The changing world of children (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirteen million of the population of Britain are under 15 years old. When Socialism is established, that quarter of the population will cease to be financial dependants and will be owners of the means of living like everyone else. Questions about education and upbringing in Socialism frequently assume that children are still to be at the disposal of adults and will have arrangements made for them. It may not be like that.

The idea of childhood itself has altered repeatedly in different social phases. “Infancy”, which now refers to very young children, formerly meant the entire pre-adult period of life; the word is still used with this meaning in law. Adolescence was a legal division in ancient Rome, covering the period from puberty (14 for males, 12 for females) to the male majority at 25. Only in the 20th century, however, has it come to mean a physical and psychological development between childhood and adulthood. In the Middle Ages and the early capitalist era such a stage was virtually unrecognized: they were children, then they were adults.

Thus, in Tudor times upper-class boys matriculated and were sent away to universities at thirteen or fourteen. The law permitted the marriage of boys at fourteen and girls at twelve. Shakespeare’s Juliet was thirteen, and a character says early in the play: “Younger than she are happy mothers made.” Children of what are now called tender years were flogged; the Verney Memoirs has a letter expressing concern for a delicate three-year-old—“Let me beg of you and his mother that nobody whip him but Mr. Parrye”. In the working class, Defoe noted with approval in the early 18th century that children of four and five all over Britain earned their livings.

Childhood is a physiological condition, but its duration and what is expected of it are social decisions. The question “What is man?” needs a rider: “What is child?”

Work and School

The first moves to control child labour in factories, and thereby create a new conception of childhood, were made by “enlightened” members of the capitalist class during the Napoleonic Wars. One of them was Sir Robert Peel, the father of the Tory Prime Minister. G. M. Trevelyan in his English Social History indicates the nature of this enlightenment: “No doubt the good Sir Robert, who himself employed 15,000 hands, was in part anxious to restrain the unfair competition of his more unscrupulous rivals.”

At the same time, economists argued the need to withhold children from work and send them to school. Adam Smith put forward a scheme for parish schools which would provide the basis of economic activity and progress. Ricardo and Malthus both favoured education as a means of inculcating habits which would lead to family limitation, and therefore an increase in economic well-being. An anonymous pamphlet of 1856 called The Education of the Masses, Can it be Accomplished? talked more specifically of making labour-power “a much better and more trustworthy article than has hitherto been furnished”. In introducing the Elementary Education Act of 1870 W. E. Forster said: “Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our national prosperity.”

Childhood was defined by developed capitalism as from birth to twelve, then fourteen and after; during this time the value of labour-power would be formed and the child purposefully conditioned. Adolescence appeared as the period between that childhood and marriage, which was now delayed several years. Alongside these changes, the spread of scientific ideas and of modern popular culture installed fresh images of childhood. The decline of the social importance of the family in this century has weakened former prejudices and sanctions; in general, children today are better cared for and less restricted than ever before. Yet, as with the majority of society, the result is frustration because means and conditions are absent.

Moulding

The often-quoted claim of a Jesuit that a child raised by him up to seven years old would be his for life has been responsible for a lot of muddled thinking about upbringing and its effects. Much of what small children learn is the acquiring by imitation of social techniques. Getting food, conversation, movement, etc., are absorbed almost unwittingly from the circles in which they live. “They are very often ignorant of the possibilities of any other sort of behaviour; and the process of learning is probably as nearly effortless as any which can be studied.” (C. M. Fleming, The Social Psychology of Education.)

Responses are also learned this way: how to win admiration and to get one’s own way. This leads to the identification of learning in children with “socialization”, or conditioning them to perform as those in charge desire—the modern version of the Jesuit theory. Fortunately, it does not work. To connect the upbringing of children with the class struggle may seem far-fetched, but this is the operative factor. While their “nature” as children is laid down by and to suit the needs of capitalism, it conflicts with the notions of self- and group-interest formed in a working-class environment. The size of the gap is shown by the numerous attempts at supplementary conditioning made through youth organizations—which in turn fail, for the same reason.

Earnest radicals have often tried to oppose the “socialization” of capitalism with alternative theories of upbringing and youth organizations which try to impose a different point of view. In the nineteen- twenties and -thirties a “Left Scout Movement” was attempted called first Kibbo Kift and then the Woodcraft Folk. The founder of the latter organization, Leslie Paul, wrote later: “Despite the socialist dressing we gave to everything, and believed we believed in, every kind of future reform or revolution paled beside our concern for the content of the actual life we were living at that moment.” (Angry Young Man, 1951.) That is precisely it. For children, the proposed indoctrination is a disposable surface item; the activity, learning by doing, is what adds to the development of reasoning powers.

Games people play

Children learn rôles. Childhood itself is a rôle; if it is deemed to continue to, say, fourteen or fifteen a boy or girl will act younger at that age than if he or she is named an adolescent or an adult. The rôles are what society expects and therefore makes known to children, and their carrying-out is part of social technique.

In the last thirty years the male and female rdles practised and accepted throughout capitalism have altered. The long hair inaugurated by pop groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stone., at the beginning of the nineteen-sixties was a sign of rejection of established masculine looks, while girls took to male trousers. Established ideas of distinct characteristic behaviour of the sexes have blurred; women make sexual demands on men, instead of the opposite. When co-education in state schools was spreading in the ’fifties it was often said to have the effect of making boys womanish, but that is no longer heard.

Previously there was no problem. Boys were conditioned from their earliest consciousness to be virile (“Be a big boy, now’’) and girls feminine. The classic toy for girls, held to be a demonstration in itself that the differences in behaviour were inborn, was a doll. However, in the last ten years one of the most popular boys’ toys has been the “action man’’, which is simply a male doll with changeable clothes. Insofar as children learn male and female rôles from what they see round them—mother doing housework and cooking, father going out to his job—the difference remains. But it is also clear that this is not destiny but a social arrangement; and the old version of it cannot be inculcated in the future.

Besides observation and instruction, children learn by play. This fact was taken up by educationalists a generation ago in "the play way”, trying to adapt play to be a means of conditioning. On the other side, before the 1914-18 war an American named Stanley Hall produced the “recapitulation” theory of play; it argued that children re-enacted the stages of man’s development—gathering, hunting, tribal wars, even (in “swapping”) the growth of commerce. Play ranges from simple imitation to the acting of fantasies, and the need for it is not confined to children. Social convention and the work-ethic say that it should be, with the result that adult occupations such as acting and professional sports are commonly regarded as evading work. Living in capitalism, we see man estranged from himself.

Something new

Again in common with adults, children need stability and affection. In memoirs of the Oneida Community (My Father's House, published in 1937) Pierrepont Noyes related how the elders of the community censured the showing of affection on the grounds that it denoted possessiveness; and the stress this put on the persons he knew. Individuals who are handicapped in this way can and do have problems ot relationships with the rest of society, which often emerge as delinquency.

However, underlying individual relationships is the structure of society as a whole. The parent-child relationship expresses material circumstances, laws and social concepts that arise from or are linked with wage-labour and capital. The protectiveness of parents is a mixture of affection with the knowledge that in the capitalist world the pursuit of a natural impulse, or a misjudgement, can be punished in the all-important material sense. This in itself makes the child a subject instead of an individual; the parent says "Do as you’re told, or it will be the worse for you” because that is how a class society operates.

