World Socialist Radio - No Such Thing (2025)

Adapted from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘No Such Thing as Free Buses’ and ‘Woolly Thinking’, by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

Proposals for “free buses” under capitalism—like the plan by New York politician Zohran Mamdani—paint a misleading picture: there’s no such thing as “free” in a system based on profit. While fare-free public transport would indeed make travel easier and lower emissions, the column warns that funding it via higher local taxes essentially subsidises employers by reducing the cost of living, which in turn can suppress wages. The only way to make transport—and all essential services—truly free and accessible for everyone, according to the authors, is to abolish the wage system entirely and bring the means of production into common, democratic ownership, enabling a socialist society where goods and services are provided solely to meet people’s needs.

In Woolly Thinking the author critiques trade union leader Sarah Woolley’s call to raise taxes on the rich and corporations in order to fund public services like housing, health, education, and a “just transition.” While she argues that the money already exists in society, the article contends that under capitalism, that wealth comes from surplus value created by workers — which capitalists then reinvest or hoard. Taxing profits would reduce incentives for reinvestment, likely leading to less job creation, lower wages, and a shrinking tax base. The piece warns that these reformist proposals misunderstand how capitalism fundamentally operates.

Articles taken from the November 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

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Cooking the Books: No such thing as free buses (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his successful campaign to win the primary election to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for the 4 November election for the Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, the left-winger, ran on a promise ‘to lower the cost of living for working class New Yorkers’ (zohranfornyc.com). He is a member of a group of reformist Social Democrats calling themselves the ‘Democratic Socialists of America’ who have chosen to bore from within the Democrat Party and among his proposals was ‘fast, fare-free buses’.

It is not a new idea. It’s been put into practice in some places. In fact, in itself it’s a good idea. Fares do restrict people’s freedom to travel and fare-collecting, even via plastic cards and ticket-machines, is a waste of resources. More people travelling by public transport and less by car will help reduce air pollution and carbon emissions.

Free transport in a socialist society would be run for people to use as and when they want it. But a distinction needs to be drawn between free transport as a reform within capitalism and free transport as part of socialist society where all goods and services will be free.

Under capitalism, where there is no such thing as a free anything, the question arises of how free transport would be funded. Mamdani’s supporters, like Matt Bruenig, say that his plan will be paid for by increased local taxes. Bruenig explained:

‘Most people seem to realize that if we shifted to a fee-funded school system, we’d need to roll back property and other taxes in order to make sure people had the money to pay the fees).’ (jacobin.com/2025/06/zohran-mamdani-free-bus-proposal).

By the same token, he argued, introducing free buses would have the opposite effect. It would mean people would save money from which to pay the increase in taxes to fund it. This makes some sense but it rather undermines Mamdani’s claim that free buses would lower the cost of living (whatever other merits it might have).

There is in fact a link via the cost of living between free services and wages. Fares are an important item in the cost of living and it is the cost of living which largely determines the level of wages and salaries. Whatever reduces the cost of living will tend also to reduce wages. Anything provided free by someone else relieves employers of having to pay their employees to cover this, as would be the case if fares were abolished. It would be a subsidy to employers, whatever its other merits might be.

Before everybody can benefit from free transport, the whole wages system needs to be abolished. The means of production must be converted from the class property of a privileged few into the common property of the whole community. This would also create the framework within which the problem of the motor car and its pollution and destruction can be rationally tackled.

Once the means of production are the common heritage of all and are under democratic control, then the profit motive and the price system can be abolished. Wealth can be produced solely for people to use. People can have free access not only to travel facilities but to all the other things they need to live and enjoy life. Goods will not be priced, but will be available for all to take freely according to their needs.

News: Do the bosses still need the “race card”? (2001)

From the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do the bosses still need the “race card”?

According to a Home Office report released last month, Britain is facing its biggest rise in immigration for a generation. A combination of asylum seekers and people moving to join relatives are among the obvious reasons cited for this new trend, but, as the Times points out, “Britain’s need for workers has also fuelled the trend. The IT industry will need to recruit a further 540,000 people up to 2009, and the report suggests that the custom of employing migrants for seasonal work on farms could be extended to other areas”.

The message should be unequivocally clear. The needs of capitalism are always paramount, so, since a skills/labour shortage and an ageing society has emerged, we can perhaps expect to hear less perjorative language in the media about being “flooded” or “swamped” by “foreigners”. Indeed, Home Office minister Barbara Roche greeted the report by extolling the virtues of immigration.

This European-wide phenomena was picked up by the Economist last year, which ran a cover story telling non-EU workers to “go for it!”. Quite pragmatic, it would seem, for a right-leaning journal.

However, this will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of capitalism. Immigrant workers have always been used to correct a disequilibrium in the labour market. The mass immigration of the 1950s, which underpinned the post-war boom, is a case in point. All things being equal, a labour shortage causes wages to rise and thus puts workers in a comparatively stronger bargaining position vis à vis overall working conditions. Naturally, our masters will always seek to counteract such a situation by importing (often cheaper, more compliant) workers, which in turn intensifies competition among workers, potentially fermenting xenophobia and racism. Needless to say, when demand for labour and/or skills slackens off, the capitalists play the infamous ‘race card’ in order to keep the working class divided.

Historically, this does not depend upon which party is in government. Both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted immigration and denounced it according to the dictates of the markets. Ideology alone does not pay capitalism’s bills!

The working class needs to remember that despite the nationalist and patriotic poison which is rammed down our throats from an early age, our bosses are actually quite open-minded. They will invest anywhere in the world, blazing a trail in their blood thirst quest for profit. Our class enemies may indeed be international,, we, however, are global

The Peter Principle

The resignation of Peter Mandelson from the Cabinet for a second time—an act unprecedented in British political history—has brought allegations of sleaze back to dog the government. Mandelson proved to be a Mr Fix-it in more ways than one but he was caught out and has now paid the price quite publicly. The danger for Labour is that the Party is now tainted in the eyes of the electorate by allegations of financial sleaze and collusion, haunted for the foreseeable future by ghosts like Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson. Luckily for them, of course, the Tories still have political ghouls of their own to exorcise in Jonathan Aitken, Jeffrey Archer and Neil Hamilton, and so do not present any coherent or principled threat.

In truth, every government since the war has been beset by scandals at some point. Even the Liberals can’t afford to sound pious as it was Lloyd George who made a habit of selling peerages at a time before the phrase “cash for questions” was ever heard of.

When people delve under the surface of these scandals only one thing of real importance emerges. It is that there was nothing uniquely corruptible about any of these people, any more so than there is about Mandelson today, even if so many people love to demonise him. All scandals like this really go to prove is that it is the system we live within—the system of ruthless competition, greed and the power of money—that corrupts individuals, not individuals who corrupt an otherwise irreproachable system.

No more yogic flying

The Natural Law Party has announced that it is giving up contesting elections in Britain. So we are no longer to be amused by Party Political Broadcasts which promise to reduce violent crime and international tensions by the mass practice of “yogic flying”. Laughable, but in the end no less incredible than the claims of other parties to be able to solve capitalism’s problems by less outlandish, reformist measures.

The NLP never got many votes but that was never the aim. Contesting elections—and getting nation-wide television broadcasts and the free distribudon of millions of rnanifestos— was a marketing ploy by an international business empire headed by an Indian fakir calling himself the “Maharish Mahesh Yogi”. The aim was to get people to buy its transcendental mediation courses, herbal remedies, oils, aromas, “healing” gems, Hindu horoscopes, books, tapes, etc.

The NLP’s reason for giving up was that “the election system is stacked against new parties”. Maybe, but the real reason will have been the coming into force of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act which requires registered parties to disclose their accounts. This would have exposed the accounts of the “transcendental” business empire that financed the NLP to public gaze.

