Election Special: Introducing the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904. Our object is the establishment of Socialism; a world-wide social system in which the means of wealth production and distribution (factories, mines, the land, railways, steamships, etc.) will be owned by the entire population of the world.

We are associated with our Companion Socialist parties in the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. We have no connection whatever with any other political party or organisation.

WE OPPOSE every organisation which stands for capitalism, which includes the Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist, Independent Labour parties and many others. We oppose the wars which capitalism persistently throws up. We oppose political campaigns which appeal for votes on programmes of reforms (better housing, higher wages, etc.), which in fact do little or nothing to alleviate working class problems. We oppose Nationalisation, which is just another way of organising capitalism.

WE SUPPORT Socialism. Nothing less will do.

WE WORK for Socialism. We spread among the working class the knowledge without which Socialism cannot be established. Our leader does not exist. Leaders are for the politically ignorant. The worker who has Socialist knowledge does not need a leader to interpret political affairs for him and to tell him what to do. There are, therefore, no leaders in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we do not set out to become leaders of the working class.

WE RECRUIT Socialists and nobody else. We examine all applicants for membership to ensure that they understand what is entailed by being a Socialist.

WE APPEAL to the working class to examine the case for Socialism and to vote for our candidate only if they understand, and want, Socialism.

Why we are contesting

Whenever there is an election the ordinary person, the man in the street—the working class voter—becomes suddenly very popular. Any number of political parties are anxious to please him and to make him all manner of tempting promises, if he in his turn will agree to vote for their candidate. Election time, in other words, is the time when there is an enormous hunt for votes—for your vote.

The bait which is used in this hunt is largely made up by promises. All the other parties offer this bait, and the generosity of their promises is usually in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their getting power. The Labour and Conservative Parties cannot be too extravagant; the Liberals can be a little more wild; the Communists can promise almost anything. And so on.

Most of the promises in this election are about things like modernisation, housing, education, pensions, wages and prices, war and peace. To read the literature of the other parties, it seems that all that has to be done to solve overnight all the problems connected with these issues is to vote for their candidate. They will all, it seems, bring British industry up to date, replace all the slums with new houses, give everyone a fair chance of the best education, increase pensions, keep prices stable while wages increase, banish war from the earth.

These promises sound very fine and in one election after another millions of working people vote for them. And presumably, when they do so, they think that they are contributing to the solution of our problems.

But let us stop and think about it.

Firstly, it is obvious that election promises are not a new thing. Political parties have been making them for as long as anyone can remember—and always about the same sort of problems.

Now what has been the result of all this?

The housing problem remains with us; despite repeated promises to deal with it, slums are developing faster than new houses are being built For the workers, who depend on their wage to live, housing is still an aspect of their general poverty.

The sort of education we get is governed by the financial standing of our parents. Even if a working class lad wins his way to university he is only studying to become a different type of worker—one with a degree behind him.

Millions of old age pensioners are living on the tightrope of destitution—and it only needs something like a severe winter for many of them to loosen their precarious hold on life.

Prices continue to rise, as they have done steadily since the war. No government has yet given a free rein to the level of wages—they have all tried to restrain them. And whatever the respective level of prices and wages, we always find that our wage packet only just covers our food, clothing, entertainment and whatever else goes to keep us ticking over.

War is just as much a universal problem as ever. At the moment there are only comparatively minor incidents, punctuated by more serious clashes such as Cuba and Berlin. But over it all hangs the threat of another world conflict, this time fought out with nuclear weapons.

It is not accidental that the politicians make so many promises and that they have so little effect upon the ailments they are supposed to cure. The world is full of chronic problems, but this is not because political parties have not thought up reforms which are supposed to deal with them nor because their leaders are not clever or knowledgeable enough.

The fact is that the problems persist whichever party is in power and this suggests that their roots go deep into the very nature of modern society.

We live today in a social system which is called capitalism. 
The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the 
population of the means of producing and distributing wealth—
of factories, mines, steamships, and so on. It follows from 
this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned out 
with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from this basis that the problems of modern society spring.

The class which does not own the means of wealth production—the working class—are condemned to a life of impoverished dependence upon their wages. This poverty expresses itself in inferior housing, clothes, education, and the like. In the end, it expresses itself in the pathetic destitution of the old age pensioner—a fate which no old capitalist ever faces.