Certainly, in any society children must learn. Rather than ask how it will be arranged in Socialism, it can be pointed out that capitalism prevents them learning now. Children will learn through their own activity, play and curiosity; the “problem” of literacy in capitalist society is for governments to try to instil it while keeping the social factors which obstruct it. The best-known of “progressive” educationists, A. S. Neill, insisted that children learn when and because they want to, but Neill was unable to operate his principles within the general education system of capitalism.

We look forward to the emergence of socialist man, the fulfilment of the capacities which are stifled and distorted in capitalist society. Socialist child should not be overlooked; equally, he and she will be an altogether different creature.

Robert Barltrop

So They Say: Protests too much (1977)

The So They Say Column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protests too much

An article in The Spectator of 12th November entitled “The irrelevance of class” which attempts to justify its title by showing how various important men have risen from what are discreetly referred to as “humble births”, reminds us that the class war still prompts professional hacks (and quacks) to issue it, at regular intervals with a formal death certificate. The entire irrelevance of class structure within society led the writer of the article to over 50 column-inches to make his point and if The Spectator is prepared to pay for and publish this sort of thing, we have high hopes for our own submission entitled “The irrelevance of air—hot and cold.”

The inconvenient obstacle to the claim however is one of fact. Obstacles of this nature may or may not impress Spectator’s writers who are prepared to spend a good deal of time apparently in dealing with what they consider “irrelevances”, but it cannot seriously be denied that capitalist society is divided, on the one hand into those who own and control the means of life and on the other, into those who must work for a member of the owning class in order to live. If this class division were non-existent, or irrelevant, we could only express surprise at the great deal of verbiage mustered to assure us of the claim.

Not cricket

Although the owning class as a whole have class interests in common, namely the retention of private- property society and they will unite on issues which may threaten this, each member also has individual interests in the day-to-day business of increasing their particular share of the social wealth, and this process obliges them to enter into battles among themselves. Whereas the working class, the non-owners, represent a class enemy to be held off by a variety of means, other members of the capitalist class are rivals and as such require direct attention.

Fresh diplomatic protests have been tendered by the Government over breaches in agreements by Japanese (Motor) manufacturers to hold down sales in Britain.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

The British motor manufacturers claim that the Japanese are carrying out an “invasion” of the British markets contrary to an undertaking given by the Japanese to restrain sales to the UK. It all sounds very reasonable—an arrangement between friends. The Japanese motor men have argued before that it had all been a misunderstanding and they may well do so again. The fact that the British government now argues the case on behalf of its own national manufacturers shows that they are not deceived. Both parties are aware that “undertakings” are weak restraints on the pressures of capitalist expansion.

Making the point, in the same newspaper, was the Chairman of the Welsh council of the CBI who advises his members that British manufacturers can satisfactorily meet Japanese competition by putting in “the same intensity of effort as the Japanese”, by which he means a greater degree of exploitation of the British working class. This gentleman was speaking from experience. He is the chairman of a machine-tool company.

Last year I put one Japanese firm out of business and two other Japanese firms have given up their markets to me.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

It seems probable that the aforementioned Japanese firms may be petitioning him soon to give an “undertaking” for restraint.

Plenty of problems

The Japanese Prime Minister has become increasingly concerned at the economic problems he faces as the yen rises against other currencies and the exporters are finding it more difficult to compete successfully in overseas markets. He now refers to exports as a “negligible factor in expanding economic growth in future.” The new strategy he revealed is to be the stimulation of home demand by increasing public spending, which we seem to have heard somewhere before.

Mr. Fukuda neatly put his finger on one of the major difficulties facing the Japanese, who are by no means alone in the matter, and shows that capitalism, despite the efforts of so-called planning, simply continues to produce problems and contradictions. The profit motive governs production.

The important thing is to create demand in the midst of the problems of overcapacity and unemployment.

(The Times, 11th November 77)

Capitalist ideologies

The Chinese are said to have approached the British government with a view to ordering Harrier jump-jets. Apparently the so-called socialists are faced with a build up of forces on their border with the other so-called socialists, the Russians. The fact that the British government also refers to itself as “socialist” no doubt lends justification to the approach and completes the picture of this happy socialist band who act so differently from the capitalist governments. To an un-trained eye it would appear to be a straightforward business arrangement.

However Britain is a member of a NATO organization called Cocom whose function is to prevent the sale of weapons and plant for producing them, to “communist” countries. America is also a member and it might be thought that they would, as they are entitled, veto consideration of the order. Surely the Americans would not permit any hole-in-the-wall arrangement between all these “socialists". It appears however that the Americans have an un-trained eye in the matter. They have their reasons too.

The fact that there is a company to company agreement between Hawker Siddeley and Macdonald Douglas to manufacture the Harrier under licence in no way interferes with the sale of the Harrier by Britain to other states, I was authoritatively informed yesterday. A non-British member of Cocom’s coordinating committee told me a few days ago that the United States rarely raised any objection to the export of strategic materials to a Communist country if it was produced or manufactured in America.

(Daily Telegraph, 9th November 77)

Direct elections: another non-issue (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain towards the Common Market has been consistent: that it is a political and trading arrangement between capitalist States. Whether Britain should have gone in, should stay in or should withdraw does not concern the working class. Thus, during the 1975 referendum, we urged workers to vote neither “YES” nor “NO” but, if they wanted Socialism, to indicate this by writing the word “SOCIALISM” across their ballot paper.

This attitude distinguished us from all others calling themselves “socialists”, most of whom were urging a "NO” vote on a variety of grounds. For instance, we were urged to oppose the Common Market on the ground that it rules out the possibility of establishing “socialism” in Britain because it infringes “the sovereignty of parliament”. But, in imagining that Socialism could be established in just one country or that “socialist measures” could be taken within the framework of capitalism, those who argue like this show that they don’t know the first thing about Socialism, which can only be world-wide like the system, capitalism, it will be replacing.

What such people in fact stand for is not Socialism at all, but British state capitalism. The sort of anti- Common Market propaganda put out by these people—the left wing of the Labour Party and the so-called Communist Party—is falsely done in the name of Socialism. By waving the Union Jack and playing on British nationalism, they reveal themselves as opponents. Socialism can only come into being when workers throughout the world have, among other things, got rid of all national prejudices and come to regard themselves as citizens of the world.

The Common Market, even if it evolved into a United States of Europe or something similar, does not make the establishment of Socialism any harder. It does not undermine the institutions (the ballot box and parliament) which the working class should use to establish Socialism. It is true that the Common Market does transfer the right to legislate in certain fields to its own law-making body, the Council of Ministers (not the European Parliament which is not a legislative body at all). But the Council of Ministers is made up of representatives from the governments of the Member States, which in turn are responsible to their elected parliaments. Thus, if we argue at this purely constitutional level (which apparently we must when dealing with the arguments of the Eric Heffers and Norman Atkinsons), the Common Market could not hold up the establishment of Socialism, for, if socialist majorities existed in the national parliaments of its Member States, this would automatically mean that the Common Market’s law-making body would also be controlled by socialists.

We are not interested in using parliaments to pass laws dealing with trade, patents, social security, free movement of labour, etc.—in short, laws to administer capitalism—but only in using them for the one revolutionary purpose of abolishing capitalism and establishing Socialism. The diminution of the powers of the British parliament brought about by the Common Market does not mean that it—or the parliaments of the other Member States— can no longer be used as an instrument to establish Socialism.

