News in Review: America Votes (1966)

The News in Review column from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

America Votes

The mid-term elections in America provided the customary festival for the devotees of the Great Man Theory.

Disgruntled Democrats were ready to blame President Johnson for their losses. The Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent passed on a report that Democratic leaders in Michigan were thinking about opposing Johnson as their Presidential candidate in 1968.

On the other side, jubilant Republicans surveyed their leaders — Reagan, Romney, Percy, Nixon—and began planning the build-up to present one of them as the nation's saviour at the polls the year after next.

Whichever party is defeated at the election, the Great Man Theory remains unbeaten. The Democrats who now blame Johnson for their setbacks are conveniently forgetting that they once adored him as the man who would build the Great Society. The only remedy they have to offer is to peddle the same sort of nonsense about another man.

In the same way, the Republicans who are now come to praise men like Reagan and Percy may yet stay to bury them in unforgiving recrimination.

This is a familiar spectacle. Capitalism’s leaders are always being credited with more power over the system than they actually have. No man, and no government, has ever been able to control capitalism; in the end the system wins.

When we have an election in which the votes reflect a developing knowledge of that fact, we shall be somewhere near getting rid of the problems the great men are always promising, and always failing, to solve.

The “new” NAZIS

A small, black cloud has been observed over the politics of Western Germany. Coinciding with the fall of Ludwig Erhard, there are signs of a growing support for parties which resemble the old Nazis, and some of whose leaders were followers of Hitler.

In particular, the recent electoral successes of the National Democratic Party in Hesse have given cause for concern. And more than one eyebrow has been raised at the fact that Erhard’s successor Kiesinger was himself a member of the Nazi Party.

How far is the surprise and concern justified?

All capitalist parties stimulate the fallacies of patriotism among their working class. This patriotism is only a short step from extreme nationalism, express ing itself in violence and dictatorship.

The last war, of course, was supposed to have finished dictatorship. Yet the so-called peace settlement, part of which divided Germany into two, provided a fertile field for nationalist propaganda there. The NDP is taking full advantage of this, and patriotic German workers are receptive.

Capitalist parties continually promise to solve the workers’ problems and when they fail, as fail they must, the workers all too often decide that political democracy itself has failed.

In this situation, the parties have often fallen into confusion and bitter internal quarrels, heightening the impression that they are crooks and muddlers.

The failure of, and the squabbles in, the Christian Democratic Union, and now the fall of Erhard, have given/the new Nazis every chance of making their point.

As long as capitalism lasts there can be no security for democracy. Capitalism itself provides the tools with which demagogues can undermine democratic rights. The political ignorance by which capitalism lives is always ready to be exploited.

The NDP is at present small and has no influence. But it is hopeful, and perhaps with good reason.

Christian Communists

While Dr. Hewlett Johnson—the Red Dean of Canterbury—was alive it was never clear which had the greater claim to him: the Communist Party as an outstanding capture from the Church or the Church as a prominent convert from the Communist Party.

He himself, like many other members and supporters of the Communist Party, never had any difficulty in reconciling the two. It is now clear that he was in good company.

Dr. Johnson’s funeral service, on October 27 last at Canterbury Cathedral, was well attended and among the congregation were Communist Party secretary John Gollan and Morning Star editor George Matthews.

It would be interesting lo know how fervently Gollan and Matthews joined in the prayers for the Red Dean’s soul, how lustily they sang the hymns which disseminate the opiate of the people.

The funeral service is one which stresses the essence of religion — its mysticism, its false beliefs, its acceptance of the burdens of life under capitalism in the hope of a better time after death.

What were Gollan and Matthews doing at such a service?

Were they trying to prove that the Communist Party is becoming respectable? Were they showing that the organisation which professes, when it is convenient, to stand for Marxist materialism can see nothing wrong in its leaders contributing to religious mumbo-jumbo over a dead man’s body?

The Red Dean was a master of double think. Obviously, he would have approved.

No Bankers’ Ramp

Many of the present members of the Labour Party were brought up on the myth that the 1929 Labour government was destroyed by a banker’s ramp.

The story behind the myth is a simple one. In 1929 it was, the MacDonald government were doing so much for the working people of this country, they were so determinedly undermining the privileged position of the British ruling class, that financiers abroad began to fear for the very existence of capitalism.

They determined that MacDonald must be stopped, and conspired together to bring about the economic storm which swept the Labour government out of existence.

The “bankers ramp” story persists to this day; it was at any rate some sort of excuse for the dismal failure of the 1929 Labour government to tame capitalism and fulfil its promises.

At this year’s Labour conference, ASSET secretary, Clive Jenkins, while attacking the incomes policy, gave the government a chance to justify themselves in the same way: “I believe positively” he said, “that the government were told to do it.”

But Callaghan had already rejected the chance: “The measures were not taken because the bankers recommended them—there was no banker’s ramp.” 

The Wilson government is doing its best to prove that it is in control, and will not be pushed around by anyone. They are in no mood, at present, to make excuses.

Let this be remembered, then. Nobody forced the Labour government to do what they are doing. The foreign bankers did not plot to bring them down.

The Prices and Incomes Bill is part of a policy they are carrying out because they want it. It is their responsibility. But would anyone care to bet.

Who’s for Profits

The human sufferings caused by production for profit are so obvious that they lend themselves to cynical exploitation by tear-jerking demagogues of all sorts. In the past this was the speciality of Labour orators with their emotional denunciation of “profiteers” and their “profit motive.” But times change. Who said this?

   Profit is necessary to keep our stock of assets up to date and to enable them to be modernised and to give a return on savings. Companies must earn a proper return on their capital, and profit is not, and should not be, a dirty word where it is properly carried.

The Investors Chronicle, perhaps, or Enoch Powell? In fact, this defence of capitalism was made by Chancellor James Callaghan in a speech in Cardiff on September 9 (quoted in a letter to the Financial Times, September 21)—the same speech, by the way, in which he called for a permanent incomes policy. Callaghan was not just expressing his own prejudice. This has been a consistent Labour theme since they got power in October, 1964. Within a week Douglas Jay was saying:

  Profits, provided they are earned by efficiency and technical progress, and not by restrictive practices or abuse of monopoly, are the signs of a healthy economy, (quoted in the Guardian, 21 October, 1964).

Junior Minister George Darling has put it this way:

  This Government believes in high profits so long as industry uses them properly. (Financial Times, 24 November, 1965)

and George Brown in the House of Commons on August 3 this year: 

 I ought to make it plain that we are not, as a party, opposed to profits. In a mixed economy such as ours, the earning of profits is a necessary incentive over a large part of industry.

Crossman, who is now adding insult to injury by telling us that the repressive anti-working class policy of his party has something to do with Socialism, foresaw this in 1960 when he wrote in a Fabian pamphlet Labour in the Affluent Society:

  If the motive of your economy is the profit-making of large-scale modern private enterprise, a Labour Chancellor must be prepared to allow very large profits indeed and to admit that the number of golden eggs he can remove is extremely limited.

The fact is the Labour Party, like the Tories, is an avowed capitalist party with its leaders openly defending capitalism, both in theory and practice, to the best of their abilities.

Hang it on the wall?

Those people who are unable to resist sending off half-a-dozen packet tops and fifteen and six in cash to get a brand new, up-to-date plastic dwarf for the garden will be interested in the latest offer from the 3M Scotch tape firm.

This offer, obviously intended for technologically minded bargain hunters, is for pictures of space vehicles—and of a Polaris missile.

Now Polaris, as anyone who has seen a CND march, is a fearfully destructive thing. Because it is fixed from a submarine under water, it was once considered to be the ultimate weapon.

The picture which 3M is offering shows a rocket zooming out of the water, on its way to goodness knows where to do goodness knows what. 

Anyone got an odd piece of wall to fill? We forgot to mention that “each picture comes elegantly framed in white painted wood . . ."

A Cold Look at Charity (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are a few people who successfully ignore Christmas. How they do it is a mystery. For who can ignore the bright lights, the oceans of alcohol, the deafening clangour of the cash registers, the stifling weight of hypocrisy? And who can ignore the appeals for charity which at this time of year come floating down all around us, like the snow which, in the eye of the imaginative greetings cards artists, always falls on Christmas Eve?

