So They Say: Faint Headed (1975)

The So They Say Column from the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faint Headed

The hot weather of the past few weeks has been having “subtle psychological and physical effects” on us all claimed the Sunday Times of 10th August. Most particularly they note that heat relaxes the nervous system and warms the blood — causing drowsiness. Perhaps this factor should be taken into account when considering the jaded statements put forward recently by Mrs. Thatcher and masquerading as ‘policy’ for the Conservative Party.

Conservatives detested unemployment as much as anyone else . . . We believe in the creation of wealth, in flourishing business and commerce because that means prosperity for all and good prospects in the years ahead.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

It may have escaped her attention that to become unemployed, a worker loses a job — or, as in the case of school-leavers, fails to find a job at all. It is currently estimated that the latter already number over 55,000 and that this figure will increase considerably after the holiday period.

The “flourishing business and commerce” organisations Mrs. Thatcher speaks of, simply do not have room to entertain what she may or may not say she “detests.”

London Brick has sold much of the huge stock it was left with when building ground to a halt last year, and because it fears the boom will be short-lived, it is reluctant to replace the workers it laid off last year and re-open the works it shut.

(Sunday Times, 10th August ’75)

The Conservative leader appears oblivious to a basic law of the social system which her party wishes to continue — Under Conservatives or Labour; No production without profit.

Ghastly Problem

She continued her weary way by extolling the virtues of the “entrepreneur” who “in creating wealth for himself, creates incomparably more wealth for other people” although we are not clear if “other people” refers to other members of the board — they could hardly be unemployed workers. Concluding she remarked with ambiguity

The greatest conservative Prime Minister of this century, Winston Churchill once had as his slogan ‘Set the people free,’ it is time we revived it.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

One who fits into this category of “entrepreneur” is Sir Jules Thorn, and he is just about to set his people free, although not in the way that Mrs. Thatcher would approve. His company, Thorn Colour Tubes is considering the imminent closure of their Skelmersdale plant. 1,500 workers will become unemployed as a result. The reason behind this is that the bottom has dropped out of the colour television market, coupled with the fact that cheaper Japanese products are mopping up a good deal of what remains. The voice of the virile and generous capitalist who seems to haunt Mrs. Thatcher’s dreams was clearly put by Mr. Harold Mourgue, the Finance Director at Thorns:

Closure was inevitable unless firm action was taken with Government help to end a brutal price cutting war in the British colour tube market . . . with the Japanese there is a ghastly problem.

(Guardian, 13th August 1975)

But isn’t competition for markets and “brutal price- cutting wars” what it’s all about? Well, yes it is — Thorn do not want the government to take the obvious step of introducing tariff restrictions against their Japanese competitors. Their concern on this point is heartfelt: “Thorn is against a tariff war, however.

This might eventually harm its own export markets.” 

They estimate that if their plant remains open it would run at well under half its capacity next year on the demands of the British market, so it would be reasonable to assume that when they enter the export market, no doubt with the gentlemanly policy of fair shares for all, they may be surprised to find that their own conception of what is fair, will inevitably be viewed by others as “brutal” competition.

Doubletalk

An accomplished variation of the three-card trick was performed by Mr. Paul Foot — the International Socialist — in The Times of 14th August. After quoting the words of a dispirited shop steward at Norton Villiers Triumph where the Labour government has failed to provide further financial backing, Foot draws the following conclusion

These are dreadful times for socialists who put their trust in Labour Governments.

This is coy stuff of course, one of the very last places a Socialist would put his trust is in the Labour Party. But there is method in the madness. He attacks the government in its attempts to run capitalism at a time, as he puts it, of “unprecedented capitalist collapse” for the following reasons:

Labours elected representatives become isolated from their power base, impotent to resist the demands of the system which they try to manage. They mouth the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.

All unsparing language of course, but we fail to recollect when this “power base” i.e. the Labour Party supporters, expected or desired other than the continuance of capitalism. In this discrediting the leaders specifically, the illusion could be created that they alone are deliberately perverting the desires of their supporters. He accuses the “helpless puppet” (the Labour Government) of recently being forced by economic conditions to “tear up two manifestos” but fails to note that each one of those manifestos was filled from cover to cover with “the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.”

Having pointed out that such an unlikely vehicle as the Labour Party has failed to introduce Socialism, he uses some loose logic to reject the whole parliamentary method

The parliamentary road to socialism has turned into another blind alley. The revolutionary road is beginning to open up.

The “revolutionary” road to Worker’s Control is what he refers to. However we recall that Foot’s paper, the Socialist Worker had little doubt on 16th February 1974 when advising before the oncoming election that “The working class has to respond with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . .” exactly which “helpless puppet” they favoured.

High Life and Times

The chairman of the Labour Party’s Scottish Council had some savage truths to bring home to Glasgow’s working class recently. Times appeared to be exceptionally high for action.

It is high time we did something to woo the working class mothers away from the bingo halls, clubs and casinos . . . It is high time we were doing something about getting the men away from betting shops . . . I think it is high time the educational processes were directed towards encouraging them into better ways of using their leisure time and to carry on their wider education.

We will not dwell on the degree of reserve which these proposals might reasonably expect to encounter from an average man within a Glasgow betting shop, but draw attention to the useful life which Mrs. Roberta Jacqueline Trieze Kimberly leads. No bingo halls for her!

She makes three parachute jumps a day, five days a week: Takes daily tennis and shooting lessons, and also flying lessons seven days a week. It runs into money of course — somewhere in the region of £17,000 a year, but she still has time and money for others, her dog for instance, which costs about £500 a year to keep in food and toys. The figures have emerged because Mrs. Kimberly is to divorce, and has been obliged to file a claim for expenses ‘in order to continue living in her present style’. She is claiming £96,000 a year for this purpose.

The costs include . . . £20,000 a year for entertainment; £850 a month for clothing: and £290 a month for flowers . . . A claim of medical and dental fees covers over £1,000 a month.

(Daily Mail, 25th July ’75)

Her husband, Mr. James Kimberly, is heir to the Kleenex empire, and should any reader feel overcome by the sad news of their break-up, reach for the tissues — both of them will be delighted.

Alan D'Arcy

In Defence of Property. (1907)

Book Review from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism: Its Fallacies and Dangers.” A collection of papers edited by Frederick Millar. Published by Watts & Co. for the “Liberty and Property Defence League.”

“Let us jealously watch the encroachments of the State, and never suffer it to become more than a watchdog.” Such appears to be the political doctrine of the band of belated individualists who are responsible for this book, for they include and condemn under the name of Socialism practically all State activity other than that of the mere policeman. Since, however, the propertied class has in its own interests been compelled to add to the State many other functions than that of the “watch-dog,” it is hardly necessary to consider the question at issue as being individualism versus collectivism at all, but rather as being—the class which lives by labour versus the class which lives by ownership, and whether those who produce should not own and control the product.

To those who seek a clear and useful criticism of Socialist principles the book under review will be disappointing. The facts of industrial evolution are not appreciated. The significance of the huge company and combine, where great and complicated branches of industry are run by hireling workers for absentee shareholders, is not taken into account. Nor is it recognised that industry is developing to the point at which the workers’ choice lies only between the oppressive collectivism of the trust or capitalist State for the profit of a few, and the collectivism of democracy for the benefit of all united in producing. The writers place themselves athwart the economic trend, and though as modern Mrs. Partingtons they may be excellent at a slop or a puddle, yet, trundle their mops as they will, they can hardly succeed in checking the rising Atlantic of economic development.