The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over wages and working conditions with attendant industrial disputes. It gives rise, with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured man’s recent history.

Every other party in this election stands for capitalism, whatever they may call themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which no human being is secure.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, alone, stands for Socialism. We stand for a world in which everything which goes to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the people of the world. Because Socialism is the direct opposite of capitalism, it follows that when it is established the basic problems of capitalism will disappear. There will be no more war, no more poverty. Man will live a full, abundant life; we shall be free.

But Socialism cannot be brought about by promises. It needs a knowledgeable working class who understand and desire it. They alone can establish the new world order.

We recognise that the road to power lies through Parliament. At the moment, the number of Socialists is small and our resources are therefore limited; unfortunately, we can afford to run only a few candidates. But as the conscious desire for Socialism spreads among the working class we shall contest more and more constituencies, giving more and more workers the chance to vote for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.

What is Socialism?

Socialism will be a social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1904. We have never altered it; not because we are stubborn and blind to changing conditions but because the word Socialism means the same today as it did in 1904—and as it will mean when Socialism becomes a reality.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution means that the things which are needed to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the whole human race. At present these things are the land, factories, mines, railways, steamships, etc. But common ownership does not mean that everybody in the world will own an equal share of every factory, mine, railway train and the rest.

What common ownership does mean, is that there is one way in which all human beings will be equal. Everybody will have an equal right to take however much wealth they need and to consume it as they require. Because the means of production will be commonly owned the things which are produced will go into a common pool from which all human beings will be able to satisfy their needs.

Now if there is unrestricted access to wealth for everybody it must follow that nobody, in the sense of an individual or a class, owns wealth. This means that wealth will not be exchanged under Socialism; it will not be bartered nor will it be bought and sold. As a rough parallel we can consider the air we breathe. Everybody has free access to the air and we can all take in as much of it as we need to live. In other words, nobody owns the air; nobody tries to exchange air for anything else, nobody tries to sell or buy it. Similarly there will be no buying and selling under Socialism; no need for the complicated and widespread organisations which deal in commerce and banking in capitalist society. Socialism will have no merchant houses, no banks, no stock exchanges, no tax inspectors, or any of the paraphernalia of capitalism.

In a Socialist society wealth will be produced solely to satisfy people’s needs and not for sale as it is today. Because of this there will be no deliberate variations in quality of wealth. Socialism will have only one quality. Whatever is produced will be the best that human beings are capable of. Homes, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they are made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the best homes that society knows how to build.

Nobody will be employed by another person—nobody will sell his labour-power or work for wages. Everybody, in fact, will work for the whole of society. Work will be a co-operative effort, freely given because men will realise that wealth can only be produced by working—unless wealth is produced society will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that will keep us working under Socialism. Men will be free—free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment, free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody will be found doing a job which he hates but tolerates because it pays him well. Healthy young men will not grow pigeon-chested over fusty ledgers. Nobody will waste his time learning how to kill scientifically. We shall be free to do useful work, making things which will add to society’s welfare, things which will make human life a little better, a little happier.

There will be no war—the cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that the people who are in the armed forces, together with the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.

When production is only for human use we shall see a great development of society’s productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Socialism will have no use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale. There will probably be statisticians to collect information about society’s productive resources and to relate this to our needs. A lot of people will work at transporting wealth all over the world. These are useful occupations, just as all work will be.

Capitalism has veined the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take pride in something over which they had no control. Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings working together for their mutual benefit.

Socialism will end the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today. It will remove poverty and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring us a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and brotherhood.

Election Special: Where our opponents stand (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conservatives

Since they came back to power twelve years ago, the Conservative Party have managed to popularise the idea that they are the party of prosperity. They also claim, like the other parties, to stand for the interest of the nation as a whole.

But can we sensibly talk of “The nation as a whole”? The economic editor of one well known Sunday newspaper recently wrote about “ the fantastically unequal distribution of wealth” and estimated that nearly one half of the total personal wealth in this country is owned by two per cent. of the adult population. This inequality is at the heart of the capitalist system—the system which the Conservative Party openly supports.