There are the stickers which come to us through the post, with a request that we either buy them or send them, politely, back where they came from. There is not very subtle pressure at work on us here; “If I were to throw these in the waste paper basket I should feel like a thief; if I were to return them without payment I should feel like a niggard” ran a letter in the press a few years back. Which is exactly the effect the senders of the seals are aiming at.

There are the special collection boxes, the Christmas stockings heavy with pennies in the pubs, the cards and the wrapping paper anyone can buy in aid of what he decides is a good cause. Or, of course, in an overflow of seasonal goodwill, he can simply send cash. Christmas is the time for giving, isn’t it? The time we’re all supposed to try to be better than we are the rest of the year? When we think of others before ourselves? The charities do their best to convince us on the point.

It is apparent that the organised charities, like Carnaby Street and the Communist Party, are with the Trend. Their Christmas cards and seals usually look like the better designed London Transport posters, all colour and abstraction and message. Some appeals—especially the Spastics Society—run lucrative football competitions. They have slick, streamlined titles like War on Want and Oxfam, which encourages a mental picture of earnest undergraduates with a conscience wrapped away under their multi-coloured scarves. These names are a significant move away from the established, cumbersome favourites like the National Council for the Welfare of Spastics, the Homes for Aged and Infirm Clergymen, the Distressed Gentlework Aid Association and so on.

Slicker titles are not a coincidence, They are part of the charities' efforts to sell themselves like breakfast cereals. They all have a message, which some of them hammer home with the same persuasive skill we see used in television commercials. The Spastics Society bangs away at the fact that anyone can have a spastic child. The National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children emphasise the tragedy of the afflicted child and, believing that there are few things less appealing than a grown-up mental defective, play down the fact that they also help adults.

Perhaps there are some doubts among the charities about these methods. It is no surprise to learn that the advertising profession has a hand in it, that one of the founders of the Spastics Society was an advertising copywriter and that the appeals officer for Oxfam was also once with an advertising agency. 

The new charity men assert that they have built efficient organisations, that they have transformed fund-raising from a chancy, flag day and fete affair into a more scientific and predictable business. Perhaps they have. The Spastics Society has a yearly income of over £3 million, some of which it diverts into other charities. At the same time the Earl Haig Fund, which sticks doggedly to its sombre image of a chilly November service at the Cenotaph and the flowers made by the broken remnants of Servicemen, raises nearly all its income—about £1 million a year—from Poppy Day.

The fashionable, big names exist among something like three thousand active charities in this country. Anyone with cash to spare can give it to the relief of needy builders’ clerks, shipbrokers, Southern Irish loyalists, ex-members of the Stock Exchange or commercial travellers. He can help a charity which exists to suppress professional begging, or one which provides “. . . moral, spiritual and physical treatment of gentlewomen who have fallen into intemperate habits through the misuse of drugs and alcohol.” He can even help to provide trusses for impoverished sufferers from rupture.

There is no lack of opportunity to donate to charity. The question is—should we?

Charity is a well-established business. A Statute of 1601 gave the first legal definition and most of the causes mentioned there—". . . sick and maimed soldiers . . . the education and preferment of orphans . . . the relief and redemption of prisoners and captives . . .” still brandish the begging bowl today.

Many of the appeals seem irresistible. Who could say no to a starving child? If one were dumped on our doorstep— and the charities aim at making us react as if there were one there—there could be only one answer. But this argument has its limits. To start off, what would we say if one of the respected, well heeled patrons of charity were to appear on our doorsteps asking us, as Lord Rank did in one advertisement, to “Please remember there is still much that each of us could do to see that those who still stand in need are not neglected”?

And what about other appeals to our pity? Could we say no to an unemployed man? Or to a salesman who is falling behind in the rat race? Or to a working class mother driven to despair by the pressures of looking after the kids, keeping home and making ends meet? These are all needy cases and they could all be helped by money.

The first question to ask is why charities exist. Most people accept that orphans need help but never stop to wonder why; never stop to question a social system where children are the legal responsibility of their parents so that if the parents die the child is left without protection. The same system produces the wars—Korea, Vietnam, Kashmir— which make more orphans as well as more homeless and more refugees, all of them suitable subjects for charity.

Disease creates problems for people for the simple reason that it can make them unemployable, in other words can make them unable to earn a wage. Few people, as they contribute to a charity to help the incapacitated, question a social system which makes the majority of its people rely so heavily on the sale of their working abilities. Few of them question the poverty which affects all workers, and which sometimes intensifies upon one person, or one group of people, and forces them out of capitalism’s mainstream.

These problems—and many, many more—are what the charities say they are tackling. Are they succeeding?

It is not curmudgeonly to point out that the lack of charity’s success is demonstrated by the very continuance of charity. There are still millions of people who are deprived, or maimed, or homeless, or hungry. The smoothest charity organiser will not pretend that he has the answer to it all; yet the fact is that most of the problems are avoidable.

The problems which the charities battle against are not a matter of mischance. It is not some personal quirk which makes an unmarried mother add another burden to the orphans’ home; she does it because it takes more courage than she possesses to face the economic and social pressures of capitalist society with a child which is known as a bastard. Oxfam repeats that two-thirds of the world’s people are hungry but this is not mischance; they also say that sixpence would save a child’s life in India, Nigeria, Hong Kong, yet in some countries food is destroyed when the market is not right and in others governments devote a large part of their resources to the production of armaments.

Modern society does not lack resources. Only it has a structure which ensures that those resources are used to deprive and destroy rather than to feed and build. It is the economy of capitalism—its basis of private ownership— which produces the flood of misery in the world and against that the charities battle with little hope.

It is not with any desire to be cruel that we say charity is a delusion. It persuades people who have a burden of their own to carry that they can solve the world’s problems by distributing a little of their poverty over someone else. It promotes the idea that there is nothing much wrong with the world which cannot be put right with a change of heart. With his problems staring him in his face, charity encourages the worker to turn his back. At best, it persuades him to look only briefly at the world and its ailments before he closes his mind by the act of dropping his coin in the box. At worst it fosters the meanest of docility and the blind acceptance of a very inadequate existence.

We can do better than this. Leaving aside the smooth organisers, many charities function on the efforts of sincere and generous workers. It is a wicked tragedy that such sincerity and energy should be misused to perpetuate the very conditions they are trying to do something about. But, as the charities would agree, capitalism is full of tragedies.

Ivan

The Money System (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money dominates our lives. It is universal under Capitalism. It speaks all languages and opens all doors. Virtually everything all over the world has a price. Practically every kind of activity we engage in, and every sphere of human endeavour, is measured against what it costs. There are money barriers erected between people and their attitudes towards each other. Respect and kudos are accorded to the money —not the man.

In a thousand similar ways money falsifies human values. It perverts the judgment of people by raising phoney standards. And as the have-nots slavishly seek to imitate the possessions of the haves, trashy substitutes become a commonplace and the general culture pattern sinks to the level of the unreal. For those in poverty, social recognition is sought through the showy accumulation of inferior junk. Whilst money expresses the values of property society, it has in itself nothing useful to contribute to human lives. It is a social growth and its existence is secondary to the basic property division in society.

The rich are rich because they own the means of production and thereby accumulate money in the form of rent, interest or profit. It is the real wealth created by workers which constitutes their fortunes. The workers are relatively poor because they own no means of production, not because their wages are low but because they have to work for wages at all. The wages system represent the social dispossession of the working class and assures their continuing appearance in the factories, mines and offices to turn out wealth for the owning class. Bingo halls, horse-racing, overtime and hire-purchase become a substitute for living against a background of ceaseless struggle and conflict.

It is hard to think of a relationship into which human beings enter that is not either derived from the money system or tainted by it. These relationships are so much part of our lives that they are widely accepted without question, it is thereby considered more honorable to starve than to steal food, more proper to walk than ride without the fare and to take the kids out for the week-end with the rent money just isn’t done.

