Canon Scott Holland on the Home. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tradition of the English home, dear to all hearts, said Canon Scott Holland, in a sermon at St. Paul’s, yesterday, to a congregation of the delegates of the International Women’s Suffrage Conference, was crumbling and perishing all about us.

At both ends of society alike disaster was being enacted. At the one extreme wealth and luxury were dissolving and corrupting the discipline that knitted the family together in a mutual interchange of serviceable functions; there were no functions left for anybody, and the services were all hired or farmed out; there was only one intelligible desire, and that was to have a good time.

Then at the other extremity the terrible pressure of competitive industry was more and more laying women under the dire necessity of becoming the bread-winners of the household. They could do it cheaper than the men they displaced, therefore every year we found heavier burdens on the backs of women.

If we desired to alter this we had got to reconsider the entire method of our industry.

Morning Leader, 3.5.09.

Progress perverted (2024)

Book Review from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Work. A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time. By Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek. Verso, 2023. 282pp.

A key concept in this book is ‘social reproduction’. What the authors mean by this is work in areas such as healthcare, education, catering and social services, as well as the essential, ‘unpaid’ work people do outside of the workplace and largely at home (cooking, caring, cleaning, etc.). They examine the contribution of this kind of work to keeping human society operating across the whole range of other work taking place in the production and distribution of goods and services. Their approach to this is to trace the evolving history of that social reproduction, in particular as it has operated in the domestic sphere over the last century and a half, the influence on it of advancing technology (eg electricity, gas, sewerage, running water, waste removal), and the changes in attitudes and expectations this has brought about. Referring to themselves as ‘socialist republicans’, they devote the final chapter of their book to examining what the future might hold for social reproduction and the home generally, especially in an imagined new social context referred to variously as ‘post-work’, ‘post-capitalism’ or ‘post-scarcity’.

This is a detailed many-faceted exposition which draws upon multiple sources and studies. They point to how capitalism forces many workers ‘to waste precious hours of their lives on work that is neither stimulating, creative nor productive’, how much of the ‘free time’ spent at home is taken up with unsatisfying chores, especially for women, and how wasteful (‘a colossal squandering of human time, effort and labour’) is the organisation of people into atomised individual housing units which makes each person or family continually repeat activities such as cooking, laundering, washing up and cleaning rather than save energy, time and trouble by making communal activities of them. In their analysis of how the organisation of work and home in capitalist society presents obstacles to activity that satisfies individuals’ needs and talents, they also point tellingly to how, in ways we will all recognise, technology, ‘rather than reducing the amount of time spent on work …more often than not … seems to lead to more work’, while, if the social conditions were different, that same technology could ‘serve as an ally in the quest for temporal autonomy and for the recognition, redistribution and reduction of reproductive labour’.

It is in their final chapter, entitled ‘After Work’, that they put the most detailed flesh on what they consider could, given the right social conditions, constitute truly fulfilling non-coercive progress for human society. After offering a thoroughly recognisable picture of work under capitalism (eg, ‘the majority of us must give up forty hours or more per week in exchange for survival, typically selecting from a narrow range of possible jobs where decisions over what we do on a daily basis ultimately lie outside of our hands’), they talk about how ‘real freedom requires the absence of domination’, which currently workers are subject to both from their bosses and from impersonal market forces, while what is needed is for work to become ‘the focus of more freely chosen commitments’. What do they envisage? While not claiming to offer a ‘sketch’ rather than a blueprint, they look, for example, to ‘a free time infrastructure’ where ‘people have opportunities to develop their capacities and pursue collective projects’ with ‘infinite possibilities for human interaction’. They look to provision of ‘non-nuclear living arrangements’ with ‘more experimental models of early years care’. They look to communities being ‘turned from passive recipients of technologies into networks of active creators’. And, commendably, all this is envisaged as being within a framework of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