That there are misrepresentations is to be expected from such a source. Thus on page 17 we meet our old and hoary friend, “Sharing Out,” Socialism being referred to as the “confiscation and division of the national income.” It is also stated that Socialists “maintain that if a man lives in the house of another man, it is an extortion to ask him to pay a rent.” But the scientific Socialist knows that, apart from what is called economic rent, house rent is but the price of a commodity that, like every other commodity, tends to exchange at its value, which already includes its proportion of unpaid labour. The Socialist, therefore, holds that the robbery of the worker really takes place in the factory, not on the market.

Those who go into the highways and byways facing the opposition and abuse of the ignorant and the interested, and who, in their championship of the workers against oppression and robbery, brave the malice and persecution of the defenders of property, are told on page 24 that “The root of Socialism is cowardice. Here is the real source of the whole movement. It is the whine and the dream of the weaklings’ base fear of rivalry, of competition. It is the duty of real men to circumvent and defeat, by war if necessary, by invasion if necessary, by conquest if necessary, by extermination if necessary, the despicable effeminacy of creatures unworthy of the name of men, because they fear to carry on the competitive struggle in which the true life of manhood consists. The Socialist movement is popular because it appeals to these numerous creatures ; panders to their baseness ; promises them what they would be ashamed to desire or seek if they were men.”

Socialism and the Family.

Next comes the war-cry of the pro-property hypocrite,—”Socialism means the abolition of family life.” On this subject the defenders of that class whose heroes fill the divorce courts and whose morals are said to be “of the poultry yard,” have only vague innuendo and misrepresentation to offer. But what are the simple facts ? The family life of the workers is being destroyed by capitalism through the man, wife and child being forced into the factory to earn the daily bread; and where the home life remains it too often spells brutalising drudgery and ill-temper, owing to the poverty of the wage earner and the great waste of labour entailed by the individual household. The tremendous saving in drudgery that the co-operative household under Socialism will allow, the improvement in comfort, health, and happiness that it will bring, leave no room for doubt regarding the future of the home, while should any prefer the greater labour and discomfort of the old style, they would certainly be allowed to please themselves.

But what of the relations of men and women ? The Socialist knows that the methods of obtaining the material living, and the social order essential thereto, form the foundations of the moral and intellectual life of the time; and that with the changing economic foundation, not only must the relations of individuals to each other change, but their ideas also. The history of family life affords a striking example of this. As Prof. Jenks points out, permanent marriage had its origin in patriarchal society, and was due to no improvement in morality, but to the necessities of the pastoral pursuits of the man, and to his desire to secure for himself exclusively the labour of the woman and her offspring. The wife was bought or captured, and the children were valuable articles of merchandise. The very word “family” is derived from an old Italian word, famel, meaning a slave.

From its origin in the institution of property the marriage relationship has reflected the changing needs of property. Children are no longer chattels or assets in the old sense ; they are “encumbrances,” and paterfamilias’ former power of life and death over his household is now restricted to very meagre dimensions. The present marriage contract expresses the needs of the economic dependence of women and children on the man, and becomes an instrument for the control and transmission of property. Mutual affection is quite subordinated to questions of property and income, with the consequent outcrop of hypocrisy, adultery, and unhappiness. While on the one hand the number of men who do not marry is made greater by the insecurity of their lot, on the other hand the number of women who sell themselves on the streets is increased by the inability of many to obtain otherwise even the bare necessaries of life.

But when socialisation ends the reign of capitalist property and insecurity, when woman has economic equality with man, and the fear for the children’s future is ended by communal life, then the relationship between the sexes ceases to be a property one and becomes human ; and who can doubt that modern forms must alter with such change of circumstances, and that the matrimonial market and property contract, with the buying and selling of cohabitation for title and income, must, together with the corollaries of prostitution and domestic misery, become mere memories of a dark past. Who can doubt that the relations between man and woman, when freed of the demoralising influence of economic inequality and vicious social surroundings, will be healthier and purer than ever before being based no longer on a property transaction or economic compulsion, but upon mutual affection. Yet we are told, among much other nonsense on page 29 of the book under review, that under Socialism “the union of men and women would be an affair of the State, not of mutual regard” !

The Intellectual Few.

On page 54 the reader is told, “the more the origin of wealth is enquired into, the more clearly will the truth appear that wealth is caused by the intelligence of the few, as distinguished from the labour of the many.” Now even if this were so it would not bear the inference that the propertied class are the intellectual few reaping the reward of their intellectual labour, for the wealth of the few is accumulated from the purchase and exploitation of both “manual” and “intellectual” workers. But what is the truth regarding the wonderful inventions and improvements which have occurred in industrial processes ? Have a series of supermen arisen to produce at each stroke a great wage-saving improvement ? Herbert Spencer himself has exploded the “great man” theory, and has shown that the great man is the product of his age, whilst the history of industry shows that nearly all improvements have been the result of an accumulation of small inventions which up to a certain point were ignored or despised, in spite of their possibilities, because they were not immediately cheaper to work than the older methods. But a last slight improvement, based upon and supplementing the labour of those who had gone before, rendered the new process more profitable than the former methods, and rapidly the features of that industry became transformed. In 1857, Hodge, before a Commission said : “Present spinning machinery is supposed to be a compound of about 800 inventions. The present carding machinery is a compound of about 60 patents.”

And those who wrought these improvements, were they rewarded ? And were they members of our amazingly intellectual ruling class ? They were, indeed, rawly rewarded, while it is almost entirely from men of the working class that the leading inventions have come. J. Burnley, in “The Story of British Trade and Industry,” says, “It is a notable fact that the leading inventors of the latter half of the eighteenth century were of the artizan class—humble workers who, in their cottages and little improvised workshops, quietly worked out the mechanical problems which achieved so much for the world, if not for themselves.”

John Kay, after inventing the fly shuttle, died a pauper at the end of a few years of ineffectual struggle. Wyatt, who after three years of close effort produced a machine which “spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers,” was poor, and allied himself with Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, who promised to finance the invention. Wyatt, however, never benefited by it, for nothing came of the idea until Arkwright revised it at a later date. Another poor inventor, Crompton, set himself to combine the spinning jenny and the water frame. It took him five years of secret experiment, but he eventually succeeded and for a while quietly used his improvement in his own work. Crompton, however, was asked how he managed to spin such fine yarn ; he then let the manufacturers into the secret on their subscribing about £50. The firm of which Sir Robert Peel, the grandfather of the statesman, was principal, were the first to make big profits out of the invention, making their machines after Crompton’s model. Soon millions of the spindles were working, but Crompton died a few years later in extreme poverty. Such is, indeed, the usual answer of capitalist practice to capitalist theory. The brains of the workers are picked, and their bodily strength exhausted, in order to increase the wealth of those who own the means of living.

The whole argument that “wealth is due to the intelligence of the few” is, in reality, nonsensical. There is no intellectual labour without some degree of manual labour, and no manual labour, however mechanical, that does not imply intellectual labour also. The marketable wealth of the world is not produced otherwise than by labour, intellectual and manual; yet the fact remains that it is a non-producing class who, by their ownership of the means whereby wealth is created, and by their control of political power, are enabled to compel the people to carry on production for them, and to hand over to them all the enormous surplus that remains when the bare necessities of the producers have been grudgingly provided for.

And it is in defence of the title of this owning class to the wealth created by others, that the book under review is published. Well does the League that is responsible for the book deserve to be called, as it is by many working men, the Liberty to Rob Defence League.

F. C.Watts

Blogger's Note:

There isn't a lot of information about Frederick Millar on the net, but he does get a few mentions in Edward Bristow's 1975 article, 'The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism', which was published in The Historical Journal.

Material World: Who voted for Elon Musk? (2024)

'Am I even in this article?'