Every facet of existence is affected by money. How we live, where we live, the kind of food, clothing and shelter consumed, all hinges upon how much can be afforded. It is the outstanding contradiction of our time that with his talents, man has mastered many natural forces and even bent them to his will; through his store-house of scientific knowledge, he has transformed the face of the earth; he has produced wonders of communication and transportation and covered the world with technical achievements undreamed of in bygone ages; with mechanisation applied to agriculture, man’s capacity to produce food is abundant, yet none of this is readily available to him. The social strait- jacket of the money system stifles his every move.

None of the things that society has produced are freely at the disposal of the producers. The telephone, the motor car, the aeroplane, the radio, the cinema—none may be used except through the intervention of money. The menu at the Hilton or the common loaf of bread are only available if you have the money. Capitalism has created the potential for abundance but its property division (its class structure) denies its attainment.

There is obviously nothing that can be done to resolve these contradictions within the framework of a money based society. Money is so revered and sought after that a world without it is extremely difficult for most people to conceive. Yet there is nothing natural about it. All that man needs to survive and flourish are his physical and mental energies and the resources of nature. Money developed out of the exchange of goods.

Where things are held in common and freely available, money is irrelevant and superfluous. Many things have been used as money in the history of its existence, including human slaves. The substance behind world currencies today is gold. Gold is ideal for the purpose because it does not perish and it concentrates a large amount of value into a convenient form. When buying and selling takes place, it is therefore values exchanging one with another and this only happens because there are exclusive property rights—owners and non-owners. It is the attitudes of men that sanction the powers of money. It serves as a standard of price, as a measure of value and a means of exchange. That is to say its operation is confined to the buying and selling of commodities. This commercial process is part of the profit making system which exploits and devours the life-force of productive labour.

All the frenzied activity of Chancellors of the Exchequer and world bankers, the voluminous writings of the so-called economics experts, and financial columnists, the contortive juggling of the Prices and Incomes Board are so many dreary acts in an over long farce. They are like the motions of a ritual to appease the wrath of some supernatural power, where men make obeisance to gods of their own creation.

Today we are confronted with hundreds of millions of people in chronic need of food, but unless they constitute a profitable market, they will remain hungry. In the same way, a money barrier exists between the millions living in slums all over the world and the provision of adequate housing. These are simple aspects of poverty, and poverty is incurable as long as the means of wealth production are monopolised by a class.

The Socialist analysis of Capitalism and its money set up points the way to a new society where men would use the earth’s resources for their common good—without money.

Harry Baldwin

R. E. Taylor & Sons Ltd (1966)

Party News from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

With this issue of the Socialist Standard our long association with R. E. Taylor & Sons Ltd, who have been printing our journal since 1921, ends. We must record our appreciation of the staff of this printing works. They have ensured that the Standard has appeared without break each month, on time, through crises and war.

The Passing Show: Post-Haste (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Post-Haste

Have you ever been infuriated by postal delays, had letters lost or turning up days after you expect them? Only a few months ago a small letter took over a fortnight to reach us from another London postal district, and although perhaps this might have been an isolated case, it’s certainly not uncommon for parcels to take over a week to reach London from the provinces. Postcards were originally supposed to travel more quickly through the post than sealed letters, but this no longer seems to be the case, and in London anyway there has been a reduction in the collections and deliveries of mail.

All very annoying, you might think, and complaints to the GPO would no doubt bring the familiar reply of staff shortage, among other excuses. And unlike Tory MP Sir Gerald Nabarro, you wouldn’t be very likely to get a question asked in the House about it.

But then, Sir Gerald was really concerned about quite a different matter. He was very worried because some thousands of people did not receive their subscription forms for the ICI eight per cent unsecured loan stock 1988-93, but he had to be content with the Postmaster General’s explanation that the forms were posted late, and some were wrongly addressed anyway. According to The Guardian of October 20, the PMG made personal enquiries in response to the complaint; which shows how important he thought it was.

Well, there was about sixty million pounds involved, and the loan was quickly over-subscribed by about 37 times, so you can guess how annoyed Some of the shareholders must have been when they missed the chance of some really juicy pickings from ICI’s future exploitation of its workers. And if it hadn’t been Sir Gerald, some other “champion of minority rights” would have been on his feet to make a fuss. Which reminds us. Christmas is coming so you’d better post early. We don’t somehow think they’ll be quite so concerned if a few of your Christmas cards don’t make it until New Year’s Eve.


How Not To Face Facts

The pacifist movement’s conception of the modern world is about as shallow as a kid’s paddling pool after a three-month drought. It is astoundingly adept at acquiring facts and then ignoring their implication. At a recent meeting of The Peace Pledge Union, I was given a leaflet. It was a neat effort, carrying some useful information on the vast waste of the world’s resources on armed forces, weapons of war, etc. “Don’t you think this is madness?” one of the captions ran; and who but a fool would say no?

So far so good. But when the PPU starts talking about “what could be done instead,” their fact-finding ends and question-begging begins. Of course it’s true that the £50,000 millions spent yearly on arms could be used to build umpteen hospitals, houses and schools, or provide sorely needed tractors and harvesters. Then why isn’t this done? Why indeed do armaments exist in the first place? After all, no government likes to see such wealth tied up in this way, but if, as the leaflet implies, it’s more a question of lack of sense, all we have to do is kick out the stupid statesmen and replace them with sensible ones.

But then, there's more to it than that. First of all, although war can be called madness when looked at from a human point of view, it does make sense of a sort in a class divided society. Given a world of commercial rivalries, no capitalist class is going to sit idly by and watch foreign competitors steal its economic thunder. It will use armed force when it deems it necessary, even to the point of a major shooting match. Under such circumstances, your politicians can be as clever or as stupid as you like. It makes no difference to the underlying forces pushing towards war.

Is there any guarantee, anyway, that a reduction in arms spending would give us more of the things we so desperately want? Far from it. Capitalism is primarily concerned with production for the market, not with satisfying our needs, and the money saved by arms cuts would merely be earmarked for other investment. A look at the policies of the present Labour Government will show us the truth of this. Indeed, we can even point to instances where money has been spent in taking plant out of production because of unfavourable market conditions—textiles in Britain, wheat in USA —yet there are plenty of ragged, ill-fed people in the world.

What is needed is the abolition of capitalism, and its replacement with a system of common ownership and production for use, not the signing of pledges against war, which past experience tells us will not be worth the paper they’re written on when the crunch comes.


The examples of Our Betters

A period of severe restraint, did we say? Rank Organisation Chairman John Davis has been ordered to pay £25,000 to his ex-wife, actress Dinah Sheridan in addition to her £8,500 a year maintenance, following her divorce. The lump sum was originally “only” £15,000 but, commented the appeal court judge, “£15,000 does not go very far towards purchasing a house in the sort of neighbourhood where a woman of this background can reasonably be expected to live. The £15,000 is so low that the court is bound to interfere.”

Wonder if anyone will think of invoking Part IV against that little lot? And it’s not even tied to a productivity agreement.


Gaspers

“Wilson and his colleagues have found it impossible to reconcile the Socialist theories they held in Opposition with the Tory facts of life they have found in office.” (Tory MP Quintin Hogg, at Ealing, 7.10.66.)

"The Minister of Power's views that steel nationalisation will go through by next summer brought an immediate rally in steel shares, and other sectors came up smartly on the prospect of reinvestment of the compensation money." (Guardian Market Report, 22.10.66.)

“In case of atomic attack, the Federal ruling against prayer in this building will be temporarily suspended”. (High School notice in California, U.S.A., reported Daily Mirror, 26,10.66.)

“I’m sorry I can give you nothing at present except sympathy.” (The Queen to the parents of Aberfan, 29.10.66.)

“The pensioner and the housewife suffer most when prices rise.” (The New Britain, Labour Party manifesto at the 1964 election.) .

“Increases in the cost of living have reduced the purchasing power of the £6 10s. old age pension for married couples by 8s. 6d. since it was introduced on March 29, 1965, Mr. Pentland, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Social Security, disclosed in a Commons reply last night.” (Daily Telegraph, 8.11.66.)