The so-called European Parliament is not really a parliament in the generally accepted sense of the word. It has no law-making powers (and has a final say as to how money should be spent in a very limited sphere) and plays a purely consultative rôle. Common Market regulations—which really do have the force of law, some being directly applicable in Member States without needing to be enacted by national parliaments as well—are made by the Council of Ministers on proposals from the Commission in Brussels. It is the Council of Ministers, not the European Parliament, which in the Common Market carries out the functions normally associated with parliaments (law-making, approval of the budget).

Nevertheless, it has been agreed (by the Council of Ministers!) that the European Parliament, instead of being appointed as now by the national parliaments from amongst their members, should be directly elected in all-Europe elections to be held in May or June next year. That these elections will take place is not yet absolutely certain since each Member State has to pass legislation to permit them in its country and if any one fails to do so then there will be no elections anywhere.

The “left wing” of the Labour Party, in accordance with its nationalist state-capitalist aim, is trying to stop Britain passing the necessary legislation. Once again we are told that direct elections to the European Parliament is something socialists should campaign against. Once again we disagree. Nevertheless, we can recognize that it is better that political bodies under capitalism should be directly elected instead of appointed from above; this makes it easier for the working class, when they have become socialists, to take them out of the hands of the capitalist class.

This does not mean we advocate direct elections to the European Parliament, but merely that, now this has been offered by our rulers, it is something that can be accepted. Thus, our attitude to the elections when (and if) they take place next year will be the same as to all other elections. We will use them to publicize Socialism; and we shall be urging those who want Socialism to write “SOCIALISM”— or “SOCIALISME” or “SOZIALISMUS” or “SOCIALISMO”, as the case may be—across their ballot papers.

Adam Buick

Letter: Class interests (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class interests

The party’s Seventh Principle states that “political parties are but the expression of class interests". Accepting that the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Parties all look after the interests of Capitalism, which particular section of the capitalist class benefits from which party?

Who does the Labour Party represent? Stockbrokers seem to believe in it, as the F.T. Share Index shows, but which businesses are actually supporting it. by donations etc? Could you name some businesses and types of business which stand to benefit from Labour policies as opposed to those of the Tories?

The Seventh Principle stands as a generalisation. There is no generalisation worthy of the name which does not apply in specific instances. Therefore, would you give some details?

F. S.

Newcastle

Reply:

All sections of the capitalist class, industrialists, mine-owners, bankers, ship-owners, newspaper proprietors, manufacturers and property-owners, and building consortiums, benefit from all the major political parties. After all, the political parties govern in their interests. There is no special group of capitalists who are preferred to others, but it is common knowledge that MPs of all parties lobby for particular business interests, and act as public relations men and consultants to large companies and industrial organizations. Historically, the Tory Party represented the interests of ship-owners, newspaper proprietors, bankers, mine-owners and landlords. The Liberal Party represented industrialists, manufacturers and small business men. The Labour Party look over the Liberal Party’s policy but was originally formed to represent trade-union interests. These distinctions no longer exist, and capitalists of all kinds will support any political group irrespective of its ideology, as long as it can keep order and advance their interests. Some sections, such as the landlords, claim that Labour governments legislate to their disadvantage, and cite the Rent Acts as an example. However, the Rent Acts were introduced by a Conservative government in 1915, and the Tories have extended these against the landlord at various times.

Without any doubt the Tory Party receives large donations from big manufacturers like Tate & Lyle and many others. McAlpine, the millionaire road-builder, is their Chairman. These donations used to be made in secret but now have to be declared on the firm’s accounts, and many rich individuals make donations through the “Old Boy” network. How else could they maintain the expensive electoral machinery, full-time agents, and professional propagandists and large head office premises. It is not possible to give specific details as these donations are not publicly announced or recorded.

Another type of support given by big business to the Tory Party is in the type of campaigns against certain Labour Party measures. In the recent campaign by the banks against nationalisation, hundreds of thousands of pounds were spent, and undoubtedly some of this money would have found its way into the Tory Party. The same thing would have applied in the case of the campaign run by a federation of ship-repairing interests against the nationalization of the aircraft and ship-repairing industries.

The Labour Party also has rich supporters, including a number of millionaires: the late Eric Miller, who hobnobbed with Harold Wilson, Jimmy Goldsmith, Cotton the Birmingham property millionaire, Charles Forte and many others. These rich people do not give their support unless they receive something in return; whether this be a subsidy, honours, export credit, a licence, a Government contract, or some other form of Government assistance will depend on the particular circumstances. The Labour Party receives the bulk of its funds from trade unions through the Political Levy, and the sponsorship of some of its MP’s, but it is a capitalist party which believes it can run capitalism in the interests of the working class. Occasionally it will make attacks on certain rich people or luxury industries, and the worst excesses of capitalism, but it will not attack the system.

The main issue between Tory and Labour government is on the question of state control of industry and nationalization. Here is a classic example of the interests of the capitalist class being represented in different ways, and this is precisely what Clause 7 refers to. The Tories want to cut down expensive government, reduce taxation, and state intervention. To the extent to which the state intervenes bureaucracy grows and inhibits the growth of capital. This is the main bone of contention. It would be impossible for governments to show partiality to certain sections of the capitalist class over a long period, as they are all watching one another and will take good care that nobody gains an advantage. This is where their parliamentary hacks come in. The fact that a party like the Labour Party is predominantly composed of workers does not prevent it from acting in the interests of capitalism, for the simple reason that the workers support capitalism.

Editors.

Letter: Socialism's Economics (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism's Economics

The article on socialism in September’s SS (p. 166-7) went beyond the evidence on human desires in the hypothetical new society. But it clearly declared that many wants may have to go unsatisfied. It did not indicate how such decisions would be reached. It pointed out that Socialism would be similar to capitalism in being a system of co-operation and social production, but it did not show what we could put in place of the price system as a means of economic communication. People would have to work, but how would they know when enough is enough? In short, where is the socialist economics that will make an economy based on common ownership viable?

“RAW" tells us (1) that it must be technically possible to keep people free of deprivation and (2) people need to have socialist understanding. He tells us that the first requirement has been met even though people like the Hyde Park questioner may feel deprived. The second is a different matter. Capitalism did not have to solve this, RAW says. Perhaps he thinks the knowledge that even children have mastered to buy sweets should not count as knowledge. On this I do not agree. However, what about the knowledge we will use to economize our wants in the new society? This seems to have been ignored by RAW.

Workers are only “forced” to work in capitalism because they want to live. The same “force" would exist in any society that depended upon effort to supply needs. The two obstacles facing the SPGB are different from the ones RAW mentioned. They are: (1) A viable socialist economics that would theoretically expound the new society as modern economics expounds capitalism. (2) A political theory of how to manage law and order in the new society. I think it is fair to say that while they remain unsolved Socialism remains a half-baked idea.