The Material World column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to mainstream economic theory as taught in schools and universities, the capitalist is fully entitled, by definition, to whatever they receive, be this modest or spectacularly large; they bore the risk by investing ‘their’ capital and so fully deserve the return it yields – a risk, nonetheless, that they can mitigate by expanding their already diverse investment portfolio and by taking considerable comfort in the legislative convenience afforded by the Law of Limited Liability.

The risk to the worker, on the other hand – whether we are talking about death or injury as a result of industrial accidents or the prospects of being made unemployed should the business close down as a consequence of entrepreneurial miscalculation – may not even be acknowledged, let alone ‘rewarded’. Our worker, unable to pay that medical bill or make the next mortgage repayment, might well find themselves, unlike our capitalist, homeless and on the street.

Risk per se may well be part of life but the kind of risks we are talking about here should, you would have thought, be dispensed with or pared down to a bare minimum – not glorified as that mindless machismo or short-sighted and selfish folly we associated with a so-called ‘rugged individualism’. The problem is that this is not possible today. ‘Risk’ in this latter sense is a built-in attribute of a ferociously competitive market economy that is itself simply taken for granted as the necessary context of all entrepreneurial decision-making.

The dogma that the capitalist provided the capital that got the production process going not only fails to address the question of where that capital came from in the first place; it also seeks to justify the return they receive on the grounds that they have to cover the operating costs of their business – unlike their employees who, happily, do not have to bear the heavy burden this entails.

But this overlooks that matter of where our capitalist derives the wherewithal to cover these costs – not to mention the fact that any inventory or equipment they may purchase out of this money remains, legally, entirely theirs. Such inventory or equipment was, needless to say, not produced by them – although at times you might be forgiven for thinking from the pronouncements of apologists for capitalism that that is precisely what happened. The issue, however, is not what contribution our capitalist made to production but, rather, where they got the money to make that contribution in the first instance.

An entrepreneur who owns a business that produces a product for which there is brisk demand, might be said to be ‘rewarded’ by society, according to this argument, in the sense that they are thereby enabled to become extremely rich by attentively responding to, and serving, this demand. Society – consumers in general – as it were, passes judgement on this product in the act of buying it. Their approval in the form of a market purchase is purportedly tantamount to a desire to reward our entrepreneur for making this product available on the market.

However, it is not difficult to see why such an argument (which is raised with surprising frequency) is little more than a specious and self-serving rationalisation. To begin with, the product itself, from its conception and design through to its manufacture, marketing and sale, is likely to involve the labour of a great many workers employed or subcontracted by our entrepreneur. Even so, these, unlike our entrepreneur, are not likely to find themselves suddenly enriched on account of their contribution to making this highly desirable product available to the public.

On the contrary, the entire revenue from the sale of this product will go to our capitalist entrepreneur, in the first instance, simply by virtue of their ownership of the business itself. What they then personally end up with in money terms, after deducting from that revenue all those production costs, including the wages bill, is a residual magnitude which can vary depending on other factors – including, of course, how much, or how little, they pay their workforce.

How the social product comes to be divided up has little or nothing to do with the public’s opinion of our entrepreneur or the putative role they perform. More than likely their existence will be completely unknown to consumers. These consumers are not concerned with ‘rewarding the producers’ for producing this product, let alone the entrepreneur who has employed these producers to produce it. That is a completely unwarranted imputation. All that the public is concerned with is the desirability and price of the product in question.

There is simply no way of effectively testing this proposition anyway, since the very valuations the public are supposedly making with respect to these different occupations in society (and the differential incomes they command) are themselves expressed through, and subject to, the limitations of, ‘effective demand’ – that is, demand backed up by purchasing power.

What this means is that even if we grant the argument that the public are, as it were, ‘voting’ for our entrepreneur, or their business, with each pound, dollar or whatever spent counting as a vote cast, it is still the case (to continue with this metaphor) that some have vastly more votes at their disposal compared to others and, indeed, that many of these others may as well be considered completely disenfranchised as far as a great many products in the market are concerned. That is to say, their ‘economic votes’ are prevented from being expressed in the determination of these products’ prices by their inability to afford these products in the first instance.

In any case, what is being asserted is a completely untestable proposition. Who decided – or voted for – Elon Musk to become the richest individual in the world? The answer is, of course – no one.

Robin Cox

Running Commentary: Up, up and away (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up, up and away

June is bursting out all over. And one of the biggest balloons fit to bust is that of Richard Branson, who is putting all his ego into one basket to fly in a hot air balloon across the Atlantic.

It's a strange thing for anyone to do. least of all him — surely he can afford a seat on one of the Virgin Atlantic flights. Of course it's being presented as a challenge. The media loves dramatic pictures of the rich wasting their money in ever more extravagant ways. The same reasons, the same "get up and go" mentality that is supposed to drive Richard Branson as a high-flying capitalist, breaking new markets, also apparently force him to break daft records (“Mr Branson, why do you exploit the working-class?" "Because it's there.").

The real basis behind the Atlantic crossing is as one part of the publicity for Virgin and Branson's plans to turn his £260 million business into a billion pound concern and from there make Virgin the biggest entertainments multinational in the world. That's all you'll be seeing on TV this month when the cameras cover the ocean crossing — one big advert.

Richard Branson is one of Margaret Thatcher's favourites. She originally wanted him to lead a campaign to encourage more adventurous entrepreneurial activity among British business, but he preferred the national litter brigade that is UK 2000.

As far as Thatcher is concerned never mind fly across the Atlantic, he could walk across it. His life reads like one of her speeches: he set up a small business running a record shop at the age of twenty and after fifteen years he had amassed a personal fortune worth £160 million (the average owner of a record shop would have to save their wages for ten thousand years to get that). What is not so widely known, glossed over in the life story, is that Branson found himself in a pickle early on when he tried to defraud Customs and Excise of £60,000 and was only saved from prison by his youth; and that his climb started with the help of £10,000 from a friend. Obviously the lesson for us all is that the only way to get on inside capitalism is to have the right friends and the right lawyer.

In fact, while Richard Branson is cooped up in his pressurised aluminium capsule 35.000 feet above the Atlantic for a week or so (it's his companion I feel sorry for), the profits from Virgin record company won't suddenly dry up. The money will keep rolling in — he may break records but you can be sure he plays absolutely no part in making any records. Richard Branson is not needed, he's redundant, like anyone who lives off ownership, off the work of others. It's bad enough having these parasites, but to have them parading themselves on TV . . .

Ministering to women

The Labour Party has promised that if it is elected to government it will establish a Ministry for Women with Cabinet status. A party policy document, Labour's Ministry for Women, refers scathingly to male domination within society:

With few exceptions, men make the laws, administer the laws, carry out ministerial decisions. control our industries, run our public services and negotiate pay and working conditions. Women are not in positions to articulate their demands or to ensure their needs are considered.

To overcome this male domination, Labour proposes that the Minister for Women should sit on key cabinet committees and have regular access to the Prime Minister. A House of Commons Select Committee would be set up to monitor the Women's Ministry which would be directly responsible for sex equality legislation and the updating of the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts.

For many women workers, dissatisfied with the double burden of (low) paid work outside the home and unpaid housework and childcare inside the home, fed up with the lack of good child-care facilities and concerned about health issues that particularly affect them, Labour's proposal may seem attractive.

And if Labour's analysis of the problem (as quoted above) were actually correct there might be a certain logic to setting up a Ministry for Women. But, while it is true that most (though by no means all) positions of power and influence are occupied by men, to say, as Labour does, that "men make the laws, administer the laws . . .", gives a highly misleading impression. It would be more accurate to say that a small handful of men and one or two women make the laws, and control industry and society while all the rest of us - men and women - never get a look in.

