Editorial: The Strike in Belgium (1961)

Editorial from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Belgian strike is an attempt on the part of some of the Belgian workers to force the Government to resign or change its method of dealing with the economic crisis. The Government, a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals, has precipitated this situation by its austerity measures. These consist of cuts in the social services such as the Belgian equivalent of the National Health Service, in the education programme, in unemployment pay, and in coal subsidies, along with the introduction of a Means Test and what is called “additional temporary taxation.” The Belgian local authorities are also to be empowered to impose additional income taxes of their own. The Belgian opposition party which calls itself “Socialist” claims that workers will suffer a loss of £21 to £28 a year.

The popular reason given for these austerity measures is the need to meet the trade and finance deficit caused by the loss of the Congo. But to accept this one has to accept the view that the Belgian capitalist class subsidised its workers out of the proceeds of exploitation of the Congolese: and that wealth which might have bought continued support for Belgian rule in the Congo was diverted to Belgian working class pay packets out of sheer generosity on the part of the Belgian capitalists.

A correspondent in The Guardian (28/12/60) gives a more reasoned view of the situation:

“Even before the Congo crisis, plans were being made to face the unpleasant fact that Belgium’s period of peak prosperity is over, and that her industrial production is growing very slowly in comparison with that of her Common Market partners. By economies in state spending, by increased taxation and by attracting foreign capital, M. Eyskens’ austerity programme was designed to achieve a vast investment drive to modernise Belgian industry and make Belgian products competitive in world markets. The most uneconomic of Belgian products is her coal, a chronic problem since the thirties. In recent months Belgium has launched on a serious programme of reform of uneconomic mines including a number of closures. Closure of mines, however, means social disruption; alternative jobs for discharged mineworkers are not yet available in mining areas and the Socialist Party has seized On the consequent unemployment and unrest to find support for its present frontal attacks on the austerity programme and the present Government.”

Socialists feel deep sympathy for the Belgian workers on strike. But they realise that their action is futile as a means to achieve anything but temporary respite from the encroachments of their masters on their standard of living, and that they are jeopardising their chances of achieving even that by using the strike weapon against the State, instead of using it to back up wage demands with which to offset the effect of the Government’s policy.

The lessons of this situation should be taken to heart. The strike weapon has a very limited usefulness and at its best can only deal with effects and not causes. To use this weapon against the might of the State is to invite disaster. If at election times the workers give their votes to the parties of capitalism, it ensures that the present type of situation will occur again.

The “Socialist” Party in Belgium is similar to the Labour Party in this country. It is these so-called “Socialists” who foist such wage-pruning schemes as National Health services, unemployment pay, family allowances, and so on, on to politically ignorant workers as bits of Socialism. And it is the same political charlatans who seek to make capital from the present situation by using the strike as a means to achieve government office themselves.

Governments do not develop reforms or pruning schemes because their attitude to the working class is necessarily either sympathetic or antagonistic. Governments administer the affairs of a capitalist economy in the interests of the national capitalist class. The Belgian workers would be well advised to consider this fact in relation to the present situation, recognising that a change of government is merely a change of label.

A more fundamental change is needed. Austerity, in a world of potential plenty, is always the lot of the working class under capitalism. It is not enough to demonstrate against one type of capitalist government. The workers must organise consciously to abolish the present economic system and establish in its place their own system of society—Socialism.

News in Review: Mr & Mrs Average (1961)

The News in Review column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr & Mrs Average

According to a new Stationery Office publication—Britain, 1961 Edition— “ Mr. and Mrs. Average " are described as having a TV set, vacuum cleaner and occasionally a washing machine and a 'fridge. The acquisition of these goods is equated by advertisements, films and magazines to true, lasting happiness. We all know the phrases “No more washday fatigue with Blank's wonderful washing machine", etc. The mere fact of possessing these goods, however, does not produce happiness as soon as the gadget is installed. On the contrary, they often produce problems, mainly financial, and occasionally their "happy" possessors are driven to desperation, as in the case of a young couple in Birmingham, who clearly were "Mr. and Mrs. Average". The husband was the envy of the neighbourhood. He had bought a five-piece living room suite, washing machine, bedroom suite and TV set on hire purchase, and had redecorated his 15/- a week house from top to bottom. On 28th December I960, with the Christmas decorations still hanging gaily, the husband, wife and their 2 year old daughter were found dead in their gleaming, gas-filled kitchen. The wife was expecting her second child the following week. A note said that they worried about their hire purchase debts.

Never had it so good . . .

Airways Strike

The maintenance staff of BOAC and BEA staged a four-hour stoppage on Wednesday, January 2nd, in support of a wage claim that has been going through the laborious negotiating machinery. This, of course, caused some dislocation of airline schedules. This undoubtedly caused a lot of hardship to some passengers, but the unfortunate fact is that for the aircraft workers one of the few ways in which the employers and their own union officials can be gingered up is by resort to a strike. This was bound to be unpopular: remember how the press and the Government castigated the railwaymen and the busmen in the past for their strike action that "inconvenienced the public"?

But what happened when the strikers at the airport reported for duty after the four-hour stoppage? BEA immediately suspended them for a further 24 hours, causing six times as much inconvenience to the public. 

One would have thought that this would have brought howls of protest from the press and Government. But the only newspaper comment was typified by the Daily Mail of January 6th, which said that BEA was determined to push home the lesson to the strikers. It seems that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.

On the Brink

Both Russia and the United States waxed indignant about each other's interference in the Laos disturbances. Sheer hypocrisy of course, because they had both been dabbling their fingers in that particular pie.

The Russians have supplied arms to Captain Kong Lae's army. Since 1954, the United States has pumped between forty and fifty million dollars into Laos. Washington wants value for its money: in 1958, it played its part in the dismissal of Prince Souvanha Phouma's government, after the elections in May of that year had returned a lot of communist members.

China is probably interested in the strategic potential of Laos, as a buffer between her and SEATO member Thailand. The Americans, notoriously trigger-neurotic in the Far East, seem to want the country more firmly under their control, and not simply neutralist.

The Laos dispute may be small in itself, but it is a miniature of the clashing interests of two giant power blocs. It could be another Korea. Or even a Sarajevo or a Danzig.

This must be the fear which overhangs every minor upheaval in the world. We are as far away from peace as ever.

Yes to De Gaulle

General de Gaulle came to power to joyful motor horns tooting the rhythm of Algerie francaise in the streets of Paris. This was an exuberant indication of the hopes of the general's supporters, that he would ruthlessly crush the FLN and maintain French rule over Algeria.

In the event de Gaulle, by resolving to come to terms with Algerian nationalism, has shown the more realistic assessment of the interests of French capitalism. In this, like many other politicians, he has disappointed a lot of his former supporters.

Last month's affirmative vote for the general's proposals gave the go-ahead to the organisation of another referendum, to be held in Algeria alone. This could express a preference for an independent country.

The second referendum will be held if security conditions in Algeria allow. This could mean that there will soon be further talks between the French government and the FLN, and that the end of the present fighting in Algeria may be in sight.

Evidently de Gaulle was determined to get his way. The questions in the referendum were loaded, the government hogged most of the propaganda and left the French army in no doubt as to how it should vote.