David McDonagh 

Birmingham

Reply:

We are afraid that the trouble is that like many people, you feel that a harmonious system like Socialism is really too good to be true and therefore spend your time looking for all possible faults (which is fine) but find problems which won’t exist (which is unnecessary). You bring up the old difficulty: "What if everyone wants a Rolls Royce etc? Chaos must reign!” Under capitalism though, most people know they will never even ride in a Rolls, let alone own one, so that’s fine! The rich who rule the earth, can drive the Rolls Royces, and the people who build them can wait for the bus, and so that's fine! What you don’t grasp is that we will only have Socialism when the majority of people are socialists; that is people who know what Socialism is, and are determined to get it. Such people will not wreck Socialism because society may not be able to afford to produce Rolls Royces. The “economics” that you seem to require is in part a result of looking at the future. Socialism, with the conditioned eyes of the present, capitalism. Socialists who go through the revolutionary process of establishing Socialism will work in their own interests sorting out their material requirements. It may sound simple, but it is not only the SPGB that says it is possible to solve all the material problems i.e. it is technically possible to do so. It is only socialists though who have suggested the practical way of doing so. Why not spend your time thinking about the real problems that afflict us now, and not the imagined ones of the future? And join with us in getting rid of the cause of these problems?

So far as your question of law and order is concerned, there is not space to go into that here. We would refer you in particular to The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, which shows that law is a product (and therefore a problem) of property society, and will be of no relevance to property less society, i.e. Socialism.

Editors.

Letter: The Rate of Profit (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rate of Profit

Did Marx hold that the rate of exploitation of workers increased inevitably? This appears to contradict his theory of the falling rate of profit, though I am aware he adduced counteracting tendencies that could increase the rate of profit?

Robin Cox

Haslemere

Reply:

The outstanding feature of what Marx wrote on this subject is his insistence that he was dealing only with tendencies, some working in one direction and some in the opposite direction. So at the beginning of Chapter XIV in Capital Vol 3 he wrote: “For this reason we have referred to the fall of the average rate of profit as a tendency to fall.”

The chief factor leading to a fall in the rate of profit arises from the tendency of the composition of capital to change in the direction that of every £1,000,000 capital invested a larger part takes the form of constant capital and a smaller part variable capital (wages). He illustrated this (see Chapter XIII) by showing how, with the same rate of exploitation and the same amount of surplus-value, the rate of profit on a capital of low composition would be 50 per cent. and on a capital of higher composition 20 per cent.

In Chapter XIV he listed some counter-acting tendencies, the first of which was increasing the intensity of exploitation, i.e. extracting more surplus-value from the workers.

But the capitalist cannot increase the intensity of exploitation simply because he wants to. He has to take account of the degree of resistance the workers can put up. Marx dealt with this in Chapter XIV of Value, Price and Profit. He showed that the actual rate of profit “is only settled by the continuous struggle between capitalist and labourer, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.”

That this is not just an academic question is shown by Engels in his 1892 Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in 1844, where he points out that in the fifty years since 1848 the factory workers “are undoubtedly better off” and that the condition of the workers organized in trade unions “has remarkably improved since 1848".

On the other hand a glance at Chapter XIV of Capital Vol. 3 will show that some of the factors listed by Marx as tending to raise the rate of profit are still operating.

It should also be borne in mind that in dealing with the rate of profit Marx was concerned with the workers in the productive sphere where alone value is created. This should not be confused with the different question of the proportion of annual national income received by the whole working class. In Chapter II of Value, Price and Profit Marx accepted the possibility that at that time 86 per cent. of the population received only 33 per cent, of the national income. Even if that figure exaggerated the actual degree of inequality, it is undoubtedly true that 86 per cent. of the population in this country now receive a larger proportion of national income than when Marx wrote.

Editors.

Letter: World Wide (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Wide

After having received two issues of the Socialist Standard I must say what an excellent magazine it is, exploring the fundamental principles of both capitalism and Socialism. Although I largely agree with the aims of your organization there are a few points in your declaration of principles that I disagree with. (1) The Working class is not confined to those who "produce but do not possess”, as over half of its number work in the so called service industries, and a good many others are on the dole. (2) The population of this country benefit from the exploitation of the less developed countries, just as the capitalist class benefit from the exploitation of the working class, and therefore requiring a majority of the population of this country to be in favour of Socialism before its establishment is, on an international scale, like demanding that a majority of the capitalist class must be in favour beforehand on a national scale. Being a socialist, and therefore an internationalist, I consider this prerequisite of Socialism to be both undemocratic and politically naive. (3) I do not consider that the SPGB is the only party ‘seeking working class emancipation’, and consider that if you accepted this you could play a very constructive part in the victory of revolutionary Socialism in this country. After 73 years I would have thought that you would have realized that there was something wrong with your methods. (4) Socialism, at least in the short term, will not make material poverty 'give place to comfort’ for the majority of this country’s population, as first the discrepancy between our wealth and that of the less developed world has to be rectified. Despite these disagreements I do strongly sympathize with your party and its aims, and would like to find out more about its views.

K. Knight, 

Exeter

Reply:

On point (1): You are correct. The working class is not confined to those employed in manufacturing industries but consists of those who do all of the necessary work of capitalist society. The definition is based not on the kind of work but the need to work. The vast majority own no part of the means of production and distribution and must therefore sell their mental and physical energies. their labour-power, to the capitalist class. Those “on the dole” share the same class relationship to the means of living as their employed fellow-workers.

(2) The capitalist class exploits the working class by paying workers less in wages than the value of the wealth which they as a class produce. Workers in this country (as in the rest of the world) are paid for the value of their labour-power. They do not get a bonus because of conditions in, say, South America. Following the dictates of the system capitalists everywhere seek to invest and trade in the most profitable manner and will take advantage of conditions in the poorer areas of the world. The propertlyless majority in the less developed countries are exploited by their "local" capitalist class.

We do not understand how the requirement that a vast majority of the working class must be in favour of Socialism in order to get it can be undemocratic.

(3) We do not know of any other party, in this country, which has Socialism as its sole aim and there is no other way to working-class emancipation. There are other parties which share some of the same terminology but they are only interested in our support on their terms, i.e. for some short term or reformist aim. We cannot have Socialism until the vast majority of the working class is ready to organize to that end. If it were possible to get Socialism on our own and make the world a present of it we surely would. For 73 years only the SPGB has kept the issue of Socialism clear and alive. During that time the same arguments have rotated in opposition—and workers have followed leaders up the same blind alleys. There is no short cut to the spread of Socialist knowledge. However if you have some fresh ideas or can tell us of some different method we are ready to listen.

(4) We agree with you that the first priority for Socialist society will be to ensure that every human being has enough to eat. Socialism will very quickly solve such problems as hunger by removing the fetters from production.

Editors.

Letter: 'With apologies to Alice' (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

G. W. Walford (London N. 1): “We have answered three questions and that is enough ... Do you think we can listen all day to such stuff?” (With apologies to Alice; except that it is not three questions but one familiar assertion, repeated ad infinitum.)

Blogger's Note:

I don't know about three questions but George Walford did have at least three letters in the Socialist Standard in 1977:

• May 1977: What is our IQ?
• Jul 1977: Class & Understanding
• Oct 1977: Class and Ideology

SPGB Meetings (1977)

Party News from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

He's telling us (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the quantity of money capable of being absorbed by the circulation is given for a given mean velocity of currency, all that is necessary in order to abstract a given number of sovereigns from the circulation is to throw the same number of pound notes into it, a trick well known to all bankers. 

(Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, p. 136, Kerr edition)

You've got plenty of nothing (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The shyster practising the three-card trick at the fairground or other places where a few simpletons are gathered together usually commences his spiel with: “I have nothing in my right hand, I have nothing in my left hand”—and suddenly out of his midriff he produces the ace of spades. Having thus gained the interest of his audience he invites them to “find the lady”. His accomplished hands move three cards around on a table as fast as the eye can see, and then he’ll lay even money against you spotting the queen. As professional shysters generally speaking gain their livelihoods at this kind of thing, there is little chance of anyone getting the better of them at their own game. The lady, alas, is never where she ought to be, and those whose money has gone from their pockets into his are definitely sadder, wiser and poorer men.