The Conservatives also claim to be the party of the small man, they talk of property owning and share owning democracies. In fact, however, their policy has been well described by Enoch Powell, one time Tory Minister of Health:

Does it pay? is the question which, quite unashamedly, we have to ask today of all our economic and commercial doings. Does this railway line pay—that coal mine, this shipping route? Does that industry in that place pay? (The Observer, 13/5/62).

This ruthless standard also applies to the small man; if his business does not pay, the Conservatives are prepared to see him go under.

It is difficult to understand how so many of those who suffer most from capitalism can find reasons to support the Conservative Party, which openly proclaims the basic capitalist doctrine that profit must come before human welfare.

Production for profit, which Mr. Powell and all Conservatives think is the most efficient and praiseworthy method, does not lead to one prosperous nation but rather to one prosperous capitalist class and to degradation and insecurity for the working class.

The workers have nothing more to expect from the Tories than what they get; unemployment, bad housing, pay restraint, insecurity. Tory ministers may describe these problems as personal, family difficulties, but in fact they are the inevitable results.of the class divided, privilege ridden social system which Conservatives so proudly support.

Labour Party

Both the Labour and Conservative Parties tell you, in this election and at other times, that the Labour Party stands for Socialism. Both parties have different reasons for saying this but these need not concern us. What we are concerned about is to ask whether it is true that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party.

Socialism means a new social system, based upon the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. All wealth under Socialism will be produced to satisfy human needs and not to make a profit. There will, in other words, be no such thing as investment under Socialism. Yet the 1953 Labour manifesto Challenge to Britain states clearly that:

The crucial problem facing the next Labour Government will be to stimulate a big increase in investment.

Socialism will have no national barriers, no separate countries each with their own mistakenly patriotic workers. Compare this with what Mr. Harold Wilson said recently:

Desire to restore Britain’s standing in the world is a noble one, and one which we have been pressing for years. We have been saying that Britain must lead (The Guardian, 2/12/63).

There will be no international trading rivalries under Socialism. These rivalries, which often lead directly to war, spring from the basis of capitalist society. But Mr. Wilson wants:

. . .  a specific preference in awarding (Commonwealth) contracts to Britain. . . In return, Britain should undertake to provide guaranteed markets for Commonwealth primary produce (Daily Telegraph, 5/5/63.)

These statements are taken at random from a mass of evidence which proves that the Labour Party stands for capitalism and, as a British political party, represents the interests of the British capitalist class.

That is why, when they were last in power, they used troops to break strikes, developed the British H. Bomb, continued conscription into peace-time, put this country into the Korean war, and so on.

There is no point in pretending that millions of workers will not once more vote Labour in this election. But they should be aware that in doing so they are voting for capitalism—for war, for poverty, for unrest and insecurity.

The Liberals

Struggling to increase its political fortunes at this election will be the Liberal Party. Out in the wilderness for well over forty years, they have previous little chance still of forming a government. But this is not for want of trying; in recent years, their language has been that much more flowery than their Labour and Tory opponents, their promises that much wilder. For they are trying hard to raise an image of the “new” Liberalism from the ashes of the old, and to convince workers that theirs is the best way of running British capitalism.

“Cut the past. Assess the present and prepare for the future," was the cry of Liberal leader Jo Grimond only about two years ago, and bearing in mind the Liberal record, this was certainly not surprising to hear. Here we have the party of peace lovers who supported both world wars; defenders of individual liberties who agreed with conscription; friends of the workers who smashed their strikes with troops; protectors of the little man, who built up their party funds by selling peerages to their big business backers. All this and more can be laid at the door of the Liberal Party of yesterday, when it was well and truly a powerful force.

Election Special: Where We Stand (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wages and Prices

Our capitalist world is topsy-turvy and generally unpredictable. Bold indeed is the man who dares to say what things will be like in twelve months, or even twelve days time. Nevertheless, there are some things on which we can speak with some certainty. We do not know which party is going to win this election, but whichever it is will have the question of wages and prices as one of its major preoccupations.

Wages are always a headache to employers and governments, and we do not have to look far to find the reason. If the manufacturer is to sell the goods which his workers have produced, he has to offer them at competitive prices, as high as the market will bear, but not so high as to leave the market to cheaper competitors. If wages increase too much his profit suffers, so he needs something to act as a brake on wage claims. Before the war the brake was there in the form of large unemployment, but this generally has been missing in the post-war years. As the purpose of capitalism is profit making, our rulers find themselves in a quandary.