If this is the beginning of the road to peace in Algeria, there is no cause for another joyful tooting of horns. We all know that there will be other Algerias, with their own bloodshed and misery.

Canadian Illusion

It was not so very long ago that some of the air and sea lines in this country were working hectic overtime to accommodate all the people who were clamouring to emigrate to Canada.

These people must have gone with great expectations of a country full of good things, where everybody was happy. How has it turned out?

It is now expected that this month, Canada’s unemployment will reach ten per cent, of its working population, which is the highest since the war, and several times higher than in Great Britain.

The solutions which have been recommended for Canada's slump are not new. Some economists favour higher import tariffs and a strong effort to replace imported goods with home products. Others advocate a freer economy, with fewer fiscal restrictions.

Perhaps these are the same economists who were telling us, only yesterday, that the days of boom and slump belonged to an old era of ignorance and were gone for ever.

The emigrants must know differently. But there is little hope that they will lose the illusions which they took west with them.

Some may return to this country, or travel on to other lands. Others will stay in Canada. But wherever they go capitalism, and its problems, will be waiting to greet them.

Battle of the Roads

Despite the reduction in road deaths over the recent Christmas period as compared with that of 1959, the Ministry of Transport and the various road safety organisations are still faced with the task of exhorting the restless tide of humanity, to walk and drive carefully. Each year hundreds of proposals for road safety are considered. One of the main difficulties is that of the separation of pedestrians and traffic, but since this can only be accomplished at enormous cost, it is not considered practical, and consequently palliatives and not remedies are preferred.

There is a mistaken belief among some people that these road problems are only a recent phenomenon, but as long ago as 1846 the daily newspapers were complaining of the inadequacies of the principal thoroughfares and of the fact that all that could be done was to patch up and mend. In today’s battle of the roads one can see all the contradictory nature of capitalist society. Whilst Mr. Marples is making his appeal, we are being told about the super-petrols which are supposed to make cars go faster, not to mention the prestige value of the bigger and faster car.

But big problems are often solved by simple remedies. The question of cost in relation to profit is at the root not only of the road problem, but of most of the major problems facing society today. The road problem is aggravated by the thousands of commercial and business vehicles which congest the highways and bye-ways, taking back and forth goods which have covered the same ground several times before. There are also thousands of small, medium, and large size shops selling identical goods to the people in the already overcrowded towns and cities. We can only wonder that the accident rate is not higher than the statistics show.

Appeals for less density of commerce and industry in the larger cities have failed. London, for instance, seems to be going the same way as New York and this fact alone should dispel any illusions the long suffering travelling public have of ever avoiding the “ peak hour ” chaos—a battle of the roads with no holds barred.

Excuses and Admissions (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

When he was Prime Minister, and a plain Mister, Earl Attlee made something of a name for himself as a calm, quiet, pipe smoking, doodling, ruthless chief. Now that he is in retirement, his views are much sought after by the newspapers, radio and so on, who presumably think that there is nothing so sage and objective as the opinion of the elder statesman. A few months back, Earl Attlee went to a meeting of the World Association of World Federalists in Bonn and there made the sort of speech which was expected of him. In the course of that speech he said, as an indication of the urgency of resolving international disputes, that there were “… not more than ten years in which to find the road to peace.”

Now this was something of an admission. If there was one thing for which the last war was suppose to have been fought, it was to ensure a peaceful world. Earl Attlee, as Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition, played his part in promoting that idea in the minds of war-weary workers. Yet here we are, fifteen years after, still apparently looking for the road to peace.

Of course, Earl Attlee’s statement is by no means exceptional. Many politicians have a seemingly infinite capacity for explaining away, and promising to remedy, the malfeasances of capitalism. Whatever the strife and poverty which may be evident at any time, there is never a shortage of smooth politicos, each with his solution to the world’s problems and the hope of better times to come, when we have found the road to peace or prosperity or some other paradise.

Take, for example, the recent trouble in Laos, over which the State Department displayed its famous trigger-neurosis. A popularly touted solution to this flare up was the recall of the 1954 Geneva Conference. This, we were invited to believe, would do something to settle the Laos disturbance. But this is what the 1954 conference was supposed to have already done; remember the knighthood which Anthony Eden received for the part which he played in it? Now we have evidence that the disputes in Indo-China are as rife as ever. The new trouble spot—Laos—was, in fact, established as an independent state by the Geneva Conference as part of its supposed peace making. What reason is there to assume that another conference would have any more lasting effect than its predecessor? None whatever. Nevertheless, this is all that capitalism’s representatives have to offer.

It is true that these conferences sometimes seem to bear fruit. But this is only a superficial impression; actually, they can only ever manage to suppress one aspect of a particular problem, which is simultaneously in evidence, or about to emerge, somewhere else. Consider the case of Cyprus. For years, the Greek Cypriot nationalists fought the British forces on the island, taking occasional time off to kill Turkish Cypriots or their own traitors. Then came the Zurich Pact which, when the various disagreements had been hammered out, seemed to have put an end to the fighting in Cyprus. Now, apart from the odd settling of a score which was made during the emergency, all is peaceful on the island. What about the rest of the world? We have already mentioned Laos; the war in Algeria goes on; the Belgium Congo is still in bloody confusion. And we know that, if an international conference were to settle these conflicts, similar problems would spring out somewhere else. Perhaps, even, in Cyprus again. This may make the conference look pretty sick as a pacifying instrument, but we can depend on it that it will not prevent the politicians from offering it as a remedy when the world’s next sore spot breaks out.

This is not peculiar to the international scene of capitalism. At home, the working class are familiar with—and, sadly, receptive to—the excuses and nostrums which flood from the organs of capitalist opinion as fast as the events which provoke them. Sometimes, directly opposite solutions are proposed for the same problem. The government has stated that, to stabilise the British economy, they must impose some strict controls over hire purchase facilities. In contrast, there are many spokesmen for the industries which thrive on H. P. who take the view that the way to stabilise the economy is to remove, or at any rate to relax, those restrictions. Neither side has any interest in pointing out that the H.P. boom, and the recession which followed, is an example of the fundamental anarchy of capitalist society. At least one firm in the domestic appliance industry felt the H.P. cuts extra keenly because, when the restrictions were off, they invested in a lot of extra productive capacity to enable them to exploit the market which had opened before them. When the squeeze came, this production—and a lot of workers— became redundant.

Is it too much to hope that the redundant workers will reflect that they have been caught in something which, we were assured, could never happen again? Some capitalist economists are fond of blaming the 1929 crash onto the fact that, in the excitement of the preceding boom, there was a lot of reckless investment which was bound to collapse sooner or later. This was supposed to have taught everyone a lesson. Yet some of the stories which have gone the rounds in the City about the recent collapse of a couple of H.P. finance companies almost recall the days of the South Sea Bubble (although admittedly no company has again reached the blissful state of raising capital to finance “an enterprise the nature of which is to be divulged”.) In their eagerness to exploit the boom the financiers trusted their weight to as creaky limbs as their forebears did in the twenties. Whatever other changes there have been, the basis of capitalism—production for sale—remains. And with it remain the anomalies and upheavals, try as the politicians may to explain them away.

What is to be done about this? Should we look for better politicians, with better excuses? Self evidently, this is futile. Wars, uneasy peace, booms, slumps, poverty are part of capitalism because they spring from the roots of that society. No politician, however smooth, can change that. This, strangely, must be done by the working class over the world. These are the people who produce our wealth, suffer capitalism’s wars and its insecurity. Now, they accept their leaders’ excuses and apologies. As easily, they could reject them.

Ivan

The New Cyprus Republic - Part 2 (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

(2) The Rude Awakening

The rude awakening was to come before the new Republic was three weeks old, and Ledra Street, which once echoed with the revolver shots of those bent on replacing the colonial government with one of their choosing, was to echo with the shouts of demonstrating Trade Unionists, striking in support of their fellow workers sacked for “economy reasons”.

The attention of the new representatives had been drawn to the plea, uttered against the dismissal of Public Works Department employees in the Paphos district, four days before Independence. Promises “to see what he could do about it” were given by the Minister of Labour in the transitional government. Combined right wing (SEK) and left wing (PEO) unions then issued strike notices against wrongful dismissal. At the same time, Mr. Beeley, the British representative at UNO, was placing the application of Cyprus for membership before the Security Council, saying “A democratic system of government and the necessary machinery for safeguarding the human rights and the interests of all sections of the community” exists in Cyprus.

While the voice of organised labour was beginning to express itself, the body of employers had been reorganising. Even as the daily press, was relaying as front page news the visits of diplomats presenting credentials at the Presidential Palace, (the old Government House) there appeared notices on their back pages. These were to give notice that “application had been made to the Cyprus Government for a licence ‘to form’ . . . The Cyprus Employers Consultative Association … to safeguard and promote the interests of all employers in Cyprus, especially in securing their fullest co-operation in, dealing with matters affecting relations between employers and their workpeople.” Continued link-ups of employers’ associations throughout the island have resulted in the association covering leading employers and most individual employers’ associations.

Still the sackings continued, amid strong press reaction, with T.U. delegations making representations to the Minister of Labour. A letter was published from the Government Workers’ "freedom is of real value as long as the worker is deprived of the sacred right Union to the Government saying, “No” to work" (Cyprus Mail 26/8/60). On August 27th, while pickets were demonstrating on the streets of Famagusta against dismissals, President Makarios announced a scheme for the expenditure of £331,300 on new public works to reduce unemployment. Then with cruel irony he said “We are in sympathy with those dismissed from Public Works, and certainly we don’t want them in the streets jobless. But I want to make it clear that I am not going to give in to slogans of demagogues. A labour conscience must be developed for the good of the country. Demagoguism and laziness must stop. What our country needs is work and production. Workers will be protected in the new state, but they must also work “.

One can be quite safe in saying that the first pronouncement of a government after its election is to call on the workers to work harder. In this case it came rather later than expected, but rarely has such a call been so cruelly worded. The “unemployed worker” who out of sheer desperation is forced to send deputations to beg for work from his newly-elected government, is roundly berated by the leader of that government for not working. The dismissals continued amid protests. The grant was seen by the workers as a stop-gap measure which, apart from failing to secure the re-engagement of the dismissed workers, would do nothing to relieve unemployment in the future. Plans for abolishing unemployment by means of foreign loans were discussed continually. Finally, a meeting of SEK, PEG, and the Turkish Federation of Labour decided on an island-wide strike for 8th September if the dismissed workers were not reinstated.

We Want Bread

The workers’ representatives negotiated up to the last minute with Minister of Labour and the President, who assured them that it was government policy to help the workers and that they would do everything in their power. But governmental concern was not sufficient for them to reverse their previous dismissal decisions, and a twenty-four hour protest strike was called. Shouts of “We want work—we want bread” went up outside the House of Representatives, while a union delegation went inside to present a solution. In every town mass rally and picket demonstrations were held, with placards saying, “Our children are hungry”, and “Let the promises become deeds”.

This token strike, undertaken by workers half-fearful of bringing the government in disrepute, had the sympathy of the general public, was peaceful, and moreover was an extremely effective example of how the working people, in default of anyone else, were prepared to “safeguard their imprescribable rights”. The strikers returned to work the following day to await the next move by the government.

The naively unrealistic “friendship with all countries” policy was to bring immediate reaction from the United Arab Republic. The friction was caused by the declaration that Mr. Zev Levin would be installed as the first Israeli ambassador to Cyprus. This came in the face of warnings by the Arab League to Cypriot merchants against trading with Israel. The announcement of the appointment was like a slap in the face to Egypt. Since the Suez, invasion launched by the British in 1956, Egypt had given full support to the self-determination agitation wishing to remove the threat of an unfriendly Cyprus on its doorstep.

The first reaction from Egypt was to suggest that the reports were circulated by Israel to disturb the excellent relations with the new republic, but when it became evident that the report was factual, the question was given priority at the Arab League Foreign Ministers’ meeting which started in Beirut on August 22nd. At the closing session of its meeting, the League passed a resolution warning Cyprus that Zionism aims to succeed imperialism in every country and to continue exploiting it. The Cyprus Federation of Trade and Industry, in expressing great concern in the deterioration in diplomatic relations, revealed their real concern in a cable sent to the President. This stated that the economic interests of Cyprus demanded the strengthening of ties between the Republic and Arab countries. In reply to this a message was sent to the President by a committee of businessmen trading with Israel, who expressed support for the “bridge of friendship” policy, and requested a meeting with him to put forward their viewpoint. Although a trade pact was signed with the UAR at the end of September, the Arab-Israeli dispute continued to be one of the main newspaper topics, and no solution seems likely to satisfy all parties permanently.

Hence the two main policies upon which the new state was to have based its action had come to grief; and with it the idealistic policy of independence and industrial peace in a capitalist world of political and economic line-ups.

Opening the Seventh Cyprus International Trade Fair, President Makarios stressed the importance of the island as a trade link between East and West. In doing so he was merely following the path mapped out for him by numerous government leaders in as many countries, engaging in the monotonous and dangerous pastime of market-grabbing. The urgency of his appeal is underlined by the recently published Economic Review for 1959, which lays stress on the continued unfavourable trend in the terms of trade.

Storms Ahead

In spite of continued expressions of optimism in the future of the new state, from the point of view of economic and political stability, and trade and foreign relations everything points to more storms ahead. Cyprus has mainly an agricultural and mining economy, the latter accounting for more than half the value of exports. Agriculture can absorb no more of the labour force; already it accounts for over half. Although the most important single activity, it is uneconomic and heavily subsidised. A large number of farmers, unable to pay off loans, are threatened with the enforced sale of their land.

The question of capital investment to finance such projects has been the subject of much dispute. The Ambassador to Greece for the Soviet Union, Mr Sergeyev, with the appearance and behaviour of a miniature Khrushchev, visited the island and offered aid “without strings”. AKEL of course advocate taking up the offer, whilst others advise caution and consideration of other offers.

The question of future intercommunal disturbances has recently been given prominence by the statement of a Turkish political leader, Mr. Denktash, that attempts by Greek Cypriots to undermine the Zurich and London Agreements would lead to chaos and civil war. Scarcely a day passes without the Greek and Turkish dailies on the island throwing mud at each other. The prospects of even elementary political organisation involving both communities seem remote at the moment. The brightest hope, from the working, class point of view, is the admirable demonstration of unity during the recent strikes and demonstrations, which the workers have threatened to repeat. Both Turk and Greek spoke as one. The Trades Unions have recently opposed the principle, imposed by the Constitution, of a 70 per cent./30 per cent. division of Civil Service jobs between Greeks and Turks as being discriminatory and introducing political factors into a purely labour field.

Difference of Opinion

The difference of opinion between Makarios and the mayors mentioned earlier is developing into a full scale feud. A week after Independence Day it was announced that the mayors would publish a book stating their opinion of the Agreement. At the same time they served notice that they would revive the feud with Makarios, who went on record as saying “that some of them deserve to be tried by people’s courts”. Their next move, taken with a number of doctors, editors, lawyers, and party leaders, was to send a telegram to the Secretary General of UNO on the eve of the maiden speech made by the island’s representative, Mr. Zenon Rossides. As though to belie his references to newly independent Cyprus as “a bridge of unity for understanding and co-operation”. The telegram pointed out that the settlement was imposed on them, and infringed their fundamental right to self determination. Two more telegrams followed immediately, one from the Turkish Communal Chairman in support of the agreement and another of opposition from the Greeks. It is quite probable that an influential body, a kind of unofficial opposition outside Parliament, will develop.

In municipal matters a Greek and a Turkish Municipal Chamber administers the respective communities with moneys allocated by the government according to the 70 per cent./30 per cent. Ratio. This rigid partition in municipal matters is also found in education and in separate representation at parliamentary level.

Police Power

In this government as in so many others, the responsibility of power has had a very sobering effect on the erstwhile rebels. They have become respectable, cautious, and apprehensive. No doubt it is the current crime wave, including some murders of those who were informers during the emergency, that has prompted the President to announce an island-wide arms round up; after which very serious action is to be taken against those holding arms. The response to this was the negligible total of 30 guns; shocking the government into the threat of snap road checks and surprise house searches. Indeed, police power has already been strengthened by the government decision to retain the pass system, introduced by the British Government during the emergency, where by all adults over twelve years old must be in possession of civilian identity cards.

The possibility of an outbreak of violence between the Communists and the Eoka faction, which had spasmodically flared during the emergency, cannot be far from the President’s mind. Reports have come from Athens of renewed political activity by Grivas, and of his statement concerning the further clarification of certain points in the Constitution. We are reminded that it was in Athens that he first organised a private army, during the German occupation in 1943. During the civil war that followed liberation, the royalist Grivas had aligned his army against ELAS, the Communist army which he had known for a long time, intended to take over Greece, and which had put a price on his head. After Greece had been forced into the camp of Western Capitalism, he made an unsuccessful attempt to get into the Greek Parliament. The subsequent failure and disillusionment turned his interest to his native Cyprus, where the growth of Communist Party influence gave him cause for concern. Although AKEL had supported the earlier Enosis movement, the Greek Civil War and its outcome had resulted in a typical about face. As always the communist attitude was inconsistent and vacillating, but union with a member of the Western, as opposed to the Eastern Capitalist blocks was not to their liking. Whilst apprehensive that self-determination would result in Enosis, their present attitude appears to be in favour of independence. The present set-up suits them very well, giving them plenty of room of manoeuvre Cyprus into the communist camp. True to the principle of “catching them young”, both groups have already formed youth organisations.

Under colonial rule, there is often identification of the ruling class with the colonial power. The belief used to be current in the “left wing” that after the achievement of national independence the resulting disillusionment would provide the experience necessary for the working class to see the class issue more clearly. Of course, this is not believed by Russia who is just as anxious as any other country to woo the newly independent states, to capture their trade and to use them as counters in international diplomacy. In any case it is a fallacious argument and certainly not borne out by the facts.

The struggle in Cyprus resulted in many hundreds of working class dead and wounded. The voice of its Capitalist Class, as yet young and weak, but struggling to be heard, finds a ready mouthpiece in its government which has shown itself to be just as chauvinistic and trade conscious as any of the other governments set up as a result of national independence. It has taken its place with the other capitalist states in a world of actual and potential aggression, and will add its voice to the general discord which is called “trade and peace”, no doubt falling into line behind one or other of the major powers.

Socialist Knowledge

This is not a step forward for the working class of Cyprus or anywhere else, and far from there being any sign of them becoming socialist, independence has thrown the nationalistic aspirations of Greek and Turk into relief. The introduction to the Cyprus working class of socialist knowledge with its clear-cut class issues, uncomplicated by nationalistic arguments, is badly needed to dispel these bars to its emancipation.

Then it will realise that its struggle, whether resulting in Enosis or independence, effectively enables its capitalist class to capture more elbow room to develop, and secure a hold on labour, in order to exploit it more efficiently in the name of the new Cyprus Republic.

R. J.

Finance & Industry: Our educated politicians (1961)

The Finance and Industry column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our educated politicians

In an interview published in the Observer (8.1.61) the banker Lord Brand, asked if he thought that academic economists do more good than harm, replied that they are extremely valuable. He claimed that through the studies of Keynes and other economists knowledge has grown and this “has altered the whole picture of economic life”. Possibly because Lord Brand would hesitate to claim that economic life has altered particularly (“I do not think we have an easy time ahead of us in the next year or so”) he went on to blame the politicians for not accepting the good advice of the economists.

He recalled the reparations chaos after the first world war, when the politicians (backed however by 3 out of their 7 banking economic advisers) insisted on exacting impossible reparations from Germany. Lord Brand says: “It was clearly mad at the time to those who would, and could, see, and were prepared to act accordingly. But the people who had control of policy could not see”.

He singles out Lloyd George—”Like most statesmen of the day, he knew little or nothing of finance”—yet Lloyd George had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it appears, according to Lord Brand, that Lloyd George insisted on the mad policy because he had boasted of squeezing Germany “till the pip squeaked” and dared not back down for fear of losing political support among voters as blind as he was.

But in the second world war the statesmen appear not to have changed much. Lord Brand tells how Churchill and Roosevelt, on the advice of Morganthau, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and with the agreement of Lord Cherwell (a “highly intelligent” man) adopted a plan to reduce Germany to a purely agricultural country. Lord Cherwell’s defence of his action was that the British Government wanted a loan from America and acceptance of this fantastic plan would make it easier to get the loan.

Capitalism 1961

Lord Brand’s complacency about the altered picture of economic life reads oddly in face of the motor car slump and the looming difficulties facing international trade and currencies. The years between the wars were spent creating currency collapse in one country after another and then laboriously re-establishing stable currencies. After World War II it was all supposed to be different but now Professor Meade is warning of the drastic remedies that he thinks may be necessary because of America’s loss of gold, so he proposes that the dollar and the pound should be cut adrift from their existing link with gold.

The Guardian in an editorial (3.1.61) remarks “Undoubtedly a period of chaos would follow. Professor Meade feels sure that stability would return at a new level of exchange rates within six months. Perhaps so; but in the process the structure of the International Monetary Fund, one of the greatest achievements of international collaboration in our generation would have been laid in ruins “.

One prospect seen by the Guardian is that “soon the Russian rouble might be the only major currency with a fixed gold parity “.

This seems ironical to the Guardian but only because they persist against all evidence in believing that Russia is not a great capitalist power, but something else.

Flood Havoc in China

Through floods and storms China is threatened with what may be a catastrophic fall of food supplies. In a Socialist world such an event would be met by movement of supplies from elsewhere. But under capitalism a different set of values rules. America, Canada and other countries have masses of food they cannot sell profitably. The Times (20.12.60) reported that in the four chief exporting countries America, Canada, Argentina and Australia, “the end-of-season carry-over on July 31 next are expected to reach the unprecedented total of 60,400,000 tons, a rise of 7,500,000 tons on the year”.

So what problem can there be? But capitalist trade and rivalries create problems. The American government when it wanted to give wheat away or sell it cheaply met opposition from the other exporting countries, who feared this would reduce world prices and cut into their own sales. Secondly there are those who on political grounds would object to help being given to China, and according to Mr. Cyril Osborne, M.P., who was recently in Peking, there are politicians in that country who reply that the Chinese people “would rather starve than eat American food or accept American charity”. (Daily Telegraph, 3.1.61). (The starving might give a different answer).

According to Reynolds News (1.1.61) projected Canadian sales of their surplus to China are likely to meet with objections from the American government.

In the meantime the American food stocks are being nibbled at by the recently increased numbers of unemployed :

“In September 3,200,000 Americans were given food from the surplus supplies held by the government”. (Guardian 2.1.61).

Speculating in Misery

Under the heading “It’s an ill Wind” the Financial Times (9.1.61) had the following:

“Americans, by their law, may not trade with Communist China. But no law stops them speculating on the effects of China’s misfortunes, and for the past week they have been rushing to do just that. Scene of their operations is the Chicago soybean (spelt this way in America) market, biggest commodity futures market in the world.

The present bout of speculation in soya-beans and their products began three months ago, as reports of crop disaster began to seep through from China, only big soya-bean producer apart from America itself. People in the trade saw then that if the usual Chinese exports did not reach Europe, American beans and oil would have to go instead. So they put their money on a rise in the market.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Marx on Piece Work (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Let us now consider a little more closely the characteristic peculiarities of piece-wages. The quality of the labour is here controlled by the work itself, which must be of average perfection if the piece-price is to be paid in full. Piece-wages become, from this point of view, the most fruitful source of reductions of wages and capitalistic cheating.

They furnish to the capitalist an exact measure for the intensity of labour. Only the working-time which is embodied in a quantum of commodities determined beforehand and experimentally fixed, counts as socially necessary working time, and is paid as such.

Since the quality and intensity of the work are here controlled by the form of wage itself, superintendence of labour becomes in great part superfluous. …

Given piece-wage, it is naturally the personal interest of the labourers to strain his labour power as intensely as possible; this enables the capitalists to raise more easily the normal degree of intensity of labour."

– Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Kerr Edition, pages 605-606.

The Passing Show: The Congo (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Congo

U.N. officials report that 300,000 people are slowly starving to death in the Congo, with two hundred dying every day. This is still further proof, if it were necessary, that it is not enough to be merely against capitalism, or colonialism, or the rule of a particular imperial power; one must have constructive proposals as to what is to replace the system to be destroyed—one must, in short, work for the achievement of Socialism, not merely for the destruction of any other economic and social system. A year ago, there were those who criticised the Socialist Party because it would not join in movements for “colonial freedom”, such as the one that aimed to throw the Belgians out of the Congo. We pointed out that this would only entail the Congolese people exchanging one set of masters for another. And this is what has occurred. It would be hard to argue, in face of the mass-starvation, in face of the pictures of Congolese children who are nothing more than skin and bone, that the Congolese people are better off today than they were a year ago. In fact the new Congolese masters, to whom the Congolese people were exhorted to give their support, cannot even agree among themselves. And in the squabbling and fighting among the various sections of the new Congolese ruling class—each of which calls in help from foreign states, Russia, America, Ghana, and Belgium among them—it is the ordinary Congolese who suffer. The system of food-growing and food-distribution has in some parts (notably Kasai) almost entirely broken down. And every day more people starve.

Land of opportunity

Feeling depressed in a monotonous job? Worried about the endless struggle to keep the weekly budget down to the size of your pay packet? Thinking about emigration—perhaps to Canada, land of opportunity?

Before you go, have a look at MacLean’s magazine (it calls itself Canada’s National Magazine) for November 19th, 1960. It carries an article telling you about Canada’s rich. A favourite place for their holidays is Frenchman’s Creek in Jamaica, where millionaires and their wives can have peace and privacy for two thousand dollars a week. Last year a Calgary oil millionaire flew a party of his friends to England to watch his horse run in the Derby; the bill he paid covered a week’s stay at the Ritz for the party and Rolls-Royces for his friends’ trips. A Toronto manufacturer had two swimming pools put in his backyard, complete with lighted fountain, hi-fi music and Japanese teahouse, for 30,000 dollars. A Montreal construction business tycoon often flies to Florida or the Caribbean for weekends in one of the family’s two private planes (a DC-3 and a flying boat); once he couldn’t get a favourite Chinese dish in Miami, so he rang up his usual restaurant in Montreal and got them to make it and fly it down to him. A multi-millionaire distiller had his house festooned with fifteen thousand lilac blooms for his daughter’s wedding; the total wedding bill was reported at 100,000 dollars. Twenty-five upper class wives dress entirely in Paris and London creations at an annual cost of up to forty thousand dollars.

The other side of the coin

You’re keen to? Have a look at the next page. This carries the stories of some of the families of Canada’s 327,000 unemployed workers. (If we had the same percentage of unemployment in Britain there would be nearly a million out of work.) It tells of the bitterness of men trying to make ends meet on unemployment pay. “Today the boss wants a twenty-year-old man with forty years’ experience”, some of them said. A fifty-three-year-old steamfitter suggested, “Why don’t they shoot us old men? Digging graves for us would make jobs for the younger men”. The stories are much the same—mounting bills which cannot be paid, threatening letters from hire-purchase companies as the payments fall behind, the despair of men combing the town every day for jobs and being everywhere refused.

Still, there it is. In a system run by the capitalists you would expect the capitalists to be well off. And you would expect the workers to be badly off. In other words—capitalism in Canada works out much the same as capitalism in Britain. Emigration will give you a change of scenery, but it can’t change your class-position in society.

Unfair to the rich

In the current number of Oxford Tory, the Conservative undergraduate journal, there was a surprising item. One writer commented “To say that we have a just society would be, to say the least, an exaggeration”. Clearly a true statement, but what a place to find it. However, the very next words dispelled the astonishment. “Look”, the writer goes on, “at Schedule A, and the absurd level of death duties”. So it isn’t the ownership of all the country’s factories, and mines, and land by a small ruling class that this Tory finds “unjust”, nor the fact that the workers have to labour to support idlers in luxury: he was only concerned with the arrangements made by the capitalist class to pay for the State which looks after their interests. Perhaps if he examines the nature of society a little more closely, he will be able to find some more penetrating criticisms of the “just society”.

Flogging

Sir Thomas Moore, the Conservative M.P. for Ayr Burghs, is again agitating for the introduction of flogging for crimes involving violence. Sir Thomas said that “peace and justice” were the “keywords” of Hitler’s policy, and also that “Herr Hitler is absolutely honest and sincere,” at a time when Hitler had already set up a dictatorship and begun his campaign to “solve the Jewish problem” with every circumstance of brutality. Socialists do not join in the debate about how criminals should be punished: we go to the root of the problem, By attempting to end the society which gives rise to crime and to criminals. But if Sir Thomas thinks that a man who injures a single other man ought to be flogged, what does he think should be done with political leaders who support dictators whose declared policy is the “liquidation” of millions of their fellow human beings?

Alwyn Edgar

Blogger's Note:

"A year ago, there were those who criticised the Socialist Party because it would not join in movements for “colonial freedom”, such as the one that aimed to throw the Belgians out of the Congo. "

This is in reference to the 'Hackney 13' who resigned from the SPGB in 1960. Hackney is in reference to the fact that they were members of the Hackney Branch of the SPGB. From 'Kaz's paper on SPGB disputes down the years:

The Hackney thirteen, 1960 (13)

Thirteen members of Hackney appended their names to a circular, dated 25th May 1960, announcing their resignation. The letter noted that those listed were “deeply concerned about racialism, about South Africa, about the hydrogen bomb, living standards and other things” and that the resignations were a protest against what they saw as the “unconcern” of the Party with these issues and its “refusal to consider…the welfare of the working class.” 

Connolly, Leo (5929)

Coster, Mrs M (5075)*

Crome, Jack (5735)

Dane, S (5551)

Gleason, J (5856)

Ivimey, AW (5572)

Ivimey, F (5573)

Jarvis, R (5885)

Lawrence, JW (5835)

Temple, MF (5008)

Walby, Dennis (5906)

Walby, S (5292)

Wood, AH (4724)

One name missing from that list was Robert Barltrop ('R. Coster'), who was part of the same dispute within the Party, and resigned from its ranks around about the same time.

Party News (1961)

Party News from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many meetings are being held throughout the month and all of them need the fullest support of members and sympathisers to ensure the utmost success of the meetings. Full details are given on page 32. Support of all propaganda meetings is as essential to the furtherance of the Parts’s case as are writing and speaking.

Conference, 1961, is being held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. London, W.C.I, on Friday. March 31st, and Saturday and Sunday. April 1st and 2nd. Please note the dates. Provincial branches sending delegates are asked to contact Head Office immediately if their delegates need accommodation during Conference. London members are happs to assist wherever possible, but arrangements can best be made if good notice is given beforehand.

Meetings

Indoor meetings are being held by many branches in different parts of the country and the notices in this issue are worth special study. No other organisation can offer lectures of the range and calibre of the S.P.G.B., and they give an opportunity to keep abreast of current developments.

Especially, we would like to emphasise the choice of meetings in London, particularly on Sunday nights during February.

At Head Office, 52, Clapham High Street, interesting films are subjected to Socialist analysis and debate. At the Central Club Hall, Clerkenwell Road, a series of lectures is in progress dealing with fundamental political issues ; these started successfully in January and are well worth attendance. In addition, on February 19th a highly topical meeting is being run at Denison House, Victoria, on the Crisis in the motor car industry. All the London meetings mentioned start at 7.30 p.m. Advertisements are being placed elsewhere, but now is the time to make a note of the meetings you wish to attend.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings (1961)

Party News from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There was a report of the April 'Demonstration for Socialism' rally in the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard. Harry Young and Cyril May were the speakers at the meeting, and they spoke to an audience of 400 people.

50 Years Ago: Socialism Hard To Grasp (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

No part of the Socialist proposition seems more difficult to the average worker than the proposal to abolish money, price and trade. So deep has the idea of commerce been driven into the working class that they have come to believe themselves formed for the sole purpose of working and increasing trade.

In capitalist production the toiler is, indeed, just a piece of mechanism, necessary to the progress of trade, and he has been taught to believe that such is all he is fitted to be.

To-day we live to work, and the proposal of the Socialist—undoubtedly a revolutionary one—to reverse the sequence, to produce wealth in order to live, seems to be beyond the comprehension of the wage-slave. His brain, stored with capitalist ideas, cannot get away from the notions connected with capitalist methods of production and exchange, hence the information that under u Socialist system no wages would be paid comes to him as a shock.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

50 Years Ago: Might is Right (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man has a right to live only — if he can. The mightiest beast and the meanest parasite have as much right to live—and as little. . . .

Yet nature is not cruel: she knows nothing of emotions. She leaves her children to fight things out for themselves, giving them one universal law: Might is Right. . . .

The revolutionary requires no other justification than that of expediency. No revolutionary in history ever really did. True they have paid much lip service to Justice and other figments of the popular mind, but that has been only because they have required the assistance of those who were to gain nothing from revolution, and who had therefore to be inspired with empty phrases and confused with humbug. But the highest sanction revolutionaries ever have required has been—opportunity.

The Socialist asks no more. Let who will grovel at the feet of Justice, or slobber over the “Natural Rights of Man”—the Socialist has no use for such meaningless vapourings. . . .

Against the might of the strong few shall be put the might of the many weak ones. Before that might capitalism and private ownership will go down for ever. Then, when society founded upon common property in the means of life, has become one harmonious whole, the brutal dictum, might is right, will hold good only between the social organism and external nature, while between man and man a new ethic will arise—or rather the old ethic of gentile society under a new form—that only the social good is right.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

Back to Normal (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the last two General Elections we heard much about the wonderful affluent conditions in which we were living.

“You’ve never had it so good” was a Mac Wonder phrase much in the air. We have also distinct memories of “doubling our standard of living within twenty-five years”. The air was as, Hamlet said “promise-crammed" but as he himself tartly added “you cannot feed capons so”.

These promises have now come home to roost. All the other old and well-worn phrases and threats have now been dusted and polished and taken out of storage. The air is now full of them, as threatening. For example, Selwyn Lloyd:

   I will simply point out that no one in the world owes us a living and if we don’t earn it by hard work in this field, the standard of living in this country will go down. It’s goodbye to dreams of expansion and social progress. 

Translated this means—“Work harder. Don’t ask for higher wages or else ... ” 

And another pearl from Mr. Lloyd, "The whole emphasis should be on saving labour, or increasing efficiency and on being competitive”. Then as if to sugar the pill—“Far from that being a threat to full employment it is the only way to maintain it ”.

It would be interesting to hear the comments of the recently sacked motor workers (and those put on short time) on that last bit.

The facts of the matter are that in present-day competitive capitalist society goods can be sold only if, in terms of quality and price, they match up to, or improve upon similar or identical products from elsewhere: the ultimate purpose being to provide a profit for the owners. If this purpose of profit-making is threatened, production eases off, and workers are put on short-time or sacked. Of course, you may rest assured that no capitalist politician is ever going to make this plain to you.'