The NLP never was as amusing as it seemed, but was a flagrant example of how, under capitalism, Big Money can undermine the proclaimed principle of political democracy according to which everybody is supposed to have an equal say. In fact, the more money you have the louder you can proclaim your views.

Transport workers on strike in London and Belgium

As London Transport workers ballot on whether or not to go on strike, and the employers and the media prepare to whip up a campaign against them for “inconveniencing the public”, they could consider copying what their counterparts in Brussels did recently. From 22 December to 1 January, the buses, trams and metro in Brussels were free, as workers continued working but prevented the ticket machines from functioning as they pursued a claim for better wages and conditions. The public were not all inconvenienced. Just the reverse. And it showed that it is workers, not money, that make the world go round. What would the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail be able to say if this happened in London? No doubt they would accuse both the public and the workers of cheating the employers. Technically, this would be true and the courts might enforce it.

Ironically, less than a month previously, a court in Brussels had done just that. Three members of a group advocating free transport were fined £300 each for deliberately travelling without a ticket, using instead a “right to transport card”. In court they pleaded that the Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed a “right to free movement” which charging for using buses and trains infringed. A good point. The judge replied that “this right can be exercised by going by foot”. Which about sums up the value of grandiloquent “rights” under capitalism.

By The Way: Medals for Russia’s Mothers. (1944)

The By The Way Column from the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Medals for Russia’s Mothers.

“A new institution is the ‘Medal for Motherhood’ 1st and 2nd degree, for women who have reached six and five children respectively.

“After that, the ambitious mother—if she manages to produce nine children—receives the ‘Order of Glorious Motherhood’ 1st degree.

“When the tenth child reaches the age of one year, she receives the ‘Hon. title of Mother Heroine’ and a letter from the Supreme Council.”—(Moscow correspondent of Daily Mirror, July 13, 1944.)

But What About the £5,000 a Year.

From a speech by Mr. Herbert Morrison in London on May 22, 1944 (Daily Telegraph, May 23) : —

“I well remember his (the Prime Minister’s) interview with me one Sunday morning at the Admiralty. He asked me to become Minister of Supply. He said : ‘I don’t offer you cheerfulness, I don’t offer you good fortune, I don’t offer you quick successes. I offer you nothing but tears and blood and sweat and toil.”

The Labour Party Summed Up.

From a criticism of the Labour Party’s Report on “Full Employment and Financial Policy” : —

“. . . the Party, as always, is obsessed by institutions and their powers, and ignores their policies. It affects to believe that changing the brass plate at the entrance will alter the way in which an institution acts. Thus, in the present report, there is a great deal about the exercise of control by the State over the Bank of England and the joint stock banks, but hardly a word about the different way in which they are expected to behave.” Economist, May 20, 1944.)

This is what we have been saying for forty years about the reformists, who believe that if you give a capitalist institution a different name and put it under State control, all will be well.

Free Travel—for The Workers.

On July 6th the London Daily Express carried the story of D. Henry Shepherd. “D. Henry Shepherd has a nerve, they cried; he travelled about on forged London Transport passes—and then wrote complaining bitterly about the service.”

This man Shepherd, Detective Alder said at the Old Bailey, had an obsession about railways. He thought they ought to be nationalised, so that people could travel to and from their work for nothing. Fares, he thought, were an imposition.

Being a talented commercial artist, Shepherd made his own passes and tickets. The Prison Doctor at Brixton confessed himself mystified, unable to account for Shepherd’s actions. Shepherd sounds very much to us like one of those numerous workers who have been tempted to move out of the slums of London to the suburbs, only to find fares an intolerable burden.

Poor Henry ! If only he had known one-hundredth part about the wages system as he did about poster design. Then he would have known that free passes on the railways, like other “free gifts” for the workers, do not solve their poverty problem.

As is quite well known, Henry Kaiser, the Pacific Coast shipbuilding contractor, has transported the entire New York elevated line across the Continent for use by all Kaiser employees FREE.

Mr. Kaiser’s workers do not feel themselves any less exploited. They merely get to work a little quicker. For that matter, men and women in the Services get all sorts of FREE issues, uniforms, cigarettes, passes, etc., but when claims were made for raising Service pay, the Government published a White Paper enumerating all the free services and issues and added them up to prove the Service personnel received more, on an average, than most workers. All these “free” gifts are merely deductions from wages.

Curiously enough, over fifty years ago Mr. H. M. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation, delivered a series of lectures preparatory to founding the S.D.F., concluding with six “Immediate Demands,” one of which was “Free Travel for all Workers,” as a stepping-stone (!) to Socialism.

The Socialist Party could have saved Henry Shepherd his fifteen months in jail.

The Fine Work THEY Have Done !

Lord Royden, the chairman of the L.M.S. Railway, doesn’t need to forge tickets, of course. He has recently made a journey by special train to inspect the stations and staffs between Leeds and London.

Officials travelled with him.

Lord Royden said last night : “I made the tour to congratulate the people on the line on the fine work they have done in the past weeks.” (Daily Express, July 6, 1944.)

This is the first tour the Chairman of the L.M.S. Board has made since the war. The “fine work” has gone on for four years without his absence being noticed.

Like most directors, Lord Royden’s function consists in saying “Thank you very much” periodically.

” Export or Bust.”

“We must, in fact, export or burst,” said Mr. Clark Henderson, the Conservative member for Leeds N.E., in the House on July 14, 1944.

There’s not very much new in that. The Tory Reform Committee have placed it in the forefront of their proposals. The Government are mainly concerned with it in their paper on Employment after the War. And Adolph Hitler said it many years ago—”Germany must expand or explode.” American capitalists are saying it—and the Russians preparing to do it. The world market is shrinking relatively to the masses of goods being thrown on to it, and at the same time as the governments of the world seek still more exports. The only solution to this sort of situation is Socialism, which abolishes capitalism, trade and exports. There is one temporary expedient for dealing with it—a new war, which, like its predecessor, is almost bound lo develop into a world war.

The Girl Who Came Back !

Under this heading, a London evening paper (Evening Standard, July 11, 1944) reports the case of Paulette Geburre, a French girl who volunteered for work at Le Bon Sauveur Hospital in Caen during the fighting there.

“The casualties came in like a stream,” she said. “Most of them were Germans, although there were some British parachutists. We worked day and night, sometimes forty-eight hours at a time, with air raids and shelling in the middle of operations.” Such cases—and there are many—are full of deep significance. Why did Paulette volunteer to help the wounded ? Not for money! That was impossible in Caen. Not for nationalistic reasons. With other French medical personnel, in keeping with the traditions of the profession, she helped all, British and German alike.

We have heard of cases of air raid wardens who vowed that “if only they could get their hands on a German airman” they would knock him for six. And yet, when a German plane has crashed in flames about them, they have got badly burned rescuing the screaming German.

That invading troops regularly give ill-spared rations to starving civilians and captured prisoners is well known. Socialists think that all these people are obeying one of the most fundamental human instincts. Man is a social animal, and the urge to protect and preserve the race operates in individuals after all the hate and atrocity propaganda has been poured out.

When it is also considered that most soldiers, airmen, wardens, etc., to-day are workers, we have still one further reason to explain why human solidarity frequently triumphs over political propaganda—even on the battlefield.

Horatio.