Should they fight the unions over every wage claim? But that would mean bringing factories and transport to a standstill, at enormous cost in lost production and profits. So they have to try other methods, such as “wage freezing” under Labour and “wage restraint” under the Tories, both meaning the same thing. They will try to persuade the workers to forgo, or at least reduce, wage increases "in the national interest.” All sorts of arguments will be used in support of this line, all boiling down to the same theme. The less we have, the better off we shall be, even at a time when generally prices are rising.

But didn’t they all say how much they deplored the rise in prices and promise to put a stop to it? Yet the Labour Government went out on a tide of rising prices, for all its controls. Who will forget the garish Tory posters up and down the country, telling us that they would succeed where their opponents had failed? We can see how little their promises were really worth. In fact, just like the Labour Party before them, they have given the nod to price rises by currency inflation, in attempts to offset wage increases.

As far as workers are concerned, the struggle for improved wages and conditions must be pressed at all times, regardless of price movements and government propaganda. The alternative under capitalism is a worsening of conditions—there is no such thing as “stability.” But the only real solution is to replace capitalism with Socialism, which will mean the ending of both wages and prices and instead the production of goods solely for the use and enjoyment of all.

Housing

Our politicians are constantly talking about it. The newspapers print loads of articles on it. The telly shows us heartrending pictures of it. All as though it is something new, something that will soon be over and dealt with, given the right political party—Tory, Labour, Liberal.

They call it the housing problem.

But a hundred years ago and more they were talking about a housing problem. Far from being new, it's as old as capitalism, as old as the working class itself.

Let us go back a hundred years—to 1864. Hardly believable though it is, many of the houses that had already been standing for twenty or thirty years then are still with us now. Everybody has heard of Coronation Street—after whose coronation was it named? Not after George VI in 1937, nor after George V in 1910, nor even after Edward VII in 1901, but after Queen Victoria’s in 1837. And in Salford they have only just got round to pulling down Waterloo Place, built in 1815 and named after the victory over Napoleon!

Today in this country there are more than one million houses—many probably worse than those in Coronation Streets—reckoned to be unfit for human habitation. So low are the standards, anyway, that one million is certainly an underestimate.

In Glasgow, tens of thousands of people live three to a room.

In Liverpool there are 88,000 houses beyond any prospect of repair; in Birmingham 50,000 families are on the waiting list; whilst in Oldham it is estimated that no less than one house in four is unfit to live in. And in London, perhaps the worst area of all, many families of the homeless are reduced to walking the streets.

Our capitalist politicians all tell us, of course, how upset they are over the problem. The same as they were telling us years and years ago. Now the Labour Party reproaches the Tories for building only 300,000 houses a year: the Tories answer back and remind the Labourites that they have nothing to shout about because when they were in office they only once managed to get above 200,000!

But this does not stop them telling us what fine things they’re going to do if they are elected. What truly wonderful promises they have given us over the years! And still they have not even got to the stage of building enough houses to keep pace with those rotting away into slums, let alone starting to fulfil those high ideals they treat us to every time an election comes around.

Yes, there’s a housing problem alright, the same one that has been with us for the past hundred and fifty years. And the capitalist political parties are just as far from getting rid of it today as they were then. Promises, we shall get promises galore. If words were bricks we’d all be living in palaces by now!

But they’re not, and we shall still be hearing about the housing problems—the overcrowding, the million slums, the long waiting lists, the wandering homeless—when the next General Election comes round!

Education

In this election all other parties are making grandiose promises to improve education.

But anybody who wants the best education, for themselves or for their children, can get it now. There is, of course, a snag. It will cost about £370 a year, which is the price of sending a pupil to a typical public school.

The public schools give youngsters the sort of education which develops their abilities to the full. Only a minority, however, can afford to go to them. What about the rest?

For them, a state school where, as both the Newsome and the Robbins Reports have shown, the educational environment is unfavourable.

Why are there so many promises to improve education?

The Times Educational Supplement, commenting on the Newsom Report, said:

The need is not only for more skilled workers to fit existing jobs, but also for a generally better and intelligently adaptable labour force to meet new demands.

