Human Nature and Socialism: 4—Capitalist Patterns of Behaviour (1953)

From the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from the previous issue.

4—Capitalist Patterns of Behaviour

In previous articles we have seen that, although men do, in a very real sense, make history, they are nevertheless also products of conditions and creatures of circumstance. Since we are primarily concerned with the possibilities of change that exist today, we should discover as much as we can about the sort of human behaviour that is produced by Capitalism. Provided that we bear in mind the limitations of the phrase, we may enquire what sort of "human nature” has resulted, so that we may more adequately see the respects in which change is both possible and desirable.

Every society, no matter the form of its social relationships, presupposes that men engage in productive activity. The way in which they come together to produce wealth (the economic aspect) is the key to all the other aspects of society. The basic question to ask, then, is: how does man work under Capitalism?

The outstanding feature of present-day labour is that the bulk of it is undertaken, not primarily to satisfy a human need, but to satisfy something interposed between production and consumption called a market. Everything is dominated by the basis of the system which recognises only motives of material gain. A tailor, for example, can no longer appeal to society’s need of clothing as a justification of his existence. He has to say^that tailoring is one way of “making a living.” He Is considered a “successful” tailor, not because he makes good clothes for people, but only when he achieves an income remarkably large for a tailor. The cash nexus, not need, is the determining factor, since, without money, access to both the means and the fruits of production is denied.

False Separation

There are a number of consequences of this economic set-up that constitute a condemnation of present arrangements and a challenge to make better ones. First, there is the separation of the individual’s interests from those of the community as a whole. The objective of the employee in selling his working abilities is to receive a pay-packet "for himself.” The objective of the employer in buying those abilities is to reap a profit “for himself.” Both may, of course, form temporary alliances with others of their class but, within Capitalism, each worker is a potential (if not an actual) rival to every other worker seeking employment, and each capitalist a rival to every other capitalist seeking profit.

Production under Capitalism is social, not individual, yet the worker does not labour primarily because in doing so he renders a service to the community. Lacking access to the means of production, he is compelled to become "gainfully” employed. He gets back in wages part of the value of what he produces, and the employer gets his profit out of the remainder. The conflict between "capital” and "labour” arising out of the capitalists’ ownership of the means of production and distribution constitutes the class struggle. It is entirely out of place to apportion blame to either capitalist or worker for their "selfish” conduct. Nor is it helpful to suggest a reconciliation between classes while consenting to the continuation of a system that makes the gain of one class the loss of another.

Capitalist division of labour is objectionable because it makes harmful separations in the productive process. Production is separated from consumption, enjoyment from work, mental labour from physical labour. These separations lead to antagonisms, and the function that should be an integrated whole is divided against itself. Thus the producer of wealth who demands more wages is castigated for making the "consumer” suffer higher prices. The worker who takes his ideas from capitalist propagandists is encouraged to vent his frustration as producer on to the consumer, and his frustration as consumer on to the producer—and the underlying, but real cause of the trouble is ignored.

The aim of the employer is to make the human labour power that he has bought as productive as possible. All kinds of aids to intensified exploitation are introduced, so that the maximum amount of profit is achieved in the shortest possible time. It is a matter of little concern that the conditions of work are such that all joy is taken from it, and the worker comes to look upon it as an evil necessity. The remedy applied, under Capitalism, for this deplorable state of affairs is not, as one might reasonably hope, the adjustment of the work to the needs of the worker as a human being, though industrial psychology whitewashes its economic motives by pretending to do this. Instead a substitute —leisure—is found for the satisfaction that is lacking in capitalist employment. Tied to unpleasant, boring and socially useless jobs, people are encouraged to make their non-working hours the centre of their lives, the part that they "look forward to.” But you cannot switch on a human being as you can a machine, and so the way in which the hours of employment are spent inevitably has its effects on the ways of spending leisure. Regimented and controlled at the factory or office, the worker tends to lose the desire to participate actively in his own amusement, and all to often relies on mass-produced entertainment to be sold to him. 

Impersonality and Excessive Specialisation

As a consequence of the commodity function placed upon human labour power, personal worth is reduced to exchange value. Everyone has his price, not only for what he does but for what he is. Human relationships are regarded as the subject of calculated business transactions ("what does he want in return?”) and are lacking in all dignity. The situation is well described by Hortense Powdermaker in "Hollywood— The Dream Factory”:—

“Man has become increasingly lonely. Although people live in close physical contact, their relationships have become more and more depersonalised. We have a sense of being with people, and yet do not feel in any way related to them. The technique of business and many other organisations in trying to personalise their selling relationships, such as by announcing the name of employees to customers, really fools no one. The fact that the name of the post office clerk, the bank teller or the person who handles complaints in the department store, is posted does not really influence their relationship with customers. The market place is still basically impersonal."

Perhaps the greatest denial of human characteristics is the excessive specialisation of function that Capitalism has developed. In earlier societies man was able to combine in one person many different functions and, in relation to his society, his development was many-sided. The craftsman in feudal times had the satisfaction of making whole articles, and his work held interest and pleasure for him because he could clearly appreciate the social value of what he produced. Today the worker rarely makes a whole article or gives a service that is wanted, not for business, but for its own sake. He is part of a machine for producing wealth and, like all machines, he must be made to function as "efficiently” as possible. Thus the multifarious operations required in the production of a motor-car for competitive sale must, as Ford has shown, be broken down into their simplest component parts; so that the ultimate aim is that the worker shall make only one movement as frequently as possible.

Throughout the whole range of capitalist employments the accent lies on paying attention almost exclusively to a small section of the whole economic process, which involves a failure to comprehend that it forms a segment of a much wider field. Few men have first-hand experience of any productive activity outside their own jobs—they come to rely more and more on the services of “ specialists.”

Symptoms of Maladjustment

What sort of cultural “superstructure” arises from this falsely separated, depersonalised and excessively specialised mode of production? In the short space of this article we can only touch upon a few aspects of present society, and show that they are given their character by the capitalist system. We read, for example, in Margaret Mead’s ‘“Male and Female,” of 

“ . . . the cultural meaning of prostitution and promiscuous homosexuality, venereal disease, acute alcoholism, and sex crimes. These all occur, and their form and frequency are indices of the maladjustment that exists in the United States, as in every modern society. They are symptoms of the state of society, just as the phobias and compulsions of the patient are symptoms.

“They are systematically related to the culture.” 

When we compare this approach to the one that seeks to lay blame for society’s ills on the individual’s wickedness, we can see how much more rational the former is. The solution, we perceive, is not to complain that there are “problem” people in the world who must be reformed, but to tackle the cause of the problem in the world itself. The dualism that characterises everything under Capitalism—buyer and seller, employee and employer, competition and monopoly, work and leisure—is perhaps most apparent in the gulf between the theory of what should be and the practice of what is. This is aptly illustrated by Bergen Evans in “The Natural History of Nonsense”:—

“We are brought up to expect rewards for certain kinds of behaviour and then thrown into a world in which none of the signals works. We are taught as children to be kind, self-sacrificing, and helpful, never to to be greedy or aggressive. Then we must five in a ruthlessly competitive economy. We are taught to be honest, in preparation for a world in which honesty is often penalized, and dishonesty, in a thousand forms, is often rewarded. Our ambition is stimulated and we are assured of success if we will onty ‘apply ourselves,' when actually, by the very nature of things, nine out of ten must be disappointed, and chance carries as much weight as merit.

“ The result is mass frustration and despair.”

#    #    #    #

Such is the capitalist environment into which we are born. Yet, in spite of it all, people do, on the whole, manage to be kind, unselfish, helpful and honest, and their greed and aggressiveness is mostly the reaction to unfortunate circumstances. It is certain that if such a disunited, contradictory, and anarchical system as Capitalism can hold people together in society, then one which is designed to harmonise with their needs will not fail because of the frailty of human nature.

Stan Parker

(Next Article: We Learn From Social Scientists.)

The Passing Show: Agitators (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agitators

It has been an accepted ruling-class myth for a long time now that strikes are caused by people called agitators. Whenever industrial trouble breaks out, the management’s bloodhounds set out to track down “the agitators”, the sinister background figures who are at the bottom of it all. The papers try to convince us that the workers concerned are perfectly happy with whatever wages and conditions the management sees fit to grant them, and that they would work away at their benches making ever greater profits for their masters without a single complaint — were it not for “the agitators". This must be one of the least convincing theories ever produced, even by a ruling class. It received another severe blow recently, at Ford’s Dagenham works. Here, as at many other factories, these powerful agitators who bring the men out on strike when they don’t really want to stop work are usually identified as the shop stewards. At the end of May the Ford Motor Company rejected outright a pay claim, not offering even sixpence a week more. So the shop stewards, ”the agitators”, called a one-day token strike in protest. But the men simply turned down this proposal, and continued work.

With the band in front

This underlined still further the obvious fact that workers come out on strike when they want to come out on strike, and not merely at the behest of agitators. No agitator in the world could make men strike if they didn't want to. Shop stewards, men who serve on strike committees, and so on, simply march with the band in front. Children love to run to the head of processions, and march in front of them, to pretend that they are the leaders. But if the band turns off down a side street, the “leader” has to go with it or be left marching on his own, a general without an army. And there is no sadder sight than that.

All day and every day

We are often treated in the press to learned articles about “the real reasons” for the trouble at any industrial plant where there have been a number of stoppages. But there is no need to go beyond the fact that the workers are exploited, plus the methods adopted by managements to screw out ever more surplus value. It is now agreed by almost everybody that the tasks which the workers have to do to stay alive are boring, monotonous, repetitive, soul-destroying, and offer no opportunity whatever for them to satisfy their basic human creative instincts, their need to do a job in which they can take a pride. The correspondent of the Observer (3-6-62) quoted one of the men at Dagenham:

The monotony of the work is another thing that gets you down. You take the Anglia handbrake. Putting it in involves turning four screws, 30 handbrakes an hour, all day and every day.

This particular job consists of putting in 120 screws every hour in every working day throughout the foreseeable future. The worker has to do every two minutes exactly what he did in the last two minutes. These newspaper articles, surely, are tackling the problem from the wrong angle. What causes astonishment to the impartial observer is not that there should be so much trouble at Ford’s, but that there should be so little elsewhere.

Salvation of souls

There is so little beauty in the lives of people living under capitalism, and such a large proportion of the few beautiful buildings remaining to us from earlier ages is destroyed every time we have a war, that one would think what we have is worth preserving. But some authorities in the Church of England believe otherwise, Not long ago the President of the Society of Antiquaries of London was protesting that the Chancellor of the Diocese of Ely had decided to demolish three ancient parish churches — Denton, built largely in the seventeenth century, and Woolley and Islington (Norfolk) which are mediaeval. In reply to this protest, a reverend gentleman from Worcester said that the purpose of the Church “is the salvation of souls and not the provision and upkeep of museums and ancient monuments.”

It is as if the worshippers of Athena Parthenos decided to knock down the Parthenon which was built as a temple for Athena, on the grounds that nobody now wants to pray to Athena in it—which of course nobody does. The fact that a particular superstition was once practised in a particular building doesn't make it any the less beautiful, but obviously the diocese of Ely sets more store upon the preservation of superstition than of beauty.

Cloisters

A similar instance of the benefits of private ownership is the case of William Randolph Hearst and the Spanish cloisters. Hearst, it appears, never even saw the cloisters, which dated from the twelfth century; but he heard that the monks in a remote part of Spain were prepared to sell their cloisters, so he sent along one of his employees to buy them. He then had to assuage the anger of the local villagers (real or pretended) at the removal of this relic by further large payments to them. Next he hired workmen to dismantle the cloisters stone by stone, had a sawmill built to make the cases to pack the stones in, and then had an extra twenty-one miles of railway constructed to transport the stones when they had been packed. They were taken all the way to Hearst’s gigantic fake castle at San Simeon in the United States, and there stored in enormous warehouses along with other art treasures which Hearst had bought from every corner of the world. This vast collection, not even unpacked, was still there when Hearst died years later.

Amber fountains

The next actor in this tragic farce is George Huntingdon Hartford II, an American multi-millionaire who has bought Hog Island near Nassau in the Bahamas, re-christened it Paradise Island, and is now at a cost of twenty-five million dollars turning it into a fantastically luxurious kind of Super-Cinerama playground for other multi-millionaires. A double room at the Ocean Club is said 'continued bottom left to cost up to £50 a day. It is not yet finished. Above the Ocean Club a “gently rising succession of terraces" is to be constructed, and at the summit, above the illuminated swimming pool, the purple creepers and the amber fountains, there will be erected, and floodlit, William Randolph Hearst’s twelfth-century Spanish cloisters. Huntingdon Hartford bought it. complete with packing-cases, from Hearst’s estate. But there is one small fly in the ointment. The plans for the cloister cannot now be found, and no-one knows how the stones are supposed to go together.

It seems that everything that capitalism touches, it defiles.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Is the Living Wage sound? (1927)

Editorial from the March 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Living Wage” is a pamphlet written by H. N. Brailsford, J. A. Hobson, A. Creech Jones and E. F. Wise, and published by the I.L.P. It takes the form of a report submitted to the National Administrative Council of that party.

The opening chapter is entitled “The place of Wages in a Labour Strategy,” and is chiefly concerned with an attempt to strike a balance between the industrialists, on the one hand, and the political socialists, so-called, on the other. The latter, we are told, hope to tackle the problem of a living-wage, gradually, by nationalising, as occasion offers, the more essential industries one after the other.

“The New Leader,” 21.1.1927, page 7, devotes a column to proving that nationalised industries are run on business lines equal to anything under private enterprise. Expenses are cut down to a minimum, both in the number of employees and the wages paid. It would appear, therefore, that the I.L.P. have sufficient evidence to prove that the workers under nationalised institutions are no better off than those under ordinary capitalist concerns. At any rate, the enquiry now going on into the question of wages and conditions of Post Office employees should cause them to hesitate before accepting nationalisation as a means to raise wages or improve conditions for the workers.

But the writers of this pamphlet do not base their ideas on facts. To them nationalisation stands for Socialism, and Socialism stands for State control of all industries. According to them the workers remain wage-workers, living by the sale of their labour-power, whatever changes may take place; consequently they say :

“That to nationalise important industries in conditions which resemble those which prevail to-day would be a disappointing and even perilous proceeding.” (p. 3.)

We can now see the necessity for “labour strategy,” industries must only be nationalised by a Labour Government, when the possibility of raising wages will gain for them additional political kudos. How futile, even, such a policy as this would be is shown by the writers themselves :

“The industry of coal-mining is overmanned, and is carrying to-day a burden of surplus labour of anything over 100,000 men. A national administration would have to make its choice. It might maintain the uneconomic pits, risk the consequences of over-production, and continue to carry the burden of this surplus labour. In that case, it would either pay low wages or require a subsidy. The other alternative before it would be to close down the uneconomic pits and turn a big body of men adrift.” (p. 4.)

Exactly ! A Labour administration, neither elected for, nor understanding Socialism, would have to face the same responsibilities as the present capitalist Government. They would have to ensure the normal working of the system, including the exploitation of the class they pretend to represent. They could not excuse themselves for extravagance in administration because they have always preached economy in this respect in the workers’ interests. To the industrialists the writers say :

“Labour when it sells itself as a commodity in the market must usually accept a price which varies according to its scarcity.” (p. 6.)

While this statement is incomplete and unscientific in itself it is, nevertheless, an admission that wages are not determined by “public opinion” or “ethical principles that have been generally accepted.” In the body of the pamphlet there is a good deal of absurdity along these lines. All that kind of sentimental nonsense vanishes before their grudging admission that :

“In the last resort it is on the organised refusal of men to work for less than a living wage that our hope of securing it lies.’ (p. 7.)

It will be seen from the quotation in reference to coal mines that the writers appear to be impressed with the idea that capitalists are confronted with grave difficulties in the business of making profits. Hence a large portion of the pamphlet is devoted to assisting them with advice on (1) the reorganisation of industry, and (2) how to create a market.

It is now generally accepted that the enormous increase of unemployment in recent years is due to the extended application of machinery and labour-saving devices and methods. Yet the writers specifically stipulate that reorganisation of industry and mass production is a necessary condition of higher wages. They ignore the fact that in order to pay higher wages numbers of workers must be dismissed. They admire American methods, especially Ford’s, and seriously advise British capitalists to follow suit. They use the following figures as evidence of American prosperity :

“Mr. Hoover, in the annual report of his department for 1925, has published an official analysis of American prices and wages. Taking 100 as the index of the year 1913, he shows that wholesale prices had risen in 1924 to 150, while wages had risen to 228.” (p. 48.)

To understand the significance of this quotation we must first of all recognise that the workers’ improvement does not commence until his wages have reached the 150 mark. Moreover, he must buy his necessaries at retail prices, which will be much higher. The difference in 1924 was, therefore, only 78 minus the difference between wholesale and retail prices. However, this difference applies to the average worker when lucky enough to be employed. No account whatever is taken of unemployment and its increase resulting from the reorganisation. When reckoning the workers’ share of the national income, the writers should have expressed it as a proportional fraction of the total and not as the average wage of those workers lucky enough to be fully employed.

The facts regarding the Ford methods and the relation of production to wages were dealt with in the S.S. for December, 1926, and need not be repeated here. These facts show conclusively that mass production everywhere returns far less in wages per unit of production, and that it depends upon progressively doing this for its success as a business concern.

The contention of the writers that the higher wages of mass production constitute a market, becomes a myth when we realise that the total wages bill is actually reduced by this method.

The writers, however, do not rely entirely on reorganisation to bring about their eldorado. They have two further reforms. First, “An enlightened credit policy,” and second, “family allowances.” The object of the first, we are told, is to stabilise prices and employment.

“At the first distant signs of a slump, it must be the duty of the bank slightly to expand the volume of credit and to lower its price; at the first distant signs of a boom, it will gently apply restrictive measures. Our assumption is that in this way the price level can be kept steady, and the general level of employment constant.”

Their object is clearly stated. It is to wipe out the fluctuations in trade ; to reduce trade and consequently production and employment to its mean level. But there is no more water in the sea when its surface is calm than when it is boisterous. Trade is not increased by restricting it when it is inclined to rise and encouraging it when it flags. The volume remains the same. It is only the fluctuations that have been wiped put.

The second reform is easily seen to be useless as a means to increase the purchasing power of the workers. Capitalists and capitalist governments understand business methods too well to be induced to pay for the same thing twice over. If they keep the children by increased taxation through the State machinery, wages can be reduced to the cost of keeping man and wife.

This is clearly shown in the pamphlet under review. A scheme drawn up by an Australian Federal Commission is instanced. The Commission estimated the weekly sum necessary for a family of 5 persons to be £5 16s. When it was shown by the Federal Statistician that such a sum would absorb all profits, the Commission reviewed their figures and suggested a wage of £4 for man and wife with an allowance of 12s. for each dependent child.

Here, then, is an actual case, quoted by the writers themselves, where a Commission evidently favourably inclined towards the workers, did exactly what the capitalist would be expected to do. Moreover, it is obvious that the writers have this result in mind all the time. They say :

“It is important to note that family allowances provide the only hopeful method of realising the ideal of ‘equal pay for equal work’ as between women and men. There would, for example, be no reasonable objection to equal salaries for men and women teachers if the children of married teachers were provided for in this way.” (p. 26.)

In other words, the salaries of men teachers could be reduced to the level of women if they were relieved of the responsibility of keeping their children.

The net result of the three reforms : reorganisation of industry, stabilisation, and family allowances, so far as the workers are concerned, is a balance on the wrong side. Reorganisation increases unemployment, stabilisation does nothing, one way or the other, while family allowances merely reduce the employers’ wages costs.

But the futility of the reforms is nothing compared to the harm done to the workers by the publication of the work. Apart from the confusion it engenders, the real relations of capitalists and workers, the class antagonism, is glossed over and smothered. It puts on one side the opposing interests of the two classes and holds out the bait of a prosperous industry that will enrich capitalists and keep the workers fully employed.

It is an attempt to persuade the workers that it is possible so to reform the capitalist system that there will be no occasion to work for its abolition. Under mass production, stabilisation, and family allowances, the workers would find their interests identical with their masters’. Yet the writers of this work call themselves “Socialists.” If they have not written it with the deliberate intention of confusing the workers, they should begin at once to try and understand what Socialism means.

Henry Ford or Karl Marx? (1926)

From the August 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Sunday Observer (11.7.26) Mr. J. L. Garvin wrote an article headed “Ford or Marx.” The inspiration for the article was Norman. Angell’s book, “Must Britain Travel the Moscow Road,” which professes to be a reply to Trotsky’s book, “Where Britain is going.”

Times out of number we have balanced accounts with the Russians, and incurred much odium by pointing out that Bolshevism was not Socialism, and that Bolshevik policy was entirely opposed to the principle set forth by Marx. But it pleases the opponents of the workers to confuse the two positions in order the better to resist the spread of Socialism.

For this purpose any stick is good enough. Mr. Garvin brings forward the once execrable, but now quite respectable, Bernard Shaw, and even the ghost of the honest and delightful old dreamer William Morris.

A single article is not sufficient to deal fully with the collection of false suggestions put forward by Mr. Garvin, so I will confine myself to a brief examination of one or two of his leading points.

The first point to clear up is the confusion between Bolshevik policy and the principles laid down by Marx.

Briefly the Bolshevik policy was as follows :—

The conversion of Russian industry from a culture that was overwhelmingly a backward peasant culture into a communistic culture at one bound, without the intervention of capitalist methods of organisation. The capture of power was to be accomplished by a small minority who were to lead the backward masses. Parliament was taboo and armed street risings the method of procedure. The providing of suitable “slogans” with which to play upon the emotions of the ignorant majority was an important part of the policy. The final futility of the Bolshevik programme has been amply proved by subsequent Russian history. The peasants were too backward to grasp the meaning of communism, and to get out of their own insular way of looking at things. A small group of quarrelling partners rule Russia at present, but are compelled to rule in accordance with the needs and wishes of the vast mass of the population—the backward peasants. It is the peasant that, in the main, determines Bolshevik policy to-day, and will do so for a long time to come.

What was Marx’s views on the above methods? In the preface to Capital he states in unequivocal language :

“One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement. … it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.” (“Capital,” Vol. 4, p. xix.)

Marx’s collaborator, and “other self,” Engels, stated, in the last thing he wrote, the introduction to “The Class Struggles in France,” that:—

“The time is past for resolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake, and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required, and it is this work that we are now performing with results that drive our enemies to despair.”

The Bolsheviks took the leap, and have landed in a quagmire.

The above quotations on Marx’s point of view are sufficient to dissociate it from Bolshevism.

The next point we come to is Mr. Garvin’s statement that:—

“Mr. Shaw could do more than any man in Europe to destroy the antiquated Marxist superstition which hinders or paralyses the progress of labour on this side of the Atlantic.”

Mr. Garvin gives us no information about this “superstition,” nor does he point out how it hinders. This is a convenient method of arguing, as it knocks the object down without the trouble of hitting it.

Farther on he says :—

”Marx egregiously over-estimated the importance of manual labour by itself. The single person with the original idea is more important economically than the thousands of workers whose employment never would have existed if he had not created it. When Henry Ford in 1914 had the idea of a minimum wage of a pound a day for his workers with profit-sharing on a large scale—terms improved since then—he knocked the bottom out of abstract Marxism deduced front studies in the British Museum.”

The opening sentence is false; the second is a joke. Marx examined the way in which the wealth of capitalism (commodities) was produced and analysed the part played by capitalist and worker. Up to the present no one has been able to show any essential fault in this analysis, although hundreds of professors of political economy have attempted the task. In the course of his analysis Marx showed the respective places of the so-called “manual” and “mental” workers and demonstrated that each was a member of the working class, and had identical interests as opposed to the interests of capital. It has been a common charge against Marx that he ignored the so-called “intellectual” worker. The charge has been levelled by the professional intellectuals, who feel their importance acutely, and would like to think that they are in a class apart, and distinct, from the “common working man” and the wealthy idler. Many years ago Paul Lafargue, in his brilliant essay entitled “The Intellectuals,” reduced their dignity to the level of carrots and potatoes.

Mr. Garvin, however, makes a variation, and puts Henry Ford among the band of economic giants. The argument is a joke.

Taking it at its face value Henry Ford introduced more economical methods of production. The result of improvement in methods is the production of a given quantity of goods with the employment of less workers, and the more rapid satisfaction of the demand for goods. Carried out on a sufficiently extensive scale this means that relatively fewer and fewer workers are required to meet the international demand for goods, an increase in the number of workers seeking jobs ‘that have ceased to exist. The final El Dorado is a small number of workers enjoying high wages and producing all the world requires to meet its needs, and a vast number of workers without employment or the means to purchase goods so lavishly produced ! Not long ago Mr. Ford himself experienced the effect of his methods. So rapidly had motor cars been produced by his system that the market was glutted and he had to close down his works ! A curious way of providing employment !

Another aspect of the question is given by the following quotation from the American Appeal, June 5th, 1926 :—

“Labour’s share of the automobile dollar is shrinking under large-scale mass production, as revealed in the United States census of manufactures for 1925. These figures show that last year only 32.4 per cent. of the value created in the industry went to wages, compared with 40 per cent. in 1923 and 38.6 per cent. in 1919. In 1899, the first year in which automobile production appears in the census, the workers received 44.8 per cent. of the value they created.

“In 1925, according to the figures, automobile manufacturers received $3,371,855,805 for their output, an increase of $208,257,931 over 1923. Deducting the cost of materials leaves the actual value created by manufacture at $1,168,868,466, an increase of $153,003,944 over 1923. In 1925, however, those who actually produced the motor vehicles received only $379,284,935, a decrease of $27,445,343 from 1923. While employer receipts increased 15 per cent. in 2 years, labour’s receipts for operating the industry decreased nearly 7 per cent.” (“American Appeal,” 5/6/1926.)

The above figures show clearly the object and result of the Ford method—more profit for the employers and less return to the workers for the energy they use up.

Mr. Garvin concludes his article with the statement that:—

“Karl Marx, the mid-Victorian Calvin of economics, is as dead as a dodo. That practical, original, Henry Ford—as the epoch-making symbol of high wages and profit-sharing—is the real spirit of the morning.”

In the land in which Henry Ford is a financial king the Federal Trade Commission reports that:—

“One per cent. of the population of the United States owns 59 per cent. of the wealth.

“Thirteen per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the wealth.

“Eighty-seven per cent. of the population own 10 per cent. of the wealth.” (“Labour,” June 5th, 1926.)

So much for the land of high wages and profit sharing !

Finally the following quotation may help to dispel any delusion as to who benefits by the prosperity of Ford industries :—

“Last year’s profits of the Ford Motor Company, which started business in 1903 with a capital of $28,000, amounted to $145,000,000, approximately $23,000,000, according to reports filed by the company yesterday.

“Only three persons, Mr. Ford, his wife, and his son, own the stock of the company. On the basis of the published figures it is estimated that every vehicle manufactured by the Ford works brings in a profit of 44.90 dollars (£9), to the shareholders.” (“Daily News,” 9th May, 1926.)

If Marx is “antiquated,” and “is dead as the dodo,” why all the excitement? We have been reading for years that he was “dead,” but he seems to be a pretty lively corpse, and a pretty awkward one.

The facts are he ruthlessly exposed the groundwork of capitalism, and correctly foreshadowed the general methods of its future development. The main propositions he laid down are as true, but more obvious, to-day, as when he wrote. The worker is poor because he is robbed of the product of his mental and manual labours. He is kept in a subject condition by a class that lives like a leech on his back. The means of subjection are the public coercive powers that are centred in Parliament. By preaching “brotherly love” between capitalist and workman the emissaries of the masters seek to disarm the worker’s growing suspicions and induce him to send to Parliament representatives whose object is either to conserve the power of capital or to mislead and make futile any real attempts of the workers to remove wage-slavery.

When Mr. Garvin and Mr. Ford are as dead as a dodo the people of future generations will be celebrating the memory of one of the greatest thinkers of all times— Karl Marx.

Gilmac.

Prosperity and “Dividing-up”. (1926)

From the February 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of the testimonies, plain to the eye of the beholder who observes intelligently, most people do not really grasp the immensity of modern production. When the Socialist puts forward his plea for the common ownership of the means of wealth production he is sometimes greeted with the statement that if all the wealth produced was divided among the whole of the people, the workers would receive little more than they do at present owing to the small number of those who are very wealthy and the multitude of those who are poor. Quotations are given from economic “authorities” who assert that if the wealth of the rich, or the total income of the whole of the people were “divided up” the result would only amount to an extra pound or two each. The insignificance of the amount is then paraded as a demonstration of the unpractical and delusive nature of Socialist proposals.

Although “dividing up” has no place in the Socialist philosophy, and our case, from the point of view of wealth, is built upon modern productive capacity rather than the actual amount of wealth at present produced, yet it is still possible to build up a strong position even on the ground of what is actually produced. The great war furnished us with unanswerable evidence on this side.

Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, dealing with the cost of the war in his little book. “Paris—the Future of War,” makes the following statement : —

“For this country alone it reached a cost of £8,000,000 daily. Our total war expenditure was nearly ten thousand million pounds.” (page 10.)

There are roughly fifteen million families in this country. Taking this and the above figures, a little arithmetical calculation gives us an interesting result. Ten thousand millions for four years is two thousand five hundred millions a year; and this divided by fifteen millions is, roughly, a hundred and sixty-six pounds a year per family, or more than three pounds a week. Modern production, then, is so prolific that this country was able, literally, to throw down the drain for four years the equivalent of three pounds a week per family, and yet produce enough to feed, clothe and house the civil population during the whole of that time and even enable war profiteers to accumulate vast fortunes !

Unreflecting people may raise objections to the view here set forth on the ground that the war was financed, to a great extent, by credit, and brought in its wake a National Debt ten times the size of the prewar debt. In reply to this, it may be well to point out that credit will not fill empty stomachs or the cannon’s hungry mouth. Wealth to the full value was actually produced. An army of approximately four millions was fed, clothed and supplied with munitions of war; munition workers were fed, clothed and housed ; and the rest of the civil population were fed, clothed and housed, during those four years of comedy and tragedy.

The professional economist who claims to “prove” that modern production is incapable of meeting with ease the needs of the whole population, can only do so by playing tricks with figures, an old and oft-used method by the special pleaders for those who rule.

There is another type of special pleader who is constantly urging the worker to work hard, work long, and work cheaply in order that goods may be produced in greater abundance so that there will be more to “divide.” The theory being that cheap wares flooding the market will “stimulate” industry and bring work to the workless and more wages to those working. There has been a minor boom in this stuff lately (I learn that it has also invaded the columns of the “Daily Herald”), and America has been held up as a kind of El Dorado of hard work, peace and prosperity for workers and masters.

As the information is both interesting and conflicting, I will give some specimens.

The New York correspondent of the “Evening Standard” (16. 12. 25.) writes rapturously, “All classes in the country are saving money and making investments in stocks and bonds” ; Trade Unionism as a challenge to Capitalism is practically dead ; “the leaders of the American trade-union movement have long recognised that if they kill the golden goose of financial leadership, they must go without the advantages of high wages” ; class antagonism is breaking down and the United States is well on the way to demonstrating that “Capitalism is its own justification and is the most effective economic system to ensure general prosperity.” The New York Correspondent concludes with the remarks that, “The necessity for trade union threats to secure higher wages is disappearing fast from American industrial relationships. . . . So improved machinery finds no obstacles among the working men, who see in every time-saving device the possibility of more money to themselves, if not immediately, yet in the measureable future.”

So writes the New York Correspondent, and I must say I am “drawn” by his touching reference to the “golden goose of financial leadership.” A golden goose must be a dead thing, and utterly different from the American goose that lays the golden eggs.

Two days after reading the New York Correspondent’s article, I was brought up with a jerk by another article in the same paper, but in the columns headed “A Londoner’s Diary” (18. 12. 25.), and this is what “A Londoner” said :—

“It is too much our custom to believe that wage disputes are indigenous to this country, and that no other peoples are affected by Labour troubles.

“I am advised from New York that a first class industrial crisis is rapidly maturing in that city, as a consequence of a general increase in prosperity. Fifty trades, representing some 120,000 mechanics and labourers, are asking for new wage contracts for the coming year.

“Of these some thirty-seven trades demand increases varying from 50 cents, to four dollars a day, which would mean for the year a total increase of the wages bill of 80 million dollars) or 20 million pounds, in the industries affected.

”The employers, however, are disinclined to consider these demands. . . .

“A typical demand is that of the building trades, who ask for an average wage increase of 14 per cent. There is still, of course, plenty of time for negotiation, but the means for a settlement do not appear favourable.”

Here is contradictory information which suggests that the amicable relations praised by the New York Correspondent partakes, of the stuff of which dreams are made. But there is a point of agreement between the two which it would be wise to make a note of—there is prosperity in America whether the American workers have a part in it or not.

The Washington correspondent of the Sunday “Observer” (10. 1. 26.) also has something to say on this subject. He writes of American prosperity in even stronger terms. He says :

“There was never in any country in any time such a prodigal production of goods or such a wide diffusion of them.” . . .

“America has not only escaped the post-war debacle, but has gone on to unparalleled prosperity.” . . .

“In America, organised labour is so fully committed to the principle which looks with suspicion upon any limitation on individual output, and which favours the largest output by each man, on the theory that the more goods produced the more there will be to divide.”

The correspondent of the “Observer” explains American prosperity by the economies, mechanical short-cuts, standardisation, and other devices that have “made Henry Ford’s automobile factory a model for the maximum output with the greatest economy of labour,” and “America has just seen a combination of conditions that defies orthodox political economy : lowering costs and prices of goods, accompanied by higher wages for labour.”

The last quotation knocks the props away from the case built up by employers in this country who contend that England cannot compete in the international market on account of high prices due to relatively high wages. It is not the work of the low-paid coolie that is threatening English industry so much as the low-priced product of the high-priced American workman. The railwayman, the shipyard worker, and the coalminer would be wise to bear this in mind when fighting wage reductions because American high wages (whether true or false) is boosted by the papers that publish matter serving the interests of the employer.

The “Daily News” (22. 1. 26.) publishes extracts from a report by two young British engineers, who have recently toured America, on the conditions that have brought about American prosperity. They also support the high wages—low prices view as a lesson to European nations.

But to return to the main point—the suggestion that cheapening productive methods brings as a result a greater production of goods and consequently more to divide with greater prosperity for everybody.

It requires very little thought to dispel this pleasant phantasy.

The absolute ideal aimed at by industry is a future when one man can, by pressing a button, set in motion the machinery that will automatically perform all the functions necessary to produce what will meet the needs of the whole world without the help of another labourer. The greater the productivity of machinery and the economy of labour the nearer industry approaches to this ideal. That is to say, that fewer and fewer workers are required to attend to the needs of the world. Given the capitalist method of production, under which the means of production and the products are owned by the employers, it is surely obvious that, after a certain limit has been passed, the greater the productivity of machinery the more workers will be thrown out of work whose labour has been “saved.” How will they stand in the division of wealth? As they will not be receiving any wages they will have no means with which to buy—unless it be the unemployment dole ! So that the future of industry would appear to present a picture of growing prosperity in which wage earners tend to decline and dole receivers tend to increase. A beautiful picture of prosperity !

Gilmac.

Marx in modern times (1979)

Book Review from the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labor and Monopoly Capital, by Harry Braverman. Monthly Review Press, 1974. (£3.25)

Labor and Monopoly Capital is a most remarkable book, providing the answer to the criticisms, alleged refutations and revisions of Marxism.

Carrying on from Marx’s own description of the transformation of the labour process by manufacture in Volume I of Capital (manufacture begins when the tool is driven by a machine) Braverman gives the first detailed historical study of the continuation of the process in its hot bed, the United States of America.

Our author, by the way, is in the best tradition of the worker-writer. Unlike Professors of Sociology, who do nothing but lecture students and conduct “surveys” (ask people their opinions of themselves) Harry Braverman is a skilled coppersmith who spent seven years or so working as a craftsman in the shipyards. While this does not necessarily make him right, it does make him interesting! He knows what he writes about, from books and from life.

He explains that the way to increase relative surplus value is to break down the labour process into the tiniest possible detail, transferring from the productive worker the last vestige of any kind of decision about size, shape, weight, material to the “office”. The worker can now be watched and timed, every moment being closely studied and recorded. This is the famous Taylor system of scientific management. Braverman recounts from Taylor’s own book The Principles of Scientific Management how he raised the handling of pig iron at the Bethlehem Steel Company from 12½ to 47 tons per man per day, with a 60 per cent increase in wages. They studied the men intently before selecting the first victim, “a little Dutchman”. The following dialogue ensued: 

“You see that pile of pig iron?”
“Yes”
“Well, if you are a high priced man you will load that pig iron on that car for $1.85 [the standard rate was $1.15]. “You will do exactly as this man tells you. When he tells you to pick up a pig and walk—you walk; when he tells you to sit down and rest, you sit down. And you do it straight through the day. But no back-talk — understand!”

As Braverman explains, this is the origin of the system of time and motion study now universal in capitalist production. True, now electronic timers, stroboscopic cameras, microphones, television cameras have been added, but the principle is the same (shades of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times).

Increasing Misery

Consequently Braverman is able to show pretty convincingly that Marx’s view regarding the increasing misery, dubbed the “weak point” of his system by so many latter-day critics, is not wrong, but absolutely right in America in 1979. The classic example is the Model T Ford car. With the invention of the now universal conveyor chain assembly line system, Ford was producing by 1925 as many cars in a day as he had in a year.

  But the new technology proved increasingly unpopular. The men walked out in droves; they could pick and choose. So great was labour’s distaste for the new system, that when the company wanted 100 men, it had to hire 963.

The Legend of Henry Ford, page 149.

However, once the conveyor belt system had spread to other plants the workers could not pick and choose: they were shackled to the assembly line.

Perhaps the author’s greatest achievement, in addition to showing the degradation of the craftsman to an automaton, is his shattering debunking of that sacred cow of American sociology, the “white collar worker”. How many gallons of ink, scores of surveys, dozens of graphs, have analysed the status of the so-called Management Sector?

From official sources, Braverman shows how the “white collar” worker in America today is actually paid below the wage rates of “blue collar” workers. The explanation given is that those very same methods of scientific management (Taylorism) have now invaded the office. The process of dividing all mental effort from the craftsman’s work has attacked the managers and their staffs.

  If one ascribes to the millions of present day clerical workers-the “middle class” of a long vanished clerical stratum of early capitalism, the result can only be a drastic misconception of modern society. Yet this is exactly the practice of academic sociology and popular journalism.
  [In the office] the productive processes of society disappear in a stream of paper, moreover, which is processed in a continuous flow line like that of a cannery, the meat packing line or the car assembly conveyor, by workers organised in much the same way.
  Time and motion study reveal just as startling results in the ordinary details of clerical work as they do in the factory . . . since every motion involves consumption of physical energy, why should not analysis result in the discovery of a mass of useful effort in clerical work, just as it does in the factory.
(Lee Galloway, Office Work, its Principles and Practice)

Braverman quotes from the Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards of the Systems and Procedures Association of America such gems as

           

          Chair Activity                   Minutes

Get up from chair                 .033
Sit down in chair                 .033
Turn in chair                         .009
Move in chair to adjoin desk .080

Similar times are given for cut with scissors, rubber stamping, collating, gather, lay aside, handle, punch, staple, and so on.

New Division of Labour

With the invention of the Hollerith punched card system a means of reading and interpreting simple data without direct human participation was available. Information is now stored by electric impulses, with the result that the magnetic disc-pack can store 29 million characters. These can be transferred to or from a computer at the rate of 186,000 characters a second. The computer introduces a new division of labour, the largest single new occupation being that of key punch operator.

  Mrs. Duncan described all key punch girls as nervous wrecks. Mrs. Calvin reported the same kind of tension. “If you tap one of them on the shoulder when she is working, she’ll fly through the ceiling. Although the girls do not quit, they stay home frequently and keep supplies of tranquillisers and aspirins at their desk”; they felt they were doing a factory job, “frozen” to their desk like an assembly line.

(Automation in the Office, Hoos)

The vice president of an insurance company, pointing to a room tilled with key punch operators, remarked “All they need is a chain”. Said one operator: “This job is no different from a factory job, except that I don’t gel paid as much”.

Typists' Pool Eliminated

With the use of the modern word processor the typists pool is eliminated. The other functions of the secretary are taken over by an “administrative support centre”, which handles filing, phone answering and postings. Thus Lewis Corey could write “a typical large office is now nothing but a white collar factory.”

  The problem of the so-called employees, or white collar workers, which so bothered early generations of Marxists, and which was hailed by the anti-Marxists as proof of the falsity of the ‘proletarianisation’ theses, has thus been unambiguously clarified by the polarisation of office employment, and the growth at one pole of an immense mass of wage workers. The apparent trend to a large non-proletarian ‘middle class’ has resolved itself into the creation of a large proletariat in a new form.

This is a book in which the problems of the so-called middle class, ‘‘increased misery", polarisation, automation, are dealt with on strictly Marxian lines . It has the further merit of being written in clear, limpid style of easy flowing English.

Horatio

50 Years Ago: Ford v. Marx (1976)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two or three months ago, one of our contributors had occasion to criticise the illusions of the Editor of the “Observer” concerning the respective intellectual merits of the notorious exploiter of motor-car producers and the author of “Capital” and other works of economic criticism. Now it appears that the editor of the “New Leader” shares some, at least, of his Conservative colleague’s fantasies.

In a recent article under the above heading, Mr. Brailsford emulates Mr. Garvin in seeking to delude his readers with the belief that Marx’s analysis has (once more) been exploded, and his predictions falsified, because, forsooth, American capitalists have discovered how to make huge profits while paying high wages. We are told that the fundamental principle of capitalism according to Marx has been discarded. The new capitalism has got rid of poverty, and Mr. Brailsford’s sole objection to it is that it is autocratic!

Now the object of capitalist production is profit. Marx dealt fairly exhaustively with this fact, and no one has yet demonstrated the alleged error in his reasoning. He also showed that wages, like the prices of other commodities, were an extremely variable factor. Nowhere did he suggest that they could never rise: while he indicated, with exceptional clarity, the part played by machinery in intensifying the exploitation of higher-paid labour-power and reducing the proportion of the workers’ share in the fruits of their labour.

#    #    #    #

Elsewhere in his article, the “New Leader's" editor refers to the fact that one-third of the American workers are below the poverty line! Marx, therefore, would appear to have been exploded only in the imagination of Mr. Brailsford, and those who think like him.

(From an article “Ford v. Marx” by Eric Boden, Socialist Standard, December 1926)

The Strange Death of European Social Democracy (1997)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Political Economy of Social Democracy: The Swedish Collapse, The Danish Mystery, The British Mirage and the German Dilemma by Stuart Wilks-Heeg (South Bank European Papers)

Capitalism is a global system, and has become more so than ever over the last twenty years. This fairly straightforward axiom is just one important factor lying behind the failure of Social Democratic reformism not only to deliver on its pseudo-socialist promises, but also its failure to even manage capitalism successfully on its own terms.

The Social Democratic failure is often couched in terms of a collapse of electoral support, but Stuart Wilks-Heeg argues in this pamphlet that "the primary challenge facing Social Democrats is one of political economy, not one of electoral decline." In fact, one of the points made most clearly in this pamphlet is that electoral support for the Social Democratic parties has not collapsed but, rather, has begun to fluctuate, often quite wildly, after a thirty-year post-war period of fairly steady ascendancy. Possible reasons for this are put forward in the pamphlet.

The one that Wilks-Heeg spends most space analysing is the collapse of Fordism, both as a method for the mass-production of consumer goods and as an ideological system that included Keynesian economics as one of its components and relied for its smooth operation on what Wilks-Heeg calls a ‘‘class compromise”, this consisting basically of a trade-off between higher wages and higher productivity. This, he says, was the basis for Social Democratic political economy.

Wilks-Heeg seems to be under some misapprehensions surrounding this point. He states, for example, that this class compromise succeeded in “combining productivity growth, full employment, labour peace, welfare state expansion, steady wage growth and greater social equality”. Much of this is no doubt true—except, crucially, “greater social equality”. A rise in wages does not mean an erosion of inequality, particularly when profits rise at a similar or higher rate, a factor represented here by "productivity growth". While workers certainly did become "better off”, inequalities, including those of power, remained more-or-less the same, the capitalists remaining in charge, workers remaining wage-slaves.

The "success" of Western Social Democracy was largely illusory and certainly very limited as, even in its own terms, it was based on a "class compromise" that was in its turn largely a product of Western capitalism's ability to keep ahead in global capitalist competition and of the absence of severe economic crisis. When the economies of other nations and blocs, particularly in the Middle and the Far East, began to technologically "catch up", and when global profit rates fell Western economic stability evaporated along with its hegemony and took the Social Democratic mirage with it.

The shift in international economic/power relations made a qualitative change in Western methods of production necessary, as Wilks-Heeg states:

  "Today, in an era of globalisation, rapid technological change and dramatically enhanced competition, capital has sought greater flexibility and deregulation . . . Inevitably, these changes have disrupted the terms of the class compromise. In order to survive, capital has had to break from traditional relationships with labour and pressured governments to facilitate flexibility and de-regulation."

In other words, class struggle in the West has gone from a relatively muted affair into a state of open warfare, with the ruling class very much on the attack. In the face of this attack the Social Democrat reformists have simply capitulated, being openly and fully on the side of capital and Union leaders have by-and-large gone with them, apparently regarding themselves (in a time dishonoured neo-Stalinist manner) as simply the industrial wing of the Social Democratic parties, trying to keep the workers in line to facilitate electoral victories for their political masters.

This pamphlet contains much that we would not agree with but, on the whole, Wilks-Heeg presents a very pertinent and interesting analysis of the present state of reformist politics. Sadly, he continues to try and think of ways to rejuvenate reformism, failing to draw the obvious conclusion that social reform is by-and-large a failure and social revolution is both necessary and desirable.

Jonathan Clay

Jottings. (1914)

The Jottings column from the March 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the whole of the Labour Party Conference, which lasted four days, the word “Socialism” was only mentioned once; that was when Mr. Bruce Glasier said they did not intend to discuss it!

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald told an interviewer on his return from India that the Conference “would be a record one as far as common sense was concerned.” Io the light of after events this can be taken as a reflection on the delegates. Mr. MacDonald told them to vote this way, and that—and they did !

* * *

One contemporary (“Modern Society”) wants to know: “Why did Mr. Ramsay MacDonald return from the Commission in India six weeks before the rest of the Commission left Bombay for home?” Well now, isn’t it obvious? Who could imagine a Labour Party Conference without Mr. MacDonald? What use is a ship without a rudder?

* * *

Speaking at Glasgow on the Sunday succeeding the Conference, he asked his audience "to realise that class feeling would not achieve Socialism. Class feeling was the mark of capitalism, not Socialism. Socialism united all classes and lifted them up to a common level of humanity.” (“Daily Citizen,” 2.2.14).

You will notice how he lets himself go on the question of Socialism outside the Conference, at which all reference to the subject was carefully avoided.

I wonder how many “classes” Mr. MacDonald thinks there are in society ? So far, Socialists have only discovered two—the working dan and the non-working class. Socialism would not “unite” these two—there can be no unity between the robber and the robbed—but would abolish the conditions which create a non-working class, thus compelling them to take part in the work of useful production or—starve. Socialism offers no other alternative. Socialism implies one class—the workers—not a combination of “classes.”

Whilst it is true that class feeling is the mark of capitalism, Mr. MacDonald has no right to condemn it as if it was something repugnant. It is the duty of Socialists to foster and direct it. Class action is necessary in order to achieve Socialism, but class feeling, born of class-consciousness, is the first essential. But Mr. MacDonald doesn’t think so.

* * *

  “I have been in Spain: once. I was there a night and a day, because I could not get a train to take me away sooner. I shall never go again. I prefer the niggers in the West Indies to the Spaniards. I think black devils are less loathsome than those of lighter hue.” (Robert Blatchford, “Clarion,” 23.1.14.)

  

  “I claim that men should not be classified as good and bad, but as fortunate and unfortunate; that they should be pitied and not blamed; helped instead of being punished. I base this claim upon the self-evident and undeniable feet that man has no part in the creation of his own nature.” (Robert Blatchford in “Not Guilty," page 10.) With his usual consistency! 

* * *

Christ as the saviour of mankind looks like getting left since Lloyd George took the field in his self-appointed task of redeeming mankind. In his speeches at Swindon and Bedford, the accounts he gave of the lot of the poor were so heartrending that one was tempted to express the fear that the country would not be able to stand another dose of the same kind without being washed away in a flood of compassionate tears, generated by the soul-stirring, heart-searching, and blood curdling oratory of the Liberal Messiah. Anyway, he chanced it—and to some purpose. And, if report speaks true, he hasn’t finished yet.

  Whether his visit to Glasgow immediately following the Labour Party Conference was only a coincidence I leave an open question. Certain it is that interest in the one quickly fell flat when it became known that the saviour was due in their midst. He said nothing new, of course. In describing the rotten conditions of this country he reiterated only what has been stated before and sniffed at. Liberals have constantly denied what Mr. Lloyd George is now hysterically affirming. Said he:

 “Take our cities, the great cities of a great Empire. Right in the heart of them everywhere you have ugly quagmires of human misery, seething, rottening, at last fermenting. We pass them by every day on the way to our comfortable homes. We forget Divine justice never passes by a great wrong, and you can hear, carried by the breezes from the north, the south, the east, and the west, ominous rumblings. The chariots of retribution are drawing nigh. How long will all these injustices last for myriads of men, women, and children created in the image of God—how long? I believe it is coming to an end." (Cheers.)

 So do we—but it won't be in the shape of a “Divine justice" personified in Lloyd George. When Socialists have pointed out the same facts (without the sloppy trimmings), they have been scoffed and jeered at as “agitators, humbugs, and discontents.” But coming from the lips of a Cabinet Minister on the platform of St. Andrew’s Hall—oh! what a difference!

  Apart from the disgusting spectacle of hew easy it is to gull and deceive these poor fools in order to capture support for another lease of robbery—it may yet possess an element of good. The awakening will be all the ruder! “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” Yet I wonder how many of his audience remembered his words at Limehouse—“Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all crimes.”

  One thing: the Labour Party wont thank him for queering their pitch!

* * *

 In the course of a discussion at a meeting of the Carnarvon Town Council on the County Council’s proposed by-laws for regulating vehicular traffic. Sir John Roberts pointed out that some of the vehicles now used as motor-’buses were only ’bus bodies put on the chassis of old motor-cars never intended to carry on their axles the enormous weight of passengers which these ’buses carried.

 It is a common-place enough saying that human life is cheap—so common-place in fact that, although the sacrifice of human life is increasingly evident every day, it passes with the majority as something that is inevitable —something that is part of the order of things. Investigation usually reveals the fact that most disasters are caused through cheapness, both of material and labour, while experience shows the acquisition of profits to be the prime incentive.

  

Only the working-class as a rule travel by motor-’bus, so perhaps that explains the callous disregard of possible accidents shown in their construction.

* * *

  Mr. Henry Ford, of the Ford Motor Co., of Detroit, has recently announced that he is prepared to divide his profits with his employees. He intends to reduce the working day from nine hours to eight, without reduction of pay. Indeed, the pay is to be increased—from 11/6 to £1 a day for all employees over the age of twenty-two. On the face of it, this looks like philanthropy with a vengeance, bat Mr. Ford has another name for it—good business.

  

  It would appear that the Ford Co. were going to be cleaned out of their profits, but that word “good business” gives us furiously to think.

  Hitherto the Ford Co. have paid low wages — and made big profits; now it is proposed to pay big wages and—lose profits ? Not on your life! Let me show you how it is done.

  Ford intends to increase his profits, and to do this he is figuring on getting absolutely the pick of the labour market by his “generous” offer. From the increased staff of 22,000 who will be employed he is expecting to get increased efficiency in every part of the trade. This means that he will specialize on each job. The very fact that an increased wage and a dividend are to be the outcome of their activity, will spur his employees to greater efforts than ever; even to competing with each other inside the shop, for the laggard is to be eliminated. It is expected that under this system the worker, being a “partner,” will boost it for all he is worth, and turn out more and better work than under the former system. Formerly the record for assembling a car stood at twenty six minutes. This is now going to be beaten — indeed, has been beaten, at their works in Manchester (Eng.)

  

Perhaps the following may be interesting:

  “In a little clear space in the centre of the assembling department, a bare frame lay surrounded by wheels, springs, axles, and, in fact, every article required for a complete motor car. A few yards further on, supported on wooden trestles, was a black enamelled four seated body. A horn screeched. Eight men hurried forward , and commenced to work furiously, but in absolute silence. Barely a minute had passed, but the front wheels (with tyres already attached) were on and the springs firmly fixed, while the back of the frame rested on two large jacks. The engine was next lifted into place. Two minutes later it was tightly bolted and the rear wheels and driving gear were in position. Seven minutes passed and the chassis stood on the ground complete in every detail. The body was lifted on, the wind screen fixed, running boards, mud-guards attached, and at the end of eleven minutes the car stood ready. With a cargo of six excited men the car was driven out of the factory and round the works. Later she was thoroughly tested with a good run into the country. The speed with which the whole assembling work was carried out was a revelation to all present, and was only possible with the perfect organisation which exists in the erecting of a Lord car from the beginning to the end. This perfect organisation of labour, it is claimed, is the only thing to account for the low price of the Lord car considering its power and general efficiency.” (Daily Mail," 24.1.14.)

“Perfect organisation of labour” ; that is the secret! Though each individual may get more wages than ever he got before, the fact will remain that he will have to work harder and still harder—or get out. By specializing and employing only highly skilled workers; by eliminating the slowest of these and speeding the rest up to a higher standard of skill and rapidity, Lord claims that the cost of the labour power will actually he less than before.

 Another point. Having regard to the fact that 10,000 men clamoured for jobs in one day at Detroit, what is to prevent this factor from operating against those who are “fortunate" enough to retain their jobs, by lowering the price of labour-power?