There is, however, is a key criticism to be made of the way this ‘imaginary’ (a word frequently used by the authors) is presented, in that it all seems to be seen as doable within the framework of the current society of money and wages, buying and selling and government control – in other words within the market system which the book has previously and quite rightly condemned as drastically limiting personal and social freedoms. So, for example: it expresses support for ‘government policies’ aiming ‘to provide support for public and community-based systems of care; ’it talks of ‘a free time infrastructure’ that provides ‘free museums’ and ‘free school meals and breakfast clubs’ for children’ – implying of course the continuation of overall social transactions via money; and, even more explicitly, it advocates ‘decent wages and better conditions for domestic workers’. In other words everything it commends is envisaged as happening via government action within the money system and without – or at least prior to — the establishment of the society of voluntary work, democratic control and free access to all goods and services that is the very essence of socialism. This seems to indicate a failure on the part of the authors, despite their obviously positive intentions and explicit aspiration for the ‘construction of a better world’, to accept that, so long as we have a system of governments overseeing the money and wages system, that system itself will not allow well intentioned reforms to come to fruition willy-nilly and any reforms that do get enacted can just as easily be reversed if those ‘impersonal market forces’ they refer to dictate it.

So, while there is much to reflect on here in terms of the kind of life that might be possible if workers were set free from ‘the realm of necessity’ that capitalism imposes, a good deal of that will only be feasible once workers in a majority take the necessary political action – ideally via the ballot box – to do away with governments and with money, wages and profit and cooperatively organise society. The Socialist Party is sometimes – unfairly — called ‘utopian’ for advocating this, but the true utopianism lies in trying to somehow see as possible true freedom in work and association within the framework of a social and economic system that by definition cannot allow it.

Howard Moss

The Slave's Awakening (1947)

From the May 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The wage-slave is showing signs of bewilderment towards present day events. A beneficient Labour Government promised him full employment and he wonders why he is on the dole. He cannot make head nor tail of the explanations they give him: fuel shortage, famine in man power, have a false ring because he knows that there was apparently no shortage of fuel during the war and the Labour Exchanges prove that there is a superfluity of fellows like himself who cannot find a master. He listens to arguments when in the queue: ‘‘It’s the Capitalist class that’s doing it, they want to force the Labour Government to quit and the Capitalists have the money: they did the same thing last time we had a Labour Government.” He is interested in the reply: ‘‘We own the Bank of England now, don‘t we? All the money is ours, so that can’t be it.” The wage slave feels in his empty pocket and vaguely wonders why he is broke— a shareholder in the National Bank should not be in his precarious position. Another argument starts heatedly: “I know for a fact that when work opens up again everybody will be kept busy for years; I saw it in the paper, many firms will be running night and day; there is a demand for houses, clothing, shoes, everything, this is not going to last long.” This cheers the queue up a little, but a doleful old man butts in with “I've seen this sort of thing before, I believe there are a lot out of work now who will never work again.” The wage slave is shocked when some one yells out: ‘‘Well, that’s one comfort anyway, it’s work that wears you out, the less we work the longer we shall live.”

The queue shuffles forward a few paces and then one fellow obviously suffering from the cold says : ‘‘My feet are frozen stiff; why is it they can’t put more men on, there are a hundred men in the queue who can do the job the clerks are doing just as well as those who are working there now.” Another move forward and some of the grumblers are swept inside; a policeman tries to keep order but finds it extremely difficult.

One by one they receive the form to sign and make their way with it to the queue in front of the pay window. After they receive their miserable pittance they fight their way through the queue outside and wend their way to their respective homes., flats, prefabs or tenements.

Those that are married, and our fellow-slave is one of them, are awaited by an impatient wife, a war bride on the war path. “Where have you been all this time? Is that all you’ve got? What can I buy with it? I’ve got to go now and stand in queue after queue to get what we want. I don’t know what we are going to do; it’s worse than during the war; look after the baby: when she wakes up give her the milk that is in the saucepan: see that it's not too hot. Where’s my ration book? 1 suppose there will be nothing left when I get there."