What these “new demands” are was indicated by the same periodical in their discussion of the Robbins Report:

The committee was impressed by the fact that plans for expansion (in Europe and America) often far surpassed present British plans.

In other words, education is being improved and expanded to provide workers with different skills from those of their fathers, so that British capitalism can compete more successfully with its foreign rivals. On this the Labour, Conservative, Liberal and other capitalist parties are agreed.

Workers are misled into believing that a better education will basically improve their condition. In fact, it will leave them relying upon their wage for their living, even if their job is a “technical” one for which they need a university degree.

The restrictions and insecurity of working class life will continue to afflict them. Just like their fathers before, they will have been educated for a job.

Education under Socialism will be free of the shackles which capitalism’s profit motive imposes upon it. We shall all learn about the world we live in, our abilities will be developed to the full. Then we shall be able to offer the best to, and receive the best from, life.

Technology

A great driving force in capitalism is competition. This often leads to the growing productivity that is a feature of the system. The fiercer competition becomes, the quicker is the pace of technological innovation and the more acute the need for scientific research. This is precisely the position today.

The growing competition which British firms are meeting in the world market has highlighted the need for various reforms if they are to remain competitive. These reforms are needed primarily in education and scientific research. The era of automation demands a higher level of skill and education among the population than at present. Thus education and technical training must be improved and expanded.

But this is not enough. To be efficient and remain competitive a firm must invest in research. At present, however, few firms can afford the large outlay that this demands. In other spheres overlapping of research takes place. Here the capitalists’ need is for some national organization to finance and co-ordinate research. This is why the “scientific revolution” has become an election issue. This is why both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are emphasising the need for more universities, more science students, for better technical education in secondary schools, more research and other similar reforms. These reforms will come whichever party wins, for modernization is the order of the day.

But what will this modernization mean for the majority of workers? Technical progress under capitalism always presents a threat to some jobs. The measure of a firm’s efficiency at such times is the number of workers it can lay off. For the wages bill is a cost and costs must be reduced to a minimum if a firm is to remain competitive.

Many of the inventions which will result from this scientific revolution will be labour-saving, that is, job-killing. This means an increase, even temporarily, in redundancy. Old skills will be useless. The faster pace of machines will mean an increase in shift-working. It should not be thought that this threat is confined to factory workers. Computers and automation represent a threat to the jobs of thousands of managers, bank clerks and other white collar workers. All in all the total result will be the same old insecurity for all sections of the working class. This is the experience of American workers. It represents our future during the much-vaunted scientific revolution.

A trade union struggle against this threat will not be enough. Such a struggle, though necessary, can only be a rearguard action as everything favours capitalism. Something more than trade union struggle is required, namely, a political struggle to end capitalism. The Socialist Party offers a constructive alternative in Socialism. Only then will the fruits of scientific progress be used to satisfy the needs of humanity instead of, as at present, the greed of capital.

Election Special: The Socialist Party and War (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody in his right mind wants war. Yet so far this century, there have been two world wars and countless smaller ones — and the threat of another catastrophe hangs over us all the time. Such is the contradictory nature of our capitalist world that the very thing—peace—which everyone wants seems impossible to obtain.

But “peace” will be a promise you will find in every capitalist party election programme. All of them will undertake to have this as one of their chief goals and will assure you that only a vote for them will ensure real progress towards it. Never mind that they have supported previous bloodbaths and helped to send millions of workers to their deaths. Never mind, either, that to a man they insist on the need to retain armaments—in fact to refine and develop them to a terrifying degree. They say that these arms are for “defensive” purposes, of course (no weapons are ever for “offensive” purposes). Yes, they will tell you of their desire for peace just as surely as they are getting ready for the next war.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has consistently opposed all war and has never ceased to point out its futility. Despite the claims of the politicians, war has solved no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of them at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalist class. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the methods of warfare impressed upon them so that they are impregnated with the idea that force, and not reason, is the way to solve all problems.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained, against such reformist organisations as the C.N.D., that war has its origin in the capitalist system of society. Under capitalism the profit motive dominates production, causing competition for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, etc. War is in fact an expression of this competition in armed terms.

Socialism—the common ownership of the means of life—is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions which breed war, because it is a society in which the people of the world will work together for their mutual benefit.