“The concrete analysis of concrete conditions and the concrete resolution of concrete contradictions are the living soul of Marxism-Leninism.” (Lin Piao, Chinese Minister of Defence.)

Eddie Critchfield

Poverty and hunger (1966)

Book Review from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

As I Recall by Lord Boyd Orr (Macgibbon & Kee)

This is a fascinating, but also an infuriating, book.

In the introduction, Ritchie Calder speaks of the author’s frustration and anger when, time and again, he was foiled by the profit motive in his efforts to improve the diet of the poorest. He speaks bitterly of his frustrated attempt to get free milk into schools to supplement the children’s impoverished diet, at a time when there was a glut of milk because people could not afford it and skimmed milk was being poured down the drain. He quotes from one of Lord Boyd Orr’s speeches: “half the population of the world suffers from lack of sufficient food; farmers suffer ruin if they produce ‘too much food’. Adjust our economic and political systems to let these two evils cancel each other out.’’

This is why this is an infuriating book. Lord Boyd Orr shows many times that he recognises the responsibility for malnutrition and hunger lies in the capitalist system and yet, even recognising this, throughout his long life and even now, he has sought the remedy within that system.

In the section dealing with his research work, Lord Boyd Orr speaks of the brushes he has had at various times with the Ministry of Agriculture. At one time the Ministry was creating Boards to fix prices of home produced bacon, etc., and to restrict imports. He was opposed to these “because . . . this meant dearer food for the poorer half of the population who were already unable to purchase sufficient for health . . . The Pig and Bacon Marketing Board would mean that there would be less bacon imported from Denmark, and in return we would send them less coal, with the resulting increased unemployment in both countries.” This is a point which still eludes our successive Governments, who preach the gospel that “we” must import less and export more!

In his criticisms of the Agricultural Marketing Board, Lord Boyd Orr advocated a comprehensive food and agricultural policy based on human needs. He pointed out that while the poorest people spent more than 75 per cent of their income on food, the wealthy spend less than 10 per cent. Therefore rises in prices obviously affect the poor much more than the wealthy. In reply he was informed that, as the Rowell Institute (his research institute) was maintained by government grant, the Director should not be allowed to engage in propaganda against his government.

In the chapter dealing with his dietary surveys and wartime food policy, the author speaks of an interview he had with Kingsley Wood, then Minister of Health, who asked him why he was making such a fuss about poverty when, with old age pensions and unemployment insurance, there was no poverty in the country. The extraordinary thing was that Kingsley Wood genuinely believed that if people are not actually dying of starvation, there could be no food deficiency. Naturally he had never put this theory to the test at first hand!

There are many other instances of ignorance or deliberate obstruction and manipulation of facts on the part of “our” politicians. Nevertheless, Lord Boyd Orr can speak with admiration of General Smuts and say superstitiously that “God frowned on our work in Kenya” because two of his friends died there, one through cancer and the other through a motor accident.

When speaking of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation, the author mentions the interest shown by American businessmen in schemes for world distribution of food “from a financial point of view.” However, due to the frequent opposition of the British team who, obviously, could see none of these advantages in view of the preferential tariff and price arrangements of this country with its “ex Empire”, many of these schemes failed.

The Atlantic Charter of 1941 stated as its aim “freedom from want for all men in all lands.” The author speaks bitterly of the fact that, already by May, 1943, at the Hot Springs Conference in America on world food problems, this had , been forgotten. ‘The old men had crept back into power, determined to resist any economic change which threatened their financial interests.” When addressing the delegates at the Quebec Conference he felt that, although the delegates themselves were in favour of his suggestions they, “like the delegates at the Hot Springs conference had been told what to say by politicians who had little interest in alleviating poverty, even in their own countries, and even less in eliminating hunger and poverty in the world.”

In spite of his experiences with succeeding British Governments, Lord Boyd Orr can say “my attempt to persuade Mr. Attlee to become interested in this project was rather foolish. He was doing a magnificent job . . . with many inexperienced ministers to reorganise Britain after the war . . . that he could not be expected to be well informed on what must have considered a side issue of the foreign policy.” Side issue indeed!

The role taken by the British Government at least appears to have been consistent. On one occasion the FAO, having sent a group of agricultural experts to Greece, reported that a grant or loan of 200 million dollars would be sufficient to finance the development plans agreed, to bring about a rapid increase in food production. Instead of the grant. Britain sent troops to support the government and Royal Family. 

In summing up, Lord Boyd Orr chafes against the division of the world into opposing camps and sees in World Government. the promotion of which now takes up much of his time, the solution to these problems. His references to “Socialism” and “Capitalism” show why Lord Boyd Orr still places hopes in such an organisation.

Eva Goodman

Letter: Socialist Aims and Strategies (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

An open-minded discussion of socialist aims and strategies seems to be badly needed in these days. The present impotence of the socialist movement in the western countries cannot possibly be overcome unless at least some unity in purpose and action is achieved.

There is already agreement on “common ownership and democratic control” of the means of production and distribution, but it still remains to be agreed upon the proper meaning of these words. Should they be understood as referring to a centralised economic system, administered by state-appointed officials, or rather to a decentralised system with scope for local initiatives?

In my opinion the latter alternative is more in accordance with the idea of democracy. State socialism inevitably leads to concentration of power in the hands of state or party bureaucrats, and there does not seem to be much sense in substituting one kind of privileged class for another.

A certain amount of central planning may be indispensable in a socialist society, but then it should be only structural, i.e., provide the general framework of the economy. If central planning is allowed to interfere with ordinary production and distribution, local initiatives will be paralyzed and democracy endangered.

To create a democratic socialist society it will be better to turn most companies into producers’ co-operatives rather than into state-owned property. This kind of decentralisation is especially valuable since it is based on the active participation of ordinary employees, while limiting the powers of company managers.

Workers’ control or self-management is the only remedy for the frustration and “alienation” felt by many workers in factories and offices today. In producers’ cooperatives they would be able to discuss matters of common interest, such as changes of working conditions, investment policies, etc., on the basis of personal experiences and preferences. Being entitled to participate when decisions concerning them are arrived at they would no longer be merely the hired tools of others but human beings with dignity and self-respect.

Abolition of capitalist privileges and introduction of a democratic socialist society could probably not be achieved at one stroke, least of all in countries where the press and other mass media are controlled by a handful of capitalists. A gradualist approach, however, requires a clear-cut parliamentary strategy.

As a first step on the road to socialism it will be necessary to confiscate the large private fortunes by means of death duties and a once-for-all capital levy. All property holdings above, say, £100,000 should be taxed one hundred per cent, and the confiscated assets used for nationalisation of the commercial banks.

The next step should be a transfer of the powers of the shareholders in all major companies to the employees. The latter should be given a majority representation in newly established Works Councils, responsible for the appointment of managers, control of management, disposal of capital assets, fixation of wages, etc.

The third step should be abolition of all unearned income and elimination of the enormous income gap now existing between highly salaried officials and under-paid wage-earners.

By adopting a radical and well defined strategy like this western socialists would leave nobody in doubt concerning their practical recommendations for the achievement of socialism. This is just as important as a clear definition of the ultimate aim: an economic system based on fair distribution and co-operation for mutual benefit instead of exploitation and accumulation of power in the hands of a few.

Sune Hjorth, 

Sundovall, Sweden

Reply

Mr. Hjorth bases his argument on the assumption that there is some common ground where the Socialist Party of Great Britain and other political parties (what he calls “the socialist movement in the western countries") can discuss aims and strategies.

In fact, the Socialist Party stands for something which is completely opposed to what the rest want. We alone advocate common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution; the other parties, whatever some of them may call themselves, support the capitalist social system of private ownership and control.

The Labour Party, for example, are now the government of Britain, for the second time since the war. Nothing they have done, or intend to do, has had any effect on society. The capitalist class are still in possession of the means of production; the Labour Party’s part in this has been to attack the living standards of the working class.

None of this has been caused by defects of Labour ministers, or a lack of discussion of aims. The Labour Party know perfectly well what they are doing. It is simply the inescapable result of running capitalism.

The great fault with the proposals put forward by Mr. Hjorth—producers’ cooperatives, workers’ control and so on—is that they are something less than Socialism. Co-operatives still produce for the market and it is the market that in the end rules. Many organisations (including the Labour Party) have dabbled in similar ideas. They have all come to nothing.

Socialists stand outside all this. The only way Socialism can be established is for the working class consciously to opt for it. When they have the necessary knowledge, they will end the privileges of capitalism and set up the new society in which men will stand as equals about the world’s wealth.

The Socialist Party exists to help in this process; it is our job to help the working class come to an understanding of Socialist ideas. Above all, this requires a clear, uncompromising stand. The worst thing we could do would be to confuse the issue by claiming to be a Socialist Party while getting involved in trifling reforms of capitalism—what Mr. Hjorth mentions as “changes of working conditions, investment policies . . . nationalisation of the commercial banks . . . death duty and capital levy . . ."

One final point. Mr. Hjorth mentions “State Socialism”. This is a contradiction in terms. There will be no state machine in a Socialist society; it will disappear along with the other organs of capitalist privilege and coercion. A better way of describing the policies our correspondent has in mind would be state capitalism—which is what the Labour Party and many other organisations stand for, and mean when they talk about Socialism.

Editorial Committee.

50 Years Ago: The Opium War With China 1842 (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Educated opinion in China adverse to the consumption of opium as being detrimental to the prosperity of the Chinese nation steadily grew, eventually culminating in laws passed by the Chinese Government strictly prohibiting the traffic in opium. Under cover, however, of an agreement with the Chinese Government for the existence of establishments to carry on general trade in Canton and Macao, our honest English traders smuggled in large quantities of the forbidden drug, in which they did a very profitable trade.

The Chinese Government then took the matter into their own hands with the following result as summarised by Justin McCarthy (Short History of our Own Times) P.27

  “When the Chinese authorities actually proceeded to insist on the forfeiture of an immense amount of opium in the hands of British traders, and took other harsh but certainly not unnatural measures to extinguish the traffic. Captain Elliot, the Chief Superintendent, sent to the Governor of India a request for as many ships of war as could be spared for the protection of life and property of Englishmen in China. Before long British ships arrived and the two countries were at war”.

The Chinese were of course, worsted in the war and compelled to come to terms, the ‘swag’ obtained by England being as follows:

The island of Hong-Kong ceded in perpetuity; Five ports: Canton, Amoy, Foo- Chow-Foo, Mingpo and Shanghai, thrown open to British trade and Consuls established there.

In addition to the above, China had to pay a war indemnity of four and a half million pounds and . . . a further indemnity of one and a quarter millions in respect of the smuggled opium they had destroyed. 

From the Socialist Standard, December 1916.

It’s up to You (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are on the verge of a slump. The so-called affluent society is crumbling.

Once more the capitalist class is caught up in the implications of its own ridiculous system. For weeks past we have had news of redundancies, mounting unemployment, falling share prices and gloom on the stock exchange. Those who have been clamouring for a reduction in the cost of living for so long are due to have their ambitions realised in a most unpleasant manner.

It has all happened before and will continue to happen periodically so long as the working class continues to support the capitalist system.

During the last General Election the working class, upon whom the capitalist class depend for support, was promised more of everything desirable and less of everything undesirable. Once the Labour Party was well and truly in power the mask of good humoured tolerance was cast aside and those who had expected years of continued affluence measured in terms of bigger cars, TV sets, holidays abroad and all the things that have been available in recent years were suddenly confronted with a Labour Party that is hardly distinguishable from the Tories who are traditionally opposed to working class interests.

So here we are. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never had any illusions about the way capitalism would go. We were not deceived after the war when optimistic forecasts were made about the years of prosperity stretching out ahead and slumps being things of the past. We know how capitalism works and are therefore able to tell what is likely to happen next.

Even without the Labour Party’s conscious effort to create unemployment by introducing the Selective Employment Tax capitalism would follow its familiar pattern of overproduction. Foreign markets are becoming more competitive and some manufacturers are finding it more and more difficulty to compete with rivals. The smaller companies will crumble, and survival will only be possible for the large groups who will cut out unprofitable products as was recently seen in the case of ICI. The continued dismissal of workers means that there are more workers on the labour market and since labour power is a commodity a surplus of it forces the price down. Unemployment becomes a problem for the worker which intensifies his struggle to live. The trade unions are made impotent by mass unemployment and it then becomes obvious how limited are their powers. They can only resist the encroachments of capitalism on their members wages and conditions of work. This is the extent of their usefulness. Their role is purely reformist and can never be anything else.

Their muddle-headedness shows itself in trade union support for the Labour Party and the acceptance by trade union officials of knighthoods and other “honours” with which the capitalists buy off potential opponents.

It is possible that the slump that is just beginning will make the nineteen-twenties and thirties look like a Sunday School treat followed by another arms build up and the Third World War to decide who shall have the pick of the markets.

These events are the deadly monotony of capitalist production and so-called progress. There is only one way to stop it. The majority of the world’s workers must work together for the establishment of Socialism.

We must consciously take over from the capitalist class the sources of raw materials and the instruments for producing wealth so that we can build a society in which food, clothing and shelter will be produced for the use of all. In which competition will be abolished and with it the causes of war, insecurity and mass misery.

This is not a dream. It is the only practical solution to our economic problems. All that is needed is working class understanding and your conscious support of the Socialist Party case. We are here already organised as the only political party whose object is Socialism.

L.J.C.

Notice from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard:

Last month we published what seemed to be an article, with the title, ‘It's up to You’. We did not make it clear that this was in fact a letter from a person who at the time was not a member of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain.

Blogger's Note:

I think that this confirms that 'L.J.C.' was in fact Louis J. Cox. He originally joined Bloomsbury Branch of the SPGB in 1943, resigning in 1958 ('personal reasons"), and then rejoined the SPGB via Paddington Branch in November 1966. He didn't stick around for long, resigning from the Party in 1970 ("not in agreement with party case"). He rejoined the SPGB again in 1980, finally resigning from the SPGB in November 1991 (reference to a "starry-eyed" takeover in his resignation letter). I've no idea if he went on to join the Socialist Studies group. 

Austria (1966)

Party News from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The League of Democratic Socialists
The Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten, whose journal we have been advertising in our columns, was set up in 1959 by people who had left the Socialist Party of Austria (SPO) and the Communist Party and wanted a clear way to Socialism. The League has always had a declaration of principles that was in essentials the same as that of our companion parties of Socialism. The League came into contact with one of our comrades in Vienna and in March, 1966, the Executive Committee of the League decided to adopt the same Declaration of Principles as ours as the basis for further activity. Since March their journal, Das Wiener Freie Wort (Vienna Free Voice), has carried this declaration. The League is in some difficulties as to a name since the SPO has the prerogative, funder law, of all versions of party names using "socialist".

Visit to America (1966)

Party News from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

As I was fortunate enough to be able to visit America and Canada, I was asked by our Executive Committee to be a fraternal delegate to the World Socialist Party of America Conference being held in Boston in September.

I was happy to be able to visit comrades in New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Boston and Toronto, and to meet at the conference comrades from Montreal also.

Members in Boston had arranged for an interview on the Boston Radio network followed by telephone (live) discussions and questions from listeners of the programme. Socialism and other matters concerning workers were discussed—the whole programme lasting nearly two hours. In addition, during the programme we were able to give information about the forthcoming conference, the address of the Headquarters, details of literature and also to mention all the other companion parties.

The conference was held in Boston. As a fraternal delegate I addressed the conference and gave news of the work of the Party in Britain. I also look the chair during one session. Gladys Catt from Toronto was the minute secretary throughout the 3 day conference. Three theoretical discussions were on the Agenda which gave much scope for exchange of views. Two lively and interesting socials were held, one at Headquarters and the other in the home of our comrades Rab and Fenton.