The wife and mother hurries out and the wage slave sits down and bemoans his fate. “What did 1 get married for?" The baby awakens and he attends to its wants as best he can, hut the mother’s touch is lacking and the child is fretful. It will not take the milk he prepares for it and eventually starts crying loudly. After trying various devices to lull it into a quiet frame of mind he eventually turns on the radio and a melancholy voice tells him to “think on these things." “Oh hell,” he says, and changes the station quickly to something less inclined to remind a proletarian of his sins.

Although he tries his utmost he fails in his attempts to comfort his offspring and when his wife comes home, tired and disappointed, the child is bawling loudly. "What have you been doing to her? You are about the most useless man I know.” He is filled with indignation and retorts in a manner that leads to a row: the neighbours are entertained for an hour or more with vivid descriptions of the immoral acts and shortcoming of both the husband and wife. The affair ends with the man going out and the woman and the child left crying together.

“ Oh what a happy land is England "—if you are poor.

The puzzled wage slave knows that things have gone wrong somewhere but he does not hit upon the cause, and feels inclined to blame himself. His wife also endures agonies of mind but she is helpless: they are both tortured by economic conditions over which they have no control.

Such is the life of the worker.

The present situation has certain peculiar features that need elucidating.

The means of production need renewing as a result of the strain of the war; in most industries new equipment and materials are lacking. Capitalism has nothing ahead; the new mechanism has to be brought into being by the producers putting their backs into it. The ruling class must force the workers to ”forge the gilded chains that enslave them.”

Capitalism is run by the capitalist class for one purpose only, the obtaining of a profit. Profits cannot be realised until goods are sold. The market of the world consists of the purchasing power of the people of the earth. In proportion to what is placed on the market the purchasing power of the producers is becoming relatively less. The trouble is further complicated by constant capital in the shape of machinery having always to be sold to Capitalists; working men and women do not buy machinery. As the Capitalist class have only claims on wealth yet to he produced they are finding things extremely difficult at the present time. .

It is the above facts that are driving the Labour Government to indulge in all kinds of tricks and experiments to induce the worker to produce more per man hour. The wage slaves are re-acting well, they don’t like the idea of speeding up, their class instinct warns them that there is something wrong with what the leaders advocate; they smell treachery but can’t detect exactly where it is. Neither do they like the irksome restrictions that are everywhere in evidence. Identity cards, ration cards, the worker must sign on the dotted line, at every move. The country is fast becoming one huge slave camp and feelings of frustration are everywhere being revealed in the expression on the faces of those of our fellows we meet on the street and on the job.

The emancipation of the working class cannot he brought about by developing the mechanism of Capitalist production ; the present machinery was not designed for the wage slave’s benefit, but to exploit him.

To achieve a state of society in which goods are produced solely for use, a complete transformation of the mechanism of production will he essential. Socialism means as great a change in the mode of production as in the mode of distribution.

The society of the future is one of associated humanity; man is the main consideration. The welfare of mankind is the sole aim of Socialism.

In order to live a life worth living man must be free, there will he no ration cards., and no identity cards either; no speeding up for wealth will be brought into being for the use of the people. The aim and object will be quality, pure food, the best of clothing. homes that are homes—for everybody. “We will eat as much as our tummy will hold, and if we feel that way drink as much as our heads will stand," and this will be ours without money and without price. Labour applied to the natural resources of the earth will give us everything necessary to our existence and well being.

When the workers have the intelligence to abolish the wage system and establish their own social order we emerge into what may he described as a new world. SPEED THE DAY!

Charles Lestor

Architecture and Politics: The Key to the Radiant City (1969)

From the December 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Architecture is not fulfilling its mission as long as it has not provided a roof (tectum) for all that should be sheltered. In this sense it should concern itself with collective services, with the agglomerations.

Letter from Paul Otlet to Le Corbusier, 1928

No architect in this century has had more influence through his ideas, buildings, and books than Le Corbusier. So much of modern architecture shows signs of his influence that it is impossible to imagine how different most of the buildings going up around us would have looked had he not existed. In city planning some of the methods he proposed 40 years ago — such as complete separation of cars and pedestrians — have only recently taken root in the minds of a few planning authorities. His ideas on almost every aspect of architectural design — from the free facade and buildings on stilts (pilotis) to 'brute concrete’ and sculptural building form, to name but a few — are still such a potent force and subject of controversy today that it may seem surprising that architects play down his political views (which he expressed no less strongly than his views on design) and even appear to ignore them.

But this is not really so surprising. To most architects and city planners politics is an embarrassment, and although every building programme is at the mercy of political and economic forces they consider these to be outside their professional scope altogether. Le Corbusier was notorious for his unique ‘arrogance’ and ‘outspokenness’. And although his political views were unsystematic, it is very encouraging to find this unique man starting out from the need to provide all his fellow-men with a decent environment and from there working out a programme similar in many respects to Socialism.

He was born in Switzerland in 1887. In 1933 his book The Radiant City (one of many) was published in France. (In a republished edition in 1964, the year before his death, he endorses everything he says in it.) The Radiant City is designed for leisure, sun, greenery, and open sky; large expanses of parkland separate rows of apartments; the playing-fields are right outside the apartments; the roofs are 60-foot-wide sun decks (beaches, in fact); the street no longer exists (except inside the buildings); homes are fully soundproofed and air-conditioned; there are nurseries, swimming-pools, and laundries minutes away, and industry in a separate zone two or three miles away (but minutes by car or bus) . . . Even though many architects disagree with various details of Le Corbusier’s scheme, it is hard to see how anyone can quarrel with the standards and quality he was aiming for. A utopia? Far from it—it was well within our technological and other resources back in 1930. Only the political structure prevented it then and prevents it now. Listen to what Le Corbusier says:

  It is recognised that industry is submerging us with products that are irrelevant to our happiness. We have been propelled by machines into a false adventure, into a misadventure: these machines that can produce ten or 20 times as much as we ourselves ought to enable us to work at least five or ten times less. Modern industry, organised according to the laws of supply has inundated us with useless consumer goods. Wandering down this primrose path, allowing one thing to lead to another, we have finally allowed ourselves to be taken over entirely by what we call free competition, which is to say a form of slavery, which means that any effort is immediately countered by an opposing effort . . . we have become merely a flock of rams, horns locked together . . . The flock’s strength is drained away, yet it is not moving . . .  we can make no progress! Free competition has been forced to invent advertising, the prospectus, the exhibition, product prizes, etc.: all those competing have to summon up all their energy to cancel out the efforts of their competitors. 

  It is indisputable that this frightful competition gives rise to the most violent emulation and effort. 

 But is it also certain that the human spirit is incapable of creative enthusiasm when faced with fruitful tasks? 

  An economy based on demand would put an end to the reign of the travelling salesman and the advertising agent, but it would necessitate a programme . . . for the production of useful consumer goods. Though not a narrow and exclusive one. The mind must always be left enough elbow room to satisfy its deepest purposes: quest for quality, supremacy, straggle and competition — but on the fertile soil of disinterest.  

   Our programme will concern itself with consumer products of a useful nature and with the redirection of industry onto the path towards its true aims; with providing work for all and guaranteeing every man his daily hours of freedom; and with providing physical sites and quarters designed to permit the man of today to enjoy this new freedom without constraint, instead of being hemmed in like a hare in an ever-dwindling square of wheat at harvest time.
(Le Corbusier's own italics etc. throughout all extracts.)

Le Corbusier also underlines the socialist case in his attacks on money —though he doesn't make it too clear whether he would get rid of it altogether or replace it with some ‘purer’ form of exchange.