Max Judd

The Real Army Game (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

So an Army commanding officer banned his troops from viewing the television programme, “The Army Game”, on the grounds that it “appears to portray little that bears any relation to the present-day Army.”

But would Major Bill Cook really approve a true depiction of the Army—whether of today or of earlier days of the present order? Would he like to see revealed, for instance, the purpose of armies in current society? If so, he can well be accommodated by socialists.

Society as today constituted is composed of two classes, the capitalist class and the working class. Although the [capitalists are] the dominating faction. This is due to workers, in numbers, overwhelmingly preponderate, it is the capitalists who are the circumstance that the capitalist class owns (in the form of the land, factories, machines etc.), the means of producing the means of life.

The workers, on the other hand, have no such means and implements of production, and to secure food, clothing and shelter and provision for their families. must offer for sale to the owning class their mental and physical energies. The price (or wages) paid for these energies are at a level that will roughly purchase the necessities of life. But those very energies (or labour power) are bought for working spells more than sufficient to produce the value of the wages paid for them. In a five-day working week this value may be produced by the end of the third day; the value produced on the fourth and fifth day. therefore, is a value in excess of the workers' labour-power value and thus the wages that represent that value in monetary terms of the food, clothing etc., required for the restoration of expended energies. This excess is thus a surplus value congealed, as it were, in the products (or commodities) the workers have produced for their masters. Surplus value, with the sale of the commodities incorporating it, is realised as profit; which, by continually flowing to the capitalist class enables them to further capitalise their businesses and live without the necessity of working.

Thus one sees the capitalist class as a relatively tiny section of the community, but a section which enjoys benefits denied to that much larger section, the working class. And added to the economic advantage of ownership of the productive means goes the political advantage of a State apparatus, the machinery of government, which since the birth of capitalism has carried out its appointed function of preserving the social set-up, and of conserving the masters' monopoly of the wealth produced by the working class. Included in this State apparatus are the coercive and armed forces which, possibly when all other official influences have failed, will be called upon to protect or restore “law and order” against any development likely to interrupt capitalism's normal productive and distributive processes or to subvert in any way the privileged position of the capitalists over the workers. And among the armed coercive forces, of course, is the Army.

As a force intended to be the last resort “persuaders” of large numbers of people—hungry and desperate strikers and unemployed demonstrators as in some cases—the Army is provided with weapons and taught how to use them. The result is that, in cases of threatened subversion etc., the Army is an efficient repressive force through its trained ability to maim or kill. Whether or not years elapse without such measures being applied, this remains one of the purposes behind the Army's existence.

There, then, lies the capitalist need for armies in the country of their being. But each national capitalist grouping also needs an armed force to defend or further its interests outside its homeland. Behind each of these national groupings, whatever the nation encompassing it, lies the pressure of competition. American capitalism contends with Russian, British with German, French with Japanese—indeed, each nation contends with all others in a quest for markets by which to sell its commodities, which have been produced by the workers of each competing country.

Hence between the national capitalist factions, there exists a struggle for markets, but for each competitive needs as cheaper fields of exploitation, economical trading routes, and all the other advantages that will enable their possessors to offer their commodities at competitive prices. Often the acquirement of these advantages can be effected only by filching them from rivals. From the diplomatic moves, the changing strategies, there come the international crises, the tensions, the cold wars—too often to end in a hot war.

If is then that the Army of each country concerned is ordered, with the other armed services, to carry out its function as the protector of the foreign interests of its native capitalist class. Not that the protection of capitalist interests will be the reason given for hurling masses of young men, mostly members of the working class, into bloody conflict against other masses of young men, similarly mainly workers. The various propaganda machines will manufacture high-sounding excuses. The war is a fight for “democracy over autocracy”, for “breathing-space”, to defend “the rights of small nations”. Augmented now by hosts of wartime conscripts the task for each army is to wreak what havoc, destruction and death it can upon the armies of the “enemy” countries. For no other reason than that they have been ordered to do so by their respective governments, man kills man so that his masters' trading interests are furthered or at least protected from damage.

One can scarcely expect a socially progressive and enlightened development among men trained to carry out the anti-social act of war. Certain it is that many of those whose military job is to make “good soldiers” are of necessity tyrannous and not far different to “The Army Game’s” Sergeant-Major Bullimore.

But perhaps this portrayal is too realistic for Major Cook. However, the Major need have no fear that “The Army Game” will in any way harm the Army. The Government, as the virtual executive committee of British capitalism, will see to that.

F. W. Hawkins

Sin on the Underground (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

What's your pet worry? The Congo? H-Bombs? The Cold War? Anybody who is preoccupied with these pleasantries may have missed the petty censorship which was recently imposed upon London's Tube stations and which passed, in fact, with only a little comment from one or two newspapers and the House of Lords. The subject of this censorship was a poster issued by the Family Planning Association which, after being displayed on many Tube stations, was withdrawn when the Transport Commission received some objections to it. The Commission justified their action by referring to a ruling of theirs which states that they “. . . will not accept posters which refer to religious or sacred subjects in a manner which might give offence or which contain matter or illustrations likely to be considered religiously controversial." 

What sort of a poster was it, to involve this ruling? We decided to find out. We spent a fortune on Tube fares, our eyes grew sore on advertisements for corsets, for films starring curvy B.B. or tough- slugging Westerners. We saw posters which exhorted the rush hour workers to partake of gracious living by drinking a certain Brown Ale—with out-of focus candelabra in the background.

Apparently, nothing in this pot-pourri of sex, violence and alcohol had raised a murmur of protest. At last we found the poster. We examined it closely, searched diligently for something in it which a reasonable person might object to. We could find none. It was not offensive, nor was it lewd. If anything, the people in it were a little overdressed.

It is difficult, then, to imagine the majority of Tube passengers objecting to this advertisement. We can only assume that it was removed because of a minority of religious purgers, who pressed their point in a barrage of protest. We have seen this happen before; the Lord’s Day Observance Society has used the technique for years, often against Roman Catholics. A more subtle method of suppression, this, than of yore, when Catholics would reduce to human charcoal any burglar or peasant who had difficulty in grasping a Papal chemical formula about bread and wine turning into flesh and blood. Or when Calvinists would burn a scholar who rejected a complex theory which held that there was a being called God, who was three people—and at the same time only one. More subtle, because the spread of materialist knowledge has made it harder to whip up hatred over theological disputes; but still reprehensible. For human progress depends upon the decisions of conscious people, not upon gags applied to society by a sanctimonious minority.

What about birth control? Much of the opposition to it is almost a mania for the intensely personal nature of sexual relationships makes it easy to rouse strong feelings in the matter. Some opponents—notably the Catholics —maintain that the use of contraceptives is a defiance of the "Almighty Will": others that it invites an increase in juvenile promiscuity. Can we expect, then, that Catholics are not promiscuous? The Chief Medical Officer of the London County Council has reported that during 1959 there were 183 unmarried female immigrants from Catholic, anti-birth control Eire who, because they were pregnant when they came to this country, had to be assisted by the L.C.C. Welfare department. The Catholic Church is as helpless as any other organisation in these matters. Without a doubt, much of the religious opposition to birth control is roused by the fact that it is an attempt to shape our own environment, instead of leaving it to the will of a mythical supernatural being.