And while it is also true that in many areas of life women workers do get a worse deal than men workers and a Ministry for Women just might ensure a higher degree of equality with working men, that equality will be worth very little if it still means, as it will, that a handful of people own and control wealth and monopolise power while the rest of us are excluded from a share in either.

Persuasion

The look of scepticism takes a moment to register. You sense the turmoil going on in the mind. There is a short embarrassed laugh. "Well, of course, it's feasible, but unlikely ever to happen". Have you suggested something outrageously shocking? No, you have just presented the case for socialism. This initial acquaintance with socialism can cause severe shock to those who derive their attitudes toward life from daily helpings of the Express, or Telegraph.

Your interlocutor, still confused at having their illusions about society shattered, fixes you with a glittering eye and proceeds to catalogue reasons why socialism will remain a Utopian ideal. "We need leaders" . . . "Human beings are inherently aggressive" . . . "You will never convince the majority" . . . "The task is too daunting". A look of triumph replaces the previous incredulity as they bathe in the self-congratulatory assumption that your argument has been totally refuted.

Why should the concept of socialism prove such a difficult one to handle? For socialists the case is self-evident. The benefits of socialism are as obvious as the solution to yesterday's crossword.

However, as the prevalent ideas in society are those of the ruling-class, then the socialist propagandist has to contend with a lifetime's brainwashing. To many people, fed on a diet of carefully controlled misinformation by the media, the word socialism evokes a Pavlovian response — Reds under the bed. shortages and dull conformity — not forgetting the ultimate threat to civilisation, the replacement of Eastenders with an endless re-run of Politburo speeches. Socialism, of course, stands for none of these absurdities.

Socialists do not pretend that the transition to socialism will be perfect. However, when the world belongs to everyone and decisions are arrived at democratically by all involved in those decisions, who needs leaders? There are violent — sick — individuals in society, it is true, but contrast that with the massive, legalised, institutionalised violence committed by the state on behalf of its capitalist rulers.

The task of persuading the majority of the working class that wage slavery is not in their interests and that the means of creating a better society lie in their power, may appear daunting but to paraphrase Marx (Groucho); socialism is one club that should have us all as members.

Dave Coggan

An ‘anarcho-capitalist’ explains (2024)

From the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last November voters in Argentina elected as President, Javier Milei, who must have styled himself at one time an ‘anarcho-capitalist’ since that’s what the media keep calling him. In January he was invited to the gathering of global elites in Davos in Switzerland and gave a speech in which he expounded his views. He had some harsh things to say about the state, seeing it, as individualist anarchists do, as the negation of ‘freedom’:

‘The state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively. . . This means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom’ (tinyurl.com/29vuvjwr).

Strict anarcho-capitalists want to abolish the state completely and transfer all its functions, including the judiciary and the armed forces, to profit-seeking private enterprises. Milei doesn’t go that far as he sees a very limited role for the state (to protect and enforce private property rights and commercial contracts) and so is technically what has been called a ‘minarchist’.

Defining his ‘libertarianism’ he said:

‘Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price. In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.’

Adding ‘and this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future’. So, it looks as if he is going to try to introduce ‘minarchy’ there. The result could well be some sort of ‘anarchy’.

Capitalist heroes?

It is a measure of the desperation of workers in Argentina that they were prepared to vote into the top office a person who calls capitalists heroes.

Are successful capitalists really heroes? To have a chance to be successful you first have to obtain money to invest in producing some good or providing some service. You can get this in various ways — inherit it, borrow it, even acquire it illegally — but you have to get it. Having identified what you think might be a profitable market you use the money to rent premises, buy machinery and materials, and hire workers. You put the workers to work at producing your product which you hope to sell at a price that covers these expenses plus a mark-up for profit. If your hope is realised you end up with more money than you started with. You have made a profit.

But what is the source of this profit? Since the only way that wealth can be produced is by applying human labour to materials that originally came from nature (usually after having been fashioned and refashioned many times) the source can only be the work of those who produced what capitalists sell. It’s the difference between the value of what workers add to the materials and what they are paid as wages. The source of profits is the unpaid labour of workers. Contrary to Milei’s assertion, capitalists do appropriate wealth produced by others. That’s not very heroic.

It is true that while some capitalists succeed others fail, and that how well you know your market or can identify a new market can affect how much profit you make and whether you succeed or fail. But this doesn’t increase the amount of wealth that has been produced. It is competition between capitalists to get a share of that part of new wealth produced by the working class over and above what it costs to maintain them. ‘Capitalist successful business people’ are those who do best in this competition at the expense of their capitalist rivals.

All on their own?

Milei argued that it is ‘free trade’, ‘free enterprise’ capitalism that has been responsible for the immense increase in both productive capacity and the amount produced since 1800.

It is a bold claim to say that this was achieved by private enterprises acting all on their own in pursuit of profits without any state intervention; in fact in spite of such intervention. We hold no brief for those pro-capitalists who favour state intervention, but we must point out that the state provides a range of key services that help private enterprises to operate and succeed. For instance, by arranging for a supply of literate and educated workers, or a health service to patch up workers so they can go back to work as quickly as possible, or payments to workers who are temporarily unemployed during a slump so that their ability to work doesn’t deteriorate for when they are needed in the next boom.

Milei denounced this state provision of services for capitalist enterprises as a whole as ‘collectivism’ (and also, as might be expected, as ‘socialism’):

‘The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn’t contribute to general well-being. Quite on the contrary, it’s an intrinsically unfair idea because it’s violent. It’s unjust because the state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively.’

In his view, taxing capitalist enterprises to pay for such collective services amounts to stealing some of their profits by force:

‘[T]he market is a discovery process in which the capitalists will find the right path as they move forward. But if the state punishes capitalists when they’re successful and gets in the way of the discovery process, they will destroy their incentives, and the consequence is that they will produce less.’

There is an element of truth in this in that, if the state goes too far in this direction — as reformist politicians want as a way of trying to improve conditions for workers under capitalism — this will have the consequence both of undermining the quest for profit that drives the capitalist economy and of rendering capitalist enterprises uncompetitive compared with their rivals from other states. It’s why all reformist governments fail and are doomed to fail. But if a state which did not provide these services for its capitalists and left their provision to profit-seeking private enterprises — as ‘anarcho-capitalists’ and ‘minarchists’ want — then this too would undermine the competitiveness of its capitalists.

It’s the job of governments, as the executive committee of their capitalist class, to get the balance right. In any event, no state has ever not provided such services, so it cannot be claimed that capitalist development since 1800 has been due to private capitalist enterprises alone. In fact, capitalism has never existed without the state. The state helped it to come into being and has helped maintain it ever since.

Can the market fail?

Milei also took a pot shot at neo-classical economic theory which, he said, ‘designs a set of instruments that, unwillingly or without meaning to, end up serving intervention by the state, socialism and social degradation’. He had in mind in particular its theory that the state should intervene to correct ‘market failures’.

According to him, market failures are impossible:

‘The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures. If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence.’

Notable ‘market failures’ that he rejected as such were the emission of too much CO2 into the atmosphere and the emergence of monopolies. He says they are not examples of the market failing. Okay, let’s accept this and see them as the result of ‘free market capitalism’ working normally. That rather weakens his case for ‘free market’ capitalism. These are indeed results of how the capitalist market economy does work and why its operation prevents states from dealing effectively with problems such as climate change. In any event, state intervention to try to correct what are perceived as market failures has nothing to do with socialism.

Milei began his address by saying that he was there to tell his audience, made up of the world’s leading capitalists and political rulers, that ‘the Western world is in danger’. This danger, he told them, came from continuing to practise ‘collectivism’. At the end he remarked: ‘I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism’. He was right. It does sound ridiculous but that’s because it is ridiculous.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Two questions answered (2024)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

An enquirer from Vietnam has asked us (and others) a couple of questions on Marxian economics. Here they are with our reply.