  Let us measure the full and cruel meaning of our present state: for some time now, we have been working merely for money. 

  A deceptive goal. It stimulates only a few of our qualities and leaves the most precious of them inactive. Worse, it encourages the defects in human nature . . . 

  If society were to reorganise itself, to distribute the fruits of its labour in a new way, then our concern for money could diminish, and our energies, freed in this way, would find the roads opened towards goals set by higher passions.

And of his programme for a new environment he says:

  It means replacing the violent, savage, cruel and ruthless civilisation of money with another based on harmony and collaboration; one in which each member of society will feel himself a vital agent in this enterprise . . .

Le Corbusier realised that his plan for a Radiant City involved the ‘replanning’ of private property (though he did not go so far as to suggest abolishing it). In August 1932 he wrote that until then he had never found it necessary to discuss politics or economics; but through his professional life he had encountered an obstacle: unproductive property. Land which could form part of a wonderful human environment, in which the senses were no longer starved, in which freedom and privacy were possible, and in which work was cut to five hours a day and leisure used to the full, was lying waste — derelict, uncultivated, or misused.

  Today we own land, but without any obligation to work it. In fact, a law which no-one would dream of disputing gives one the right to work it or not, just as one wishes.

And the ‘denaturalisation’ of property, he adds, made impossible the kind of work from which springs collective action. The present form of land tenure is invested with private rights antagonistic to the public right. ‘But if the public right is infringed, then THE INDIVIDUAL SUFFERS.' And in the caption to an aerial view of Alsace, showing plots of farmland endlessly subdivided between heirs for generation after generation: “We live in a machine age, but machines cannot be used here.”

Capitalism forces its workers into the moulds that best suit its ends, regardless of whether these moulds cramp its workers' spirit. Le Corbusier passionately resented this. He poured scorn on football stadiums and other 'arenas’ in which the few are paid to perform while the many — whose need for active sport and whose ability to enjoy it is no less—sit and watch. He lamented the fact that most city-dwellers leave one compartment giving onto a street, (home) for another (work) and in between experience nothing but asphalt or stone under their feet, the ephemera of the daily paper or advertisements in their mini, poisoned air and smoke in their lungs, and barely a tree or a decent-sized stretch of sky, greenery, or water in sight.

But his programme had serious limitations.

Although he believed that architecture and city planning would, one day become extensions of politics, sociology, and ethics, he believed that ‘research into the correct solution for this problem (common ownership of land) is not part of the architect’s professional task.’ More food for the myth that ‘professional politicians' are essential! But in fact Le Corbusier planned to toss the problem to another profession: the law. ‘Let the lawyers find a way!' he exclaims. And:

  It must be the task of our jurists to find a way of initiating the indispensable changes in present land tenure . . .

And although he wants international standardisation for building components, an international technical language, and so on, his thinking is still in national terms. He refers constantly to “mobilisation of the country’s land” (i.e. France’s) and to a national authority. Perhaps it is this acceptance of the nation state that leads him to accept war as inevitable — he points out the great advantages of pilotis for raising buildings above clouds of poison gas, and proposes armour-plated roof-decks to resist aerial bombardment.

Nevertheless, his political awareness is amazingly advanced compared with that of most architects. This is perhaps because his mental scope exceeded theirs. After all, it is terribly difficult to work out a viable political philosophy all on one’s own. There may be millions of people (architects among them) who, on having Socialism explained to them, will say: “That’s just what I’ve believed for a long time—but I could never put it properly into words!” And we believe with Le Corbusier that, despite the scornful laughter of cynics and spokesmen for capitalism, “there is a power for enthusiasm in the human soul that can be made to. explode”.

A.M.B. 