Notes by the Way: Workers Better Fed 200 Years Ago (1940)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers Better Fed 200 Years Ago

Sir William Bragg in an interesting article on the kind of food we ought to eat and the possibility of supplying it to everyone in war-time (Times, October 26th, 1940), throws light on what has happened to the diet of the workers during the past two centuries—the centuries when we were reaping the supposed benefits of capitalism: —

“Professor Drummond, of the Ministry of Food, has recently made it clear that in this country our people were worse fed at the end of the nineteenth century than at any time within the preceding 200 years. White bread and meat in some plenty had become the principal foods of a great part of the population, and, though energy and warmth were thus supplied in sufficient quantities to appease hunger, a number of constituents necessary to health were no longer included in the popular diet. This was not so when milk and vegetables, fruit and wholemeal bread were more commonly consumed. The result of the change was the frequent occurrence of certain diseases, and the nation was horrified to find in 1914 that a considerable number of the people must be classified as C 3.”

—(The Times, October 26th, 1940.)

He goes on : —

“White bread and meat are the cheap foods when the demands of hunger are alone concerned, because they supply the energy and warmth which the body wants and asks for. Consequently, when there is very little money to spend on food, the body is allowed to go without the necessary aids to health and growth which the cheaper foods do not contain. Thus the poor suffer first when the proper supplies are not available, not because they go hungry but because they are insufficiently protected from disease and structural failures. From the national point of view the protective foods are the cheapest, because it is costly to maintain an unhealthy nation.”

Sir W. Bragg appears to think that the fault has been one of the population merely falling into bad habits, and he is gratified with “the effort now being made by the Minister of Food to bring milk and other protective foods within the reach of the poorest.” He does not touch on the fact that there have been and will continue to be the interests behind the food trades whose concern is not with working-class nutrition, but with making a profit. They have at their disposal powerful means of encouraging the population to buy their well-advertised products whether good or bad, and the small voice of any disinterested scientist or doctor has no chance of being heard against them.

It will, too, be noticed that Sir William Bragg is anxious that certain foods should be brought within the reach of the poorest—he has nothing to say about the problem which underlies it, the existence of rich and poor.

* * *

The Scientist and Accumulated Knowledge

Incidentally, Sir William Bragg wrote interestingly about the use the scientist makes of accumulated knowledge and experience : —

“Scientists have so many new tales to tell that they are often supposed to pay little regard to that which is old. It is a fundamental mistake. Science is built on the accumulation of experiences, and every scientist knows that he must not base his conclusions only on the last few experiments in the laboratory. He must take into account all that has been done before. History is to him a very real thing; tradition is priceless, because there is no substitute for it. Practice is based on the experiments of innumerable years, and even when there are no written records to be consulted, the behaviour of men, the thoughts they have turned over and sifted, the knowledge they have gained in ages of trial and error are all of value; they are not to be thrown aside in favour of the last galvanometer reading. When a scientist records a discovery he only makes a new entry in an old book.

Now in this matter of food the scientist is at the. present time insisting that certain old ways are best, and it is queer that he should be supposed to be trying to introduce fads that have no merit but novelty.”

* * *

“There Is No Morality”

The Daily Worker (October 28th, 1940) had a smug editorial under the above heading telling us that “there is no morality in power politics. The European system has always been based on the balance of power, with France perched between Britain and Germany—the two strongest imperialisms. After their own military defeat and the vital elimination of British influence on the Continent the French ruling class now enters the camp of their former enemy. Capital knows no frontiers….”

It comes ill from the Communist Party, which has defended the Russian Government’s power politics through thick and thin, to talk in this strain about other governments. The choicest passage in the editorial comes later when the Daily Worker says that “the Tory ‘anti-Fascists’ are still itching to switch the war, and they would take Hitler into their arms to-morrow if only he would honour his promises of Munich. And so would the dollar capitalists of America.”

The Daily Worker seems to forget that one principal reason why other people cannot take Hitler into their arms is that he is already in Stalin’s arms, but, apparently, in Communist eyes, hobnobbing with the Nazis is only a crime west of the Rhine.

Remembering Finland it is ironical to be told by the Daily Worker that it is the code of the detested “power politics” that “conflicts can be settled only by means of superior force and violence.”

* * *

Those Bus Tickets Again

It was recently suggested in these columns that if the powers that be really wanted to save paper, and if their vision were not limited by the capitalist necessity of profit making, they would not waste efforts printing thinner bus tickets, but would do without tickets. Now the “Londoner” in the Evening Standard has been thinking about the problem : —

“The reduction in the length of the London bus ticket has caused some people to suggest that London Transport should find means of using tickets a second time, or even of dispensing with tickets altogether.

But no one can explain how this is to be done and, while invention in most fields marches on, the majority of tickets used to-day on road vehicles all over the country are issued by a device that has known no major change since it was first made, some sixty years ago.

I am told that nearly £1,000,000 has been lost in efforts to establish various new types of issuing machines. One of the successful is the “Tim” printer used now on some London buses, but the old “bell punch” system remains pre-eminent.”

—(Evening Standard, October 22nd, 1940.)

For a very long time Socialists have been trying to persuade the workers that while capitalism has provided the incentive for much technical and economic development, it now stands in the way of the development of society. Perhaps something that seemed unnecessary or even Utopian under peace conditions, in the eyes of men and women still steeped in tradition, may be more easy to grasp under the stress of war. Under a sane, economical system of society road vehicles and rail transport systems would exist simply to convey people to their work and their places of entertainment, etc. Consider then the absurdity of a social system which permits the problem of transport to be cluttered up with financial considerations and the employment of an army of men and women engaged in checking and counter-checking the payment of fares, and generally in safeguarding the interests of a body of shareholders who own and control what are mistakenly known as “public” services. Even under the stress of travelling to and from work during the war the companies are still concerned with the problem of profits. Consider the absurdity of the disclosure that “nearly £1,000,000 has been lost in efforts to establish various new types of issuing machines.” Consider the absurdity of the following : —

“Many people have been told that the little confetti-like circles of ticket that fall into the bus conductor’s machine are counted as a check on receipts. And most of them think that it is not true. But it is true—up to a point.

The scraps of paper are counted if the conductor’s takings do not agree with the serial numbers on his unissued tickets when he goes off duty.

Generally the clippings are emptied out of the “punches” and heaped together to become pulp.”

And all of this puerile business proceeds in what the Labour Party calls the “socialised” London Passenger Transport Board.

* * *

The Army and The Workers

Readers of the Socialist Standard over a number of years will remember several occasions when Communists have argued that the S.P.G.B. is wrong in holding that when a Socialist majority is in control of the political machinery this will also give control over the armed forces. One of their arguments has always been that the army, both rank and file and officers, would be out of sympathy with Socialism and would assist reactionary elements to prevent the majority from democratically and peacefully introducing Socialism. In particular they have argued that the officers would challenge the democratic system. In the light of this controversy it is interesting to read the following views expressed in the Soviet newspapers. The summary was published in the Times (October 7th, 1940), from their New York correspondent: —

“New York, October 6th. 

Soviet newspapers published last night what foreign correspondents in Moscow were permitted to say were “significant,” approving references to working-class participation in Great Britain’s war efforts. They were contained in a two-column message of the Tass Agency from London, which praised British defences and the discipline, moral, living conditions, and social conditions in the British Army. The article, in giving an eye-witness account of a British anti-aircraft battery in action, reported that most members of the battery were trade unionists and of working-class origin. This, it declared, was “unlike the last war when few trade unionists were among the British soldiers.” It was unlike the last war, too, it added, in that British officers were now drawn from all walks of life and were not professional soldiers.”

* * *

Without Comment

Mr. William Hickey, in the Daily Express (October 22nd, 1940), has the following: —

“A worker in a Torquay hotel (“which of course might bias my outlook,” he says) sends this choice there’s-a-war-on cutting from a local paper: —

” Dog nurse wanted. Woman to take care of small dog, partially paralysed. Vet. attending daily. Only those who have some experience & knowledge of this type of case need apply. …”

I feel sorry for this dog’s obsessed owner ; sorrier still for the dog. Wouldn’t it be best to coin a phrase & put him out of his misery ?”