Heaven forbid that we should describe our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, as a shyster —he is nothing of the kind. He operates within the law whilst shysters do not. He receives the approbation of wealthy and respectable people, and no shyster surely would receive that. Also, shysters do not have sizeable estates in the country. Their scale of operations is minute, as they only deal with small fry. Our Chancellor is a man of honour, and his dealings with the working class should never be placed on a par with our fairground charlatan.

However, there is one thing our Chancellor and our shyster have in common, and that is the ability to play tricks on people; to deceive them; to present an illusion where things are not what they appear to be. As everything done by Healey is done in the most reasonsable arid refined manner, and in full vision of the public, it would be wrong to say that he practises deception.

TUC — graveyard of unity
In his 15th budget since Labour took office in this parliament, Healey on 26th October increased the personal Tax allowance by 12 per cent. This meant, according to our best newspapers, that some workers would receive £1 extra each week. But hold on! The rate of inflation, or the fall in the purchasing power of money, for which Mr. Healey’s Labour government is directly responsible, has been over 13 per cent. over the last twelve months. All that Healey has done is to return to the workers a tiny fraction of something previously derived from them. That graveyard of unity, the TUC, consider that this was a benefit for the lower-paid worker. This lickspittle institution never tires of telling the workers that a Labour government is God’s gift to the working class and they ought to be grateful for it, even with 1,600,000 unemployed.

This resembles the man and his dog who got lost in the forest. There was no food to be found and the man was very hungry. He looked at the dog and for the first time noticed that it had rather a long tail. After some misgivings (being an Englishman) he cut off the dog’s tail and made a stew of it. After eating, he threw the bones to the dog. Never in the history of canine loyalty was there a more delighted dog—it felt it had the best master in the world.

For the working class to ask for a bigger share of its own product is to ask for charity. Why should the workers allow themselves to be dependent on the goodwill of well-fed, well-breeched politicians, whose future is assured as well as their prosperity by the useless parasites who pay them well for the dirty work they perform?

It is easier to get rid of them both than to live with them. That is what Socialists have been saying for years. We deserve your support, and we shall get it when the workers decide to get up off their knees.

Jim D'Arcy

The Nature of Democracy (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is essentially democratic. It means a society of true equality. All people will jointly own the means of production and distribution, and will control them and administer all the affairs of society from that classless basis. Because means must harmonize with ends, the organization for Socialism is also democratic. Socialists reject leadership and censorship; the realization of the interests of the working class lies in full, free and informed discussion.

The capitalist class does not willingly give such facilities for the development of socialist consciousness and organization. It has to provide them as legal “rights" for the maintenance of its own political system, and their extent varies from country to country. Socialists are aware of the need for scope, and — unlike many foolish people who call themselves “revolutionaries” — avoid jeopardizing the opportunities we have. At the same time, we do not bow down in gratitude to the ruling class and promise to fight on their side in return for what they have grudgingly given. We compare their “rights” with the freedom Socialism offers; when increasing numbers of socialists give us bigger muscles, we shall want more room to flex them.

The other half of the lie, that Russia and China are communist, is that the West is free and democratic. This falsehood provides a vital propaganda weapon which the ruling class use to goad workers into the acceptance of war preparations. It can never be officially admitted that the reason is economic and concerns markets, resources and profits, not ideological concern for freedom and democracy.

Strategic Alliances
Alliances between allegedly free countries and dictatorships have no ideological explanation, they can only be understood in terms of commercial and military strategy. For example, Portugal while a dictatorship was “Britain’s oldest ally” and Uganda under Amin, remains part of the so-called Commonwealth, America sponsors dictatorships like that in S. Korea and fought a ten years war to bolster the power of its puppet tyrants in Vietnam. Russia and China infiltrate much of the world with massive investments, trade and military power, even in places where their “communist” comrades are in prison. The British and American ruling classes embraced Russia as an ally from 1941 to 1945 and tailored their propaganda accordingly. Churchill found no difficulty working with Stalin, whose regime he had spent twenty-five years denouncing as a “cancerous growth”, to organize the mass slaughter of Germans and Italians, whose leaders Hitler and Mussolini he formerly admired.

Today the world is one huge nuclear arsenal for the major powers. The smaller states are drawn into one armed camp or the other or come under the strategy of the big bandit. Nuclear weapons have no respect for non-alignment. Just as the major powers are motivated by the economics of capitalism, so also are the smaller countries. The conditions leading to conflict are always present in competition for markets.

After two world wars and scores of “minor” wars supposedly to ensure freedom, outside the phrasemongering of politicians and the media how much freedom and democracy is there in the world today? What do these words really mean? To arrive at a clear understanding, it is necessary first to grasp the nature of class society, otherwise freedom and democracy, like ideas about rights and justice, remain vague concepts. In our Declaration of Principles, we refer to the enslavement of the working class being a consequence of the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist class. This is the number one fact of life of capitalist society. The only sense in which the working class are free is, as Marx explains in The Communist Manifesto, that they are not tied to land or any individual employers, but being divorced from the means of production are free to sell their working abilities on the labour market to any capitalist willing to hire them. Wage-labour is socially enslaved to the capitalist class as a whole.

Marx also makes the point that the working class is dragged into the political arena by the capitalist class. The Capitalists are not a single group with the same interest, but numerous groups with often conflicting interests. Although they all live on the backs of the workers, they dispute among themselves as to which should have the main burden of taxation for the costs of running their system. In the early days of capitalism when the sharpest division was between landed and industrial interests, the Tory party represented the former and the Whigs (Liberals) the latter. Both posed as champion of the workers to enlist the aid of the workers for their own advantage. This was the background to the passing of the early factory legislation and franchise reform. Instead of seeing their own interests as distinct from those of the capitalists, workers sought to play one against the other for the amelioration of immediate grievances. This led to dissatisfaction with existing parties and as the trade-union movement grew, to the formation of the Labour party. The workers then as now blamed their hardships on leaders and parties rather than the system. The fraud of reformism has become the status quo. The institutional forms taken by the national affairs of the capitalist class, which includes the health, education and welfare of the working class, are put over to the workers as freedom and democracy.

For the dubious privilege of having his children’s heads stuffed with nationalism and religion, while being trained for a life of wage-slavery, and the benefits bestowed by the Welfare/Warfare state to relieve the worst extremes of poverty, the worker is expected to rejoice that he is remembered at election times and invited to vote for the continuation of things as they are.

Just as capitalist politicians debated the dangers of teaching workers to read and had no choice but to do so, they also debated the wisdom of universal suffrage. The provision of facilities for lobbying opinion to decide how property interests and profitability can best be served is not the same thing as freedom. There is no provision made for expressing socialist views; these fall outside the province of profit promotion, and have to make their own way. The capitalist conception of freedom can never amount to more than the freedom of the capitalist class to trade, legislate and arm against their rivals. For them, the first freedom must always be the freedom to exploit wage labour. Even the contesting of elections is tightly circumscribed by money, resources and access to the media.