The Great White Elephant (1958)

From the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advertising In Modern Life

When they talk of the marvels of modern times and the loftier race that welfare reforms have brought to being, it is interesting to browse through the ads. in the papers and the television channel. Here, dress-suited prigs sit amid fake period furniture eulogizing cheap tinned soup; pasty youths sip their tonics and slick their hair in hopes of catching the boss's eye; fagged-out, rushed and noise-ridden people by the score swallow pellets and powders by the ton for the noise and rush to continue. Here, in fact, is as great an indictment as could be made of civilization in the mid-twentieth century.

Pure and simple, advertizing is salesmanship: convince the man and he buys your goods. In 1788, toothpaste makers were claiming that their stuff would "faften fuch as are loofe, keep fuch as are already decayed from becoming worfe, prevent the Tooth ach, perfectly cure the Scurvy in the Gums . . .  likewife render the Breath delicately fweet, and remedy all thofe diforders that are the confequence of fcorbutic Gums and bad Teeth." Sixty years ago the most popular soap powder was boosted as "possessing high detergent properties in a concentrated and effective form. Cleanses without injury to skin, fabric or texture."

It has long ceased to be as simple as that Then—years ago, a hundred and seventy years ago—you take it or leave it. Now, to leave it is impossible (except for the blind and the recluse). The advertizing man is no longer a huckster seeking new additions, one by one, to the satisfied buyers of Bloop. His aim is whole social groups, even whole generations, for whom life without Bloop would hurt or be shameful He is sociologist, psychologist, con-man, poet and maker of dreams, with nowhere private and nothing inviolate to him—not the innermost thought nor the smallest room.

There are a hundred means to this assault on social consciousness. Appealing to snobbery and prestige: it is smart to drink this, superior to smoke those. Linking prestige with pride in home or person: clean your home the modern way—and surely you don't still shave with the old soap-and-brush method? Evoking authority with tit-bits of pseudo-science, or vague references to clinical knowledge: the hair is a tube with roots, the intestines are twenty-six feet long, doctors and nurses know all about Blobbo.

The cornerstones of most advertising, however, are Fantasy and Fear. The strip-drawn advertisements for cosmetics, beauty soaps, beverages, and the rest, are explicit, deliberate fantasies of romance or success. In the best-known of them all the strips are peopled by an entire mythology of seemingly real characters: masterful executives, paragon wives and paternal fathers and, of course, the family doctor, benign and wise, sitting back recommending the hot drink that will send Henry bounding up the ladder of success. Or there is the fantasy in prose and a single picture, setting forth a desirable world with which buying some product will somehow put one in touch. Drink Crossbread's, and you commune with Old England, oak beams and dray horses; or Washington's, to be in spirit among the big-thighed footballers and six-hitting batsmen; open an account at the Lowland and enter the semi-detached realm of bowler hats and deference, chequebooks and U-conversations with the Manager.

And there are the sexual fantasies, the dreams of allure, enticement and capture. First shy glances drawn by white soap, first embraces made inoffensive by pink soap; erotic spells cast by shampoos, face creams and cheap perfumes with expensive names (Nuit dans l'Ecurie, one-and-three). Dreamiest, most voluptuous of all are the corset and underwear advertisements, with their Vie Parisienne pictures and their lyrical lore

“The line forms . . . in at your waist,
With a gentle lift of pride up there.
Dance Time, new summer guile . . .
With padded undercups,
And low-hugging Lastex round your back. . . ."

It is wrong to suppose, however, that the sales depend only on those who can share these fantasies. Equally, they set standards for the rest. For every girl who daydreams enslaving Fred by Gluggo, another girl fears the consequences of not using it The advertisements, in fact, make the consequences clear; before the happy ending to the strip a wise friend takes Jean aside and tells her why Fred avoids her.