* * *

The Case of Prince Starhemberg

The following report of some heated questions and answers in the House of Commons is taken from the News Chronicle (October 24th, 1940): —

“Captain Balfour, Under-Secretary for Air, replying to Mr. Wedgwood (Lab., Newcastle-under-Lyme), said that Prince von Starhemberg held the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force, and received £1 4s. 11d. per day in pay and allowances.

Mr. Wedgwood: Is it not rather indecent that this man, who assassinated democracy in Austria, should now be allowed to fight on our side and be paid by us in a war against all that Starhemburg has stood for ?

Captain Balfour: I reject wholeheartedly the hon. member’s suggestion. We owe a debt of gratitude to anyone who risks his life in the air to fight on our side.

Mr. Woodburn (Lab., Clackmannon and Eastern) : Is there any suggestion that we are going to impose this man on Austria at the end of the war ?

Mr. Shinwell (Lab., Seaham) : Supposing his name were Starhemberg, instead of Prince von Starhemberg, would it make any difference ?

Captain Balfour : No. None at all.

Mr. Wedgwood : Why does not he allow other aliens from Austria who hate Nazism to fight ? Why keep them in prison ? Why allow this scoundrel to fight for democracy? (Loud cries of “Order!”) I want an answer.

At this point the Speaker intervened and the next question was called.”

* * *

The Times and the Causes of War

On October llth the Times published the first of two articles on “Fallacies of Nazi Finance,” written by an unnamed correspondent. He touched, incidentally, on the world scramble for markets, and had the following to say about its relationship to war : —

“Beyond doubt one of the fundamental causes of this war has been the unrelaxing efforts of Germany since 1918 to secure wide enough foreign markets to straighten her finances at the very time when all her competitors were forced by their own war debts to adopt exactly the same course. Continuous friction was inevitable.”

The Times correspondent’s main concern was to show that “Hitler has not advanced Germany one step towards the solution of this problem,” and he did not go on to the still wider problem of how to get rid of this struggle for markets. Socialists, having become aware of the facts long before they were discovered by the Times, know quite well that the problem is utterly insoluble short of introducing Socialism.

* * *

Do We Want to Legislate for the Talented or for Everybody

In an article which otherwise showed a good deal of insight into the real nature of the poverty problem the Reverend W. Rowland Jones (Daily Herald, October 28th, 1940), describes the “better world” that he wants to see as one in which “the backward son of the rich” shall not be able to pass through a sheltered life “to a position of responsibility just because he is a son of the rich,” and in which “the brilliant son of the slum” shall not be hedged in and “kept out of the advantages of education just because he is a son of the slum.”

The idea behind this is to be found mixed up with all the reforms demanded by the Labour Party, it is the idea that attractive careers should be open to the talented, not kept as a preserve for the rich and influential. It is naturally a very good idea in the eyes of those who think they are talented, but thwarted in their striving for success in the world of to-day. It is not a Socialist idea. Giving a privileged place to one select group means relegating the rest of the population to an inferior position. Socialism, on the other hand, will give every human being access to the means of life. Socialists are not concerned with enabling a selected few of the poor to climb into the ranks of the rich, but with abolishing both rich and poor.

Mr. Jones should consider the problem again, and particularly consider what he means by his own phrase that the new world “shall have no poor and rich.”

* * *

Really, Mr. MacDonald ! 

Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, Minister of Health, spoke recently about the future health of the population. The Times reports his speech as follows: “He insisted that the lessons taught by the war must be remembered in peace. One of these was the stimulating effect on their physical well-being of sending children from the cities to the country; after the war the children in cities must be able to draw fresh draughts of life from that source. Another lesson was that there must ! be adequate consumption of the right kinds of food.”—(Times, October 18th, 1940.)

Obviously the Times noticed nothing odd about the speech, for they did not make any critical comment. Yet the speech is odd and incomplete. Why, in the past, have poor children not been sent to the country and not been given enough of the right kind of food. Mr. MacDonald implies that fathers of children did not know, having had a war to teach them, or if they did know they forgot, and in future they must not forget. And if it wasn’t the fathers who forgot then it was someone else, perhaps the Government, or the rich. The truth is that most of the fathers had a very good idea about it all and did not forget. The Government and the rich did not forget (they remembered about their own holidays and food, anyway), they just weren’t concerned. The fathers failed to take the necessary step because they were poor, and for no other reason. It is therefore up to Mr. MacDonald to tell us precisely what he and his fellow Ministers are doing to abolish poverty.

* * *

The Complacent Bishop

Bishop Hensley Henson, Canon of Westminster, preached a sermon at Westminster Abbey on the anniversary of the declaration of war. He touched the social reforms that were introduced since the last war.

“The last War had stirred deeply the social conscience of the British people, and perhaps one reason why the nation was so perilously slow to realise the fell significance of Hitlerism was its fear that war would arrest the salutary movement for social reformation which, in the interval between 1918 and 1939, had effected such great improvement in the life of the people and brought new hope into the darkest places of industrial society. The determination to fight was accompanied, and in some sense conditioned, by a determination to continue and complete the effort to re-order British social and economic life on more reasonable and equitable lines. The combination of these two objects—defence and reform—was deeply significant, for it separated sharply the British ideal of a rightly ordered society from the ideals of Moscow and Berlin, which were either coldly indifferent or professedly antagonistic to Christian faith and morals.”— (The Times, September 4th, 1940.)

The complacent view of “such great improvement in the life of the people” is hard to square with the well-known facts of poverty in the distressed areas and elsewhere. A few weeks after the sermon was preached a letter was published in the Manchester Guardian (September 24th, 1940) from Mr. Eddie Williams, Chairman of the Children’s Nutrition Council (Wales). The following is taken from the letter, which dealt with investigations “into the income and expenditure of some of the poorer sections of the community” :

FAMILY A.

1. Number in family seven—father and mother and children aged 14, 13, 11, 9, and 5.

2. Income £2 5s. unemployment assistance.

3. Expenses: Rent 12s., coal 2s. 6d., light 2s., clothing club 3s., insurance 1s.

The parents say : “What we are receiving is not sufficient to clothe and shoe the lot of us and to feed the children and ourselves all the week. Often there is nothing in reserve in the larder. We cannot afford to buy milk; and butter is too dear. Three of the children get free meals in the school feeding centre, and we are thankful.”

FAMILY B.

1. Number in family seven—father and mother and children aged 26 (a cripple), 13, 12, 10, and 9,

2. Income £2 5s. from unemployment assistance and the cripple on relief just enough to keep himself.

3. Expenses: Rent 11s., coal 2s. 6d., light 2s., clothing 4s., insurance 1s. 6d.

The parents say they are unable to use meat coupons because meat and bacon are too dear. Their children are without boots most of the year because boots are out of their reach. They buy one pint of milk per day and two tins of milk a week. The children in school have free dinners. Other instances were also given.”

It is true that these investigations were made after the war had been in progress some time, but even if the families had received the same income before the war their standard of living must have been deplorably low.

* * *

How To Win Elections in Rumania

Mr. Noel Panter, Balkans correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (October 17th, 1940), tells how Rumanian and Hungarian peasants were induced to vote for Nazi-minded politicians: —

“Nazi propaganda in the Hungarian provinces is of the most blatant type.

It was in Rumania that M. Goga, who became Premier, gained electoral support by proposing to bring the printing presses and royal mint from Bucharest to the village market-place so that the peasants’ pockets should be filled with crisp 1.000-lei notes as these rolled off the machines, “instead of those officers and courtiers who have the advantage now.”

To-day the Hungarian peasantry are being told that when a Nazi Government is in power pengoe notes will be scattered about the streets and the millennium will have arrived, with the wealthy being compelled to share with the poor. The benevolent Greater German Reich, they are also told, will assure work and plenty for all.”

This sounds very childish—until we remember the Social Credit Movement and the way the Alberta Election was won by Dr. Aberhart with his promise of “dividends for all.”

* * *

Candid Mr. De Valera

It is striking to contrast the above with Mr. De Valera’s gloomy words to his supporters : —

“The Prime Minister, who, when in opposition, had painted a rosy picture of what he could attain if given a majority, admitted that the problem was disconcertingly difficult. Indeed, he went so far as to say that it defied solution, and that it is an apparently incurable ” blot on our social organisation.”

. . . The working classes must produce more and, if necessary for this result, work harder. The trade unions must cease to practise restriction of output and must be prepared to accept a lower standard of living.

—(Economist, September 7th, 1940.)

Mr. De Valera also stated, according to the Economist report, that “Nationalisation of industry or the manipulation of credit are incapable of improving the situation.”

At least the Irish workers will not be able to complain in future that De Valera has given them less than he now promises.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

This column was actually unsigned but it was obviously by Hardcastle, who was the usual writer of this column. It just happened to be the case that Hardcastle - who was on the editorial committee of the Standard - already had three signed articles in this issue of the Standard, and my guess is that his usual signature ('H') was left off this column because it didn't want to give the (true) impression that he'd written the majority of this issue.

More on free transport (1970)

From the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free public Transport in London (see May Socialist Standard) is still under serious public discussion. It is finding supporters in some strange places.

The April issue of Commerce International, the journal of the London Chamber of Commerce, asked various people to comment on the suggestion that “London Transport without fares would b# more efficient”.

Some, like Sir Desmond Plummer Tory leader of the GLC, were against this on the grounds that it would encourage “financial irresponsibility”. By which we assume him to mean that the capitalist maxim of “no profit, no production” would not be applied so directly. Others, including the chairman of the Chamber of Commerces own Transport Committee, were in favour. Some of the figures given reveal the waste of capitalism. According to Tory Islington councillor John Szemerey “at present some two fifths of London Transport’s annual working expenditure is spent on collecting the money to pay for the service”.

The British architects’ association commented with remarkable insight in the May issue of their RIBA Journal:

  To abolish fares on all city public transport would make economic sense, social sense, and moral sense. And it would be practical and more efficient. It is a common sense reform which would immediately make life better for a lot of people; and in present conditions in London, it would be perhaps the simplest and most effective way of making the city a bit more tolerable for its inhabitants. You don’t even have to be a liberal, let alone a radical, to agree with this. But it isn't going to happen, of course, because it’s still too far fetched to make political sense. Moral: when people are told that something is 'utopian', it usually means that some other people don't want them to do it. (our emphasis).

Their views were commended by Labour councillor Sir Norman Prichard in a GLC debate on 12 May. He also pointed out that the Woolwich ferry across the Thames was an existing example of free transport paid out of the rates.

Although of course in a socialist society all transport would be free, to implement free public transport in London on its own would merely be another reform of capitalism which would at best only palliate the problem of traffic congestion. What interests us as socialists is that a proposal to abolish prices is getting such serious discussion. We want to extend this discussion and to hear the arguments of those who advocate free transport against our proposal that everything should be produced free for people to use and that all prices should be abolished, on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

To those who have their doubts as to whether this is practical we can only repeat: when people are told that something is ‘utopian’, it usually means that some other people don’t want them to do it.

Free transport in London (1970)

From the May 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the more obvious examples of the waste of capitalism is the common practice of making people buy a ticket before they can travel. Under this absurd procedure men and women are employed to issue pieces of paper for other men and women to punch holes in. People who cannot afford to pay for these tickets cannot use the buses and trains, while those caught travelling without one are liable to be brought before the magistrates and fined.

In a socialist society on the basis of common ownership travel, like everything else, would be free. Buses and trains would be provided for people to use as and when they wanted to.

Faced with this common-sense proposition many people are at a loss and can think of no sensible objection. They often do not know that even under capitalism public transport is provided as a free service in some places. Such people must have been thoroughly confused during the recent Greater London Council elections. For here there were Tories and Liberals, Labour and Homes Before Roads candidates, all saying that the GLC should run London Transport as a free service.

For instance, the “Homes Before Roads” group who stood in most boroughs declared:

  We believe that within the next ten years we will have to consider the idea of free public transport as a feasible solution to the congestion and pollution caused by the private motorist.

But it was not only amongst the minority party candidates that this was canvassed. In Islington, the idea had an able advocate in Councillor John Szemerey, a Tory. He wrote:

  It is six years since I first proposed to Conservative Central Office that public transport in London should be provided free as a public service, financed jointly from the Exchequer and from the rates. With all the resultant savings on manpower and machinery, increased mobility of labour and utilisation of public transport, and reduction in travel by private car, I still think there is a good case for this. (North London Press, 6 February).

When asked how much it would cost to provide free public transport in London the Tory GLC leader replied that “the abolition of fares on London Transport’s red buses and Underground trains would be equivalent to a rate of 3s. 4d. in 1970, or approximately £30 a year for the average householder’’ (North London Press, 6 March).

Szemerey’s Labour opponents in Islington were delighted. They challenged him to say he stood for “a 3s. 4d. a rate increase to make travel free on all the London Transport buses and Underground trains”, an obvious appeal to what they thought were popular prejudices against the idea. In Camden, incidentally, the same challenge was made to the Liberals by a Tory — a revealing illustration of the sham that conventional party politics is.

Szemerey replied, arguing in effect that even from a capitalist standpoint his proposal could be justified:

  My point was that the savings from having no tickets (savings in manpower, materials and machines) put together with the savings on road maintenance and improvements (many more would use free public transport and leave their cars at home) might well justify a totally new look at public transport policy and treating it as a public service paid from local and national taxation (rates and Exchequer).
  The statement by the leader of the GLC that free red buses and undergrounds in London would cost a 3s. 4d. rate or some £30 per year for the average householder, if paid entirely from the rates underlines my point. The balance of payments from rates and Exchequer still needs to be worked out, but even if paid entirely from the rates £30 a year per household would present an actual saving for most families . . . And for the old, who nowadays have to think twice before spending 6d. on a bas fare, it would open a new life. They could visit friends, go to the shops, make outings to museums or parks all at no direct cost to themselves (Islington Gazette, 20 March).

Because abolishing tickets was proposed by a conventional politician it got this serious hearing. Nobody suggested that, with free access to transport, there would not be enough seats for everyone. Or that the buses and trains would be jammed full of people travelling nowhere in particular just because it was free.

Free travel on London Transport has nothing to do with Socialism, as the fact that it finds such a keen advocate in a Tory shows. It would merely be another reform which, with class ownership and the wages system continuing, would exert a downward pressure on wage levels.

It is the implications of some of Councillor Szemerey’s arguments that are of particular interest. He argues that resources would be saved since there would no longer be any need for tickets, ticket machines, ticket collectors or accounts, and that people who now cannot afford to travel too often will have this restriction on their enjoyment of life removed.

But these arguments can be applied with equal validity outside transport. Think of the saving if other things like food and clothes and housing were to be provided free. There would be no need for any cashiers or accountants or bank clerks or security guards or rent collectors or salesmen. The list is almost endless since very many people are employed in jobs which have to do with the buying and selling rather than the actual production of wealth. There would be no need either for cash registers, safes, counting machines or sales ledgers. The saving would be enormous and could go some way towards providing the extra things that people would ask for if prices were abolished.

What an indictment of capitalism it is that there are old people who, as Councillor Szemcrey admits, “have to think twice before spending 6d. on a bus fare”. These same people also have to think twice before spending money on the food and clothes they buy and on the rooms they rent. The abolition of price-tags really would open up "a new life” for them.

Of course free access to wealth according to need is not possible as long as a privileged few own the means of production. It would first require a real social revolution changing the basis of society from class to common ownership, as opposed to the comparatively trivial reform Councillor Szemcrey proposes. It is up to him to explain why his proposal to abolish prices is restricted to transport. He must say why he wants to go on wasting society’s resources on the trappings of buying-and-selling and why he still wants to force old people to pay for the food and shelter they need.

Adam Buick

Free Transport (2019)

Book Review from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free Public Transit and Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Escalators. Ed. Judith Dellheim and Jason Prince. Black Rose Books. 2018. 274 pages.

As the subtitle suggests, it is not the idea that people should be able to travel for free from one part of a city or town to another that is odd but that they should have to pay to do this. They wouldn’t have to in socialism but in a number of places this is not the case under capitalism either. Fares-free public transport for all users exists, we are told, ‘in as many as 97 cities and towns worldwide’ (56 in Europe, 27 in the US, 11 in Brazil, 2 in China and 1 in Australia). Partial free transport, where a section of the population such as pensioners can travel without paying is much more widespread.

The book, made up of articles by various authors, covers the subject comprehensively, both past struggles and current arrangements. It begins with the free transport policy introduced in Bologna, in Italy, for a while in the 1970s and covers failures, as in Montreal and Toronto, as well as successes, including Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, the biggest place to have introduced it.

The authors approach the subject from an ideological point of view, seeing free transport not just as an answer to the pollution and congestion caused by private cars, but as a move towards a change of society, writing of ‘socio-ecological transformation’ and ‘decommodifying public services.’ However, where it has been introduced, this has been more for more pragmatic reasons. In the US the driving force has often been ‘downtown’ businesses wanting to encourage customers to visit their stores. In France schemes are partly financed by a tax on employers, who benefit from not having to include an element for travel to and from work in the wages they pay. In some small towns it has been a cost-saving exercise as, given the relatively small number of users, it has proved cheaper to subsidise the service from local taxes than to erect a superstructure to charge and collect fares.

Since under capitalism money has to be found to pay for everything, how free transport is funded is a big issue. Various ways have been advocated or implemented – national or regional subsidies from general taxation, local taxes, one author here suggests a tax on land values near stations and bus stops.

The ideologically-motivated campaigners have often ended up relegating free transport for all (let alone socialism) to a long-term aim and concentrating on obtaining it only for disadvantaged groups as ‘transport justice’, clearly a reform to capitalism’s poor law system rather than a step towards a change of society. As reforms go, not having to pay for local public transport is unobjectionable, even of benefit to workers, but it’s not a step towards free access for all, although it does show that there is nothing unfeasible about this given the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Fareless Transport (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the headline ‘German cities to trial free public transport to cut pollution,’ the Guardian (14 February) reported on a letter from German ministers to the EU Environment Commissioner. Their idea was to encourage people to use public transport rather than carbon-burning individual cars (and avoid Germany being fined for not meeting EU antipollution targets).

Free transport will be a feature of socialist society as part of general production to directly meet people’s needs. So, there would not just be free transport, but also free health care, education, communications, restaurants and laundries. There would be no charge to enter museums, parks, libraries, theatres and other places of entertainment and recreation. Houses and flats would be rent-free, with heating, lighting, water, telephone and broadband supplied free of charge.

Free public transport on its own within capitalism is a different matter as under capitalism everything has to be paid for. As the system’s defenders put it, there is no such thing as a free lunch. In the case of public transport, the body operating it has to spend money to provide the service, on buying and maintaining the buses, trams or trains, on maintaining the tracks, on fuel and electricity and general running costs, as well as on the wages and salaries of its employees. If there is no money coming in from fares, somebody has to provide the money to pay for all this. The transport authority has to be subsidised, from central or local government which will have raised the money from taxes and borrowing.

One capitalist justification for such a subsidy is that it would save money that would otherwise have to be spent on something else. The Guardian mentions that, according to the EU, ‘life-threatening pollution’ affects 130 cities in Europe ‘costing €20bn euros (US$24.7bn) in health spending per year in the bloc.’ Another reason might be to avoid employers in city centres having to pay higher wages because of the high cost of workers getting to work; in effect, a subsidy to these employers.

Free transport has in fact been introduced in some cities, and has worked to refute the silly objection that opponents of socialism have predicted will happen when anything is made freely available.

When in 1970 the GLC was considering whether or not to introduce free transport in London one Conservative councillor predicted that everybody would rush to take free rides and a contributor to the Local Government Chronicle (15 August) opined: ‘individual charges are a form of “rationing by the purse”, but they are rationing. If there were no individual payments and thus no rationing, buses and trains and so on would surely get even more overcrowded than they are today; powerful and unscrupulous would-be passengers would get places in the vehicles, but what about old people, children, and the disabled? They need transport most of all, but they would be likely sufferers in a free-for-all.’

This has not happened in the places where free transport has been introduced. In a follow-up article on the German proposal, the news website, the Huffington Post (22 February) reported on two cities which already have unlimited public transport free at the point of access. In Tubingen, in Germany, where residents pay a tax of €15 (about £13) a month towards the cost. In Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, there is also fareless public transport. In neither case has free transport led to a free-for-all as the physically strong push aside pensioners to grab a seat, nor to people ‘joy riding’ or ‘free loading’ just because it’s free. People only use the free transport to get from A to B when they need to for one reason or another. As they can be expected to do in socialism too,

Running Commentary: Back to the Front (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Back to the Front
Racialist propaganda does not come exclusively from forthright racialist outfits like the National Front. A far more menacing and insidious variety often comes from “respectable” sources and for that reason is not always recognised for what it is. During the trial, last month, of the editor of Bulldog, the Young National Front magazine, for publishing articles which were likely to incite racial hatred, some interesting information was revealed.

The articles in question included phrases urging the “white” population in Britain to “drive the immigrant invaders out of the country” and put an end to the British way of life being “swamped”. The editor was being prosecuted under the Public Order Act, 1936 for making “threatening, abusive and insulting” comments. A surprise was in store for some when David Martin-Sperry, defending the Bulldog editor, rose to inform the court that the comments should be regarded as acceptable as they had been lifted, hardly altered, from the national press.

Martin-Sperry read out original versions of some of the articles which had appeared in the Daily Express, and then went on to say to the jury, “And don’t be put off by words like ‘swamp’. They’ve been used by the Prime Minister”. He later attempted to claim further credibility for the general policies advocated in Bulldog by pointing out that other political parties shared its belief in the need for import controls and immigration control. We wonder whether members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, which has promoted both of these policies, will rally to the support of the fascists and give evidence to the English courts on the worthiness of such political measures?


Vive le Socialisme
If you believe the news bulletins and the papers then you will consider socialism to exist in France. How you would square your belief with various items of news from that country, we cannot be sure.

One person who probably isn’t all that bothered what political labels you attach to the French society is Marcel Dassault. He is usually known as France’s “most active capitalist”, and looking at some of his more recent exploits you can see why. Dassault, reputed to be the richest man in France, has just gone into partnership with a state company, after buying a 20 per cent share in Europe One, the continent’s largest commercial radio station, which is effectively controlled by a French state company.

Described on the French bourse as “the biggest share deal of the century”, Dassault will be hoping that his new investment, which carries with it interests in Tele-Monte-Carlo, several publications and a record company, will greatly boost his already gigantic unearned income.

If Marcel laughs himself into a fit when he hears people talking about socialism in France, then so must Yvon Gattaz, the new leader of the French Bosses Council. He has just concluded a deal with President Mitterand and the French unions and announced that he was pleased to find “that employers’ aims were the same as those of the government”. The most important feature of the trilateral agreement was that the unions had agreed to moderation in all their wage claims. Although the shared aims of the bosses and government were not explicitly stated a critical observer might describe the situation as ‘screwing the workers for the maximum profit’.

Before we leave France, just a couple of comments worth noting from Bernard Brune, the Minister for Social Affairs. Speaking about his new plans to fight climbing unemployment Brune said: “If all works well we shall have fulfilled our promise to keep unemployment stable at 2,000,000 this year” (Guardian, 8/1/82). Then on the subject of carrying the support of the bosses for his job training centre strategies, he proudly stated: “The employers are beginning to realise we are not a lot of bolshevists or a bunch of crackpots. We mean serious business". And “serious business” is, of course, exactly what he does mean.


God Help Us!
“Trust in the Lord and Sleep in the Street” is an old saying that his Holiness the Pope would not thank you for repeating. As a devout Christian he presumably believes that material matters in life are of less importance than ‘spiritual wellbeing’ and that your destiny is ultimately in the hands of that mysterious thing called god.

If we are humble and docile and meek, so the story goes, everything will be all right and we shall “inherit the earth”. F'or someone with such entrenched faith in the powers of beneficent extraterrestrial forces, Pope John Paul places an unusual reliance on down-to-earth man-made modern medical treatment. The Vatican has just had to pay £22,482 for the 77 days the Pope spent in hospital following the attempt on his life last May. We wonder whether it was this medical treatment which was responsible for saving the Pope’s life or divine intervention brought about by the prayers uttered to the skies by Catholics throughout the world?

Now that the Pope has recovered, we learn (Sunday Times, 3/1 /82) that he is to make his debut as a West End playwright next spring. The dramatic piece written by the Supreme Pontiff as a younger man is entitled The Jeweller’s Shop and examines attitudes about love and marriage. There were internal difficulties in persuading the Vatican to release the right, as catholic director Mike Murray explained: “The problem was that the Pope cannot be seen to be entering the commercial arena".

The author’s royalty will now be paid to the Vatican. Murray went on to elucidate: “There is nothing wrong with profit in the context of faith. Mediaeval tradesmen used to pin up a sign on their stalls which read: ‘For God and for profit’. That’s the trouble, capitalism without God is hopeless”. So the unemployed and the homeless and the thirty million people who are likely to die of starvation this year and those who are simply sick of being exploited can all take comfort in knowing that the only thing missing from their lives to make capitalism pleasant, is God

Any More Fares?

The Greater London Council’s experiment with cheap public transport, soon to fade away in a puff of diesel fumes, has been depicted in the media as a personal feud between Ken Livingstone and Lord Denning. All the clichés, however, obscure the real issues as effectively as an old-fashioned London smog.

High density urban living and modern commercial and industrial practice require that vast numbers of workers travel from their homes to their places of work at set times, and then travel back again approximately eight hours later. The means of transporting this army must be effective and reliable so as not to disrupt the profit-making process. The argument is really about how the total cost of transporting workers about is to be divided between different sections of the owning class, each of course wanting to reap the greatest benefit at the least possible expense.

The history of the bickerings over whether public transport should be made to pay for itself or be subsidised shows up party politics for the sham they really are. Ken Livingstone, the “red extremist”, turns decidedly pink (or is it grey) when compared to John Szemery, a Tory councillor on the Tory controlled GLC of 1970. Szemery wrote:

   It is six years since I first proposed to Conservative Central Office that public transport in London should be provided free as a public service financed jointly from the Exchequer and from the rates. With all the resultant savings in manpower and machinery, increased mobility of labour and utilisation of public transport and reduction in travel by private car, I still think there is a good case for this. (North London Press, 6 February, 1970.)

Szemery’s Labour opponents in Islington challenged him to say that he stood for a rate increase to make travel free on all London Transport buses and underground trains. Obviously pandering to what they thought were popular prejudices against the idea. All change please!

Our Winston

In a speech at Guildhall in November 1914, Winston Churchill said: “The maxim of the British people is ‘Business as usual’.” Even from his earliest days young Winston must have had a clear understanding of exactly what ‘business as usual' means in a class-divided society, and why for a minority there is every reason to try to convince the majority that the present order of society is worth preserving even at the cost of “blood, toil, tears and sweat”.

On 4 January this year the Public Records Office made available the census returns for 1881 and from them we find that our Winston, aged 6 and described as a scholar, was living with his parents at St. James Place in Pall Mall. His next door neighbour was Earl Spencer (occupation: Peer and Lord President of the Council).

The Spencers had 31 servants in residence, while Lord Egremont ‘next door’ on the other side only had thirteen. The Churchills had to scrape by with a mere eight servants, including the butler, the nursery maid and the cook. Hard times indeed, but he and his friends seemed to get a fair whack out of capitalism. What was it he once said, “Never in the history of class struggle has so much been taken from so many by so few”?

Gary Jay

No such thing as a free bus? (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the beginning of July the people of Hasselt, a town in Northern Belgium with a population of 60,000, have been able to travel free on the buses.

No, socialism has not been established there. This is just one of a number of such experiments that have been carried out in various places over the years. In this case the aim is to encourage people to use public transport rather than their cars when they come to work or shop in the town centre so that the costs of renovating a ring road can be avoided. The free transport experiment, which will run for two years, will cost the town 38 million Belgian francs (£6.6 million), but renovating the ring road would cost hundreds of millions of francs. So, on the principle that “free is cheaper”, the mayor opted for free buses.

Socialists don't advocate free transport under capitalism—we only advocate it as part of the general free access that will apply in socialism—but the same arguments are put against free transport as are against general free access.

When socialists say that in socialism people will be able to give, in terms of work, according to their abilities and then take from the common store of wealth according to their needs as they decide them, the supporter of capitalism's typical reaction is: people are greedy so they would grab more than they need and shortages would soon develop again.

But why? Greed is not a built-in part of human nature but a behaviour pattern under certain specific social conditions.When a ship was wrecked in the Seilly Isles recently people rushed to grab what they could.They did this because they knew that the supply of free goods was a one-off and was not going to last.

Where people know that the free supply is going to last they adjust their behaviour accordingly. They no longer frantically seek to grab what they can. Instead, they wait till their current supply runs out and then they go and get some more or, in the case of a service, they wait till they need it and then they go and use it.

All the experience of free goods and services even under capitalism confirms this. Of course it is true that "there is no such thing as a free lunch" under capitalism: everything has to be paid for in the end, in one way or another. Water supply is paid for in Britain through water rates: free local phone calls in some US and Canadian cities through high telephone rental charges: and free transport through local or national taxes.

But this is not the relevant point here. The water, the local phone calls and the buses or trains are free at the time of use: people pay nothing when they use them and they can use them as much as they like. According to the "greedy person" theory, under these circumstances people should be hoarding water, making as many phone calls as they can. and travelling round and round on the buses just to get in as many free rides as possible. But of course this doesn't happen. People adjust their behaviour to the permanent situation of free use and only use these services when they need them.

Supporters of capitalism don't want to accept this because they don't want to believe that it is possible for humans to behave in this sensible way. This prejudice came out in the debate in Belgium over free transport that the mayor of Hasselt's decision provoked.