1. Does the commodity value come mainly from demand, market evaluation and utility, not from labor? (explain labor theory of value v/s marginal value theorem)

A commodity (as a product of labour produced to be sold) does have to be useful to sell but its price is not related to its usefulness. Water, for instance, is more useful than gold but this is not reflected in their respective price. Nor could a commodity’s price be determined solely by the paying demand for it as supply conditions have also to be taken into account. A stable price for a commodity arises when supply and demand are equal, as Marginalist theory notes, but this tells us nothing about what that price will be. For this we need to look at what it costs to produce the commodity.

No capitalist enterprise is going to produce something to sell unless it recovers the commodity’s money cost of production plus a mark-up for profit. The cost of production to a capitalist enterprise is the labour embodied in the materials and machines the enterprise has to buy to produce it and the wages paid to those working at the final stage of its production. These wages, however, represent less labour than the labour the workers add through their work. The part of the added labour that is not paid for – the surplus value – is the source of the capitalist enterprise’s profit.

So, a commodity’s value, reflected in its price, does depend on labour. It is not quite as direct as that, though, as a commodity’s market price will not normally be an exact reflection of its value due to the averaging of the rate of profit (see the answer below to your second question) but it is still related to the labour required to produce it. Gold is more valuable than water because it needs more labour to produce it.

2. Do employers, business owners, corporation boss… (capitalist class) earn money and create profits from their efforts in marketing and managing their companies… (choose market output with great needs), from the difference in value and price of goods (increased due to consumer demand after being marketed by the boss). Therefore, the capitalist class gets rich on its own merit, not through the exploitation of surplus value by the working class (workers) and the workers’ wages are fair for their labor.

No, the source of profits is surplus value created by workers, not necessarily by the workers that a particular capitalist enterprise employs but from that created by the working class as a whole. Capitalist enterprises compete to obtain a share of this in the form of profits on the capital they have invested. Competition has brought about a situation where each capital ends up tending to make the same rate of profit through capital having moved from less profitable to more profitable fields of activity.

Some capitalist enterprises can make more profits than others depending on how astute they are in anticipating trends, cutting costs and marketing their products. To this extent, the actual profits a particular enterprise makes can reflect the knowledge and experience of its managers (these days capitalists themselves don’t normally manage their business themselves) but the source remains surplus value created by the working class. The managers can justly claim that their skills have brought in more profits, but the skill is in capturing a share of surplus value not creating it. The capitalist class as a whole does not get rich from this; in fact could not as there are losers as well as winners — some individual capitalist enterprises get more in this way but at the expense of others.

Cooking the Books: Entrepreneurialism (2024)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article in the Sunday Telegraph (2 December) appealing for Tories to vote Labour, subtitled ‘My party extends the hand of friendship to those who voted for the Tories but feel let down by their failure to act’, Sir Keir Starmer praised Thatcher for having ‘set loose our natural entrepreneurialism’. Entrepreneurialism, what’s that?

One dictionary defines it as ‘the ability to start new businesses, especially when this involves seeing new opportunities to make money’. This is not what most people remember the Thatcher government of the 1980s for. Selling off nationalised industries and council houses, cutting social benefits, mass unemployment and hammering the miners come more readily to mind.

Thatcher is on record as declaring:

‘I set out to destroy socialism because I felt it was at odds with the character of the people. We were the first country in the world to roll back the frontiers of socialism, then roll forward the frontiers of freedom’ (tinyurl.com/mus4fr9v).

By ‘socialism’ she meant of course the sort of restrictions on the workings of private capitalist enterprises that the Labour Party used to preach. Private capitalist enterprises supported her because they wanted more ‘freedom’ to choose how to make profits. In writing of ‘our natural’ entrepreneurialism Starmer even agrees with her ridiculous claim that this accords with ‘the character of the people’.

Entrepreneurs are people who invest money in producing something or providing some service with a view to making more money in the form of profit. This is not necessarily their own money but is frequently money borrowed from a bank or some venture capitalists or even the state who reckon that the entrepreneur has identified a potential way to make more money in which they can share.

In chapter 23 of Volume 3 of Capital on ‘Interest and Profit Enterprise’, Marx discusses how this extra money is divided between the lender of capital and the entrepreneur who actually uses it:

‘The functioning capitalist is here assumed as a non-owner of capital. Ownership of the capital is represented in relation to him by the money-capitalist, the lender. The interest he pays to the latter thus appears as that portion of gross profit which is due to the ownership of capital as such. As distinct from this, that portion of profit which falls to the active capitalist appears now as profit of enterprise, deriving solely from the operations, or functions, which he performs with the capital in the process of reproduction, hence particularly those functions which he performs as entrepreneur in industry or commerce. (…) [P]rofit of enterprise appears to him as the exclusive fruit of the functions which he performs with the capital, as the fruit of the movement and performance of capital, of a performance which appears to him as his own activity.’

Entrepreneurs, especially those who succeed in making lots of profit, have a high opinion of themselves. They see themselves as ‘wealth creators’. They are certainly more involved in this than the mere owner of capital but only because they identify some new way of making money by organising workers to produce wealth.

Entrepreneurs are obviously more useful from a general capitalist point of view than mere coupon-clippers living off dividends or interest as they are an active section of the capitalist class identifying new ways of making profits, the driving force of capitalism. Which is why governments, as the guardians of the overall general capitalist interest in a particular country, seek to encourage them. It is part of their remit. Thatcher recognised this. So does Starmer. Labour is now more than ever an avowedly capitalist party and is openly saying it will govern as such.

The capitalist and his case. (1925)

From the April 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist argues that in the typical capitalist industry of the twentieth century, the proprietor or proprietors have degenerated into mere receivers of dividends, and are therefore no longer a necessary part of the organisation for producing and distributing wealth. This does not involve any condemnation on “moral” grounds either of the system or of the capitalist class, nor does it prevent us from recognising the great historical role played in the past by the revolutionary capitalists when they struggled to clear Europe of the encumbrance of decrepit Feudalism. But the capitalists, like their Feudal predecessors, have overstayed their welcome, and the duty falls upon the workers of preparing for further progress by removing the encumbrances of this age and generation.

There is no lack of capitalist apologists willing, and in their own opinion able, to justify the system and the privileged position of those who benefit by it. Let us then examine some of the more familiar arguments.

First of all, there are those who tell us that the capitalist works just like any member of the working class and that his income is as much “earned” as are the worker’s wages. If this were true, it would not justify the enormous inequality between the one income and the other, and would not explain how it is that the capitalist is frequently able to live in luxury and yet increase his wealth, while the worker has barely sufficient to live in modest comfort and can usually save nothing at all. In fact, it is not true, except in small concerns and in certain unimportant industries, where the small concern still holds its own. In large-scale industry the shareholder does not work. The ordinary shareholder is not even permitted by law to interfere in the conduct of the limited company in which he invests his money. No one would be more surprised than the investor in railway stock if it were suggested to him that he take his turn along with porters or cleaners on the line. He probably knows and desires to know nothing about the unpleasant processes associated with the running of “his” business. It is absurd on the face of it to suppose that investments made thousands of miles away from the residence of the investor, yield an income because of the work done by the investor. When financial failures and frauds bring into court such men as Bevan, of the City Equitable, no surprise is felt when a managing director declares that he is ignorant of managerial duties and pays someone else—a member of the working class—to perform them in his name. This brings us to a special type of work concerned with organising production. Our apologist says that, while it may be true the capitalists do not nowadays actually work alongside their employees, they still provide the brains and directive ability.