Election Special: Leaders and Led (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the issues in this election will concern the personalities of the various political leaders. Many people will vote for the Labour Party because they like Mr. Wilson, or for the Tories, because they admire Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The assumption behind these votes is that, whoever the leader happens to be, it is necessary that somebody holds the job.

But is this true? There are innumerable leaders in the world today—political, religious, trade union, and so on—yet none of them is capable of doing anything about the world’s problems. And this applies equally to the leaders of the past, who spent a lifetime assuring people that they could do something about capitalism's ailments but died with the world in just as big a mess as ever.

In spite of this, the working class continue to put their faith in leaders. As one set fall from grace, the search is started for a new set and each time the searchers convince themselves that they have at last found the honest, consistent and capable men they would like to have at the top. They never, apparently, consider the proposition that all leaders are futile.

Leaders, in fact, exist by virtue of the ignorance of the people they lead. And the more emphasis is put upon the leader, the more gullible and unthinking are the followers. Yet what point is there in a leader who has to listen to the rank and file? The ultimate logic of leadership is the dictator.

With political understanding, leaders are unnecessary. When the working class have grasped the nature of capitalist society, when they understand how it inevitably produces war and poverty and insecurity, they will be immune to the blandishments of aspiring leaders.

With knowledge the people of the world will understand the cause of capitalism’s problems, and realise that they will only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. That will need, not leader,, but a consciously Socialist working class.

Until that happens we face the chaos and brutality of capitalism. When it does happen, there will be a world of happiness, freedom and plenty.

Election Special: World of Waste (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live today in a world of waste—a ludicrous waste of buying and selling; a criminal waste of war and preparations for war; a useless waste of ticket clipping, accounting, form-filling.

Only now and then does the utter stupidity of the whole futile business pull us up short and make us see things as if for the first time. We stand amazed at the way human beings can go on putting up with such a crazy world, so out of keeping with its real needs and interests.

When more than half the population of the world are going hungry and destitute, the British government will spend something like £2,000 million this year on what it likes to call “defence.” The United States will spend more than ten times as much to the same end and no doubt the Russians will be doing the same.

Every country in the world reserves up to one-tenth of its total national wealth in preparing for war. Some of the weapons they make are obsolete before they actually begin to leave the factories, others even before they are off the drawing board. Many more are scrapped after they have seen only a few months service.

Probably no one will ever know the full amount that has been spent by this country on its atomic programme, and the expenditure by other countries is equally shrouded in secrecy. That the sums are vast is certain.

When the Americans launched Colonel Glenn into space, it cost the staggering sum of £150 million. Britain has spent the better half of £1,000 million so far on rocket missiles. Even greater sums have probably been spent by the Russians, yet Kruschev told the Russian workers only a little while ago that he hoped that by 1980 every Russian would be able to eat an egg a day !

We are so bemused by governments talking in these astronomical figures that they lose all significance. It takes a conscious effort to turn these vast numbers of pounds into such basic things as houses, oil refineries, washing machines, boots and shoes, bread and butter.

In these days when families roam the streets looking for somewhere to live, the productive resources represented by the £150 million spent on the Glenn circus could have built 30,000 houses (and we mean houses, not the glorified chicken coops which currently pass for them). For the same sum five times as many homes could have been provided with good furniture to make them a pleasure to live in. Or perhaps a quarter of a million cars could have been built, or three million refrigerators, or ten million vacuum cleaners, or just a decent pair of shoes for every adult in the country.

Capitalism measures everything in terms of money.

These are the millions, the hundreds of millions, the thousands of millions of pounds, dollars, roubles, francs, marks, yen, and all the other currencies one can think of, that capitalism wastes each year. And this only in misdirected production —we leave out all the other ways in which human labour and resources are uselessly frittered away.

Translate all this vast accumulation of wasted wealth and labour into the worthwhile things of life and into the things that produce them—into houses and brick factories, into electricity and power stations, into food and agricultural machines, into clothes and spinning mills, into coal, oil, roads, railways, and ships.

Stop and think of all this when next you hear some glib politician talking at election time of the millions that are going to be spent on a new rocket, a bigger tank, a faster aeroplane, another atomic test.

Bromley and Woodside Election Campaigns (1964)

Party News from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard