Cooking the Books: ‘Raise everyone’s wages’ (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Cut bills and raise everyone’s wages’ promised the Green Party in a leaflet put out for elections earlier this year (‘Stop Reform. Replace Labour. Vote Green’). Wage increases all round is more typical of Trotskyist candidates trying to get workers to follow them by dangling impossible ‘transitional demands’ in front of them. In this case it was an example of Polanski’s professed ‘ecopopulism’ which consists of making attractive promises on bread-and-butter issues to gather votes, in particular from those who normally vote for the Labour Party. But it is just as unobtainable as any Trotskyist carrot.

If ever the Green Party came to form the government and decreed that all employers should pay their workers more, the result would be an immediate financial and economic crisis since everyone’s wages could only be increased at the expense of overall profits and profits are what drive the capitalist economy. A lower economy-wide rate of profit would mean less investment and so a drop in production.

Derek Wall, a one-time speaker for the Green Party (before they had a Leader) and still a Green Party activist, described in 1990 what he expected to happen if a Green government came into office on a programme of putting the environment before profits:

‘A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of Sterling as “hot money” and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing revenue from taxation and putting up social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction — the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system — would run out’ (Getting There. Steps to a Green Society, p. 78).

As the Green Party accepts the ownership of the means of production by private corporations and individuals and doesn’t even have any state-capitalist pretensions, it is fair to assume that they would come into office, if ever they did, under capitalism as it is today. So Wall’s scenario is entirely plausible.

Wall envisaged this happening if the Green government was elected on the basis of implementing far-reaching measures to protect the environment. The Green Party doesn’t seem to say much these days about protecting the environment (the leaflet in question doesn’t mention it at all) but the same would happen if a Green government were elected on a pledge to make all employers pay their workers more. In fact, the immediate crisis would be economic and not just financial as Wall envisaged. Some employers would go bankrupt immediately. Others would lay off workers. Unemployment would soar. Production would slump.

The Greens are taking workers for fools, though we doubt many were fooled into voting for them because they believed that the Greens would, or even could, bring about a general increase in wages. Increased wages for everybody sounds good but is too good to be possible under capitalism.

Blogger's Note:

Derek Wall's 1990 book, Getting There. Steps to a Green Society, was reviewed in the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Major Douglas rides again (2003)

From the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of our nearly one hundred years of socialist activity, one of the ideas that we have had to deal with from time to time has been currency crankism – the idea that economic and social problems are caused by some flaw in the monetary system and that what is required to put things right is not to get rid of the profit system that is capitalism but mere monetary reform (of one kind or another, depending on which particular school the currency crank belongs to).

Between the wars the most popular school of currency crankism in Britain was Social Credit, based on the ideas of Major Douglas (as he was known). His explanation for the slump – of poverty amidst potential plenty, of unmet needs alongside idle factories and widespread unemployment, of piles of unsold goods being destroyed – was simple, not to say simplistic: it was due to a lack of purchasing power, to people not having enough money to buy what they needed or to constitute a market worth catering for. The solution, too, was simplistic: distribute purchasing power free to people in the form of a “social dividend” paid by the government.

Douglas believed that banks could “create credit” by the mere stroke of a pen, but that they deliberately kept money scarce so as to be able to charge a higher rate of interest. Hence his solution that the banks should be taken over by the government and their supposed power to create credit exercised but in the general interest, as “social credit”.

In fact, there is no chronic shortage of purchasing power. Sufficient to buy the product is generated as wages and profits in the course of production; slumps are not caused by an absolute shortage of purchasing power but arise when, because of falling profit prospects, capitalist firms choose not to spend all their profits on fully renewing or on expanding production. Nor can banks “create credit”; they are essentially only financial intermediaries, borrowing money at one rate of interest from people with cash to spare and lending this at a higher rate to those needing money to spend or invest, their profits coming from the difference between the two interest rates.

This being the case, the main result of applying “social credit” would be roaring inflation. All the other problems of capitalism, including periodically re-occurring “poverty amidst plenty”, would continue unabated. They will only end when the means of production are brought into common ownership and democratic control so that they can be oriented towards directly satisfying people’s needs – when banks, money and all the rest of the buying and selling system will have become redundant.

Normally, lack-of-purchasing power currency crank theories flourish in times of slump. However, according to an article by Derek Wall, “Social Credit: The Ecosocialism of Fools”, in the September issue of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, the modern-day followers of Major Douglas are well ensconced in the Green Party:

“Brian Leslie, whose parents were members of the Social Credit Greenshirts during the 1930s, chairs the Green Party Economics Working Group. The newsletter, Sustainable Economics, is almost entirely concerned with social credit and Party economics speaker Molly Scott Cato advocates monetary reform . . . Frances Hutchinson, a former member of the Green Party left grouping, the Association of Socialist Greens, has revived the Douglas Social Credit Secretariat . . . Wilfred Price, a member of the Greenshirts in the 1930s, joined the Ecology Party (now the Green Party) in the early 1980s and powerfully spoke for social credit as a form of green politics.”

Currency cranks find it easy to infiltrate the Green Party because of the tendency amongst its members and supporters to blame “big banks” and international financial institutions for ecological problems and the ravages of capitalist globalisation. The Green Party has, for instance, lined up alongside the Tories, the UKIP and other reactionaries in the “defend the pound” camp because it sees the euro as an international (in the sense of anti-national) currency.

Derek Wall’s article concentrates on the political side of Social Credit rather than on its economic fallacies (though he recognises these), in particular on the anti-semitic position it took up between the wars. The title of his article is taken from August Bebel, a pre-WWI German Social Democrat, who once quipped that “anti-semitism is the socialism of the fool”, by which he meant the anti-capitalism of the fool. And it is, of course, a short step between denouncing “global finance” for causing problems to blaming “international Jewish bankers” or some other supposed international conspiracy or cabal. It was a step that Douglas himself took. Wall quotes him as writing in Social Credit (1933):

“In a remarkable document which received some publicity some years ago, under the title of ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’, a Machiavellian scheme for the enslavement of the world was outlined. The authenticity of this document is a matter of little importance; what is interesting about it, is the fidelity with which the methods by which such enslavement might be brought about can be seen reflected in the facts of everyday experience.”

Wall – a Green Party member who describes himself as an “eco-Marxist” – recognises that Social Credit doesn’t have to be anti-semitic and that its supporters in the Green movement (with one exception) are not. His concern is to warn the Green Party and the anti-globalisation movement against embracing monetary reform as a quick-fix solution but also of the dangerous company they risk falling into if they continue down the road of blaming “global finance” for ruining “national” – and local – economies.

Adam Buick

Where the Greens go wrong (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not a day goes by without the problems of the environment being featured in the press and on radio and television. Particularly since the industrial revolution, there have been developed vastly increased powers of production which have spread across the planet and which are being operated in a very destructive way. So the question is: how do we establish a society in which all people are able to cooperate to provide a decent life for each other which at the same time will be a society which is in balance with nature?

The Socialist Party holds that only socialism can set up the relationships of co-operation, the freedom and the rational control over our affairs which can get us out of the mess we’re in. For all their good intentions, and for all their apparent radicalism, the policies of the Green Party are impractical because they stand no chance of establishing the kind of world they want to see.

The destructive nature of modern production has developed as part of capitalism. Because we live in a competitive, profit-motivated system enterprises come under an irresistible pressure to use the cheapest and most labour efficient methods. There is no choice about this. Companies simply have to go for low cost options and cannot afford to worry about the ecological consequences of this. To choose high cost options would be to commit economic suicide.

Under capitalism the production and distribution of goods takes place – and can only take place – according to the economic laws which govern the profitable circulation of capital. These laws are of an absolutely compelling nature. You can break the criminal law and sometimes get away with it, but you cannot break the laws which regulate the profit system without suffering financial loss or going bankrupt. What this means is that production methods cannot be chosen on their merits, as being environmentally friendly.

Constraints of Market System

The Central Electricity Generating Board is a state capitalist enterprise which every year throws up 4.2 million tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s not the only villain. West Germany has been putting up 3.5 million tons every year and the countries of the EEC have been putting up over 20 million tons.

In 1984, the British government came under pressure to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent. It refused because the cost would have been £1,000m. At the time British capitalism was struggling to get out of a deep depression in which there were nearly 4 million unemployed and in these circumstances the British government was not in a position to add £1 billion to its energy costs. You only get out of a depression by becoming more competitive, by improving the prospect of profit and by improving investment confidence. You can only achieve these things by lowering not increasing your overall production costs. This is a fundamental and compelling fact of market life.

Everybody must be aware of the tragic absurdity of the situation. We’ve got the urgent need to eliminate these harmful acid emissions and not just by 30 per cent. We’ve got the techniques for doing it, and there are millions of unemployed, so there’s a vast availability of labour for the work. Yet we are unable to bring these things together. We are held back by the economic constraints of the market system. We cannot do it because the profits of a privileged class minority who own and control the means of life come before the needs of the community. There are no sane grounds on which this can be justified.

The only way to get out of the mess is to establish socialism which will be based on common ownership, production solely for need and democratic control. With common ownership all means of production and distribution and all resources will be held in common by the whole community.

You can’t have the oil resources of the North Sea or anywhere else owned by oil companies or governments, you can’t have the land owned by agribusiness and exploited by them for profit, you can’t have the means of life, mining, industry, manufacture and transport owned by capital, and at the same time expect to run a decent society based on cooperation and social responsibility. It is just not possible. If you want a world of co-operation and responsibility then all these means of life must be brought under the democratic control of the whole community on the basis of common ownership.

On this basis, instead of the wages system through which workers are exploited, there will be a community of free producers who will cooperate to produce goods and provide services solely and directly for needs. The community will have access to the pool of goods created free from the barriers of the market, without exchange of any kind and therefore without the use of money which is only necessary for making profit.

It is only by this means that we can sweep aside the economic straitjacket which constrains all social action under capitalism. To come back to the problem of eliminating acid emissions from power stations, the cost of £1 billion would not be a factor. That money barrier would disappear and through co-operation we would use the techniques which are available, apply our energies and get on with the job.

In socialism we would not be bound to use the most labour efficient methods of production. We would be free to select our methods in accordance with a wide range of socially desirable criteria, in particular the vital need to protect the environment. It wouldn’t matter if ecologically benign methods of producing energy required more allocations of labour than destructive methods as we wouldn’t be producing commodities which have to compete in price for sales in the market. We’d be free of all that.

The Green Party has talked about a “steady-state” society and this is something we should aim at. What it means is that we should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be reduced. You achieve this “steady state” and you don’t go on expanding production. This would be the opposite of cheap, shoddy, “throw-away” goods and built-in obsolescence, which results in a massive loss and destruction of resources.

This is something that socialism could do. The problem for the Green Party is that they want this, but they also want to retain the market system in which goods are distributed through sales at a profit and people’s access to goods depends upon their incomes. The market, however, can only function with a constant pressure to renew its capacity for sales; and if it fails to do this production breaks down, people are out of employment and suffer a reduced income. It is a fundamental flaw and an insoluble contradiction in the Green Party argument that they want to retain the market system, which can only be sustained by continuous sales and continuous incomes, and at the same time they want a conservation society with reduced productive activity. These aims are totally incompatible with each other.

Old Failed Policies

The Green Party sees itself as a new force in politics but its basic approach to problems is years out of date. Like the Labour Party, it imagines it can do all sorts of things through the tax system. It says, for example, that it wants a tax system which will substantially redistribute wealth. The Labour Party tried that years ago and it failed, and the Green Party will fail for the same reasons.

Like the old Labour Party they imagine that by having the right kind of government in charge of capitalism they will be able to administer it in the interests of the whole community. The reason the Labour Party failed should be obvious. In its everyday operation capitalism staggers along according to its economic laws which cannot be controlled or rationally directed, on the basis of an economic antagonism between classes with capital trying to maximise its profits at the expense of wages and salaries and workers struggling to maximise wages at the expense of profits. It staggers along on the basis of competition and economic rivalries between enterprises and between capitalist nations.

Yet the Green Party thinks it can form a government which somehow, as if by magic, can ignore this reality and act on the basis of a common community interest through cooperation and socially responsible policies. This cannot be done. The tragedy is that we’ve got a lot of sincere and enthusiastic people in the Greens being sidetracked by these out-dated illusions which have dissipated so much energy and wasted so much time in the past.

The Green Party manifesto contains an elaborate battery of new taxes through which they hope to restructure society. Again, the old Labour Party manifestos contained similar proposals with the same intentions. The Labour Party abandoned them because they failed, but the Green Party has resurrected the corpses of these dead policies.

There’s a community ground rent, a resource or conservation tax, pollution charges, increased consumption taxes, higher taxes on large firms, a new company turnover tax, and new trade taxes which would operate through import and export tariffs.

We can project a scenario for what would happen under a Green government. Imagine that it has passed a law standardising the production of all bottles and glass containers so they can be returned to food and drink producers to be used again. It’s a sensible idea – socialism would do it – but this is a Green government under capitalism and it has put firms in the glass industry out of business and made a lot of workers unemployed. As a result of its trade tax on imports other government have retaliated and placed an embargo on the imports of British goods. This has put more firms out of business and more workers out of jobs. As a result of higher company taxes on large firms there has been a sharp drop in business confidence with a corresponding reduction in investment. Again, this has made more workers unemployed. With less trade and less taxable income, there has been a sharp fall in funds flowing into the Green Exchequer. It has had to abandon its guaranteed income scheme and is facing widespread strikes in the public sector with vital services breaking down.

These depressed conditions have led to an alarming run on the pound, with the Green Chancellor frantically buying in sterling to keep up its value. Having dissipated government funds on this and other measures the Green government has been forced to abandon its plans to invest L1 billion to reduce acid emissions from power stations.

In other words, the Green government is facing mounting hostility from the trade unions, employers, the City and the international business community. It is in desperate straits struggling with a worsening financial crisis. They’ve had to set aside all their plans for dealing with the problems of the environment. Their poll ratings have hit zero, and they’ve fallen out amongst themselves arguing about what went wrong.

In the light of the economic realities of capitalism and the experience of previous reformist governments, which is the more likely scenario? The one being projected in the Green Party’s sublimely optimistic literature or the one just outlined?

Urgent Need for Socialism

The obvious, and only practical, way forward is to get rid of the whole insane capitalist structure. This is the serious work begun by the socialist movement which has to be supported. One of the problems is that throughout this century we’ve had a lot of people who don’t like the system and who want a better world, but they were diverted by the superficially attractive but fatal illusion that capitalism can be made to serve our needs through the right kind of reformist government.