This claim is, of course, as false as the other. Granted that some men have organising powers approaching genius, and that some of these men happen to belong to the employing class, it is a sheer physical impossibility for, say, the late Hugo Stinnes to organise and direct literally hundreds, of concerns of the most varied nature operating in all parts of Central Europe and with world interconnections employing a million and a half hands. To master all the technical processes of one of the industries would more than tax the powers of any man. Moreover, if so much depended on the brains of the proprietor, his removal by death would—but does not—bring chaos. It does not, because salaried officials (members of the working class) can and do master the specialised work of direction just as they do any other trade. So plain is this that one of the most noted defenders of capitalism, the Austrian economist, Bohm-Bawerk, readily admits it. In his “Capital and Interest” (Macmillan, 1890, page 1) he writes about interest on invested money in the following terms :—

  “It owes its existence to no personal activity of the capitalist and flows in to him even where he has not moved a finger in its making.”

He further asked, but never answered, the question, 

  “Whence and why does the capitalist without personally exerting himself obtain this endless flow of wealth?”

When it is argued that the capitalist owes his superior position to his superior brains, we would also like to ask one question : If it is his brains and not his property which make him privileged, and in view of the fact that his brains will remain at his service, why does the property owner so strenuously resist attempts to take his property from him? The apologist often assures us that even under Socialism we could not keep the brainy capitalist down in the ranks of the common herd, but his determination not to take the risk gives the lie to his words. A recent illustration will help to drive home the absurdity of this position. A New Yorker named Suydam was left 50,000 dollars by his father fifty years ago. Last year he died worth 1,000,000 dollars, and for the whole fifty years Mr. Suydam lived in a lunatic asylum, mentally unable to direct his own or anyone else’s affairs. Whence then this increase of 950,000 dollars? Labour, directive ability, of course. But whose labour and whose directive ability? Not Mr. Suydam’s, but those of the workers employed in concerns in which Suydam, Senior, had invested the money.

Then we are told that the capitalist “saves,” and thus makes future production possible. In answer, we cannot do better than quote Sir W. Ashley, a Conservative historian and economist of note :—

  “Senior, in 1835, introduced the term “abstinence,” as more fitly expressing the source of capital. . . . He characterised abstinence as implying “self-denial,” and declared that “to abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power” is “among the most painful exertions of the human will.” Phrases like these have occasioned no little mirth; it is hard to discover self-denial or parsimony as the world understands those words, in the processes by which modern capital is most largely accumulated.”—(Economic Organisation of England, p. 157.)

Under Socialism provision would naturally be made by society as a whole for future developments of plant, etc., instead of, as now, handsomely rewarding a favoured few because they cannot consume or waste the whole of the proceeds of their robbery of the wealth producers.

The greatest and most impudent stand-by of the capitalist economist is the “risk,” which needs to be paid for. The very real risks from industrial accident run by miners, and railwaymen and others count for nothing in this argument. They were in the past permitted to occur without any penalty for negligence or liability for compensation resting on the employer, until it was found that this was really an expensive method, despite its appearance of cheapness. Throw-outs on the industrial scrap heap simply became burdens on the Poor Law, and in the long run prevention was cheaper than indifference. Thus do our masters make a virtue of their meanness and boast of their humanity when their pocket induces some capitalist reform. But the capitalist is supposed to run the risk of losing his capital, and this is said to justify his being paid his profits. Now what is the basis of this argument? The Socialist replies that it is merely a man-made law which protects capitalist private property, and we propose, of course, to terminate such laws when we control the machinery of government. The capitalist, on the other hand, says, or at least believes, that we are here concerned with some law or vital principle of nature in accordance with which risks are rewarded. This is nonsense. The man who jumps off Waterloo Bridge runs the risk of being drowned. Does he for that reason anticipate being rewarded by Nature? If he selected the Monument he would run the risk (so great as to be almost certainty) of breaking his neck. Would he expect some compensation commensurate with the risk? And to come nearer to the actual conditions of industry, compare two possessors of £10,000; one of whom invests his money in some safe stock, Government Loan, for instance, while the other keeps his at home. The latter would run great risk from burglary, while the former would run no appreciable risk of loss at all. Yet at the end of a year the man who risked nothing would be wealthier by the amount of the interest, and the man who risked much would be no better off. Capitalist practice disposes of the risk theory.

We are also told that the capitalist advances capital to the worker over the period which passes before the product of the latter’s labour is completed, and thus the capitalist aids production and earns his reward. But here again capitalist usage refutes the argument. It is customary for weekly, monthly and even many yearly contracts to be so framed that the workers do not receive their pay until after they have put in their agreed amount of work. In truth then it is the worker who advances his service to his employer. And, moreover, how does the capitalist himself live in the meantime, except on the food, clothing, etc., produced by the labour of other workers?

A defence of private property of which we still occasionally hear is that it is a “Divine” institution and must not be touched. We might be more ready to believe that those who use this, do so sincerely, if they demonstrated their confidence in their “omnipotent God” by trusting him to look after his own. Instead they behave just like any non-believer and employ policemen, soldiers and sailors to protect their property for them. We are compelled therefore to assume that this relic of a day when religious “dope” was more effective than now, is intended to deceive the unwary.

A whole tribe of defenders of private property concentrate on the alleged social virtues which with culture and learning are the monopoly of a leisured ruling class. The argument fails for three reasons, if for no others. In the first place the monotonous series of disclosures in the law courts of the filthy intrigues and low standards of the “upper ten” do not bear out the assumption that leisure to cultivate necessarily results in cultivation of social virtues. In the second place neither learning nor artistic achievement and appreciation are by any means confined to the wealthy, in spite of certain decided advantages they enjoy. And lastly there is no such thing as an hereditary and exclusive ruling class. Every revolution in industrial processes brings some new section of property owner to the fore and the blue-blooded and effete aristocrat of one century is invariably the descendant at a few removes of the upstart new-rich of the century before. What education and surroundings can do for the few we propose to make possible for the many.

These and other futilities produced by the profound thought of professors of economics are the kind of thing they offer in the name of economic science. The stagnation of economic thought is due largely to the necessity felt by university lecturers of pleasing those, whether Governments or private companies, who endow these “educational” establishments. The stagnation was foreseen by Marx, whose work they all agree to decry (the only thing they can agree upon), and their capitalist bias was admitted in a letter to “The Times" (March 11th) by E. J. P. Benn, a publisher of economic works. He writes of Cannan, Mallock, H. D. Henderson, etc., as “writers whose object is the defence . . . of the existing order of things.”

Their inability is well illustrated by the consequences of the recent war. All the economists of Allied and Central powers were quite unable to forecast in even the most elementary way the effect of war on prices, production, currency and trade. Even now, seven years after the Peace, when the gold standard is returning to Europe, they still have not made up their minds whether it was ever necessary to depart from it. They have not even been able to agree on an explanation for the rise of prices. The capitalists who imagine that social progress will cease at the strange medley of commands issuing from the professors are in truth relying on a broken reed.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Philosophical Digression (1952)

From the May 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Zeno of Elea was an early Greek philosopher who denied the existence of motion. He said that the change and movement going on everywhere was illusory, had no real existence, and he devised some very subtle arguments to try to prove this. One of those “proofs” was that if an arrow is shot from a bow, the arrow must, at every point in the line of flight, occupy space; therefore it is at rest at those points. If it is at rest it can’t be in motion. The Eleatics, the school of philosophy to which Zeno belonged, were the first to question the senses as a reliable source of knowledge, and their arguments prepared the way for the view that only through reason alone could real knowledge be attained.

