Running Commentary: Wish we weren't here (1988)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wish we weren't here

Of course it may have been a trick by the more miserly elements in the Confederation of British Industries but some recent research has thrown doubt on the benefits, hitherto taken for granted, of a holiday. Casting a cold eye on what actually happens to people who are trying to convince themselves that they are having a marvellous time, getting away from it all, has revealed that, such are the stresses involved, they might have been better to stay at home.

In this year of delays in air transport, which condemned thousands of bored, weary, sweaty package tourists to pass hours, even days, of their holiday in airport lounges, nobody will argue about the strains of getting yourself from rain-soaked Britain to a sunbaked paradise across the sea. Those who stayed at home could also face transport difficulties. For them there were many huge, fuming motorway tailbacks, in each vehicle a driver praying that the engine would not overheat in the inch-by-inch crawl towards their holiday idyll.

Before the journey there is the stress of organisation — booking the holiday, buying the tickets, insuring yourself, making sure that things are up to date at work before you go. worrying about whether you can afford it. And many holidays, under an unrelenting pressure to enjoy yourself according to the writ of the organisers, are little better than exercises in self-abuse — excessive drinking, eating, sun-bathing. . . This behaviour is regarded by many holiday-makers as a release, because it is in direct contrast to what they are allowed to do in the everyday routine of wage-slavery. Two weeks with the 18-30 Club Ibiza is a world away from the factory bench, the supermarket checkout, the typing pool stools. It is a fortnight of unrelieved fantasy with an unpleasant reality waiting at the end.

But perhaps even more damaging is the stress which can be observed on many a crowded beach or cafe or coach. One result of a holiday is to take people, who for the other fifty weeks of the year are kept in only distant contact through being at work or school and forces them to spend a lot more time close together for days on end. It starts out being a happy change but then minor irritations become focussed into major provocations; differences in tastes which usually don't matter because lack of contact allows everyone to do their own thing become impassable obstacles. What usually operates as a manageable tolerance for each other changes into active dislike. It is a relief for everyone to go back home, where they don't have to see as much of each other.

Only one social group, however, experiences stresses. People who have to work for their living cannot employ a load of secretaries. maids and valets to smooth their way onto a holiday. The tensions they are under during their brief spell at what is called leisure reflect those which dominate their working lives. It says a lot about working class life, that many of them might well be better off not taking a holiday. Getting Away From It All is. for them, impossible.

Living on tick

One of the iron principles said to have been drilled into the young Margaret Thatcher by her legendary father was never, ever to get into debt.

Like most of Thatcher s professed standards of behaviour, that one has little relevance to what actually happens in the world. To begin with, a great deal of capitalism's commerce would need to be drastically remodelled if every company adopted the principle of never owing any money to any other firm.

That is besides the working class, whose access to things like furniture, household equipment and houses relies on their being able to borrow money. Of course in the long run it is cheaper to buy, say. a house out of your own pocket rather than go cap-in-hand to a building society. But to save that sort of money would need such stringently miserly living standards over so many years that by the time you moved into your newly-purchased home you would be an emaciated, nervous wreck.

In this time of so-called boom (Thatcher says it's a boom. Lawson says so. . .) workers widely use the quick-loan facilities of credit cards or the "personal" loans which are so enticingly offered by the banks. Running up a bill with Access can work reasonably well for a worker who wants some of the more expensive bits of wealth produced by their class provided there is no tendency to have nightmares about descending bailiffs, but not so well for those suffering from doubt- wracked insomnia. Then what about the sense of guilt induced by our being told that our high living on all this credit is bringing the British economy to its knees. While before a "weak" pound and high interest rates were crippling problems which all true English folk should do their utmost to solve, with the help of a clever Chancellor of the Exchequer like Nigel Lawson, now the threat comes from a "strong" pound and low interest rates. Law- son's apparent solution to this is to say that he will implement the measures which were so recently themselves the main problem. . .

The most cursory acquaintance with these affairs — these blunders, these U-turns, these false assurances — points to the conclusion that all the Chancellors and all their experts really don't have the slightest idea of what is going on in the world. What is obvious is that none of them have the exact, delicate control over the economy and the market which they claim to have. Any confidence they may display in their proposals for juggling endlessly with the symptoms of capitalism's real sickness springs from the very few occasions when their luck has been in — when events which are out of their control have changed in such a way and at such a time as to suggest that they control them. It is on that kind of luck that Lawson's reputation has so far been based; what will happen to him. now that his luck seems to have run out?

Workers who are struggling to survive under capitalism should pay no heed to the superficial aspects of the system. Every time they pay the mortgage, every time they sign a credit sales slip, they are attesting to the fact that this is a society which denies them access to almost everything except pompous harangues from politicians.

Hunting Quayle

If Senator Dan Quayle s prudent membership of the National Guard rather than take his chances on being conscripted to fight in Vietnam was hypocrisy. how do we describe the exultant indignation which it provoked in the media?

Quayle is a member of the capitalist class — born into that minority who live off the labour of the rest of us and so do not need to be employed for a living. Their income — a lot more substantial than that of the majority — comes from their investment in the exploitation of the other class — the working class. This class — the majority in society — do all the useful work. They conceive, design, produce, transport all the wealth and services. They do the clean work like sitting behind a desk and the dirty work like fighting in a war. Society could not operate without them. In contrast, there is no social need for the capitalist class; in terms of producing and distributing useful things they are redundant.

So it is perfectly reasonable for Quayle to expect that other people — from the other class — should fight in the wars in the same way as he expects them to cook his food, clean his floors, write and print his newspapers which his family own. It is also perfectly reasonable for him to use his class privileges, which confer so many advantages on him. to avoid unpleasant experiences — and what could be more unpleasant than a spell in battle in Vietnam?

Many rich youngsters took refuge from Vietnam in the National Guard, pulling the strings of privileges as they did so. The sons of George Bush and Lloyd Bentsen were among them. In the rush to escape Vietnam the National Guard became over-subscribed.

So Quayle and all those other cosseted young capitalists were only doing what come naturally in a class divided society. They were behaving in accordance with the wealth of their class and with the advantages which that wealth brings. It went with their sumptuous homes, their servants, their private aeroplanes and yachts, their ability always to choose how they spend their lives.

The media stand foursquare in favour of this social system. They eulogise the ruling class as people of unusual abilities, the most trivial of whose life must be lovingly related to us. However they may complain about some of the system's symptoms they never question capitalism in its essentials — the division into classes, the existence of rich and poor, the need of one class to be employed by the other, the principle of political leadership. . .

What Dan Quayle did. as another example of what it means to have access to class privileges, was utterly predictable and. from his point of view, utterly sensible. Of course he is a hypocrite — a hawk who wants other people to do the fighting for him. which makes him especially despicable. But the only people who can fairly condemn him for this are those who oppose the system in which his privilege and hypocrisy are rooted.

The Farce Of Consumer Protection. (1962)

From the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 30 pages and over 150,000 words the team of eleven men and women who signed the final report of the Molony committee on Consumer Protection made recommendations about ways of securing that the things people buy shall be a little nearer to what they want and what the makers and sellers claim them to be.