In the meantime the problems have stayed and some have got worse. The Green Party is the first to stress that we don’t have a lot of time, and it is certain that we cannot delay the solution without suffering the consequences. There can be no justification, on any grounds whatsoever, for wanting to retain an exploitative system which robs workers of the products of their labour, which puts privileged class interests and profit before the needs of the community, which robs the soil of its fertility, plunders nature of its resources and destroys the natural systems on which all our lives depend.

The only alternative is socialism. We must concentrate all our efforts on the work of building up a majority of socialists. It might seem a big job because our numbers are small, but we wouldn’t need many more for us to become a strong voice in the community and every new socialist makes the work easier.

Pieter Lawrence

Why the Greens are wrong (1994)

From the June 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

People are right to be concerned about what is happening to the environment. Materials taken from nature are being transformed by human activity into substances which nature either can’t decompose or can’t decompose fast enough. The result is pollution and global threats such as the hole in the ozone layer and global warming.

There really is a serious environmental crisis. The issue is not whether it exists but what to do about it. The Green Party has one view. We have another.

The Green Party sees itself as the political arm of the wider environmental movement, arguing that it is not enough to be a pressure group, however militant, like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. Greens, it says, should organise as well to contest elections with the eventual aim of forming a Green government that could pass laws and impose taxes to protect the environment.

We say that no government can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. And the profit system can only work by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. So to protect the environment we must end production for profit.

Pollution and environmental degradation result from the inappropriate ways in which materials from nature are transformed into products for human use. But what causes inappropriate productive methods to be used? Is it ignorance or greed, as some Greens claim? No, it is the way production is organised today and the forces to which it responds.

Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them — and it doesn’t matter whether they are privately-owned or state-owned — aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. "Make a profit or die" is the jungle economics that prevails today.

Under the competitive pressures of the market, businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interest, ignoring wider social or ecological considerations. All they look to is their own balance sheet and in particular the bottom line which shows whether or not they are making a profit.

The whole of production, from the materials used to the methods employed to transform them, is distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by uncontrollable market forces which compel decision makers, however selected and whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste.

Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are "profits first" and "you can’t buck the market".

The Green Party is not against the market and is not against profit-making. It imagines that, by firm government action, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system than making profits. That’s why a Green government would fail.

Some Greens have already begun to realise this. Here is what Derek Wall, who was a national speaker for the Green Party in the last European elections in 1989, has gone on record as saying:

"A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as "hot money" and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulations. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction — the building of railways, the closing of motorways, the construction of a proper sewage system — would run out" (Getting There: Steps to a Green Society).

The Green Party is right on one point though, when it says that pressure group activity is not enough. Where they go wrong is not in proposing political action, but in proposing political action to elect a Green government.

They fail to realise that what those who want a clear and safe environmental are up against is a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding economic law of profits first.

If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go. What is required is political action, yes, but political action aimed at replacing this system by a new and different one which will allow us to meet our needs in an environmentally-friendly way.

To do this we must control production — the way we interact with the rest of nature — but to be able to control production we must own the means of production. So we are talking about a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources.

That’s the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature. And it’s the only basis on which we can begin to successfully reverse the degradation of the environment already caused by the profit system.

What Greens should be struggling for is not a change of government but a change of society.

Adam Buick

Letter: Ignoring MOVE (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Socialists,

Thank you for taking the trouble to review my anthology Green History. I feel that you are being slightly picky on some points. Bellamy, for example. is normally seen as a socialist (see Kumar's Utopianism, OUP. 1991:65). which was why I believe William Morris felt it necessary to counter his Looking Backwards with the decentralist and ecological News from Nowhere. I have never denied that Morris was a Marxist but equally he wrote an impressive utopia and was concerned in a very central way with ecological issues. Morris was a founder member of Britain’s first Marxist political party with Eleanor Marx and Engels. His creativity is a source of inspiration and education to all of us who see ourselves within a Marxist tradition.

Equally I fail to see how 1 can I be accused of ignoring the central issue of class struggle. For example, although he advocates manifesto promises you would see as reformist. Dumont (p.247) notes "It is one and the same system which organises the exploitation of the workers and the degradation of living and working conditions and puts the whole earth in danger.” On page 145 we find Marx in Capital showing us how capitalism turns the individual worker into a crippled monstrosity.

My only real complaint, though, is the fact that you fail to mention MOVE. This revolutionary group said a lot with which you may disagree but they identified the fact that human liberation and ecological liberation are one and the same thing. They were massively persecuted for rejecting capitalism, leaders and the exploitation of all forms of life. A leading supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row on trumped-up charges since the early 1980s. Most of their members have suffered long prison terms. We are fast approaching the 10th anniversary of the May 1985 massacre when eleven MOVE members were burnt to death in the most horrifying circumstances by an FBI bomb.

Worse perhaps than the bombing is the fact that socialists, anarchists. Greens and other radicals have largely ignored MOVE. I use Alice Walker's essay on MOVE to introduce my study of Green History because MOVE made the links between a system of human exploitation and the exploitation of the Planet better than anyone else.

Derek Wall, 

London N15.

Reply:

You exaggerate on a number of points not least of which is the assertion that being ignored is worse than being bombed.