The Brussels Region Communications Minister, Hervé Husquin. a Liberal (but Liberals on the Continent are still living in the 19th century), was quoted as saying:

  "People don't respect what they can get for free. Not only does vandalism grow but the motivation to use the car remains. They profit from it. Cheap tickets on the other hand, where people pay a kind of contribution, is the right way to get people to use public transport more often" (Het Nieuwsblad, 22 May).

He may turn out to be right about free public transport not working in the sense of not discouraging people from using their cars (that remains to be seen), but what's all this nonsense about vandalism increasing? Husquin's objection here is, clearly, ideological. According to him, if anything is free people must abuse it because that's human nature. However, as yet there have been no reports from Hasselt of people boarding the buses to slash the seats because they can now do this without paying.

Husquin is a university professor but that seems to be qualification for talking nonsense on this subject. Two lecturers from a university in Antwerp came up with an equally silly objection.

Starting from the premise that humans are, or ought to be.,walking calculating machines who if they had all the facts would decide to spend their money in such a way that the marginal price/benefit ratio of everything they consumed was the same (yes, such are the nutty ideas that circulate in university economics departments and that students arc required to at least pretend to subscribe to if they want to pass the exams), they argue that free transport is not desirable as it distorts people's judgements. When something is free this registers on the calculating machine in their heads as a price equal to zero and encourages them to use more of it than they would want if they knew all the facts, i.e. the "marginal social cost" of the free service.

So. say the nutty professors:

   "Rather than subsidising public transport, economists propose to apply to the whole transport sector the principle of pricing at marginal social cost" (Le Soir, 4 June).

They admit that this will mean an increase in the average amount charged for transport, more for the car user than for the public transport user but more for the public transport user too.

The logic of this argument—and the proof that it is wrong—is that everything should be charged for. Everything should have a price tag on it. Nothing should ever be free. Not just water, phone calls and buses, but not libraries, museums or parks. In the transport sector roads should not be free.Tolls should be reintroduced not just for roads but for pavements too since it costs money to clean and maintain them.

As Robert Tressell pointed out in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, if these people could find a way of doing it they would charge us for the air we breathe.

Adam Buick

World at work (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property utilises every aid in upholding its rights. Armies in the field, policemen in the streets and detectives in the stories, each armed with the marvels of modern technology, are obvious examples of this. All this is necessary in a society in conflict where every man's interests seem to be in opposition. The struggle is world wide and is carried into every sphere of human activity — even London Underground, where one of the latest technical innovations, automation, is being used to protect the property rights of London Transport against the encroachment of an army of fare-dodging passengers.

The exact amount of income which London Transport loses through this phenomenon is unknown although they put the figure for buses and Underground combined at around 1 per cent of receipts, which were £112 million in 1969. So by their own reckoning it is costing them over £1 million yearly, and since it is harder to dodge paying on the buses, especially with the introduction of pay-as-you-enter, then it can be safely assumed that most of this is lost on the Underground. London Transport have tried to fight back as convictions for dishonest travelling on the Underground show — an average of 6,000 yearly, but still the cash is lost and they must continue the fight.

The answer as London Transport sees it is to ensure that correct fares are paid. Today, thousands simply buy no ticket at all and just hand the collector a shilling at the exit. This disinclination to pay full fare was best seen during the 1965 strike of booking clerks when “honesty buckets” were placed inside stations for passengers to put the cost of their journey into. The response prompted a London Transport official at Victoria to complain that “so far as I can gather over the weekend thousands of people must have moved to within a sixpenny travelling distance of Victoria". (The Times, 16 March 1965). Therefore, a way has been devised whereby passengers must have paid full fare before being allowed to leave the station. The solution is automated ticket issuing and collecting.

This entails selling chemically coated tickets on which the details of the journey are magnetically encoded. To gain access to the trains the passenger feeds the ticket into the entrance gate which scans it before letting him through. The ticket is again electronically read by the exit gate which opens only if the code is correct. If not, the passenger is “attended” to by one of the station staff. This system is already in wide use on the new Victoria Line and double the normal excess fares have been collected at some stations during the first year. The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million lost due to fare-dodging will be shown to be hopelessly under estimated.

How much of society’s resources will it cost to introduce automated ticketing throughout London Underground? Anthony Bull, London Transport’s Vice-Chairman, stated in 1966 that it would cost, at a very rough estimate, £10 million at 1966 prices. Obviously the final figure will be much higher, but Bull sugared the pill by adding that the capital expenditure of designing and installing the system was of a once-and-for-all character. (Modern Railways, June 1966). We shall return to this.

Of course fare-dodging isn't the only reason for installing automation. London Transport expects to save £1 million a year by dispensing with surplus staff who, as we have seen, are liable to take costly strike action. This saving, together with the money at present being lost, would go a long way towards solving London Transport’s financial plight. It is currently losing £10 million a year—£7½ million on interest on loans and the rest on running losses. Accordingly, vast amounts of highly skilled human time and energy are to be wasted in order to prevent workers freely utilising the transportation which their brain and muscle power alone created . . . but which they do not own. And this is something which is happening all over the world. The growth of private motoring is forcing authorities in countries like America, Germany, Japan, Holland, to turn to Rapid Transit Systems as a means of maintaining communications in large cities and automated ticket issuing and collecting is being almost universally adopted.

But there is even more waste involved than meets the eye, because London Transport’s Mr. Bull was reckoning without human ingenuity when he made his “once-and-for-all” claim. When Milan’s Underground opened in 1964 it used an admittedly simple automated ticket system. A few minutes after the Archbishop and Mayor had cut the riband and the Milanese discovered that a holy picture cut to the correct size would operate the electronic turnstiles very well. So it was back to the drawing-board in order to produce an even more sophisticated machine. And in America change-giving machines, which are a “must” in the new systems, were withdrawn for modification a few years ago because workers were getting the change by inserting copies of banknotes run-off on office photocopy equipment. Obviously today’s ticket machines will cope with these simple ruses and no effort is being spared in ironing out the snags. In two American cities passengers have been invited to try and beat the system any way they can without retribution —for a trial — period — and if successful to confess their secret afterwards. No one can say with certainty that new methods of beating the machines won’t be developed. For example, if currency notes can be forged or stolen then why not special extended-travel tickets valued at, say, £5?

Reporting the Milan episode the Guardian correspondent cited it as proof of “man's answer to the tyranny of machines” (4 November 1964). The fallacy is that it is machines which dominate men when what actually happens is that some men, through their ownership of capital, use machines in the production and realisation of surplus value from other men — the workers, who sometimes hit back in whatever way they can, usually at the machines.

Nor is the situation any different in “communist” Russia. Moscow Metro is considering introducing automated ticketing and change-giving machines in the hope of dispensing with 300 booking clerks. Already Leningrad Metro employs a simple light-ray device which is placed just behind the coin-slot on the gate. If the intending passengers breaks the ray without first inserting the required coin then, just as in avowedly capitalist Britain or America, the gate remains closed. The Russian government claims that all public transport will eventually be free of charge as a social service (Modern Railways, April 1967). We have heard promises like this before, but even if it is realised it has nothing to do with Socialism when carried out within the context of an exchange relationship society such as Russia. The Expo 67 railway in Montreal was free “because of its importance in distributing visitors”. Substitute “workers” for “visitors” in state capitalist Russia and you have another reason why free transport can be such an attractive proposition to exploiters the world over.

Capitalism can easily provide us with better examples of its wastefulness and divisiveness and the contest between London Transport and the fare-dodgers is really only a sideshow. But it is part of the overall picture of how capitalism, in attempting to solve its problems, not only increases the productive forces and technical know-how but also glaringly exposes itself as the cause of the accompanying social conflict. In a society where all the goods and services man needs, including transport, were freely available themselves with brilliant thoughts of how to cancel out each other’s inventiveness would be impossible.

Vic Vanni