The Committee made a large number of observations and recommendations, the most important of the latter category being the proposal to set up a 12-man Consumer Council “to devise and advance” the means of resolving the problems of consumers. But the Council is not itself to prepare test reports on articles offered for sale, or receive complaints or take proceedings. Its chief functions are to get information about consumer’s problems, determine what can be done and give advice and guidance through Citizen’s Advice Bureaux and other organisations and by its own publications. It all sounds very vague and ineffective. Other recommendations are that whatever protection is now given by hire-purchase law shall no longer be limited to transactions worth less than £300, but shall be extended (taking in cars and caravans), and that misleading descriptions of articles offered for sale shall be made more difficult by tightening up the administration of the Merchandise Marks Acts and widening their scope to all classes of goods.

At the time of writing the Government has not announced its intention about the recommendations, only undertaking to “study the reactions of all parties affected before finally concluding what we should do.”

What is more interesting than the details of the Committee’s recommendations is what they did not do, and the principle on which they worked.

If buyers in great numbers complain that they are being misled or defrauded by sellers it would seem that two lines of action would theoretically be open to a Committee set up to solve the problem; to place legal restrictions on the freedom of action of sellers, or to abolish the buyer-seller relationship. The latter is the solution inherent in establishing a Socialist system of society and was not even thought of by the Committee. The Committee, however, managed to find a third solution, which is to allow the sellers to behave as at present, but to encourage the buyers to show more aggressive resistance. So the Economist, in its issue of July 28th, after an implied approval of what it calls “slick American style selling,” blames the 15 million British housewives for not standing up to it, and hopes that with more information and advice they will be encouraged to do so:

“This is why it was so important that the Molony report . . . should get its balance of recommendations just right. The right precept is full free speech for the advertiser and salesman, but also full free speech (and sufficient detailed information) against them. In the event the Molony committee severely avoids being anti-salesman, but seems not quite sufficiently radically pro-consumer.”

Quality goods

No doubt the Government will implement parts of the Molony recommendations and if the Labour Party, with or without association with the Liberals, becomes the Government after the next election, it is certain that they will do much the same. It is equally certain that the problem will not be solved, nor even stated. Neither this Committee nor the earlier Committees that ploughed the same field, nor any of the Party spokesmen and newspapers that have offered alternative proposals have got as far as admitting why these deceitful practices go on, much less accepting the logical conclusion that there is only one way to end them.

There is a question that could be asked. In a world in which technically it would be possible to produce and distribute only first-class articles, not needing false deceptions and high power salesmanship to make them acceptable, why do the producers and distributors put out so much that is inferior and cheap and known to be so by the purchasers, and so much that is, in addition, dressed up to look better than it is? The manufacturers have a simple answer to the first part of the question. What would be the use, they would say, of producing masses of good quality articles that the majority of the population could not afford to buy. It is the poverty problem of every country in the world today—one standard of quality and quantity for the rich few, and another for the poor majority, and none of the governments are concerned to put an end to this situation. We also have to accept that many workers still regard it as natural and inevitable—like the workers rebuilding the Prime Minister’s residence at 10, Downing Street, who told a Guardian correspondent:

“There should be a sense of achievement on a job like this—doing something exceptional, you know. Another added, It’s not just a housing estate after all—you can’t just bung it up.” (27 March 1962.)

These workers probably themselves live in just such a bunged-up estate.

The other aspect—the adulterations, the false descriptions, the petty cheating, is in a different category and a complex one for those who govern. It can hit the rich shopper as well as the poor one, and while some manufacturers are prepared to legislate to limit it, others want it left alone. Their interests are divided and only pettifogging “remedies” are possible. Some manufacturers of high-quality, high-cost, articles would be happy to see the advertising carried on by their mass producing rivals curbed; and the latter would favour laws against the swindling activities of cheap-jack competitors who undersell them; but how is this to be done without hampering the normal business in which they are all engaged, that of making profit?

The dilemma they face here is closely paralleled by the problem of placing limits on the exploitation of the workers. All capitalist profit flows from the exploitation of the workers, so there is a common interest in continuing it, but if particular groups of employers carry exploitation to extremes by child labour, excessive hours, dangerous and insanitary factories, it undermines the health of the workers (not to mention their fitness to be soldiers) and damages the profit interest of the whole class of exploiters.

So also in the field of legal restrictions on the sale of defective and misrepresented goods. Committees of inquiry expose the evils (like the one that sat just over a century ago), then the interested parties squabble about the minimum of legislation they are prepared to enact.

Those at the back cry forward and those at the front cry back! While Jean Robertson in the Sunday Telegraph (29/7/62) criticises the Molony Committee for being too timid and points out that “while we were waiting for Molony, four modest consumer Bills introduced by private members were killed off in his name”, the Guardian (26/7/62) while admitting that some of the existing regulations under the Merchandise Marks Act “are enforced slackly or not at all” goes on to plead the traditional businessman’s case against legal restrictions: “There is much to be said against attempts to interfere administratively with too many points in the complicated business of distribution.”

Adulteration

The problem examined by the Molony Committee is not new, though in earlier times it went by the cruder name of adulteration, and this time the scope of the inquiry was expressly limited. The Committee confined itself to private consumers, cutting out the sale of goods to manufacturers, farmers and traders. Nor did it include services, though admitting there is much complaint about such work as the repair of radio and television sets. It excluded food and drugs on the ground that these are covered by the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, and excluded the nationalised power industries (except the sale of solid fuels) mainly because in these industries functions and relationship to the public have been determined as a matter of government policy. They admitted that they heard much complaint about prices being excessive, but decided against making recommendations because it would be difficult and costly to fix prices and in any event “vigorous competition” makes price control unnecessary. They fell back on the good old myth of the capitalist economists that the consumer has “wide freedom of choice” and this is his best protection. (Paragraph 6.)

As already remarked, the problem of adulteration is not new. The 1950 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in an article under that heading divides it into three types, the intentional palming off of an inferior article, the addition of injurious ingredients, and the deliberate or negligent use of contaminated or deteriorated material not necessarily injurious. Having produced evidence that such practices existed from the earliest historical times the article smugly avoids inquiry into their precise causes with the remark that “adulteration of the first kind is probably as old as human greed itself” which, of course, adds nothing to our knowledge.

The Encyclopaedia writer did, however, throw light on a development that explains why the Molony Committee became necessary and the form its inquiries took:

“… as the rise of the factory gradually took the manufacturing of many foods out of the home, and away from the farm and the village, the forms of adulteration became at once more invidious, more numerous and more difficult of detection. The proof of the pudding was no longer in the eating, but in the laboratory.”

This development has extended to all sorts of products, not only foods: in our century it is not enough for the buyer “to beware,” he now must have at his disposal expert knowledge and means of elaborate testing.

For the economic background we must turn to Marx for more enlightenment about adulteration. In Volume I of Capital (Chapters VI, X and XXIV) he reproduced from the reports of committees of inquiry over a century ago numerous examples of the widespread practice of adulterating foodstuffs, medicines and other articles, and showed how the demand for laws against adulteration of bread came from bakers themselves: they saw their trade being ruined through the lower prices charged by their adulterating rivals.