From Boston—a journey to Toronto with the Toronto delegates. I. Rab joined us in Toronto, where members had been hard at work to get publicity and arrange two outdoor meetings. One in the New City Hall Square and the other the following day at Allen Gardens. Newspaper offices were visited and a reporter at one office listened to our case and we spent much time with him. He attended our meeting in Allen Gardens on the Sunday and stayed for two hours taking notes and photographs. A picture and report on the Party were published in the paper.

Both meetings were stimulating and well attended. Several members speaking from the platform including Rab from Boston and myself. There were good literature sales and donations and a great interest was shown, people asking for details of the Party and meetings.

In Boston and New York most of the members have worked for the Party for many years and they are still very active and enthusiastic. In Toronto the members are mostly quite young and it is certain that their energy and enthusiasm will considerably help to propagate the Socialist case.

In all, it was a wonderful experience to join our comrades in America and Canada in their work and their tremendous hospitality left nothing to be desired! There is no doubt that if members from either side of the Atlantic can more frequently visit one another it will give us all a boost to work even harder together to bring Socialism nearer.

Phyllis Howard

No Mystery About Banking (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Banks have been in the news, with the failure of the Intra Bank in Lebanon, the largest in the Middle East and a bank in Detroit, the Public Bank of Detroit.

Both banks claimed to have assets more than sufficient to pay depositors eventually, but neither had the cash available when the depositors took fright and wanted their money back. The Intra Bank is reported to have invested much of the £86 million deposits (some of it from oil-rich Arab clients) in such varied properties as a West End Hotel in London, docks in France and properties in Paris and America. As the Sunday Telegraph (23 October) remarked:– “This is dangerous banking practice – office blocks cannot be sold overnight to repay depositors”.

The Detroit Bank, which had deposits of $117 million at the end of 1965, had got heavily involved in financing “home improvement” work.

It was the biggest American bank failure in thirty years.

It was the familiar story, recalled by the failure of a small British bank a few years ago, when the manager complained sadly that “depositors were taking the money out faster than they were putting it in”.

The outcome has been that the Detroit bank has been taken over by another American bank, and the Intra Bank, with Government and other aid, has re-opened. Among those who propped it up were the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, with that the Times described as “the not inconsiderable resources of his Church”.

But what is of more lasting interest is the light such bank failures throw on the absurdities of the banking theories held by what the late Professor Cannan called the “Mystical School of Banking Theorists”.

Before their ideas gained their present widespread acceptance economists and bankers, though they disagreed about other things, had no doubts about the basic principle that what a bank lends or invests is placed at its disposal by depositors.

Marx for example wrote: –

A bank represents on one hand the centralisation of money-capital, of the lenders, and on the other the centralisation of the borrowers. Its profit is generally made by borrowing at a lower rate of interest than it loans (Capital Vol. 111. P. 473).

And a banker, Mr. Walter Leaf, Chairman of the Westminster Bank, wrote: –

The banks can lend no more than they can borrow – in fact not nearly so much. If anyone in the deposit banking system can be called a “creator of credit” it is the depositor; for the banks are strictly limited in their lending operations by the amount which the depositor thinks fit to leave with them. (Banking. Home University Library 1926.)

But the mystical school (which included Keynes) would have none of this. They saw by experience that a prudently conducted bank, having the confidence of depositors, could rely on them to leave the bulk of their deposits in the bank, so that the latter could safely invest about twelve to fifteen per cent, keep about 20 per cent in a form of lending which they could call on immediately, keep about 10 per cent in cash in their tills or at the Bank of England, and use about one half to make advances to customers. From this they make the topsy-turvy deduction that out of the 10 per cent cash (it is now down to 8 per cent) the bank had “created” the rest.

The Committee on Finance and Industry (The Macmillan Committee) in its report in 1931 claimed that “the bulk of the deposits arise out of the action of the banks themselves, for by granting loans, allowing money to be drawn on an overdraft or purchasing securities a bank creates a credit in its books, which is the equivalent of a deposit”.

They went on to give what they called a simple illustration. First they assumed that all banks had been merged into one bank. Then they described what they said would happen if a depositor deposited £1,000 in cash, the bank relying on past experience that it was only necessary to keep £100 of it in cash. The bank, they said could now make loans (or purchase securities) up to a total of £9,000 “until such time as the credits created . . . represent nine times the amount of the original deposit of £1,000 in cash”. They were of course assuming that when each borrower drew on his account to make payments the cheques would come back into other accounts in the bank.

Two things they overlooked or obscured. In the real world there are quite a lot of separate banks and in the nature of things most of the loans made by each bank are used to make payments, not to customers of the same bank, but to customers who have accounts in other banks. So if for the moment we accept the assumption that the banks by making loans have created deposits they are doing most of it not for themselves but for their rivals. More important, their simple illustration is too simple. If their argument is sound it could be applied to a bank just being formed just as well as to a bank already functioning. (They were silent on this.)

But as soon as it is put like that its absurdity becomes apparent. A newly formed bank with no deposits except the £1,000 cash just handed in would, on the past experience which the Macmillan Committee itself accepted, invest £150, have £200 on call, £100 in cash and make advances of £550. Thus its total of investments and advances would be, not £9,000, but £900. It would only need one borrower of £1,000 to draw a cheque paying it to an account in another bank, for the first bank’s £1,000 cash to be reduced to nothing.

The same principle applies to an existing bank; for example if we take total deposits £100,000, with £15,000 invested, £20,000 on call, £10,000 in cash and advances of £55,000. For the existing bank would only have been able to expand to the £100,000 level by treating each additional deposit of £1,000 cash in the same way, with investment and advances totalling £900 out of each £1,000, not the mythical £9,000.

The members of the Committee were soon faced with a problem. Taking their words at their face value the late Major Douglas concluded that this power of “creation” meant that a bank “acquires securities for nothing”, creates new money “by a stroke of the banker’s pen”, and that the banks “are the potential or actual owners of everything produced in the world”.

Faced with this, members of the Committee who were asked about it, including the late Reginald McKenna, Chairman of the Midland Bank, had to repudiate Major Douglas. The fact remains however, that Major Douglas was only taking them to the logical conclusion of their own mystical theory of banking.

Edgar Hardcastle

Planning in Russia (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Planning is in great fashion at the moment. In France planning is state policy and here in Britain the National Plan is still awaiting the starter’s gun. According to the Labour Government once the economy is correctly set it will improve in every aspect. Time will show.

The Russians like to think that the popularity of planning throughout the world is due to the success in the growth of their own economy, although Professor W. W. Rostow has provided evidence that economies expand, in the period when capital formation is difficult, at about the same rate whether they are planned or not. It would seem that if planning in Russia was successful there would not be any need to change its basic character. Yet what do we find? Without doubt a decline in centralised control!

In The Plan and Initiative by S. Pervushin it is pointed out that planning takes place in capitalist economies. Each organisation plans its own expansion in the light of the market conditions, and the state controls different parts of the economy through its expenditures and in raising income to meet them. According to Pervushin, the actual implementation of a national economic plan requires a “unity of purpose. In other words, all society, or the majority of it, must strive to one and the same goal . . . This can only be achieved by the socialisation of the means of production.” These conditions, he asserts, exist in Russia. Further, in bourgeois capitalist countries planning must fail because “the mistakes made by one economic unit spread like a chain reaction to many others, and in the end often cause disruption of the whole economy.”

But what has been happening in Russia? According to Pervushin, despite a definite correlation between the different branches of the economy, a correlation which is established beforehand and strictly observed, errors arose due to wrong planning, short-comings in the functioning of various organisations or industries, or, finally, unfavourable natural conditions.

Kantorovich, in his book The Best Use Of Economic Resources, was much more explicit. He writes of “substantial shortcomings,” “considerable losses,” “idleness of labour and equipment,” “rush work” and the “greater use of manual methods and consequent lowering of labour productivity.”

Yefim Manevich, in Voprosi Ekonomiki (Economic Problems) in 1965, reported the “accumulation of a considerable labour surplus” in Moscow, Leningrad and Odessa which was extending into rural areas. At this time, summer 1965, the Communist youth paper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, was suggesting the break-up of the system of collective and state farms into smaller units farmed by groups of half-a-dozen peasants and their families, with a minimum of state interference, who would keep the profits from the sale of their cash crops. Whilst the argument against collective and state farms was their unwieldy size and inefficiency, family farming would help to solve the problem of rural unemployment.

Meanwhile, in Russian industry the Liberman thesis was gaining ground. Liberman, a Kharkov economist, argued that the economy cannot function effectively without the profit motive. The introduction of the “Liberman system” means that factory direction in parts of the consumer goods sector of the economy will have much greater freedom to plan output and fix prices according to market conditions. Management will also have greater autonomy in the raising of capital for improving or reconstructing their factories. They will plan separately as in the western economies, and, according to Pervushin’s quotation above, will fail for their errors will react on each other.

Actually there is little new in this situation, for it is largely a case of Russians recognising what before was the unspeakable. In Russia at the moment it is not profit that is new, but a decline in state control. The planners have failed.

In backward emergent capitalist countries state control is inevitable when only the state can raise capital in large lumps and co-ordinate economic activity to promote future expansion. Once development takes place, and capital is easier to obtain, pressures arise to break down the centralised control. This is what is happening in Russia. Industrialists are seeking freedom from political control.

So as Russia retreats from control, the western powers increase the amount of it. It would appear that for advanced capitalist communities some state control is necessary today. But whether control of the economy is being relaxed or tightened, in neither case is it Socialism.

Ken Knight

What's it all about? (1966)

From the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government must be pleased with itself. Unemployment is increasing.

Those members of the working class who cheered the return of a Labour Government which claimed it would put an end to “stop-go” must now be asking themselves whether the “shake-out” will develop into an economic fall out. An appraisal of how the situation has deteriorated since July 20 does not inspire much confidence in the ability of the Government or the capitalist class to deal with the situation.

Regular readers of this journal will know that we hold that an economic crisis, or the threat of it, is endemic to capitalism, the social system under which we currently endure. We further make the case that the economic ups and downs, loosely described as the good and bad days, do not come about because of the ability, or lack of it, of the capitalist class. Despite all the forward planning horrible gaffs are frequently made and the laws of the economic jungle as expressed in the markets of the world always prevail, often making a mockery of the planned growth so fondly extolled by these lance corporals of industry.

If General Motors is the thermometer of American capitalism, then the British model is ICI, one of the few British companies big enough in terms of capital, labour employed, turnover, and profit, to be included in a world ranking list. For years the prestige of this company appeared as if it could climb to the moon. Its board of directors was held in such esteem that some people would instal them as the Government in preference to the inept politicians of the Labour and Conservative Parties. Any words uttered by chairman Sir Paul Chambers—a former accountant and civil servant, and the innovator of the PAYE system of taxation— were always eagerly waited upon. So much talent was encompassed in the board of directors that they could afford to loan Lord Beeching to British Railways for five years in an endeavour to make that organisation a more profitable concern. The good doctor, as he then was, undertook the task, as you may recall, on the time honoured trade union principle of the rate for the job. The rate in question being the one he was receiving at ICI of £25,000 per year.

It was therefore highly ironical that IC1 should be the first of the large companies to announce cut backs as the squeeze took its effect. Profits for the first half of 1966 fell by ten per cent to £90 million and the forecast for the second half of the year did not look any brighter. Capital expenditure was to be cut back and 1,000 workers declared redundant. All because the high powered, and even higher paid, board of directors had overestimated the growth of the market in those commodities that they produce.

Since then reports have appeared in newspapers every day of firms either dismissing staff or putting them on short time. But as the number of workers involved in these instances are counted in tens and hundreds, rather than hundreds and thousands, the publicity attracted by these events has been small and completely overshadowed by the happenings at the British Motor Corporation, where tens of thousands of workers have been “shaken out”.

The situation has become confused, as some workers have engaged in retaliatory strike action. It is no longer clear which workers are on short time because the company is curtailing production, or, because parts are not available because of a strike in some other part of the organisation. The one thing that is clear, is that if BMC were asked the question recently posed in the pop parade “What’s it all about?” they would have to reply that they just didn’t know.

Unfortunately the Government and our fellow members of the working class would have to answer in the same way. If Prime Minister Wilson is correct and unemployment reaches 470,000 this winter, that will mean an increase of 150,000 in the ranks of the unemployed. How then, does this [plain] crazy Labour Government propose to do to deal with this? According to Minister of Labour Gunter there are a number of firms eagerly awaiting skilled labour as it becomes redundant, and the Ministry of Labour training centres are ready to retrain sacked workers and give skills to the unskilled. But some of the unions whose members are being affected by the dismissals have made a survey of the situations vacant and find the vacancies are falling, and those still available are not suited to the sacked men, and, in any event, there are not enough to absorb the workers now surplus to the requirements of the motor industry. As for the Government’s retraining scheme, there are 31 centres in the country and they can deal with 12,000 men per year.

The situation in the car industry today illustrates the difference between a capitalist society that produces for profit, and a socialist society that would produce for use. Who could argue that man’s requirements for motor cars has been satisfied? There are many families who own a car which often has been acquired at a great personal cost, including sending the wife out to work. A large number of cars have the owner underneath them carrying out repairs for longer periods than the car is actually in use. If roadside checks were made on private cars in the same way as on commercial vehicles a large number of them would be similarly ordered off the road. Some people who have been unaccosted by the affluent society cannot even afford an old banger.

So then, there are people without cars, and some with old cars, all who would like new cars. There are the workers at BMC who want to work a full week manufacturing cars. But the British Motor Corporation will not let them, because its function is not to make cars, but to sell them at a profit.

It may be said that the motor car is not really an essential thing. Have fear. If the crisis deepens you will find that the home makers, food makers and clothing makers will all curtail production if their products cannot be sold at a profit.

Ray Guy

Revolution (1966)

Book Review from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peaceful Revolution versus Violence by Frederick Engels (Socialist Labour Party, Is. 10d.)

The SLP have republished the introduction that Engels wrote in 1895 to Marx’s Class Struggles in France. They have changed their title from The Revolutionary Act.

Engels argues that the armed uprising as a means of winning political power has become outdated. The power of the military has so increased that they have the upper hand every time in street battles. The most practical means to political power has become the vote, as the Social Democrats in Germany were showing. There the working class were beginning to use the vote as “an instrument of emancipation.”

One passage is particularly worth quoting:

"The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act.”

This the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain has argued all along, against anarchists and those who back the theories of Lenin and Trotsky. Before Socialism can be established the immense majority of the working class must understand and want it and democratically set about getting it.

Adam Buick

The Sam Packer Story (1966)

A Short Story from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sam Packer was in his teens when he got a job at the factory. He was a bright lad, energetic and jolly, and his workmates took an instant liking to him. Sam soon became one of the firm’s most popular employees; the foreman smiled at him; the manager acknowledged him with a nod.

After doing odd jobs for a few years Sam qualified for a place at a bench and promptly celebrated his promotion by getting married. Marriage set his life on a different tack. Pocket money, sufficient when he was single, dwindled when he had a wife to maintain. It almost disappeared when the children came.

The few pay increases the firm conceded had to go straight into Mrs. Sam Packer's purse because of rising living costs. Sam did his best to economise, rolling his cigarettes, mending the family’s shoes, wearing second-hand clothing and riding to work on a bicycle with sandwiches for lunch. In desperation, after a bout of nagging from his wife, Sam went to the factory office and asked for a raise. Very abruptly he was told that such matters were dealt with through trade union channels and that the firm, facing financial problems, could not afford to pay increases.

The “financial problem" story was true, the firm was soon absorbed into a large combine. Sam found the new management remote and impersonal. A notice was posted informing the staff that, following reorganisation, there would be certain redundancies. A demand for a pay increase was rejected.

Sam was furious. He talked of throwing up the job but his wife nagged the fear of unemployment into him. One evening, with several mates, Sam went to his trade union branch meeting where he got on his feet and bellowed out all the rude things about his employers that his mates were thinking. He was clapped and cheered and went home happily with the applause ringing in his ears.