* * *

Parliament had hardly settled down to “business" when the Labour Party defined its position by once more saving the Government. The circumstances were exactly the same as have happened before—voting against their own amendment when the Tories tried to force it to a division. Readers will be familiar with the details, as great publicity has been the outcome. I only mention it because it is the sequel to a statement made by Mr. Macdonald on his return from India. Referring to the support they had offered the Liberals last session on the question of Churchill’s extravagance, and which was ignored, he remarked to an interviewer of the “Daily Citizen," “We can afford to let bygones be bygones, however, if they (the Liberals) will support us this session."

Not that we expect them to do anything else than support the Liberals; but unfortunately there are thousands of workers in this country who are deluded into supporting them, fondly believing that they are getting independent representation when such is not the case. Significant were the words of Mr. Philip Snowden at the Labour Party Conference. “So long as they had Labour members returned by Liberal votes, as nine-tenths of the Labour members were, they had no right to expect independent action from them in the House of Commons. It is clearly evident that there was no labour member in the House who did not know that he was dependent for his seat in that House on the good-will of those who belonged to the other political parties.”

Which is a damning admission, for it shows they possess a programme which can cater for all shades of opinion—except Socialist.

Tom Sala

What about the workers? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

With his Goodbye to the Working Class André Gorz achieved a shock effect which probably owed more to the arresting title than to the content of the book. Not that it was without merit, for example his ruthless analysis of the relations of production in capitalism—that lines of control are from the top down, military style, which makes the idea of taking them over and converting them to production for use, with voluntary labour, completely ludicrous.

He went on to fall into traps he had dug himself. There will always be jobs needing some element of compulsion, he argued (old class-warriors will recognise this as the Who Will Do The Dirty Work question); these jobs will be shared out so that everybody gets some free time, while technological developments have made it possible for it to happen without a fall in production. But as we have pointed out (see "New Economics, Old Errors", World Socialist No 6), it is difficult to imagine compelling anybody to work if they access to everything they need for free. So that Gorz's proposal for extra monetary rewards as encouragement adds another bizarre contradiction.

But his main theme, which gave the title to the book, was that changes in the character of the market economy due to automation had rendered traditional Marxist thinking and practice totally irrelevant. The masses of workers who had trooped into the steelworks, the shipyards, the mines and the factories, were a vanishing race. Strikes had been broken, men sacked and a select few re-engaged and put to work with labour-saving equipment to do the jobs that had previously taken many. The remainder of the workforce, generally speaking the less skilled and qualified, had been hived off to do menial or casual or part-time work, and had been rendered marginal in their work and their social life.

Thus working class solidarity had been destroyed, loyalties replaced with a new ethos of competition to get on the gravy train of well-paid guaranteed jobs, and consumerism was providing the spectacle to keep those so privileged in a zombie-like trance of soap-opera following and gadget-buying.

Changing patterns of work

Gorz returns to this theme in a new book, Metamorphoses du travail (Paris, 1988), a translation of which is about to be made available over here. It is unfortunate that he spends a certain amount of time disposing of the Soviet system. The final collapse of state capitalism has rendered this excursion totally superfluous. This comes of keeping bad company. He had been in the group of Stalinist fellow-travellers around Sartre and Les Temps Modernes which had taken an unreasonably long time to discover the irrelevance of Russia after 1917 to libertarian socialist thinking. Eventually for him however:

The Soviet system represented a gross caricature of capitalism pursuing accumulation and growth as main objects.

Once that matter is out of the way, his dissection of contemporary society is thorough and frequently illuminating. He draws freely on those 20th century thinkers who have attempted to bring Marxist analysis up to date—Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, Hannah Arendt, the Frankfurt School, Habermas, Baudrillard, etc. There are many provocative images:

Social disintegration extends to politicians, who increasingly resemble salesmen.

And:

The Welfare State replaces services which people provided for themselves . . . this leads to a continual extension of public administration and state power while parliament becomes a shadow theatre presided over by a charismatic leader. This is the end but arrived at by different means, predicted in the nightmare of Orwell and the "führer mit maschine" of Weber. 

Gorz identifies stages in the evolution of production beginning with the simple division of labour as in Adam Smith, which he argues was introduced to facilitate control rather than production. He claims that the difficulty experienced by early factory owners in getting former peasants to work all day and every day led to the search for child labour, usually obtained in plentiful supply from the orphanages. The new proletariat had, virtually, to be bred.

Then at the turn of the century came Fordism and the assembly line. This was followed in the 1950s by what the French call Taylorism, i.e. time and motion study. But this created new problems: the extra compensation demanded by workers, accompanied by bad quality, bad timekeeping, absenteeism, even arson.

The new tack is to restore some independence, with small groups completing each process and determining the rhythm of their work. Work is "subbed out", a privileged 25 percent are kept on. Line workers are replaced by robots supervised by a highly adaptable elite. The subcontractors absorb the business cycle. There is flexibility of function for the elite, and flexibility of numbers for the subcontracting workers.

This, says Gorz, has broken up the working class, who can no longer be looked to for liberation from capitalism. A new coalition is needed, based not on sectional interests but on ethical considerations. People are increasingly turning to alternative, marginal groupings as an answer to the disintegration of society and the spiritual emptiness of work. Increasing numbers are choosing quality of life before money and success at work: "The autonomy being born, unsure of itself, hesitant, menaced by industrial culture and the merchants of leisure, is where we must turn to survive".

The answer, he argues, is the reduction of the working day, week, year. With increased leisure, people can and are replacing bought-in items with home-produced ones. There is a turning away from consumerism among a significant minority. People are turning from "more is better" to "enough is enough".

As in Goodbye To The Working Class Gorz repeats his argument that replacing control-by-others (heteroregulation) by voluntary co-operation is impossible with all industrial activity; some compulsion will always be necessary, and for this, monetary rewards will have to remain. Clearly, money notions stick to these former Stalinists (and Keynesians) like shit to a blanket. Gorz gives no explanation why compulsion should be necessary.

If unpleasant and dangerous jobs were always avoided by the voluntary sector, then the argument might be plausible, but there never seems to be any lack of volunteers for the lifeboats, or cave and mountain rescue. And of the argument is that only spectacular activities call up such responses, how about the nurses who volunteer to care for AIDS victims, Legionnaires' Disease, and similar horror? Are they all crazy, Jesus Christ characters, or Superwoman? Or are they just in it for the money?

Shift to money-shuffling

While there has been an acceleration of the shift from heavy industry and agriculture in particular, and from wealth-producing activities in general toward functions peculiar to a market economy-banking, insurance and money shuffling, the sales effort, advertising, public relations, security, defence of markets—the drift is not entirely new.

It was noted as far back as the 17th century by Sir William Petty ("Political Arithmetic"). In 18th century France, Quesnay in his "Tableau Economique" calculated that the burden of the non-producing aristocracy on the peasants could reach unsustainable levels. And, in England again, in the 19th century, the redoubtable William Cobbett carried on a campaign for decades against the reduction in the numbers of the wealth-producers and the multiplication of "stockjobbers", bureaucrats, and the Civil List.

There is little evidence that those moving from productive work into "service" activities always move down the social or economic scale as Gorz argues. Some do, of course, but that is nothing new. He quotes Marx to the effect that in the middle of the 19th century, 14 percent of the labour force in England were skivvies of one kind or another. There is little evidence that the new servant class has reached that proportion.

But there has been a significant increase in banking and insurance activities. There appears to be 150,000 accountants in Britain—more than in all the other developed nations outside the US. It would be difficult to believe that these workers and bureaucrats are financially or otherwise worse off than those retained in industry, yet they outnumber and are increasing faster than the unemployed and part-time workers who are the object of Gorz's concern.

Neither are they lacking in willingness to organise themselves for the defence of salaries and conditions. There have been bank strikes; one in Ireland in the 1960s lasted six months, and there was a strike of half a million local government workers in Britain in 1989. Professional associations like the Law Society and the British Medical Association are increasingly beginning to resemble and behave like trade unions. They are not affiliated to the TUC but who knows? The announcement of the death of the working class is, to borrow an expression of Mark Twain, an exaggeration.

Ken Smith