In fact, birth control is at present only a method of spreading out workers' relative poverty, an attempt to prevent ourselves slipping too far into degradation and dire need. Whether we practice it or not, whether we have two children or sixteen we remain workers, depending on our wage to live. In underdeveloped countries, birth control is often given official backing, but the older established capitalist nations leave it as a matter of personal choice, only raising the issue of government support in. for example, times of slump.

We should remember that man’s future lies within his own society and that birth control could be a factor in fashioning the sort of world that man desires. But this in turn depends upon man’s social knowledge and his rejection of, for example, religious theories with their threats of hellfire and purgatory. When he has reached that stage, he will be facing the many aspects of living a civilised life in a developed society and there will be no bigots to decide what he may or may not do.

Jack Law

Notes on Economic History (4) (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the Physiocrats

Sir William Petty (1623-1687)

Marx, in Volume 1 of Capital, says: "Once for all, I may add that by classical political economy I understand that economy which since the time of W. Petty has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradiction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only".

This is a tribute to the genius and originality of Sir William Petty, the founder of modern political economy. It is in his Treatise of Taxes and Contribution, London 1662, that we find the first idea of surplus value.

Petty distinguishes the natural price of commodities from the market price, the "true price current". By natural price he means value. This is his main point, as the determination of surplus value depends on the determination of value itself. What, then, is value? Petty determines the value of commodities by the relative amounts of labour which they contain; he is concerned not with appearances, but with foundations.

In the following quotation from his Treatise of Taxes and Contributions we get the first definition of value:

If a man brings to London an ounce of Silver out of the earth in Peru, in the same time that he can produce a bushel of corn, then one is the natural price of the other; now if by reason of new and more mines a man can get two ounces of silver as easily as formerly he did one, then corn will be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, caeteris paribus (all things being equal).

The next quotation from the same work interests us, as it is the early examination of the value of labour;

The law . . . should allow the labourer but just the wherewithall to live; for if you allow double then he works but half so much as he could have done, and otherwise would; which is a loss to the publick of the fruit of so much labour.

In modern words, in receiving for six hours' labour the value of six hours, the labourer would receive double what he receives if he worked for twelve hours and got only the value of six. he would therefore not work more than six hours. Thus the value of labour is determined by the minimum necessary for subsistence. To induce the labourer to produce surplus value and to perform surplus labour, it is necessary to compel him to expend all the labour power of which he is capable, as the condition upon which he may earn the necessities of life.

Petty recognises two forms of surplus value, ground rent and money rent (interest). He divides the second from the first which, for him, as later for the Physiocrats, is the true form of surplus value. He depicts rent not as simple surplus of labour expended over and above necessary labour, but as a surplus, of the surplus labour of the producer himself over and above his wages and the replacement of his capital; as for example the following"

Suppose a man could with his own hands plant a certain scope of land with corn, that is, could dig, or plough, harrow, weed, reap, carry home, thresh and winnow so much as the husbandry of this land requires; and had withal seed wherewith to sow the same. I say that when this man has subtracted his food out of the proceed and given to others in exchange for clothes and other natural necessaries, that the remainder of the corn is the natural and true rent of the land for that year, and the medium of seven years, or rather of so-many years as make up the cycle, within which dearth and plenties make their revolution, doth give the ordinary rent of the land in corn.

To Petty, the value of the corn is determined by the labour time which it contains, while rent, equivalent to the total product after the deduction of wages and seed, equals the surplus labour represented by surplus product. Rent, therefore, includes profit which is inseparable from it.

Petty also shows that the individual character of the labour is of no consequence. Labour time is what matters.

As a final tribute, and summing up of Petty's contribution to political economy, we quote the following extract from Volume III, of Capital.

Petty . . .  and in general the writers who are closer to feudal times, assume that ground rent is the normal form of surplus value, whereas profit to them is still vaguely combined with wages, or at best looks to them like a portion of surplus value filched by the capitalist from the landlord. These writers take their departure from a condition, in which the agricultural population still constitutes the overwhelming majority of the nation, and in which the landlord still appears as the individual, who appropriates at first hand the surplus labor of the direct producers through his land monopoly, in which land therefore still appears as the chief requisite of production. These writers could not yet face the question, which, contrary to them, seeks to investigate from the point of view of capitalist production, how it happens that private ownership in land manages to wrest from capital a portion of the surplus-value produced by it at first hand (that is, filched by it from the direct producers) and first appropriated by it.

John Locke (1633-1704)
John Locke is probably better known for his philosophy than he is for his contribution to political economy. He follows William Petty in that he regarded human labour as the principal source of wealth, though Petty regarded both labour and land as the important factors. For Locke, nature was out of the prime importance. He believed that the laws of nature established personal labour as the natural limit of private property—the limit arising from the physical limitation on the amount of labour an individual can perform, and from the fact that no one should accumulate more than his needs.

Locke was opposed to the private ownership of land. In his opinion ground rent was no different from usury and, due to the unequal distribution of the means of production, was a transfer from one person to another of the profit that should have been the reward of one man's labour. The following quotation from his Consideration of the Lowering of Interest is an illustration of this:

Money, therefore, in buying and selling, being perfectly in the same condition with other commodities, and subject to all the same laws of value, let us next see how it comes to be of the same nature with land, by yielding a certain yearly income, which we call use or interest. For land produces naturally something new and profitable, and of value to mankind; but money is a barren thing, and produces nothing, but by compact transfers that profit that was the reward of one man's labour into another man's pocket.

Locke's importance is that he is the voice of the juridical theories of capitalist society as opposed to feudalism. His work in philosophy was the basis upon which the thinking of subsequent English economist rested.

Sir Dudley North (1641-1690)
Sir Dudley North is best known his Discourses upon Trade. This is mainly concerned with commercial capital, and as such is outside the scope of these notes. The importance of North is that he reflects in his writing the period in which he lived.

From 1663 to 1798, except for the years 1708 and 1709, wheat prices were falling. Landlords complained continuously about falling rents. Industrial capitalists and landowners were concerned about, and did in fact bring about, a reduction in the rate of interest. Up to 1760 it was considered to be in the national interest to maintain and increase the value of land. From 1760 onwards an economic investigation began into the rise in rents, about the increase in the price of land and corn, and of other consumer goods.

The years 1650 to 1750 were full of struggles between "monied interests" and "landed interests". The landowners gradually lost out to the money lenders and financiers of the period. The financiers, with the establishment of the credit system, and the system of State debt, became predominant in society.

Petty, in his works, refers to the complaints of the landlords regarding the fall of rents. He defended the monied interests against the landlords, and placed the rent of money and rent of land in the same category. North, in his writing, follows Petty. It was in this form that capital gave landed property its first set-back, since money-lending at interest was one of the main means for the accumulation of capital.

North seems to have been the first to understand interest correctly. He included both capital and money in "Stock". On price and money his observation that gold and silver serve not as gold and silver in themselves, but only as forms of exchange value, is, for his day, remarkable.

To sum up, the position of the economists before the physiocrats was that they had to try and understand the conditions in which the landlord was being forced out, to the advantage of finance capital which was growing.

Bob Ambridge