Readers who haven’t read the philosophers and don’t know the questions they have asked may think it absurd to mistrust the senses. Those readers may say that the philosophers have had a lot to think about and that if they had some practical work to take up their time they wouldn’t be asking such silly questions. There is some truth in this opinion as such questions could only be asked when a leisured class had arisen and had the time to think about them. Taking no part in the practical work of producing society’s needs, these philosophers would exaggerate the part played by reason in the understanding of the world. But those questions and the answers given to them have been steps in the development of human understanding. And those readers who think such questions absurd should note that to-day many scientists claim that the qualities perceived in things, like colour and taste, have no real existence, the real world being a whirling mass of protons and electrons.

Since the days of the Eleatics, succeeding ruling classes, once they had become firmly entrenched as the State power, found the belief that the senses are false witnesses very useful. The subject class or classes may reject this view when it is stated simply and clearly yet accept it when it is applied in particular instances.

For example, in present-day society, the evidence of the senses indicates that the working class are exploited. They are compelled by economic necessity to produce wealth for the capitalist class and receive back insufficient to allow them to live decently, while the capitalist class don’t have to work and yet live in luxury.

Those who wish to preserve capitalist society say it only appears as if the working class are exploited, and, like Zeno, they provide many arguments to attempt to show that appearances are deceptive. They attempt to explain the “seemingly” privileged position of the capitalist class.

They argue that members of the capitalist class work also. This may be true in certain very small concerns, but not for the giant companies which produce most of the wealth in modern society. The shareholders in these companies take no part in production at all.

And it is argued that the large shareholder with investments in dozens of different companies earns his huge dividends because of his organising ability. It is impossible for one man to have the knowledge of the complicated processes involved in running one company, let alone trying to run several. The capitalist class employ workers to do their organising for them and even employ members of the working class to advise them how to invest their money.

Another argument put forward is that the capitalist class are entitled to their large profits because of the risks they take with their investments. What risk is involved buying State bonds? And in these days of “increased” crime is the person who keeps his money at home not taking a bigger risk of losing it? And what about the meagre compensation the working class receive though they risk their lives and health in such industries as mining, transport, etc.

Another aspect of the “risk” argument is that for saving his money and sacrificing present pleasures the capitalist must have some recompense. To talk of the Rothschilds, the Ellermans or the Nuffields foregoing pleasures because of their investments is absurd. Again to abstain from the pleasures of present spending is to indulge in the pleasure of making more money for future spending.

The capitalist class also claim that by investing their wealth they provide the working class with the means to live. Many a black page has been written describing how the rising capitalist class dispossessed the majority of the population of the means to live. The capitalist class invest their money to procure profit. They buy the workers' physical and mental energies by the week or the month and after the workers have used their energies for the specified period producing wealth for the capitalist class they receive back just sufficient to enable them to live. The difference between what the worker produces and what he receives is the source of the capitalists' wealth and is the object of the whole process.

The senses do provide dependable information, but the arguments based on it by the supporters of Capitalism are deceptive.

Man evolved from some ape-like ancestor between one million and 500,000 years ago and his survival is proof that the senses are reliable. Millions of years before man's arrival on earth other living things not endowed with the faculty of abstract thought existed depending on their senses. Many of these species are still in existence.

Reason, though it can be deceptive, does provide true knowledge when it interprets sense-experience accurately. But reason is often led astray by overlooking certain facts because of prejudice or through not being acquainted with a sufficient number of facts. And reason is also limited by the circumstances of the time. Just as the telescope and the microscope extended the range of the senses so the new facts brought to light enlarged our ideas and increased our understanding, and the only way that reason can be trusted to give accurate information is if it is continually tested by the evidence of the senses.

J. T.

Editorial: Disaster from profit and profit from disaster. (1923)

Editorial from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capital ! How often are the dividends of the idle justified on the plea that the investor is entitled to a “fair” return on the capital he has ”risked” ? When workers ask for an increase in the beggarly pittances they receive as wages then risks on the workers’ part are forgotten, and “what the industry can stand” becomes the watchword; the first charge on industry being an adequate return on the capital invested.

In the inquiry into the coal industry of a few years back employers spoke much of the risks of capital and but little of the risks of the wage worker. The fate of the bulk of the 42 miners entombed in the Redding Pit, Falkirk, on September 25th, is an illustration of the risks the workers run; they risk their lives, and they do so merely for bread and butter. Not only does the miner risk his life, but the miner’s family risks the loss of its mainstay.

Disaster after disaster have overtaken the mine workers, due in the main (as instance the Whitehaven disaster some years ago) to the cheese-paring economy of the mine owners in their desire to extract, the maximum of profit out of the coalmining industry. And yet, in spite of the ever-present dangers to limb and life, the miner only gets in return for his labour, in the best of cases, little more than sufficient to keep himself and his dependants from actual starvation.

In mine and factory, and on the seas, the workers risk their lives daily in order that capital may have a “fair” profit. Not in order that society may obtain the necessaries of life; because where profit is not forthcoming the wheels of industry cease to turn, though society may be groaning for the goods that do not come.

Disasters to humanity are often but sources of profit for the ghouls that control this misery-making function of wealth.

The earthquake in Japan that caused so much havoc a short time ago provides an instance of how precious property is in the eyes of its owners, and also how the economic advantages of a disaster become of more importance to capitalists than pity for misery suffered.

Only a little while ago we read harrowing tales of Japanese misery and a cry was raised to help those who suffered from the earthquake. Later information, however, reduces the protestations to a sham.

The Manchester Guardian Weekly of October 12th publishes an article from their correspondent in Kobe on the “Economic Effects of the Earthquake,” which opens up with the following paragraph :—

  “The immediate economic consequence of the earthquake is that 1,500 Europeans have come into Kobe, where a somewhat smaller number have fed, lodged, and clothed them. And no sooner were they comforted, than they organised two ‘expeditions’ (neither of which has sailed at the time of writing, exactly one week after the earthquake) to proceed to Yokohama and protect not only what movable property may have escaped the fire and the enterprising looter (who soon had the military on his track), but titles to land and so forth” (italics ours).

How much more important in the eyes of these gentlemen was private property than the misery of the poor Japanese, whom they appear to have forgotten !

A further quotation from this correspondent should interest those who believe in the idealism of the profit-seeking capitalist.

  “Of course, between profiteering and ruin the authorities are between the devil and the deep sea. If they have reconstruction they must let the profiteer get his percentage. It is a necessary part of the capitalist system. Big firms here have been advised that the earthquake here had no sooner happened than Japanese in England did their best to get a good grip on the metal market, but not very successfully. Everybody is on the watch for developments, and there is, in spite of the slump, quite a tense awaiting of the revival. The revival of Tokio means the rebuilding of Yokohama. It would be a disaster if, because of temporary embarrassments, British holders of original perpetual leases or even those of ordinary leases were to be forced to sell their holdings, as this would be a blow to British trade. It would be inadvisable for the Government to subsidise them as one subsidy only leads to another. But it is worth while for British firms to lay out money to gain or maintain a footing in the trade that is to come.”

In the eyes of the capitalist, then, the most important fact arising out of the earthquake is not the misery it has brought to those involved in the earthquake, but the profit it promises to those who “risk” their capital.

What a monster is this capital, brother, that it grows fat out of human misery, and dulls in its owners the human feeling of pity ! Doth it not reek with the blood of our fellows, and is it not time that the monster was buried ? Then join with us in digging the grave and burying for ever the exploitation of the many by the few, and with it all the misery and suffering that capital has called into existence.

Merciless capitalist class (1996)

Edward Bond

Theatre Review from the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Company of Men by Edward Bond 
The Pit Theatre
, Barbican.

The playwright Edward Bond has a formidable reputation as a critic of capitalism. But is it a deserved reputation?

In his latest play In the Company of Men he re-visits some familiar territory. He is concerned to document the merciless competitiveness which is at the heart of big business; to examine the way in which the search for economic power, with its seemingly inevitable deviousness and deception, bullying and lying, spills over into the rest of life and corrupts human relationships; and to catalogue the connections between competitiveness, power, bullying and physical violence.

Adopted son, Leonard, tries to displace his bullying father as the head of an arms manufacturing company. He is aided and abetted in his endeavours by the company secretary, only to discover that he has put himself in the thrall of a rival entrepreneur, Hammond, who is in cahoots with the devious company secretary. What should Leonard do? Hand over the controlling interest in his father's business, or kill his bullying father before Hammond can gain advantage?

Bond is very good when characterising the inanity, the madness and the malevolence which lie at the heart of corporate capitalism, and the hypocrisies which its apologists mouth in its, and their, defence. Hammond is intent on amalgamations which will allow him to sell not butter or guns to the nations of the world, but rather both butter and guns. He says he trusts no none "not even myself'. And Leonard's father rejects the charge that he is ambitious, claiming only to be "a leader wanting to serve".

In the Company of Men is a wordy, verbose play. On its first night it ran for nearly four hours, but when I saw the production some days later it had been trimmed to a mere three-and-a-half hours. Probably Bond shouldn't have directed the play himself. A more objective director would, even now, likely demand more cuts. The play's dense language is often compelling but occasionally it gets in the way of meaning and impact; no matter that it is delivered with conviction and gusto by a talented cast.

A friend remarked as we came out of the theatre that "somewhere in all that there is a play waiting to get out." I know what he meant, but l don't think it’s just a matter of deletions. revisions and amendments. Bond's insights may have been compelling but, to my ears, they were incomplete. Certainly capitalists behave like monsters but Bond never asks why. Is it a matter of choice or does entrepreneurial activity attract those who, for whatever reasons, are inclined to be thrustful, competitive and merciless? Or is it, as the socialist would claim, principally that the mechanics of capitalism demand ruthless, merciless competition because that’s the way the system works?

Bond’s account of the mordant, merciless world of corporate capitalism is powerful and revealing, and it certainly makes for an enjoyable evening. But finally it is an unsatisfactory account, because it is incomplete. Bond describes the behaviour of those caught up in capitalist enterprises very well, but he doesn't help us to understand why his characters behave in the way that they do. And descriptions of the world are not enough. If we want to change things we must engage in more analytical activity. We need to know not only "how" the economic system works and the way it brutalises its combatants, but also "why" it works in the way that it does. In the Company of Men doesn’t really consider such matters.

Michael Gill

Sting in the Tail: Tory morality (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory morality

You would think that any political party which has had so many of its leading lights’ extra-marital activities exposed in the media would think twice about presenting themselves as the guardians of the nation’s morals.

But not the Tories. Having blamed the one-parent family and especially the absent fathers for the decline in "family values", they had to gaze in horror as one more government minister, Tim Yeo, is exposed for his part in creating yet another one-parent family. Yeo’s brazen defence was that his case was different because he is paying towards the child’s upkeep!

So its OK to contribute to this so- called decline in family values so long as you pay for the privilege, and when it comes down to it, money is always what Tory morality, philosophy, and all the rest of that guff, is all about.

Common practice

We’ve heard plenty about gerrymandering in the past in Ulster and more recently in Westminster, but it’s been happening in Scotland too. This piece by "Backbencher" appeared in the Glaswegian (27 January):

GERRYMANDERING IS NOT JUST A
 TORY PLOY

Labour were quick to call it "gerrymandering". But their councillors, up and down the land, appear rather restrained in condemning the peculiar council house sales policy of Westminster City Council.

Not surprising. After all, in the post-war years, Labour activists quickly figured out their own vote-creation formula.

They built new council houses in their 'marginal" wards to strengthen the political control.

Indeed, this explains why some pockets of new homes were created not where Glasgow families actually wanted to live.

But where ambitious local politicians needed extra votes.

Little earners

The Tories’ latest desperate attempt to explain their failure to run British capitalism smoothly has been to blame the parents for almost all of society’s ills. Increased crime? Drug abuse? Poor educational standards? All down to the lack of parental control!

But this pathetic excuse is not exclusive to the British government. BBC’s Newsround Extra (14 January) told how children in Colombia, some only ten years old, are working down coal mines in horrendous conditions. There are shafts with wooden pit-props which frequently collapse, dust-laden air, and access so restricted that even a child can barely squeeze through. Indeed, this was one of the reasons mine-owners gave for employing the children.

A local official justified the government's inaction by claiming that the children did a Lord Lucan whenever rare inspections were made, and added that the blame for this child-labour lay with — guess who? — the parents for allowing their children to go down the mines.

These children, they earn about £10 weekly, are often their families’ sole source of income and, come to think of it, could be held up by the Tories as a shining example to British children.

He’s a scream

That comical Keynesian, Professor J.K. Galbraith, has been wowing his British audiences once again. In his Cardiff gig he was supposedly setting-out conditions for what he called "the good society" (Guardian, 26 January) but this was just a front for his usual laugh-a-minute routine.

And what a routine! The good society, he gagged, would put an end to poverty, unemployment, bad health and poor housing. Then he joked that there would be a "more equitable distribution of income" while "positive government intervention" could end recessions. Hilarious stuff!

For a finale he slayed ’em with "I want to see demilitarisation" plus "an effective curb on the arms trade", and all of this to be achieved within (wait for it) the capitalist system. Stoppit, Prof, you’re killing us!

So maybe it is the same old material, but the Prof knows exactly what his audience wants to hear, and on this form his Vegas debut can’t be far away.

Sheer murder

Anyone who thinks that socialists use over-emotive language in claiming that capitalism murders workers, might like to consider a report which appeared on Scottish Television News (18 January) revealing how the asbestos industry was responsible for the deaths of many workers employed in shipbuilding on Clydeside by deliberately suppressing information about the deadly effect of its product.

According to the report this information became available fifty years ago when experiments carried out in laboratories in America showed how white mice were exposed to asbestos dust with terrifying results. 81.8 percent of mice inhaling long-fibre asbestos develop lung cancer, a figure sixteen times that of other dusts.

Because the consequences of inhaling asbestos dust don’t appear for perhaps twenty years, the industry was able to protest its innocence for a generation. Not only do dead men tell no tales, but even better from the insurers’ point of view, they make no claims for compensation either.

Learning to hate

Did you watch the movie of South Pacific on 9 January? In among all the big hit songs was this little gem:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
you’ve got to be taught from year to year
it's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
you’ve got to be carefully taught 

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
of people whose eyes are oddly made
and people whose skin is a different shade
you've got to be carefully taught 

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
before you are six or seven or eight
to hate all the people your relatives hate
you’ve got to be carefully taught

This song probably explains how racist ideas are learned and not inborn more clearly than all of the speeches and writings on the subject ever could.

Booking his place

This is what Patrick Minford, Professor of Economics at Liverpool University, had to say on Channel Four’s High Interest: Loadsamoney on 16 January:

  "There’s no doubt that in the last decade and a half when we have liberalised this economy and pushed it more towards the free market end of the capitalist system, the distribution of wealth and income has become much more unequal and of course that’s exactly what one "would hope would happen because the whole point of the capitalist economy is that it should throw up enormous inequalities in order to motivate effort and entrepreneurship. It’s now extremely respectable to he a successful entrepreneur. You get invited to the best dinner parties and people pay you the respect that you are due, and that is the visible change in our culture which I think is a tremendously good thing."

If that doesn’t earn this lickspittle his own invitation to "the best dinner parties" then nothing will.