Green Scenario (1990)

Book Review from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Getting There. Steps to a Green Society. By Derek Wall. Green Print. £4.99

During the Euro-elections last year Derek Wall was one of the Green Party's three national spokespersons. He wasn't heard of much as the media ignored him in favour of Sara Parkin. This probably pleased some Green Party strategists who feared his leftwing views might put off the muddle-in-the-middle voters they were targetting.

For example, while one platform speaker at the Green Party Conference last September proclaimed “we come not to bury the market economy, but to use it” (Independent, 22 September). Wall writes that "ecology is incompatible with the market".

He is undoubtedly right here. Where wealth is produced by separate firms competing to make profits out of supplying a market, it is considerations of cost-saving and profit-making that will determine the materials and methods of production used: the short term will prevail over the long term and the cheaper over the ecologically appropriate.

Wall sees the solution as lying in the establishment of a decentralized society where much less would be produced and consumed than today and where these reduced needs would be mainly met locally. Money would not disappear completely but its role and influence would diminish drastically since peoples needs would be met directly (growing their own food, making their own clothes, etc) or on a barter, mutual aid or gift basis.

This might not be capitalism but it wouldn't be socialism either. In any event Wall doesn't call it socialism but a "Green society" and sees it as coming into being in embryo within capitalism (indeed as already having come into being in the form of "picnics and parties, collective allotments. co-operative buying, shared meals, local community news sheets, learning exchanges, tithing, ecological transport") and eventually growing to be strong enough to dissolve capitalism into a network of “local economies". This, according to him. is the way to "smash capitalism gently".

It couldn’t work of course. People can't just opt out of capitalism and begin satisfying their needs on a non-market basis. To launch and sustain this, money would be required (to hire or purchase land, premises and machinery, for instance) and, as long as capitalism exists, there is essentially only one way most people can obtain this: by going out and working for an employer for a wage or a salary. It is true that another possible source of income does exist in payments from the state. However, these are never generous and are in fact deliberately kept as low as practicable so as to offer a very miserable existence to those unable or unwilling to work for an employer.

Nor is the capitalist state going to allow state payments to be used to try to undermine capitalism in the way Wall suggests. But replies Wall, this time echoing official Green Party policy, a Green government would introduce a Basic Income Scheme under which everybody would receive a payment from the state, as of right and without means-testing, of an amount sufficient to satisfy at least their basic needs without having to go and work for an employer. The theory is that people could use this income to finance an "alternative economy".

It's a nice theory, but where's the state going to get the money from? It could only come from taxing the profits of capitalist firms, but any attempt to raise the massive amount that would be required to finance such a scheme would provoke an immediate and widespread economic slump. Wall, however, believes that "bankers create money out of thin air" and seems to be advocating that the state should do the same and simply create the money it needs, just printing pound notes and handing them out! Unlike banks, the state could do this but as the amount of real wealth in existence would remain unchanged this would result in a massive inflation that would rival that in Germany after the first world war.

Actually. Wall is not quite that naive. He does realise what would happen should a Green government committed to such a programme ever come into office:

A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as ‘hot money' and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction—the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system—would run out.

But if this is the case, as it would be, a Green government would clearly be unable to help an embryonic green economy to develop by introducing a Basic Income scheme to allow people to escape from the wages system. In admitting this Wall is also admitting the non-viability of his scheme to “smash capitalism gently".

Adam Buick

Socialist summer school (1992)

Party News from the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 4 and 5 July Socialist Party weekend of speakers, debate and socializing was a great success. Although outside of the Party and critical of some of its aspects, I felt welcome and included. The food was wonderful and much thanks must go to our hosts and caterers. Having toiled from the bus stop up the hill, I was greeted with a cocktail, lunch and a splendid view over the Gloucestershire countryside. For a moment I had the illusion of having stumbled into William Morris’s News from Nowhere. After lunch, proceedings continued with an impressive piece of oratory exploring a socialist vision of the future and the poverty of alternative aspirations.

Where Socialists look to a moneyless cooperative society where creativity is released and humanity grows in myriad ways, cynicism rules amongst the non-socialists. A John Major version of "Imagine”, including lines such as "Imagine no inflation, it’s easy if you try”, may not have been the musical highlight of the weekend but illustrated the theme. Imagination was shown to be, just as much as theory, a weapon of revolutionary struggle and a central aspect of Marx’s system.

Other discussions addressing such topics as sex, economics, ecology and personal freedom looked in greater detail at the possibilities of a socialist society, one where individuals rather than the blind economic force of capitalism, might determine progress. One of capitalism’s most dangerous ideological ruses is to dress up our present decaying order of ecological degradation, mass poverty and alienating work as the only way that things can be. The lesson of the weekend was that we could imagine alternatives and work towards a socialist world.

Contributions to the discussions were wide-ranging and well-informed, covering such diverse issues as democracy, political practice and vegetarianism. For me the event was both very enjoyable and contributed to my understanding of socialism, I look forward to similar occasions. The Social Democratic Federation of which William Morris was a founder member and which the Socialist Party split from in, I believe, 1904, used the slogan “Educate, Agitate, Organise". I feel there is a greater hunger for radical education amongst those disillusioned by the failures of both capitalism and the Leninist Left. This hunger can perhaps be fuelled and filled by rigorous but comradely debate such as the Libertarian Socialist weekend, in particular, and the activities of the Socialist Party in general have provided.

Derek Wall 

Bristol

Derek Wall helps edit Green Revolution and is writing a book examining Green politics and Marxism that will be published by Greenprint in 1993.

Life Without Money (2012)

From the Life Without Money blog

Adam Buick on a life without money

Adam Buick's script from our panel discussion on Life Without Money at Bolivar Hall (London) on 30 May 2012 follows. Well over half of the discussion involved the around 40 participants who attended and it was quite lively.I [Anitra Nelson] spoke about why and how we came to write the book and Derek Wall talked more generally about the power of money and contemplating radical social change while the first question that Adam addressed was: What might a 'life without money' mean?

It’s an ambiguous idea. It can mean trying to survive without using money within or at the margins of existing money-dominated society. Or it can mean a change of society to one in which money would be redundant. Both points of view are represented in this book.

Then there is the question of what is meant by “money”. There are those who want to replace notes and coins, cheques and electronic transfers by labour credits or consumption vouchers. They too are represented in this book, even though some might regard them as only wanting a different form of money. But then, Karl Marx, a famous critic and opponent of money, envisaged using “labour-time vouchers” instead of money in the early stages of socialism pending it becoming possible to go over to full free distribution and full free access.

None of the contributors argue that all that needs to be done is to abolish money and leave everything else unchanged. That would be madness and would lead to a breakdown of production and distribution. If you’ve got a system based on producing goods and services for sale on a market with a view to profit, you’ve got to have money. So, no, we don’t want to go back to barter.

As a Socialist, I’m one of the contributors who wants to replace the present capitalist system with a new system based on common ownership instead of ownership by the few and with production directly to meet people’s needs instead of production for sale on a market with a view to profits. In such a socialist (or communist) society – the two words mean the same – money would be redundant. So I don’t want to “abolish money”. I want a change to a society with a system of production and distribution in which money would be redundant and so would disappear.

For me, the case against money is the case against capitalism.

Capitalism is the system which now dominates the world. No country escapes or can escape from its influence and effects. It is essentially an economic system where the means for producing useful goods and services take the form of “capital”, or wealth used to produce more wealth with a view to profit, and where the goods and services produced take the form of “exchange value”, they all have a price and have to be exchanged for money.

The farms, factories, offices and other places where wealth is produced are owned and controlled by rich individuals, capitalist corporations and states. Under the pressure of competition, those in charge of these “units of capital” are driven to seek as much profit as they can, not so much for the personal benefit of the owners (though this does come into it) as to get funds to reinvest in cost-cutting innovations so as to be able to compete with, and outcompete, their rivals. One consequence of this is that more and more capital is accumulated. This in fact is what capitalism is all about: the accumulation of more and more capital out of profits.

So, over time the means of production and their productive power have built up and society has now become able, in theory, to produce enough useful goods and services to meet people’s needs. But the economic mechanism of capitalism does not let this happen. Making profits and re-investing them as more capital always comes first.

It’s an irrational system of “production for production’s sake”, of “growth for growth’s sake”. There are other anti-social results of capitalism. Such as the recurring economic crises and slumps like the one we’re in now. Such as the wars and preparation for war that occur as capitalist states compete over sources of raw material, trade routes, markets and investment outlets. Such as putting short-term cost and profit considerations before protecting the environment and respecting a balance of nature. But the one I want to concentrate on is that it does not allow production to be geared to meeting the needs of people for food, clothes, housing, healthcare, education an the other amenities for an enjoyable life.

People’s needs are met but only to an extent – to the extent that they have money to pay for them. There are various ways an individual can get money. They can inherit it (be born with it). They can steal it. They can beg for it. Or they can work for it – which is what most people do.

I don’t criticise those who try to avoid this by establishing rural communes or by living off what they find in skips. That’s a lifestyle choice but not an attractive one for most people. I don’t even criticise those who chose to steal money, at least not as long as they steal from the rich.

But what sort of society is it where most people have to fend for themselves to get money so they can access what they need to live – and where, even in a developed country like Britain, 10-15 percent can’t keep up and are forced to rely on more or less meagre handouts from the state? This, when, from the point of view of technology, society could produce enough for all, especially if we get rid of capitalism’s artificial scarcity (the need to make a profit holds back producing enough to meet people’s needs) and its organised scarcity (not just of wars and preparation for war, but also all of the resources devoted to the counting and transfer of money).

As a Socialist, I say capitalism must go if we’re going to be able to provide a decent living for every man, woman and child on the planet. 

What is needed in place of capitalism is for the Earth’s resources to become the common heritage of all. Then, they could be geared to satisfying people’s needs. If productive resources were commonly owned, then so would what they produced. The issue to be dealt with would be, not how to sell to people what had been produced (how could you when they’re already the joint owners of it?) It’s how to share-out/distribute what’s been produced. In other words, exchange (buying and selling) is replaced by distribution (sharing-out and taking). For this, money is not needed.

It’s possible – right at the beginning or as a result of some major natural disaster – that some useful things might be temporarily unavailable in sufficient quantities. In which case there would have to be a temporary rationing of them till supplies were increased or restored. But, given modern technology and capacity to produce, the general rule (and certainly the aim to be reached as rapidly as possible) would be free distribution and free access, the implementation of the old communist principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. With free public transport, healthcare, education, gas, water, electricity, telephone, internet access, and other public services and amenities. And people free to take from the stores and distribution centres according to their needs. As I said, there would be no need for money. It would be redundant. The notes and coins we now use would find their proper place in museums.

Why not? Would it work? And how would  – or, rather, could – it work?

The main objection is a popular version of the basic dogma of modern conventional economics: that resources are scarce because people’s wants are infinite. Or, in its popular (populist) form, because people are greedy, so they would take too much and the whole system would collapse in chaos.

But are people’s wants really infinite? “Infinite” is the word they actually use in the textbooks. If literally interpreted, it would mean that everybody desires to obtain the whole universe. Which is absurd. People’s needs are not infinite. But are people “greedy”? In today’s society, where you can’t be sure of the future, it makes sense to make hay or gather nuts while you can in case things go wrong and your future money income is reduced (if, for instance, you lose your job or your employer or the government freezes your pay).

But even today within capitalism, when some things are free at the time of use and people know they will continue to be freely available they only take what they need. I’ve got a Freedom Pass that allows me to travel free on public transport in London. So have hundreds of thousands  of others. Do we spend all our time going from one end of the line to another or round and round the Circle Line? Of course not. We only travel when we need to. Maybe more than we would if we had to pay, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It only shows how having to pay means that some needs have to go unmet.

So, overconsumption is not going to be a problem. The problem will be organising so that the stores and distribution centres are always stocked with what people are likely to need. Here we can go again to the textbooks of conventional economics. They say that production is geared to meeting paying consumer demand. This isn’t the case, but let’s assume that it is. The theory is that consumers determine what is produced by the way they spend their money. What they buy over a given period is a signal as to what to produce. If stocks run short, that’s a signal to produce more. If stocks build up, that’s a signal to produce less.

This system of signals via stock levels can work just as easily irrespective of whether the stocks run short or build up as a result of what people buy or as a result of what they take freely. So the sort of central planning involving planners deciding in advance all that’s needed – which some people see as the only way to organise the production and distribution of useful things without money – is not necessary. In a moneyless society too, production and distribution could be largely self-regulating.

Anyway, this is not a blueprint, just an illustration of how organising the production and distribution of wealth without money is feasible.

The session was taped and will be posted on You Tube in about month's time.

Cooking the Books: Green Economic Policies (2014)

The Cooking the Books Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party held its annual conference at the beginning of September. According to the BBC, ‘the Green Party have sought to position themselves to the left of Labour and the Lib Dems by adopting policies such as the renationalisation of the railways, and curbing private NHS work’ (BBC online, 5 September).

Being more radical than Labour and the Liberals is easy enough and it is true that in her speech as their leader Natalie Bennett did seem as if she might have been speaking at a Labour Party Conference in the days of yore.

The Green Party, she told the BBC, is ‘the party of real change, the party with plans and policies for how to transform our economy so that it works for the common good … What we really have to do is rebalance our economy. At the moment, wealthy individuals and particularly big multinational companies aren't paying their taxes and aren't paying adequate wages. Britain is a low-wage economy. We have to allow people to get a decent return on their labour.’

This is to assume that the economy - which is capitalist - is something that a government can manipulate or mould at will, but the evidence of all past governments that have tried to do this is the opposite. It can’t be done. Rather than governments being able to change the way capitalism works it’s been the other way round. Governments have to dance to capitalism’s tune and that means putting profits first.

The Green Party may not like capitalism in its present form and want to ‘rebalance’ it, but they still see no alternative to capitalism as a system of production for profit based on wage-labour and are resigned to working within it. It is true that the sort of capitalism they envisage would not be dominated by tax-dodging multinationals but one in which the profit-seeking enterprises would be small and eco-friendly. But there is no more chance of an eco-friendly capitalism than there is of going back to small-scale capitalism.

Transforming the capitalist economy so that ‘it works for the common good’ is precisely what cannot be done. Capitalism is a class-divided society driven by the imperative for those who own and control the means of wealth production to make a profit. It can only function as a profit system in the interest of those who live off profits.

All governments have to take this constraint into account and frame their policies so as to give priority to profits and profit-making. This means that they have to back off from taxing the rich too much – to pay, for instance, for ecological measures or higher wages and benefits – in case they reduce the incentive to pursue profits and so provoke an economic crisis.

Derek Wall, once a Green Party spokesperson (in the days before they had a Leader) once put this rather well:

‘A Green government will be controlled by the economy rather than being in control. On coming to office through coalition or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an instant collapse of sterling as 'hot money' and entrepreneurial capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and industrialists would move their factories to countries with more relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. Sources of finance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction – the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction of a proper sewage system – would run out’ (Getting There, 1990, p. 78).

The answer is not to steal Labour’s abandoned clothes but to get rid of capitalism and its production for profits and working for wages.

Green writings from Wall (1995)

Book Review from the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Green History -  a reader in environmental literature, philosophy and politics by Derek Wall (Routledge, 1994)

Ninety-six extracts from a wide selection of writers of many periods have been assembled into nineteen groups, each with an introduction by Derek Wall.

The topics of the groups range from "Ecology and early urban civilization" to "Philosophical holism". They are intended to cover the full spectrum of "Green" attitudes and beliefs and, as such, they offer a valuable insight into the thinking of those people who have decided to associate themselves with the broad ecology movement.

What is clearly demonstrated, however, is that concern for the earth, for nature, is nothing new. Pre-civilized peoples knew—and still know—the extent to which it is was necessary to live in harmony with the flora and other fauna of their area of the planet. But ancient civilisations, although they made many mistakes with their cities, agriculture and irrigation programmes, had their "Green" spokesmen too, such as Plato, Lucretius and Ovid.

Derek Wall intends to give Greens the authority of a respectable history, but he also warns them to be aware that many others before them, including socialists and anarchists, have drawn attention to the impact of human civilisation upon the rest of nature.

He mentions the expansionism of capitalism as the current cause of mushrooming ecological impact but, quoting Jonathan Porritt, entirely evades the explanation of why the majority have no choice but to continue abusing the planet's resources and amenities.

Nowhere is there a mention of the subjection and exploitation of the majority of the industrial world's population—the working class—by the capitalist class. Environmental degradation is therefore held up as the fault of us all. And this, of course, is the lameness which has been the cause of repeated disappointment for the political aspirations of Greens. They have no answer to capitalism. They have no agreed understanding of why capitalism plunders and pollutes as it does: and therefore they have no appreciation of what it will take to stop the rape of the world. They act as though they think indignation will be enough - and it won't.

Green History is an interesting book to dip into or, because of its good index, look up topics and writers. But socialists must be prepared for considerable irritation. For example, Bellamy's military-industrial society in Looking Backward is described as "socialist" although Bellamy had expressly rejected the label, preferring to call his scheme "Nationalism". Morris's News from Nowhere, written as a counterblast to Bellamy by an avowed Marxian socialist is, on the other hand, called "eco-utopian" by Wall. Perhaps these really are the terms in which most people today have been encouraged to think. But, for a book which claims to be providing a guide through the history of ideas to reinforce such prejudices betrays a lack of care and precision, eroding confidence in the other comments and conclusions the editor makes.

RC

Stopping short (2005)

Book Review from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Babylon and Beyond: the Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements. by Derek Wall (Pluto Press)

This is a textbook-like survey of various trends in the anti-globalisation movement. As such, it covers a great deal of material in less than 200 pages, from avowed supporters of capitalism such as Joseph Stiglitz to autonomists like Toni Negri, via Naomi Klein and (but why?) Major Douglas and social credit. There are too many direct quotations, and too many typos (e.g. references to Lenin on imperialism as 'the highest state of capitalism'). But not many readers will be familiar with all the writers and activists mentioned here, so the book does serve a useful purpose, though it is scarcely a full guide to the ideas of particular thinkers.

On the whole Wall summarises other views rather than expressing opinions of his own, but he does sometimes let his own attitudes show through. For instance, he is sceptical about the ideas of some 'green localists' that a decentralised economy would naturally lead to ecological sustainability and social justice.

The chapter on 'Marxisms' (note the plural) starts well, with a photo of the Socialist Party's founding conference, but ends weakly with references to Russia, Cuba, etc., as if these dictatorships constituted a valid reason for rejecting Marx's ideas. He discerns a 'pro-globalisation strand of Marx's thought', which is correct to the extent that Marx saw capitalism as expanding into more and more parts of the world, but it is simplistic to transfer what he wrote in this regard 150 years ago to the present day.

Capitalism has long been a world system and created the potential for abundance, so there is no need for further globalisation and the concomitant wars and impoverishment.

As a Green Party member, Wall himself seems to support what he calls 'ecosocialism'. Certainly we can accept that Socialism needs to include ecological concerns, indeed that this will be a crucial aspect of a society based on common ownership. We can also agree with his description of the ideas of Joel Kovel: "The use of what is useful and beautiful must be pursued, while exchange values must be rejected. . . . The rejection of exchange values is essential to reducing resource consumption and human alienation."

Unfortunately Wall stops short of advocating the abolition of the wages system, and it's just not clear what sort of society he does stand for. There are some remarks about "moving beyond the market" and "extending the commons", and some praise for the open source software movement, where software is put on the web for free (Wall suggests that Marx would have used the open source browser Firefox!). This is OK as far as it goes, but it needs to be taken that crucial bit further.

Paul Bennett