Sam became a regular attender at the union meetings, speaking as often as the chairman would let him on every subject that came up for discussion. Always critical, always expressing the general discontent, always demanding fair play for the workers, he established a local reputation. “Sam’s the boy,” said his mates, “He’ll tell ’em.”

When a shop steward suddenly died Sam’s nomination for the job was unopposed. He was required to attend trade union conferences and, after an attack of butterflies-in-the-stomach, he made his first conference speech, following it with regular contributions to the debates. Consistently he proposed motions of censure against union officials, criticisms of employers and threats of strike action.

At the close of each conference Sam would go to a nearby pub and argue over a pint with other ale-supping delegates. He became as popular with them as he was with his local workmates.

One day, at the factory union meeting, the members took one of Sam’s fiery speeches seriously and decided to strike. Sam was thrust into the position of a strike leader. It was the first time he had been called upon to do more than talk and he was bewildered.

The employers, with ears to the ground and spies at the union meeting, learned of the strike decision. Business was brisk and they were not prepared to face a stoppage at that moment, so they sent a polite invitation to Sam to meet them at their headquarters. He entered the boardroom with knees knocking, but the assembled management greeted him so warmly, addressing him as Mr. Packer, passing round their cigarettes and making flattering remarks about his ability as a trade union leader, that he soon got over his nervousness.

The chairman candidly admitted that the company was making a moderate profit and was prepared to show appreciation to its staff by introducing a bonus system. He pointed out how, with increased production, the bonus could grow and make a substantial increase in the staff’s earnings. Sam was relieved. They sold him the idea with ease. He shook hands all round and left the building with a jaunty step.

Back at the factory Sam called a special union meeting and recommended to the members the acceptance of the firm's offer. Against feeble opposition the meeting agreed to accept, to withdraw the strike decision and to give Sam a vote of thanks.

With his reputation enhanced Sam was elected on to one committee after another. He served on district committees, area committees, finance committees and, eventually, national committees. He was sent to Trades-Union Congress and to Labour Party conferences. His name became known in trade union circles from Penzance to Penrith, from Lowestoft to Llandudno. He was photographed by the press and interviewed for television. He dressed smartly and gave up rolling his cigarettes.

He worked at the factory for only one or two days a week. His employers gave him leave to attend his union meetings and the union paid him an allowance for the days devoted to union business. He was continuously invited to attend social functions sometimes in the company of employers he had recently faced across a negotiating table. He lost his taste for beer and cigarettes and acquired one for spirits and cigars.

Being on christian-name intimacy with the top brass of his union, Sam was groomed for a full-time job as a union officer and when he got it he moved from his old address to a modem flat near to his union office. His workmates at the factory, who had been seeing him less and less, now saw him not at all. His salary enabled his family to treble its living standard. He had a sleek car and his cigars and his waistline gradually increased their girth.

There was a fly in Sam's ointment. He missed the exhilaration of the applause that used to accompany his old fiery oratory. If he gave vent to a speech in front of employers they smiled indulgently and his fellow union officers made cracks about soap-box oratory. He was expected to devise compromises and work out alternative propositions. He was not good at it. It fogged him, his mind rambled and he lapsed into silence.

As a trade union officer Sam was drawn into Labour Party activity. When a by-election occurred in his constituency he threw himself into the fray with zest. He was in top form addressing audiences in his old spirited manner, lambasting his party's opponents and drawing laughs and claps with his wisecracks, his slashing criticisms and his slangy oratory. Only question time made him uncomfortable. He did not know the answers so he skirted round questions with wit and sarcasm. After the by-election he decided to better equip himself with a study course on political economy through his union education scheme.

Promotion in his union further increased Sam's salary, the size of his car and the length of his holidays. He attended international conferences, flying to foreign cities and staying in the best hotels. To improve his image he took his wife around with him. The days of living in a two-roomed flat, riding a bicycle to work, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and mending his own shoes were so far behind him that he could afford to boast about them in contrast to his new status.

Mr. Sam Packer no longer spoke of workers’ rights, fair wages, the unscrupulous boss class and working class solidarity. Instead he spoke of national economy, trade balances, export problems, productivity and international finance. Although he allowed himself to be called a Socialist he carefully avoided references to class interests.

One day the 'phone rang in Mr. Packer's office. It was his National Secretary calling to tell him that the workers at the factory where he used to work were on strike for more pay. The employers had 'phoned union headquarters to complain that, as they abided by national agreements, they expected the workers to do likewise and what was the union going to do about the strike? The National Secretary had assured them that the Union did not condone unofficial disputes and that a union officer would be sent to the effected area to get the men back to work. That was a job for Samuel Packer.

Press reporters were waiting outside the office to bombard Mr. Packer with questions. He gave them a statement. He said that the strike was unjustified, that it was probably the work of an handful of agitators, that the workers would see reason when matters were explained to them and that the public could be assured that there would soon be a resumption of work.

A meeting of the strikers was specially convened to hear union officer Packer tell them that their action was ill-timed and ill-advised and that, if they forced wages up at this time, the price of their products would increase and foreign competitors would undersell them. If goods could not be sold the workers who produced them, explained Mr. Packer, would soon be out of a job. The sensible thing was to increase production without increasing costs, to be competitive in the markets of the world, capture orders and have plenty of work. When that was done there would be good prospects of a big pay increase.

One questioner asked, if jobs depended on selling goods and selling goods depended on low wages, then wouldn't jobs and low wages always go together? Another worker said that when he worked in an overseas factory he had been told the same story; the workers were being played off against one another.

Mr. Packer replied that he could smell a red agitator a mile away. He, with other union officers, was in the best position to keep a finger on the pulse of the national situation and to advise workers when to seek wage increases and when to bide their time. If they were as reasonable as he thought they were they would go back to work and leave their claims in the hands of the union where, he swore on oath, their interests would be well looked after.

The chairman counted the votes amid uproar and announced a narrow majority for a return to work.

Months later, at a Labour Party meeting, Mr. Packer accepted a challenge from a member of the audience to debate the question “Is the Labour Party a Socialist Party?" This, he thought, would be fun. He was astounded when Transport House informed him that, if he engaged in this debate, he must do so as an individual, not as a Labour Party representative.

For Mr. Packer the debate was a fiasco. He defined Socialism as “The greatest good to the greatest number," “Christianity in practice" and “The brotherhood of man." He amplified these definitions by reference to the Labour Party’s schemes for building houses, hospitals and schools, for increasing production and old age pensions and decreasing armaments.

His opponent defined Socialism as a system of society wherein the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth were commonly owned and democratically controlled by, and in the interest of the whole community. This, said Mr. Packer, was idealism, a pipe dream and totally impracticable. Human nature would not allow it. He believed in a practical kind of Socialism. 

Mr. Packer's opponent explained how this so-called practical Socialism was really a continuation of the existing social set-up with its wars, poverty, unemployment and insecurity. He quoted from Mr. Packer’s own trade union speeches to show that the abolition on the wages system was the only solution to the problems of wage earners.

In his winding-up address Mr. Packer became confused, then annoyed and finally abusive. He left the hall with a red face amid grins and laughs.

When the office of national union secretary became vacant Mr. Packer was an unsuccessful candidate for the job, but compensation came when, in the New Year’s Honours List, he was cited for the O.B.E.

Subsequently he accepted nomination as a parliamentary candidate in a safe Labour constituency. As a Member of Parliament his infrequent speeches were as empty as the benches around him. The Honourable Member Mr. Packer, O.B.E., knew the right people and was appointed to the board of a nationalised industry at a salary of £12,000 a year. He hob-nobbed with his fellow board members, all of whom were either ex-bankers or ex-company directors. He objected to any reference to his humble origin.

He gradually faded from the public limelight till he was stricken by thrombosis in his London home and died, despite the attention of two hastily summoned Harley Street physicians.

A few grilled old workers at the factory read of his death in their morning papers. The announcement was wedged between news of a wage freeze, closing factories, short-time working, redeployment and unemployment. One old timer, as he spread his breakfast margarine, said, “Packer, he used to work at our place. Led us up the garden, proper, he did. Still, it was our own fault. We ought to do our own thinking instead of leaving it to blokes like him.”

W. Waters