The moral

But unlike the Encyclopaedia, which avoided seeking the real cause and took refuge in a sort of original sin, the greed of the human race, Marx pin-pointed it in the class structure of capitalist society, which functions through the exploitation of one class by another and by the necessity of making profit:

“This fanatic love of the capitalist for profit is expressed … by the adulteration of the elements of production, which is one of the principal means of reducing the value of the constant capital in comparison with the variable capital, and thus raising the rate of profit.” (Capital Vol. III Page 100.)

The moral of this ought to be obvious—though not to government committees. What is needed is not more laws and regulations to restrict capitalism’s freedom of action in the market, but the abolition of a system of society that works through the Market; having in its place production solely for use, so that there will be no-one against whom consumers will need to be protected.

Edgar Hardcastle

The "Prosperous" Working Class (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are often told by people who do not really understand its meaning, that poverty no longer exists. Largely they mistake poverty for destitution, and think in terms of pre-war days of dole-queues, hunger marches, and the general hardship suffered from not being able to afford sufficient food, clothing and shelter.

Workers who feel secure in their jobs at the moment must bear in mind that the era of full employment was started by the last world war, when a vast amount of industry was smashed up, and the world market at the end of it had six years dearth of consumer goods to make up, and, all the while, massive preparations have gone on for World War III.

If our measure of prosperity is to be that we have all got "jobs,” it still leaves Capitalism, with a great deal to answer for. In the first place, our jobs are not really “ours ” at all, because they can be taken away from us, and today, just as before the war, how long they last depends on how long our employers can sell, at a profit, the things we produce.

Neither poverty, nor destitution, has been abolished, and these evils of Capitalism only smite the useful people of society—the working class. Poverty is not something which depends on what Government is in power, it is a permanent condition of the wage-earning class.

Poverty can be recognised in the existence of hire-purchase; it can be seen amongst the crowds of window-shoppers looking in at the things they cannot afford; it is the reason why workers “save” for holidays, Xmas, clothing or furniture; why they live in low-rent homes; take out insurance against their old age; shop more in Brixton than in Bond Street; buy one necessary thing, and forego others; and generally live from pay-day to pay-day.

There are many other instances of the condition of poverty, but the above will be sufficient to take any heads from the clouds, in order to take a closer look at the world we workers “live’ in. Destitution is always a threatening possibility to wage-earners, as their only source of income is through finding hirers, and, as we shall see, all kinds of dire consequences can follow when the hired are dispensed with. The old age pensioners, the disabled, and the sick, ca still be found destitute, on the pittance doled out by the “Welfare State.” .

One example of the prosperity we are all supposed to be enjoying, comes from a report in the Daily Express of 15th October, 1956. In Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, the Chamber of Trade is starting a “Black Book” of customers who do not pay. “The idea is to protect traders from people who run up accounts at one shop, and then open accounts at others, when they cannot pay off the first In another town, housewives may be secretly investigated, and find it difficult to open accounts at a second shop, after exhausting credit at the first.” 

Mr. Raymond Broad, President of the Chamber said:—

“ Many people who formerly paid cash now want credit. Things are getting more difficult for traders."

" Some women in Axminster have been going 10 miles to Honiton, to run up new bills. But a woman who leaves her grocer, when he asks for his money, will find her new grocer more cautious,’ said Mr. Herbert Jeffery, Secretary of Axminster Chamber of Commerced."

We are sure to be told that people who cannot pay the grocer must be buying television sets or motor-cycles but, after 17 years of full employment, for workers to have to choose between paying the radio shop or the grocer, is poverty.

The Daily Express, a day later, carried an even more remarkable story. After we have been told, by Eden and others, of the terrible fate in store for "us,” if “we” lose the Suez Canal, the Express gives an account of what happened to the family of a reservist, who was called back while the Canal dispute raged. The income of Mrs. Bedford was "chopped from £14.16.0 a week, to 16/- for children’s allowances. Food ran out. Her three little daughters, Anne, aged five, Christine, three. Denise, two —began to fret, and then weep with hunger.” The mother “broke open the gas meter at her home in St. Paul’s Road, Middlesbrough. She was found out. Yesterday, she was conditionally discharged, on payment of 15/- costs. The electricity authorities have cut off the current, because she has not paid the last bill.”

It is indeed ironic that the same Capitalist State machine, which took the man away from his work, was responsible for cutting off his electricity, and imposing the Court costs on his wife. Even more remarkable, in view of the story of the Canal being vital to our survival, and the fact that we are told that the public own nationalised electricity.

The eventual allowance from the Army was £4 0s. 6d. per week, and, being a member of the working class, with no property income, Mrs. Bedford had “9d. left out of the allowance, after she had paid:—

Rent                  £1    8   9

Clothes on credit      £2    0   0 

Furniture, H.P. ... 11   0

Total                   £3 19  9

This woman had a child “ recovering from polio,” and “was expecting another baby.” Before her allowance arrived, she had taken sheets and blankets off one of the beds, and gone to the pawnbroker with them. “ He allowed me 18/-. With that, I bought bread, margarine, and milk, and gave them to the kids. They were ravenous.”

The fact that workers do not own the Empire, the oil, or the Country, is often tragically brought home. As the S.P.G.B. pointed out at its formation,“ the machinery of Government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the Capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers.” (See clause 6 of our Declaration of Principles).

The last example we will give here, is of how the “benevolent” State treats wage-slaves from whom profits cannot be made, as they are too old. It is from a letter to the Sunday Graphic for October 14th, 1956:—

“There are large groups of humans, men and women, who suddenly cease to belong economically to the everyday world that swirls around them, almost over them. They grope and scheme for a little food, a little warmth, and, above everything else, a little security.”

The writer is a pensioner, aged 71, with a semi-invalid wife.

“ We receive a weekly sum of £3 18s. 6d., for all our needs. After budgeting for rent, gas, coal, and clothes, it leaves 6s. a day between us and starvation. And the dread of the winter is on us. The little extra something an old body craves in the winter, is beyond the few shillings needed for sheer necessities to keep alive.”

After going to a rally of the Old Age Pensioners’ Association, and listening to the speeches by the High Sheriff, a padre, and others, about what must be done, "Hope surged again,” and, after the collection was taken, “I trudged back home. My twopenny bus fare was in the plate. The heart and soul shrink from the dreary, hopeless future that stares bleakly at us. For how much longer now? Who knows? Who cares?”

As Socialists, we care about the poverty suffered by workers. We also know how long it will last. It will last as long as the working class are content to work for wages; for as long as they look for solutions to their problems within Capitalism.

Whilst a minority owns the means of production, and profit remains their goal, older workers, who have slowed down, will always have to make way for younger, faster ones. Consideration of human suffering and hardship is a luxury which Capitalism must always place as a poor second to profits. It is only with Socialism that the peoples’ needs will count first

When the means of production are held by society in common, the fruits of our social labour will be available for use. Goods of all kinds will be freely distributed without the barrier of money.

If only workers, young and old, would ponder the possibilities of this sure but simple solution, instead of allowing competing reformist parties to deceive them into the continued support of Capitalism, the misery, poverty, destitution, insecurity, and war threats, with which our whole lives are cursed at present, would be banished for ever.