Those who take the propaganda of the system at its face value tell us at our meetings, that in Britain at least we have “free speech and freedom of the press”. But where a minority owns the means of living and also owns and controls the press, obviously the press is not free. Useful though Hyde Park is, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the world day- and-night output of television, radio and press. Free access to the channels of radio and television does not exist. If “free” speech consists of standing on a platform by the roadside, shouting above the traffic, while the system’s propaganda invades every worker’s living-room, clearly the word “freedom” has a double standard.

Unfettered Discussion

The press, radio and television are not even free for the capitalists as individuals. There are programme controllers, D Notices, censorship, “editing”, regulations laid down in broadcasting charters, the Official Secrets Acts and other “democratic” devices. The national interests of the capitalists as a class need secrecy, and the slanting of information. This is the antithesis of democracy Democracy involves the free availability of all information and unfettered discussion— but this implies no class with privileged interests to maintain.

In the Preface to The Critique of Political Economy, Marx enunciated the principle of the materialist conception of history: that the legal and political superstructure can only be explained by the social relations that men enter into in production and the level of development of the productive forces at a given time. The legal machinery and political power of capitalism are built upon the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the capitalist class. The prevailing ideology and morality reflect the interests of private property. The non-owning class are fed false information and miseducated to produce attitudes in conformity with the dominance of private property and profits. Attitudes towards money, wages, leadership, housing, inflation, trade and war, are manipulated by the schools, press, radio and t.v. on the basis of the prior assumptions of the capitalist interest. The skilful use of spurious information and a pretence of a debate excludes views which reject those prior assumptions.

There is no freedom to put the case for Socialism on level pegging with the parties of capitalism. They have the mass media at their constant disposal, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not. If Marx’s view of society is correct Socialist ideas do not spread among the workers because they are given permission to do so, by rights or concepts of freedom. It is the contradictions inherent in capitalist society which promote the growth of class-consciousness. Ideas can neither be legislated into nor out of existence. There is a conflict between the material forces of production and the existing social relations of production and the existing social relations of production. This is the essential prerequisite, the soil from which consciousness grows. It is a paradox for workers to accept the prerogative of capitalist politicians to grant them “rights”. The other side of the coin is acceptance of their prerogative to curtail them.

Rights

Just as with other reforms in welfare or education, there is the assumption that what is good for capitalism, is good for the workers; in times of crises when reforms are cut back this too is sold as good for everyone. In time of war or emergency, the “rights” and “freedoms” for which workers are told to sacrifice themselves, become all but non-existent. Since the end of the second World War, the frequent recurrence of wars and emergencies have provided the grounds for repeated tightening of the reins. There has been a vast expansion of surveillance and “security” operations throughout the world and a tremendous extension of the screening of individuals, publications and organizations, despite the “inalienable” rights guaranteed by the American Constitution, and such documents as the United Nations Charter.

What sustains their continued acceptance of capitalism, is the fact that workers everywhere, are side tracked into struggling for a host of other issues. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Frederick Engels makes a brilliant summary of the situation: “The possessing class rules directly through universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class, in this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing of the capitalist class. But the more the proletariat matures towards its self emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class”. (Pages 210, 211, Kerr Edition.)

No minority could hold back the tidal wave of a majority wanting Socialism. It is the task of socialists to expand Socialism and nothing else. Socialism will be democratic because, the interest of everybody in a classless world will be harmonious. At the end of our Declaration of Principles, we urge workers to join us to end “the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom". For socialists, the attainment of freedom means the abolition of classes and democracy is inseparable from Socialism.

Harry Baldwin

How sweet is charity? (part 1) (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once when we wanted to avoid the importuning of charitable organizations, we only had to walk across the road to evade the flag-seller on the corner. But now these collectors seek us at our own front doors, they invade our place of work, they nobble our children at school. They write us begging letters, send unwanted Xmas cards, and issue catalogues of goods for sale. Shops selling jumble have appeared in the High Street. Large newspaper advertisements press us for support. Heart-rending unfortunates stare at us from hoardings. Charity has become Big Business.

Many workers display attitudes of confusion and guilt about charity, and before they next dip their hands into their shallow pockets they should pause, question why all these appeals are necessary, and if the voluntary contributions they are giving are doing any good. In spite of the Welfare State and the ramifications of charitable organizations the poor are still with us. As the standard of living has risen so the standard of poverty has changed. The wealthy nobles in the 12th and 13th centuries did not have the comforts the poorest take for granted nowadays. Poverty is a relative thing, and can only be assessed by comparison with the wealth that is produced. All members of the working class are poor, and some are more unfortunate than others.

All the more reason the worker may think, to spare what he can, even to deny himself, to alleviate a small part of that hardship in those less fortunate. Distress in others makes us uncomfortable. Few can hear a child cry or watch a fellow human in pain or trouble, without being moved. In man’s early days the young were protected, for in them lay the future, and the old were respected for their knowledge and experience.

Goodwill
As private property developed the tribal structure broke down. Hard though their lot might be, to some extent the chattel slave and serf were protected by their servitude. The slave had to be fed, clothed and housed. The serf was bound to his feudal lord’s land which was his means of life. But where this did not apply, those in distress and want had to rely on the goodwill of those who might pity them. Pity has a curious effect on the recipient. The writer remembers as a child being taken by the Country Holiday Fund from the slums of London to a beautiful village in Shropshire. We stayed at a farm; the lady of the manor invited us to tea; the vicar let us ring the church bells, and called on his congregation to be kind to the “poor little children from the East End of London.” (The effect was to create humiliation not gratitude.)

After Christianity was established in Britain, the care of the sick and needy was undertaken mainly by the monasteries. Under feudal custom one-tenth of all yearly produce was an obligation for the upkeep of the Church, and the Church was equally bound to use part of the tithes for the care of those who could not support themselves. Early hospitals such as Bart’s (founded 1123), St. Thomas’s (1200) were combined almshouses, shelters for the sick, and orphanages. Christians like to claim that charity is synonymous with Christianity, but taking with one hand and doling out crumbs of relief with the other is practised by all religions. In England, the hand that took prospered so well, that by the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII the Church owned one-third of the country.

In time the old system of fixed work-days for the feudal lord fell into disuse, and the serfs became peasant tenants paying money rents for their leaseholds, and receiving money wages for labour on their lord’s demesne lands. All they produced by their own labour on their own holding belonged to themselves (except for tithes). While the nobility fought, the peasants had no say and little interest in the struggle. When it was resolved, the exhausted nobility were ordered by the new upstart Henry VII to disband their armies of feudal retainers, who were cast penniless and propertyless onto the roads.

Almhouses
The wool trade was growing, and those landed gentry who sought riches saw that turning the land into sheep-walks would achieve their object. They began to enclose the common land, and drive the peasant tenant from his olding. The Reformation dissolved the monasteries and confiscated Church lands. Many of the clerics readily adapted their views and made the transition to office in the Protestant church, but the monasteries employed large numbers of lay servants, and Church lands were farmed by lay tenants, and these joined the throng of those with no means of subsistence. Some of this force of landless humans suited the needs of a rising merchant and manufacturing class who required cheap labour for commodity production, but the influx of recruits could not be absorbed as quickly as they were dispossessed, so begging and thieving were the inevitable outcome. Such relief of pauperism as was undertaken was provided by craft guilds and individual philanthropy. It became something of a fashion for nobles and rich merchants to establish almshouses during the reign of Elizabeth I, either out of a desire for immortality in stone or to “lay up treasure in the life to come”.

By the beginning of the 17th century, so troublesome were vagrancy and destitution, that the Poor Law Act of 1601 laid upon local parishes the duty of providing from the rates for the sick, needy and homeless, and putting to work the able-bodied. This established for the first time the principle, that the care of such people was part of the responsibility of the State. The State has developed into the overseer for the capitalist class of the wage-slave, and it has been discovered by slow degrees (as the chattel-slave owner learnt earlier) that to allow working-class welfare to sink below a certain level seriously affects their efficiency and consequent profitability. Running through the history of Britain from the 15th to the 19th century is the account of how the land that was the peasant’s means of subsistence was first illegally and then legally expropriated; and the once self-sufficient peasant and agricultural labourer dispossessed of any means of support, except by hiring themselves to the manufacturing class.

Thus the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution saw an enormous increase in human misery. A "free” worker who could not find a job, or who was unable to work because of illness, found himself and his family destitute. Some workers formed friendly societies in an attempt to help each other. Machinery meant that women and children could take part in production. Working conditions in the factories were so bad that medical observation reported the “rapid spread of malformation of the bones, curvature of the spine, heart disease, rupture, stunted growth, asthma, and premature old age among children and young persons”.

As capitalism developed so did the need for and nature of charity. The contrast between the resultant luxury on one hand and poverty on the other became more apparent. Societies for the relief of this or that affliction sprang up in the 19th century. These were sponsored and supported by the rich: characteristically, the capitalist could not enjoy his dinner and claret with a hungry waif staring through the window—besides, the organization gave his wife and daughters something to do! Yet still distress continued, and so widespread was the problem that the capitalist class became concerned about their potential labour force, and introduced the Welfare State to care for the working class from the cradle to the grave.

Charities Register
What has been the result? Next time in the library look for the Charities Register. There are over 100,000 listed covering every conceivable (and inconceivable) need. Each has to satisfy the Charity Commissioners’ definition of a charitable cause. Most are competing for your cash. These are only the registered charities, and take no account of the hundreds of thousands of informal projects that go on, such as pub and club collections, sweepstakes, school funds, coffee mornings etc., held for strictly local objectives and not included in official statistics. The welfare umbrella, it seems, leaks badly.

This puts the donor in something of a quandary; there is the problem of which charity to support, for it is certain one cannot help all. A choice must be made between this misery or that. Does one Help the Aged or Save the Children? Help the blind or the deaf? Support cancer research, kidney machines, multiple sclerosis, or spastics? Are you more touched by Dr. Barnardos or the Distressed Gentlefolks’ Aid Association? And people have now become aware of distress beyond these islands. Television brings painful sights uncomfortably into our sitting-rooms. Do earthquake victims move you more than flood disasters? Whose need is greater, famine victims or war refugees? We must not forget our four-footed and feathered friends, catered for by the RSPCA, RSPB, PDSA. Blue Cross, World Wildlife Fund, etc., etc. There are even charities for those who do not care much for some of the human race. There is a classified list under the heading "Promotion of the Efficiency of the Forces”. A typical rifle-club charity will have as its declared aim: "To encourage skill in rifle shooting by any of Her Majesty’s subjects so that they will be better fitted to serve their country”.

When workers contribute to charity they must not lose sight of the fact that their donations merely reduce the obligation of the government, so that the taxpayer, i.e. the capitalist class, is being subsidized instead of the charitable cause. If they argue, as some do, that the government will only offer the bare minimum, and it is necessary to fill the void where the State will not or cannot intervene, then they should acquaint themselves with the conduct and efficiency of the mammoth organization of charity today. The effect of the capitalist ethic on even such a worthy object as trying to relieve distress is startling!

Alice Kerr

(To be continued)

Link to Part 2

50 Years Ago: Fascism and the State (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we urge the supreme importance of the working class capturing Parliament, with the administrative departments and local councils which it controls, we are often met with the argument that the Fascists came to power in defiance of the then constitutionally elected Italian government.

★ ★ ★

But as we have pointed out before, the Fascist seizure of power took place not in defiance of, but with the approval and active assistance of, the democratically elected Italian government. But for that active assistance Mussolini and his followers would have been helpless. Then, as before and since, the possession of the State machinery proved to be the deciding factor. Our view has received interesting confirmation from three sources—the Italian Communist, Bordiga; Professor Salvemini, a Liberal; and Modigliani, of the Italian Socialist Party.

Bordiga says (Labour Magazine, February & March 1923):- ‘After the Nitti, Giolitti, and Bonomi governments, we had the Facta Cabinet. This government was intended to cover up the complete liberty of action of Fascism in its expansion over the whole country. During the strike in August 1922, several conflicts took place between the workers and the Fascisti, who were openly aided by the government.

★ ★ ★

Wherever Fascism had been beaten back by the workers, the power of the State intervened; workers who resisted were shot down; workers who were guilty of nothing but self-defence were arrested and sentenced; while the magistrates systematically acquitted the Fascisti, who were generally known to have committed innumerable crimes.

Thus the State was the main factor in the development of Fascism.

[From an editorial “Fascism and the State”, Socialist Standard, Dec. 1927.]

Obituary: Dick Jacobs (1977)

Obituary from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with deep regret that we report the death on 11th October of Comrade Dick Jacobs. For four and a half years he had suffered a debilitating illness, which he bore bravely with the help of his wife and family. During his moments of lucidity he would sing old Party songs, and he still remembered many members by name.

He first came in contact with the Party during the Great Depression, in East London. He moved to South Wales at the outbreak of the 1939-45 war, and put in years of work to get a branch established at Swansea. In the 1960s he returned to south-east England and became secretary of the Southend branch. Eventually he and his family moved to Poole, where he died.

The writer first met Dick Jacobs during the war years at the Mannesmann Tube Works in Swansea. His comments were in line with my own thoughts; one realized that his outlook and knowledge were something different from those of workers moulded in the orthodox political ideologies. In a bombing raid we sat together in a shelter, and in a lengthy discussion I was given some understanding of the socialist case. The next stage was a series of discussions at Dick’s home, and I realized that there was an established political party which stood for the principles I had held for many years. These informal discussions led to my joining the Party. Later we contacted others, and the first SPGB branch in Wales was formed.

As a person Dick was kind and compassionate, a gentle-man in the best sense of the term. Like all socialists he had a number of political enemies, but he did not have a personal one: it was impossible to dislike him. He will be missed by all the Swansea and London comrades who knew him in earlier years. We extend our deepest sympathy to his wife and family.

Phil Mellor

Sixty inglorious years (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our issue of October last, we printed an article quoting remarks made by Carrillo, the leader of the so-called Spanish Communist Party, saying that Russia is not Socialist and their Communist Party is not Marxist, thus confirming what we have consistently stated in these columns right from the start. (Of course this has not prevented Carillo from accepting a gracious invitation to join in the banqueting in Moscow to celebrate the great anniversary of the State-Capitalist Revolution.)

Just in case further confirmation was needed, those other glorious “Communists”, the rulers of Red China, have not missed the opportunity of the anniversary to revile their Russian comrades. The Guardian of November 1 quoted an article from the People's Daily of Peking which Reuters says is a restatement of the views of Mao and which is certainly a statement of the views of the present ruling gang. Comparing the two super powers, they say that the Soviet Union “is therefore more aggressive and adventurous” than America and then goes on to make the following choice pronouncement: “It has a highly centralised State-monopoly capitalist economy without its equal in any other imperialist country and it is a state under fascist dictatorship.” You can’t get blunter than that, even in Chinese.

L. E. Weidberg

Those twisting tongues (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The loose-lipped Labourite likes ladling out the lies.
The calculating Conservative clearly croons over clichéd cries.
The lamenting lacking Liberal leans loosely left and right.
The Kremlin-coated Communist careers confusedly out of sight.
But the scientific Socialist sees it all as a serious sleuth
Takes the twisted tasteless tattle and traces out the truth. 

Paul Breeze

Wage-labour and capital: The case of Grunwick (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A year ago few people had heard of the dispute at the Grunwick film-processing laboratories; today, the effort of the strikers to win union recognition has become a national cause célèbre. The events surrounding the dispute have been obscured by the press, which would have us believe that Grunwick is some kind of elaborate game in which one side tries to drive a bus through a gateway and the other side tries to stop them. The principle involved is lost amid reports of how many policemen were injured and how many demonstrators arrested. It is also difficult because socialists, while seeing the trade-union struggle as necessary, also recognize its futility in terms of the revolutionary political action we call upon workers to take.

Members of the SPGB have attended the Grunwick demonstrations in order to sell literature and distribute a leaflet putting the Party’s view on the dispute. The first paragraph of that leaflet states:

The dispute at Grunwick will come to an end . . . but the class struggle will go on. The Socialist Party of Great Britain believes in the urgent need for workers to join together, not simply for the defensive right of union recognition, but for the purpose of organizing for social revolution—NOW. The need for class unity for Socialism is the pressing task of the age.

That, above all else, is the message of the SPGB. To abandon it would be to abandon our claim to be socialists.

So what’s Grunwick really all about? The strike began over a year ago when one of the employees at the firm walked out as a result of an argument about overtime. She persuaded fellow-workers to go out on strike with her. A majority of the workers from the mail-order section of the factory in Chapter Road, Willesden, walked out. They were disgusted by the conditions in the factory where managers shouted at and abused the workers, where they had to put their hands up before they could go to the toilet, and where employees were instantly dismissed for disobedience.

The owner of the factory, George Ward, dismissed them for going on strike. They took their case to Brent Trades Council (the representative body of local trade unions), which referred them to APEX. For months they picketed outside the factory, demanding higher pay and better working conditions and union recognition. Nobody listened to their case. In June this year the TUC was persuaded to take it up. Trade- unionists from all parts of the country came to support them. Mass picketing has now gone on for some months, so far without resolving the dispute.

What do the Grunwick strikers want? One thing they clearly do not want or even know about is Socialism. They want the opportunity to belong to a trade union, and for their employer to recognize it and reinstate the workers who were sacked for joining it. Without being organized in trade unions, the working class would be in an even poorer state than it is now. Trade unionism alone, however, will not solve the problems capitalism throws up for the working class. Union combination can improve wages and conditions only in accordance with the economic anarchy of the profit system. It cannot be stressed too much that if workers want an end to exploitation, it is political action to capture the state and establish Socialism they must be committed to.

Nevertheless, disputes like Grunwick demonstrate the inherent problems of capitalist society. First, it shows clearly the role and the immense power of the state. Why are thousands of police brought to guard the property of one man? Because the state is the executive committee of the ruling class and is bound to protect capital against wage-labour. In private, representatives of the state try to persuade Ward that he’s swimming against the tide and should recognize the union; but in public, the workers must be blamed.

Second, it is interesting to note who is in control of the state on this occasion. Not the Tories, the traditional representatives of private property and freedom to exploit, but the party of the trade unions and Clause Four: Labour. No doubt more Labour ministers are sentimentally attached to the unions than their Tory opponents, but when their commitment is put to the test they prove far more concerned with the right to exploit than with the right to strike.

Third, the fact that most of the workers at Grunwick are Asian immigrants means they are more easily intimidated, more desperate for work (immigrant unemployment is much higher than the average, especially in this area of London) and that they are less experienced in trade-union organization. The main reason for Ward’s employing them is that they will accept worse pay and conditions than other workers. Similarly many of those involved are women.

Socialists are not concerned with the “rights” and “wrongs” of the Grunwick dispute. We do not see the class struggle in terms of moral injustice. Under capitalism everything, including the prevailing morality, is loaded against those who are forced to sell their labour-power. To see George Ward as the root of all evil, as the Left has done, is to create the illusion that the defeat of Ward is more important than the defeat of capitalism.

What of Ward’s supporters? There is the National Association for Freedom which represents the more backward and reactionary section of the capitalist class. The Conservative Party is divided over Grunwick. The division is an index of the attitudes within the ruling class towards trade unions. The “right wing” of the Tories, represented by Sir Keith Joseph, stand for the traditional Tory attitude that the capitalist should be the sole master of his business, answerable only to the demands of profit and in no way to his employees. The other Conservative view, represented by James Prior, Shadow Minister for Employment, is based on the so-called “free market” in which trade unions are free to negotiate with employers and reach settlements without state interference.

That was the view taken by the Scarman enquiry which was set up to look into the Grunwick dispute:

The company by dismissing all the strikers, refusing to reconsider the reinstatement of any of them, refusing to seek a negotiated settlement to the strike and rejecting ACAS offers of conciliation, has acted within the letter but outside the spirit of the law. Further, such action on the part of the company was unreasonable when judged by the norms of good industrial relations practice. The company has thus added to the bitterness of the dispute, and contributed to its development into a threat of civil disorder. (Our emphasis.)

Clearly it is in the interest of the ruling class to strike a balance between excessive exploitation and threats to the smooth running of capitalism. That is why they reject open hostility to trade unions in favour of “enlightened capitalism”.

What of the Left at Grunwick? As usual, they have confused the issue. They have vastly overestimated the importance of it. It is not, as they claim, an attempt by the capitalist class to destroy trade unions. In fact, trade unions are of use to employers (especially when reformist hacks like Ray Grantham are in control of them). In our leaflet we told workers to reject leaders:

Whilst the organized labour movement accepts reformism they are happy—it is time to reject their leadership and organize independently. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKING CLASS MUST BE THE WORK OF THE WORKING CLASS ITSELF.

The Left, far from telling people to reject leadership and organize democratically, naively call for yet stronger and more militant leaders. These are the people who see themselves as the vanguard of the working class, who are going to lead us to the barricades. They have been conspicuous by their silence when members of the SPGB have been arguing the socialist case to people at Grunwick. They have been seen standing in the background selling newspapers and muttering something about “traditional demands” and “the need for action”. Perhaps it is because these self-appointed leaders share Lenin’ belief that workers are too stupid to understand Socialism—far better have them shout slogans at a bus-full of confused workers. As our leaflet said:

The enemy is not those still working at Grunwick. We must unite to persuade them to the side of their own class interests. The enemy is not the police. They too are members of the working class. When the movement for Socialism grows they will stop doing the dirty work for the parasite class who give them their orders. THE REAL ENEMY IS THE SYSTEM OF SOCIETY WHICH PUTS PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE AND PARASITES BEFORE WORKERS. We must unite to abolish the cause of the sickness of society, not just fight against the symptoms.

Marx argued the case for a future society without buying and selling, wage-labour or capital. That alone is the object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We urge all readers to involve themselves in the struggle for a world in which trade unions will be unnecessary because the buying and selling of useful things, including human energy, will be a thing of the past.

Steve Coleman