this includes the Duke, who do the exploiting and reap the benefits of ease and comfort. This other “we,” if they were honest, would answer the Duke's leading question with the words: "For just as long as we can." Or, to put it another way. “For as long as the workers are mugs enough to let us.”

Blessed are the Poor . . .

Who said that? Well whoever said it, there's one body which doesn’t believe it, and that is the Church of England. The total revenue to the Church Commissioners for the financial year ending March 31 was over £17 millions, of which more than £9 millions was from stock exchange investments and about £5½ millions from real estate rentals. In fact, stock exchange and property deals have more than doubled the Commissioners' income in the past fifteen years. Their capital assets are valued at more than £300 millions.

Rich, very rich, you would say? So would we, but not the Commissioners. Another report followed a few days after their financial one, telling us that they were not really wealthy after all. Apparently the Commissioners contribute only about half of the money needed to keep the Church working. Be that as it may, it does not really concern us. A fool and his money may soon be parted, but what interests us is where his huge sums of money come from in the first place. There is only one answer— from the exploitation of the working class.

Eddie Critchfield

The Joys of Independence (1963)

Book Review from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Morning After by Brian Crozier (Methuen, 36s.).

The joys of becoming an independent country are, by and large, illusory for the mass of the peoples of the “liberated” countries and not worth the effort and sacrifice so often involved in achieving it. This is a theme that the S.P.G.B. has been plugging throughout its history. We did not need to wait till after the "subject peoples” had experienced the frustrations of independence to come to our conclusions, any more than we needed to wait for the emergence of forced labour camps or the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact to prove that the Soviets were not going to introduce Socialism into Russia.

Of course, this attitude was regarded as cynical and brought us no popularity either among the people who were to be “liberated” or among the left-wing parties of the west who (except when they were in power, of course) were often in the van of the freedom movement. Nor shall we gain any popularity among the readers of this book if we point out that we could see it all coming.

Nevertheless, this book is a valuable one and worth reading. For Socialists it provides a considerable amount of evidence to support the case we make. For others it may prove something of an eye- opener.

Mr. Crozier has no difficulty in showing that in many of the countries that have thrown out the British or the French or the Dutch the lot of the average worker, far from being better than in Imperial days, is actually worse. He gives the example of Burma where four years after independence the average worker was earning £13 16s. per, not week, not even month, but year. Twelve years earlier, under British rule, the figure was £24 14s. Nothing to write home about, but the Burmese workers can hardly claim to have done very well out of the change for which they struggled. In Indonesia, a country with fantastic natural wealth, the author quotes President Sukarno’s own paper as admitting: “A city worker who only makes 6.50 Rupiah a day can never afford a litre of rice at 8 RP. He therefore cannot even support a family,” i.e., not even on rice-bowl standards. It must be comforting to a worker in Jakarta to watch his children going hungry and reflect that at least they have expelled the Dutch.

The author also has little difficulty in showing that on the freedom front most of these countries make as poor a showing as on the economic one. When one thinks of political opponents being tried in chains in the Courts of Ghana (where Nkrumah's strong-arm man was able to send his wife on a spending spree to London to buy, among other things, a £3,000 gold bed) one is almost tempted to forget (as one should not) the quite recent atrocities of the British and French in places like Kenya or Algeria. The author does not mention an item which was quoted in this journal a year or two ago about trade unionists being imprisoned and flogged in the Pakistan of General Ayub Khan, whom he regards as one of the less evil of the rulers thrown up by independence, for the crime of striking for better working conditions. One wonders if these poor devils felt the lash any less painful because it was used on the orders of a fellow Pakistani and not of an alien Briton.

There is a tendency, and Mr. Crozier is not free from it, to suggest that dictatorship is really quite good for the emergent countries or at worst, a necessary evil. This is, of course, an insult to the workers of these countries who deserve their despots no more than the European workers of Hitlerite Germany or Franco Spain. But in general this book does a useful job in showing the futility of the nostrum of independence for the working class. Would that he showed some awareness of the need for a revolutionary change in the social scene in backward and advanced countries alike.

L. E. Weidberg