Harry Baldwin

News in Review: Mr & Mrs Average (1961)

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

Mr & Mrs Average

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

Never had it so good . . .

Airways Strike

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

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

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

On the Brink

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

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

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

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

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

Yes to De Gaulle

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canadian Illusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battle of the Roads

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

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

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

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

Hire Purchase (1955)

From the June 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

“To Have and Have Not”

It is often said that Punch is the great social historian of the last 100 years. Since comic journals thrive on aptness rather than humour, they do in fact provide a minor guide to changes in manners and morals.

A joke that has entirely disappeared now is the one about “the instalments on the furniture.” Continually, in magazines of the 1920’s little boys blurted out that the settee wasn't paid for, and men called to take back the chairs when guests had come to tea—the psychology being that, 25 years ago, to buy on hire-purchase was to have a guilty secret.

All different nowadays, of course. There are even good, wise reasons for instalment buying: for example, if the thing goes wrong the firm will see to it. Hire-purchase is an accepted social fact. Last year, half the radio sets, seven-tenths of the furniture and bedding and vacuum cleaners and TV sets, and nearly all the refrigerators and washing machines sold in this country were bought on hire-purchase. “Cash only” shops are the exceptions now, and very recently the instalment system has spread as far as air travel and holidays.

That is not to say all reprehension of hire-purchase has ceased. Generally, there have been two sorts of objections to it. The one voiced by most working people in the past was strictly practical: “I’m hanging no millstone of weekly payments round my neck,” said the poor, poverty-hardened man in Love on the Dole. The other objection was that to have something before paying for is wrong—apparently a moral view but in fact only cash customer’s attitude. The people who largely held that view were the better-off, professional and black-coated workers; since the war their position has declined, and so consequently has their moral objection to hire-purchase. Many of the “swell” shops, in fact, now advertize hire-purchase facilities.

Hire-purchase trading has gone on for at least a century. Before 1914 it was mainly a hole-and-corner business (nevertheless, plenty of suits were bought at a shilling a week). Its growth between two wars went with the mass-production of cheap luxuries—gramophones, bicycles, radio sets; the first legislation to regularize it in this country was in 1938. The great boom in instalment buying came after the second war, however. Some idea of its extent is given by the banks’ statement of their loans to hire-purchase finance companies. The total in February, 1955, was £30,493,000, compared with £11,188,000 in February, 1954. The sum actually was greater, since many loans for general trading went mainly into hire-purchase; and in the same period several of the companies made capital issues.

Few shops finance their own hire-purchase trading—in fact, only the very big ones. Most of them borrow from hire-purchase credit companies, which often buy the goods themselves, receive the instalments themselves, and leave the shopkeeper as little more than an agent. There are several organizations for checking on prospective buyers. Every hire-purchase customer has his particulars filed (including how he pays); investigators discover all they can about him, and the information is filed for future reference. In America, according to a recent Picture Post article, the files include; “. . . intimate details and frank character assessments. Facts include positions and salaries of all members of a family, bank balances, litigation records, all past time buying deals, estimates of business or professional prospects, value of house or mortgage position, or amount of rent and how paid, local reputation and probably social habits. Police records are included.”

Hire-purchase buying is dear. It has to be. There are the book-keeping and the postage and the enquiry fees and the advertisements (last year the Gas Council and Hoover Products each spent about a quarter of a million pounds on advertizing); the “free” maintenance is really, of course, covered in the cost. The rates of interest range from five to ten per cent. At least, those are the nominal figures: calculated on a diminishing debt they are much higher—over two years, the usual period for furniture, they actually average out at something like 20 per cent. The number of bad debts is said to be small, and hire-purchase firms try everything before resorting to court action, which usually is fruitless for them.

Outside the main stream of instalment trading, there are innumerable related concerns; for example, the cooperative societies’ “mutuality shares,” where vouchers are issued to be exchanged for all sorts of goods. Then there are the clothing clubs, and a host of door-to-door easy-payment salesmen—many of the latter charging rates of interest which are exorbitant even by hire-purchase standards, and having no advertizing or accounting costs to speak of. Incidentally, cars do not figure in hire-purchase as much as would be imagined; most are bought by bank overdraft and re-mortgaging houses.

From the economists’ point of view, instalment buying is simply the form taken by the demand for certain sorts of goods today. Thus, when the number of new contracts fell last year in America, the Government hurriedly urged traders to get things back to normal. And in this country the recent restrictions on hire-purchase were headlined by the Manchester Guardian as “Plans to Limit Demand for Goods.” A fair enough estimate; with the minimum deposit raised to 15 per cent., the demand for furniture has fallen to not much more than half what it was a year ago.

To see hire-purchase as something which—vide Fyfe Robertson in Picture Post—"puts real wealth, which otherwise would not be acquired so quickly, into consumers’ hands and raises living standards,” is to grasp flight appearances, however. It is easy enough to point to all the television sets, but television is only the newest replacement for the piano, and pianos were a far greater luxury in their heyday. Before the wireless era, one cost as much as a television set today—that is, anything between £40 and £70, at a time when money wages were much lower.

But to consider living standards in terms of luxuries is to succumb to advertizers’ patter. The fact is that working people obtain luxuries only at the expense of other things. How can a family with £8 a week get them otherwise? The other things may, of course, be minor luxuries themselves—drinking, pictures, smoking; a small boom in smoking cures has accompanied the big one in hire-purchase. They may, on the other hand, be necessities—food and clothing; or the “solution” for a good many families is the wives’ going to work. Whichever way it is, there is not much to confirm the idea of better, more gracious living for the working class.

“Luxuries” is the wrong word, anyway. There is nothing luxurious about buying clothes by instalments, knowing they will be half worn-out before they are paid for: “pay as you wear” has the sound of eternity. True, furniture is more durable—it is outmoded instead of wearing out in two or three years. A favourite sneer of precious suburban aesthetes is that working people lack taste. An ignorant untruth, as the beautiful little gardens in the dingiest surroundings show; but in any case, there is no scope, for modishness when things are bought over two years to last for 20. Most people, in fact, buy furniture only once in their lives—as the hire-purchase advertisements, with their single-minded appeal to the newlywed testify.

Probably the best example of this sort of thing is the way in which television sets have superseded one another since the war. Each latest model, gaining its owner the maximum of prestige, has been rendered inferior long before the final payment. There cannot be much feeling of luxury about having given up smoking to buy a set with a nine-inch screen five years ago and finding it primitive by today’s 17-inch standards.

The truth is that hire-purchase is a monument to poverty, not a pillar of prosperity. People can buy more things, by whatever method, only if they have more money. For a year or so after the war there was no hire-purchase; it began as the briefly spectacular spending of the gratuity era faded. It is hard to believe that anybody enjoys paying instalments—indeed, these commitments add to the tension of modern living. There is no alternative except going without, however. It is all very well to think people can save up to buy, but it doesn’t work out like that—and in any rase, it means going without just the same. The rise of hire-purchase and the decline of the pawnshop are probably not unconnected.

The average gross wage of male workers today is just under £9; for women, it is just over £5. According to the Chancellor of Exchequer in November last year, there were 8,600,000 receiving less than 96s. a week. Compare those figures with pre-war ones, remembering the cost of living today as 2 1/3 times what it was in 1938. In that year, 63.2 per cent, of the families in Britain received under £5 a week, and 11.8 per cent, between £5 and £10. About the same time, John Strachey did some calculations—slightly tortuous, admittedly—in “The Theory and Practice of Socialism” to show that “the real earnings of the working class in 1934 were only 91.1 per cent., of what they were in 1900.” The only conclusion is that the buying power of working people is much the same as it has always been—small; hire-purchase is the latest manifestation of the smallness.

One other aspect of hire-purchase needs to be mentioned. It helps to discipline the working class. The man with heavy commitments—or the American worker who values his “credit rating”—is the man who must keep his job at all costs. Bernard Shaw’s Andrew Undershaft preferred religious workmen because they were sober and honest and amenable; nowadays his ideal would be the employee buying a dining-room suite. The recent Government Economic Survey mentioned that more than a quarter of industrial operatives worked overtime last year, and it is a sad but fair comment that more than a quarter probably want to work overtime this year, too.

Ours is the age of mass-production. One would imagine it to be an age of plenty, but it is not so. It is a queer reflection that, in this world of science and power, the majority of people have to buy trashy products bit by bit and perhaps abstain from necessities in the process. Profit is often imagined as the greatest incentive to progress; in reality, it is the fetter. The hire-purchase system is a fresh pointer to the outstanding contradiction of capitalism: the inability of a productive system which has industrialized the world to perform the only real function of production—the satisfaction of people’s needs.

Robert Barltrop

So They Say: Nearest and Dearest (1973)

The So They Say Column from the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nearest and Dearest

The case last month in which an Englishman married a Malawi-born woman to prevent her deportation, the couple intending to divorce immediately, was treated by the press as unique. It is not. Five years ago the celebrated small-ads pages of International Times were regularly carrying advertisements from seekers and offerers of nationality-by-marriage. They are currently to be found in the Personal column of Private Eye:

Englishman (26) offers citizenship by marriage. Best offer.

Englishman offers British citizenship £800.

Englishman offers British citizenship. Best offer over £1,000.

Socialist Standard readers are invited to think of a new answer to the question: Would you let your daughter marry a black man? As Byron wrote, “ready money is Aladdin's lamp”. In its light can be seen the fatuousness of legal marriage vows as well as the stupidity of national boundaries and immigration laws.

Growing Stunts Your Growth

The classic definition of inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods”. The aim of western governments wrestling with it has been to try to hold back wages and prices on one hand, and promote productive growth on the other. More goods, less currency: it seems logical. “Growth” is not only the answer to the inflation problem, but the source of the ecological one. With growth, pollution comes; without it, we are in the economic mire.

That is what they say, at any rate. But a report from Japan (Guardian, 1st September) turns the economic picture another way up. There, to try to stop inflation the Cabinet has framed measures “aimed at moderating the growth rate of Japan’s economy”. The programme has familiar features like cuts in bank lending, hire-purchase restrictions, etc., but goes on to a series of limitations on development. They include the postponement of public works and the reduction of outlays on new plant and equipment in the motor industry. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry will also

ask six industries to reduce capital spending plans in fiscal 1973 by 102 billion yen, centring on long-lead-time projects. These include the steel, petrochemical, electronic and electrical machinery, aluminium smelting and rolling, electric power and retail sectors.

Pay Attention, There !

In fact, capitalists in Japan, like their counterparts everywhere else, recognize that they must follow not the theories of government but the market. On 10th September the “City Comment” columnist of the Guardian asked an industrialist if his company was affected “by the thought that the Government was committed to the expansion of the economy and running immense economic and social risks apparently on industry’s behalf”.

The blunt answer was no. The company was paying no attention whatsoever to Mr. Heath’s obstinate growth policy in forming its new investment plans. It was working on the assumption that by 1975 demand for its products would be slowing down markedly, for other industries the deceleration would come earlier. As for Mr. Heath’s expansionist propaganda, it was dismissed as ‘politicians’ talk’, for public consumption.

Making A Crow Grow

One company whose “profit growth record” has been checked is Acrow Engineering group. Due to the losses of a newly-acquired subsidiary, Steel Group of Sunderland, Acrow's pre-tax profits for 1972-73 rose by only 3 per cent., from £2,617,000 to £2,697,000, instead of the 10-13 per cent, shown in the last five years. According to the annual report (1st September) the difficulties at Sunderland are now being resolved; and “the original Acrow companies had performed well”.

“Performed” is an appropriate word. Students approaching an Acrow works in south-east England for vacation work this summer were offered employment as labourers for 20p. an hour. A 44-hour week in factory conditions at that rate brings a wage of £8.80p. before deductions. Perhaps it is a scheme for teaching economics students the meaning of “surplus-value”, first hand.

Rising Tally

Another interesting report is that of the Provident Clothing company. Its profits have been rising for some time, and in the six months to 30th June this year they jumped 35 per cent. Provident Clothing’s figures have to be given in an unusual way. The leap in the current year is from £71.2 millions to £127.6 millions in amounts due from customers and from £12.5 millions to £25.6 millions in deferred revenue.

Financial-page comment has put this surge down to “buoyant consumer sales”. However, Provident is the best-known name in the check and voucher business — hence the statement of incomes “due” and “deferred”: like the weekly payments for clothes and household goods. Nothing “buoyant” about that. Provident Clothing prospers through poverty and working people trying to make ends meet. No doubt employees of Acrow Enginering are among its regular customers.

Liberal Sentiments

The recent Liberal Party gains have produced euphoric visions of capitalism humanized by Liberals’ “concern for the individual”. It is more to the point to know what economic policy the Liberal Party would try if in power. On 11th September it published a document which proposes “a prices and incomes policy enforced by fiscal penalties”.

The penalties envisaged are for exceeding laid-down rates of increase in prices and wages. For companies they would be additions to Corporation Tax; for workers, surcharges on graduated National Insurance contributions. John Pardoe, MP, defending this policy in a letter to the Guardian, called it “foolproof” and asserted:

It needs no policemen and no prisons, and it removes the Government from day to day interference in wage and price settlements.

Oh, marvellous: away with all this cumbersome machinery, and let us return to straightforward pay cuts.

It would be interesting to learn how the obviously large addition to Inland Revenue work is to be accomplished. Tax officials have complained continually of understaffing and overwork. Is the solution to raise wages to recruit more clerks, and then cut the wages to defeat inflation ?

A Freudian Misprint

“No doubt it is possible for a well led, well educated, well housed individual ... to come to the conclusions reached by your correspondent.” (Letter from a clergyman to The Guardian, 7th September; our emphasis. If he did not mean it, he should have.)

Robert Barltrop

And then the roof fell in! (1958)

From the July 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American Slump

The beginning of a recession is like intoxication: the patient gets worse—but he feels better. British and American capitalism has been looking and feeling better for two years, but now the symptoms are beginning to show. Business has been booming, problems of shortages have been overcome, and for the consumer—with the end of the “sellers’” market, inducements to buy in the form of better quality, better service, better packaging or even lower price: all these have made life seem better and easier.

Buy now and pay later

Since the War the credit buying was expanded greatly in this country, but it has never reached United States proportions. The legal restriction on hire purchase trading that we have here (minimum deposits, etc.) does not apply in the U.S., and consequently, as selling became more difficult, “easier and easier” credit terms were offend. Not only is credit buying respectable in America, but almost a national custom. Whatever the income range—from the lowest paid to those executives whose blood pressure would suffer considerably at the thought that they wen “workers’’—all buy houses, cars (a new one every year if possible), refrigerators, holidays, and all the gimmicks of the American Way of Life, on credit.

Then is also a growing inability and reluctance to repair anything. When that brand new car—or fridge— or house—starts giving trouble, well then, just throw it away and buy another one. Last year Time magazine, which usually has on its cover the effigy of a Great Man (or film star), featured “The American Repair Man.” and the article dealing with the cover story showed in amusing detail the situation of the American worker, surrounded by mechanical appliances which would save him a lot of labour if only he could get them to work again. 

Throw it away!

But, of course, the advertisers have the answer: buy another one. Buy this year’s model: be in the fashion: your old green refrigerator is out of date—red is the colour this year1

In fact, there is only one thing wrong with buying on credit, and that is that you have to pay for it even if it is later rather than sooner, and this is rapidly being brought home to those millions of Americans who are now unemployed.

Unemployment

The present situation in America is that there are over three million drawing unemployment benefit. The actual number of unemployed exceeds this figure, since the benefit only lasts for a maximum period of 39 weeks and many have been out of work long enough to be now disqualified. This puts them “on relief,” paid for by their city, and they come out of the statistics of “ unemployed.” Arising from this lack of work (and consequently, lack of pay) the furniture and other items bought on credit are being repossessed by the sellers, mortgages are in many cases being held over temporarily and stealing of food from self-service stores has increased noticeably in those towns that have been forcibly hit by unemployment. 

The “land of opportunity” is receding for the unemployed worker whose home and way of life is in danger. Suddenly, the insecurity of capitalism is made real.

This problem will be aggravated since we learnt recently that the American car factories are shortly to shut down production of 1958 models for several months to give dealers time to sell 760,000 1958 cars now unsold. The industry always shuts down every year in order to retool for the next year’s cars, but this year the closure has been brought forward many months.

Too Much

Everywhere the terrible cry goes up—surpluses. Too much food, bumper crops; too much oil; too many cars and other goods on the market: too much production of raw materials from South America and Asia, causing world prices of raw materials to drop drastically: too many unemployed, not able on the benefit to buy more of these commodities and seeing those that they have “ bought ” taken back by the finance companies.

Add to this catalogue the statement by Mr. Khrushchev last November: "We declare war on you in the peaceful field of trade.” Thus Russia, a new competitor, enters world capitalism on a large scale as a rival to the older established powers.

Capitalism's Answer

What is the answer? In May there was a meeting of the National Industrial Conference Board in New York at which economic and business experts gave their remedies. Cut taxes to encourage business they say: but the man on relief does not pay taxes and has not business been “encouraged” too much? Produce better values, they say; but the man on relief (or in danger of it) will be unable to buy anything other than necessities, good or bad value. Bring back the lost art of selling, they say: but again, if you haven’t got the money you can’t buy, no matter how slick the salesman. Introduce high tariffs against foreign imports? but that will only aggravate the bankruptcy of countries like Bolivia, Chile, Indonesia and others, and will have a profound effect on countries like Britain, which depends largely on car exports to the U.S. It has been estimated that a 4 per cent. drop in key prices in undeveloped lands cancels out all the funds supplied by the United States in economic aid. In many cases the drop has already exceeded that amount.

It may seem strange that those who support capitalism most volubly—including those workers now unemployed—are those who understand its workings least. Or perhaps it is not so surprising since if they did understand it, would they still support it? See the great surprise of the American worker who finds it hard to realise that all that bustling prosperity founded upon these great factories—such permanent things—all this should suddenly collapse into what is now politely called a “recession.” A recession, mark you, that shows no signs of getting better yet. The National Industrial Conference Board which met in New York this month (referred to above) received a “report from businessmen pointing to a further decline in spending for plant expansion that will last into 1959.” And recently a top building-industry economist, speaking to the New York Society of Security Analysts said that the recession will last “through I960"

Our Criticism

Socialists are opposed to capitalism and we are opposed because we do understand the basic workings of the system. The broad cycle of slump and boom will continue due to the basis on which production rests. This basis, this “ incentive ” that is thought so admirable by anti-Socialists, is the competitive urge to profit. But this incentive can work both ways—if the production of a commodity does not appear profitable, then it will not normally be produced. On the other hand, distribution has no relation to the needs of people but only to the ability or otherwise to pay the price.

Generally the picture of the world commodity market today—of which America is only a more dramatic example—is of too many goods unsold, in store, production being restricted. And, at the same time, too many people needing those goods and without the money to buy them.

It's Falling

This is always the picture in capitalism and is only brought out more clearly when, as at the present time, there is a growing world recession. To those who support capitalism, this system of fake individualism, financial enterprise and dog-eat-dog competition, we say. this world as you see it now is the society that you perpetuate.

We say further that this is not necessary. The energy and enterprise that goes into attempts to solve insoluble problems and to stabilise an unstable system, and the techniques of production that produced these vast crisis-making surpluses—all these could be used perfectly well for the benefit of the whole community, in a society where goods were made to satisfy peoples’ needs and not for the profit of the producers.

With Socialism, economic security would be a reality.

As one of the unemployed said, in Bristol, Connecticut, where now nearly one worker in four is unemployed: “ It seemed set to last for ever, and then the roof fell in.”

L. B.

Television (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The institutions and morality of Capitalism reflect the profit motive and thus the interests of the capitalist class. The means of mass propaganda, and thereby the power to put over their ideas are in the hands of the capitalist class (or their agent, the State) in each country.

Whole generations of workers come and go, blissfully unaware that anything is wrong with private property or with the system of working for wages. The real facts of life have to be learned, perhaps from experience outside the influence of the propaganda machine. The Press, Schools, Cinemas, Pulpit, Radio and T.V. do their job so well that most people never realise they are having an outlook foisted on them which is fundamentally opposite to their own class interest.

The structure of capitalism and its institutions rise from and are in harmony with its class-property basis. Land, oilfields, factories, mines, herds of cattle, are among the things which make up the means of production. While these belong to the capitalist class, the wealth producers will work for wages, the goods they produce will be for sale with a view to profit, and human relationship will be dominated by money. While capitalism lasts, so will the false social values it generates. The accumulation of personal wealth will remain the perverted criterion of worth. No wonder that a working class, as yet unaware of their social position as the all important producers, are often seen in large numbers gazing in awed reverence at some of the parasites who live off them. No wonder, in turn, that various forms of escapism and make-believe have become widely popular.

The cinemas, now showing signs of decline, only a few years ago had queues at almost every pay-box. Going to the pictures was the working-class pastime, just as watching “the telly” is today. The world of second-hand thrills and dreams has largely changed its medium.

The fictional cow-boy and detective heroes have different names now, but their function is unchanged. Catching offenders against property, and the idea that punishment is Justice, are as popular as ever.

The land-grabbers, the cattle-thieves, the con-man, and the bank-raider, are still brought to book by the goodies of the F.B.I., the C.I.D. or the Marshal’s Office. The stolen property is always returned to its ’’rightful owner,” with few people to ask how he came to own it.

We are told that it is a sign of prosperity if workers, after a day in the factory or office, can go home to watch television. In fact, this simply shows how dull and monotonous their lives really are. In a world based on production for sale there is so little spontaneous joy in living that the professional laughter man and entertainer are in great demand. Without the artificial stimulations of things like T.V. many people would be at a complete loss. Thus the artificial becomes the real and to escape is a substitute for living.

Some people, of course, only watch the more “sophisticated” programmes, such as plays, and take pride in confining their viewing to the B.B.C. Not having a Socialist outlook, they soak up the same debased set of virtues and vices as the rest. Even plays which mildly attempt to investigate some festering ill of capitalism, such as the plight of the old, housing, juvenile delinquency or war, are totally unable to offer any solution and never give away the correct cause of these things. Instead of blaming capitalism, the workers continue to blame bad leaders, governmental mistakes, dictatorship or human nature. So those who, by not watching commercials think they avoid the money-morality of capitalism, are mistaken.

The commercials, of course, demonstrate the sickening hypocrisy, the false values and phoney morality of capitalism most nakedly. 

In the average week's viewing it is scientifically “proven” and demonstrated that half a dozen different makes of soap powder and detergent wash clothes cleaner, lighter, brighter and whiter than each other. There are about as many brands of oil and petrol which perform great wonders for motorists, with each one said to be better than the rest. There are numerous brands of cigarettes which “everyone” is switching to. Then the “razor boys” have a go with half a dozen makes of safety and electric razors, all of which shave smoother, cleaner, faster, than the others. So the examples could be multiplied.

Of all the scores of different things advertised in commercials, either on T.V. or elsewhere, not once are any of the possible drawbacks or harmful effects mentioned. Exaggeration, half-truths and direct lying are commonplace in advertising. The fact that millions of people watch the same adverts every night (many of which are repeated several times in the same evening) and make so little protest about them, is an unhealthy indication of the general acceptance of capitalism’s low standards. Perhaps Sir Robert Fraser, Director-General of the Independent Television Authority, had this in mind when he said: “Every person of common sense knows that people of superior mental constitution are bound to find much of television intellectually beneath them. ’ (Daily Mirror, 18-5-60.) We do not accept the idea of “superior mental constitution,” but since Fraser spoke generally in high praise of television, one might ask where he fits in? The idea is deliberately planted that unless you wear a certain make of shirt, skirt or cosmetic and own a watch, carpet-cleaner or spin-drier made by a particular firm, you will fail to impress your friends. Your prestige will slip, you will fall behind in the rat-race.

All the* high-pressure sales drives and the subtle persuaders merely emphasise the constant need in capitalism to find markets. Although on the commercials they say that their commodities “are just the thing for you,” you cannot have them if you cannot afford them—or at any rate the instalments. The normal condition of a worker is to live within what his wages can buy or hire. Hire-purchase, or by saving up, are the ways open to him to get anything that costs more than he can spare out of one week's wages. For most workers T.V. means H.P. over a couple of years or a rental or relay. The best that capitalism can do with the immense possibilities of modern scientific techniques is to allow the working class, while living under the threat of a slump or a war,, to enjoy themselves on the never-never. Capitalism denies the working class access to the wide world of real things that make up living. Having to live within the limitations of the wages system, they get things out of perspective and T.V. becomes a substitute for things out of reach.

Production under the profit motive has reduced most work to drudgery. Having taken the joy out of our working life, capitalism would reduce us to passive viewers in our leisure time. Television is just one of many achievements abused by capitalism.

Harry Baldwin

Woman at Work (1960)

From the April 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Someone recently made the discovery that lots of married women now go to work—somewhere about one in three. Of course, everyone knew that many married women did this—it was merely the number, and the increase over pre-war days, that was surprising.

This fact alone provides an explanation of much of the working class's newfound prosperity. This is what pays the hire-purchase on the telly and maybe the mortgage repayments. In other words, the working-class family is buying its so- called prosperity at a high price.

It is difficult to guess whether the desire for the new shiny gadgets is the principal factor in this phenomenon, or whether it is merely the reflection of women's increased emancipation from male domination, so that she goes to work simply because it is better than being imprisoned within the four walls of the home, with the washing-up and un-hoovered carpet staring her in the face.

From a purely economic viewpoint, the increase in the number of women at work probably operates as a drag on the increase of wages of male workers, but in time of boom the effect is not too great. The trouble is that capitalism doesn't give endless full-employment, but operates in a cycle in which lack of jobs supplants an excess of jobs. When this time arrives, the working-class family will be in a doubly insecure position, because their family commitments and standard of living have become based on two or even more wage-earners in the family. In the same way, illness or the arrival of children can also have a disastrous effect on the family budget.

What then is wrong with this process? Surely one cannot object to working-class families enjoying more of the things that society can provide? The answer is that every new wage-earner brings added insecurity along with his or her additional income, a paradox that only an irrational social system such as ours could provide. In this situation the pregnancy of a working wife becomes a major problem rather than a source of joy. And what is to be said of a nice new home full of new furniture and gadgets when no-one is at home during the day to enjoy it, and where the working members of the family are too tired to enjoy it anyway when they return from work. Too tired to do anything, in fact, but to flop down in the G-plan armchair and watch the telly.

It is true that one cannot turn the clock back, and no-one wants to return to the times when the woman's place was in the home, and where the wage-earners' toil was matched by the home drudgery of the housewife. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to hope for a time when ordinary people, both men and women, will be able to enjoy both leisure and the comforts of life without the nagging worries of insecurity and the phony values of a glittering, but essentially dross, world.

H. W. C.

Anti-Affluence: the Debt-Ridden Society (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing to the newspapers in protest against the receipt of unsolicited credit cards is an honourable as well as a popular occupation. Implicit in the nuisance is a degree of social flattery: those selected to be pestered in this way are the cream of shopping customers, whose bills are paid promptly and whose credit is worthy. There has been no stream of complaints and Questions in the House from the scores of thousands who, ask as they may, will get no credit cards or hire-purchase terms. These are the sometime defaulters whose failures, and a great deal more about them, are recorded in the finance companies’ registers of debtors.

Once in those files, you never come out. Capitalism drives and presses us all to buy to the limits of our means, and offers devices by which those limits may be apparently stretched. But the pressure must never be yielded-to by an inch beyond the limits. The point of marketing, after all, is not that goods shall be distributed but that they be paid for. He who, lured and compelled by deferred terms or slashed deposits or simple needs, fails to meet his money commitment is as far as possible prevented for the future from buying on those terms again. Morally condemned as well, for violating the golden capitalist rule that everything has its price.

Recording and Collecting
There are about 3 million registered defaulters in Britain. The most common ways of getting listed are by irregularity or failure in payments to one of the companies which finance trading credit, and through a County Court judgement. It does not follow, however, that the absence of such a record means credit granted automatically. An application for hire-purchase or the opening of an account always means an enquiry being made. One widespread practice is to send forms to local officials likely to know something about the applicant, asking for an estimate of what he is worth and any useful information regarding him. The car-finance companies keep detailed records in which procrastination over payments is noted for future reference, even if there is no actual failure to pay.

When a debt occurs, the usual first step is a warning letter—from the legal department if the firm is big enough, from a solicitor if it is not. Some traders employ debt-recovery agencies, which work on a percentage of money collected and aim, generally, to scare or embarrass the defaulter into paying up. One technique is to send a notice on blue paper, looking remarkably like a summons, with words like “Bailiff”, “Distrain on Your Goods”, “Appear in Court”, etc., printed in capitals and underlined. In other cases, collectors call on the debtor repeatedly and make themselves objectionable. No doubt there are laws against much of what goes on, but a debtor is likely to feel he is hardly in a position to shout. Car-finance firms, for instance, are known to employ men who stand on defaulters’ doorsteps jingling keys and announcing their intention to take the car away—despite the fact that this cannot be done without a court order.

Penalties
If all the threatening is ineffective, a summons follows. There are two kinds, the common one being the default summons. No-one goes to court over it: the defendant has ten days to settle his debt, dispute it, or offer to pay by instalments. If he fails to do any of those, a judgement summons (the other sort) is served; he must attend the court to answer questions about his means, and the normal outcome is an instalment order. And if the instalments are not paid, a “warrant of execution” is issued for each as its due date passes. This is simply a distraint order—the County Court bailiffs call and arrange to take enough belongings to cover the amount owed plus the Court costs. The costs are standard fees charged at each step in the proceedings, so that the repayment of a debt in these last-resort circumstances is itself an extra expense.

Until a year ago debtors could be imprisoned instead of distrained upon, by order of the court. The purpose of “committal orders” was to deal with people who supposedly could pay but were reluctant to do so. However, County Court judges were in the habit of making the orders almost automatically, and an impoverished defaulter was liable to be hauled to prison by the bailiff. What good was thought to be done by it, no-one knows; though its abolition aimed at reducing the pressures on prison resources, not at sense or humanity. Imprisonment orders are still made for one common class of debts, non-payment of rates to local councils. Since rates are levied under statute law, defaulters over them are summoned not to the civil courts but to magistrates’ courts which continue to make committal orders.

Hard Cash
One other course of action against a debtor is the High Court writ. This is more attractive to creditors than County Court proceedings because the outcome is swifter and more relentless. The debtor has ten days following the service of the writ to file an “appearance“. Unless he has (and is prepared to pay for) a defence, the plaintiff may then “take judgement”. The High Court does not deal in instalment plans, and very shortly after the judgement the debtor will be called-on by a Sheriff’s officer — i.e. a licenced bailiff—with a view to distraint on his possessions. However, High Court proceedings are for larger sums. The County Courts are intended to deal with actions for debts up to £700; though claims for smaller amounts can and do go to the High Court, they are not encouraged there.

It is true, of course, that proceedings for debt can be expensive to the plaintiff. The cost of solicitors’ letters, and representation in court for the hearing of a judgement summons, is not recoverable. Proceedings to get back, say, £50 can well cost that amount and so have their success nullified. Many traders acknowledge this, and either write off small debts when the threats have failed or try the percentage collecting companies. Larger firms can afford the proceedings, but the fact remains that much debt-recovery is sterile: the real object is to make default an unpleasant experience, to brand the defaulter and let it be known that this sort of thing will not be tolerated.

A Dirty War
“Unpleasant” is a mild word. For those who have got into debt through adversity, over-optimism or simple inadequacy in dealing with everyday matters, the consequences are harrowing and humiliating. Threats; the bailiff (or, for rates, a policeman) on the doorstep; the possibility of an auctioneer’s van come to take one’s belongings away, and even of being taken to prison. One wonders what future generations will think of a society in which such miseries were commonplace. There is the thought, too, what kind of people are prepared to treat other human beings like that. For judges, the question need hardly be asked. Bailiffs generally are either men who got into it through the accident of starting in associated employment when they were young, or retired policemen and the like. Loathsome as their functions are, it ought to be remembered that they are wage-workers—only daubed with more of capitalism’s dirt than most of us. Certainly they suffer a penalty in social isolation: it is not uncommon for bailiffs’ wives to have been in the same line of business, leaving one with the thought that most women draw the line at living with that.

Since debt is a struggle, it produces its own strategies. A debt is personal; the desperate defaulter becomes a dodger. A wife may stave off the pressures by saying her husband has gone away and left her, though bailiffs are likely to keep an eye on the house and make neighbourhood enquiries. A High Court writ has to be put actually in the defendant’s hand and proceedings can start only when this has happened, making elusiveness desirable (process-servers usually are young smart-alecs ready to find fun in the chase). Likewise, when distraint is proposed a husband may claim that all the household belongings are his wife’s or someone else’s and therefore not seizable for his debt. This can be challenged by a creditor—the action is called “interpleader”—but the difficulty of proof make the cases rare and seldom successful.

States of Mind
Whatever the reasons for which people get in debt, it is likely to become a spiral from which extrication is hard: continually half-robbing Peter to half-pay Paul, with the result that both remain hot-breathing creditors. One of the attractions of the “second mortgage” is that it offers the exchange of a lot of small debts for a single large one, an apparent fresh start which also can take a haunted person from the realm of County Courts to that of the High Court. But if an even keel is reached, the record of money troubles remains as a permanent disability. It is permissible for a small fee to have past judgements erased from the court registers, but they are never deleted from the credit companies’ records. Extenuating circumstances are not allowed: a defaulter is marked for the rest of his life. It is possible for defaulters to be victimized through their records. Two or three years ago someone circularized several thousand householders offering highly favourable mail-order terms. They were all in fact selected from registers of defaulters, their readiness to jump at the prospect of being allowed to buy on a credit system obscuring more rational doubts such as how the advertizer was financing his generous activities. Orders with deposits rolled in, for the money to be pocketed by an adventurer whose chief asset was a little comprehension of the states of mind that debt produces.

Must it Continue?
Looking at all this: what a way to live! Yet it is part of how a very large number of people do live. Statistics about it tend to appear unbelievable because people will admit to other problems but not this one—disgrace in money matters is the deepest kind of disgrace in a money-dominated society. Nor is it anything new. The 18th-century London Spy describes women in the debtors’ prisons through default to tallymen. Spike Mays account of pre-1920 village life, Reuben’s Corner, refers to the village postman “walking many miles round the scattered community pushing bills and debt-summonses into letterboxes” (a different picture from the romantic one of rosy-cheeked rural bliss).

Most people under capitalism exist in “quiet desperation”, hair-breadths away from this sort of calamity. To talk of the proliferation of debt as a consequence of irresponsibility, of failing to cut coats according to the cloth, is beside the point. For the great majority, there chronically isn’t enough cloth to keep out the cold. The respectable with credit cards and no histories of default are in debt just the same, paying monthly for what they cannot otherwise afford. Debt is a demonstration of the inescapable poverty problem of the working class. The slogan of the latest credit card is that it “takes the waiting out of wanting”; but the only way wanting and waiting will be ended is by the abolition of capitalism.

Robert Barltrop