This is one kind of fear played up by the ads.; fear of social or matrimonial failure. It hardly needs building- up, in a world of perpetual insecurity where most people know only too web that jobs and sweethearts are easily lost. There is fear of disgrace (someone isn’t using Pungo —see the offending noses wrinkle); fear of general inadequacy, of being talked about for remediable failings. This is the secret of the great soap-powder campaigns of recent years. In terms of competition, one may wonder how much is achieved by persuading housewives to change from Diz to Duz, particularly when both are produced by the same firm; but that isn't the real point The effect of seven years' competitive insistence that each soap powder washes whiter, adds brightness, is whitest of all, is whiter and brighter than white itself, has been to make whiteness a social value, something which no woman dare neglect for fear of censure and shame.

The strongest theme of all is fear of harm or deprivation to loved ones. Somebody's mum isn't using Gippo; somebody's baby girl has to ask if the jakes has been made safe for her with Fizz. The wake-up beverages play heavily on this, too; tiredness threatens a man's income just when his daughter has won her scholarship or his widowed mother looks to him for help. It is wrong to sneer at this kind of fear and say people shouldn’t be taken in by it. Nobody wants to be lonely or unpopular, still less to have his children deprived of companionship or opportunity. The advertisers find their material in natural, sensible feelings which are whipped into fears because our world is an insecure and frustrating place.

In a buying-and-selling society, the realm of advertising is unlimited. It goes far beyond the hoardings, the advertisement pages and the television commercials. Thus, in any woman's magazine, where half the space is taken up by advertisements, much of the remainder goes the same way:  fashion pages, beauty articles, stories grounded in the same dream-world as the adverts. The same applies for most magazines and papers. Holiday guides, technical pieces, the Christmas spirit; even the chit-chat about a personality may be, indirectly, advertisement of what he sells.

What are the effects of all this ? There is, of course, the known influence of advertisers on the Press. Large-circulation papers draw about half their revenue from advertisements, the smaller-circulation ones about two-thirds; half a page in the Daily Express costs £3,000. It would be surprising if newspapers did not defer to their advertisers' interests. Mainly the influence is indirect, a standing deterrent to certain kinds of criticism: "A newspaper that receives a large revenue from company prospectuses may have an unconscious bias in favour of our present financial system; and the paper carrying frequent advertisements of patent medicines may, without any conscious deviation from rectitude, give too little weight to the medical profession's views on such goods. A famous editor has, indeed, written unashamedly of 'such needless folly as putting the report of a fatal motor smash alongside of a motor advertisement'.” (“The Newspapers," Oxford Pamphlets on Home Affairs, 1944.)

Occasionally, more direct pressure has been brought to bear. An ex-editor of the Daily Herald stated that his paper’s policy during the Munich crisis was modified on account of the advertisers. In 1938, a British Medical Association advertisement, headed “Is All Milk Safe?” had to be modified to avoid prejudice to the milk industry’s campaign. In his American Freedom and Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard gives several instances of coercion by advertisers in the U.SA Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think (as some people seem to do) that newspapers would be substantially different without this influence; after all, the newspapers support capitalism and the advertisers are the capitalists.

The social effects of advertising go much further. Implicit in all of it is the commercialising of every human relationship: people are valued in terms of their possessions and buying habits, the dentifrice they use, the gleam of their shirts. In this world, as E. S. Turner remarks in his amusing Shocking History of Advertising, “loyalty means always buying the same hair oil. . . . A bride is not a young woman on the edge of a great adventure; she is a conditioned consumer, who, by buying the right cosmetics and the right brassiere has captured her man.'' A generation ago, How to Win Friends and Influence People was the salesman's obsession; now, it is the customer's.

Half-a-dozen minor revolutions in social consciousness—none of them making anyone better off—have been effected or assisted by advertising. The whiteness-phobia, the speed-craze, the conception of beauty and, newest of these, the odour-phobia. In recent times the deodorant business has extended its target from bad breath and strong perspiration to skin smells, cooking smells, “sudden smells" and vegetable smells. It seems on the cards, in fact, that in a few years all natural smells will have been outlawed and abolished, and nothing will be left except the scents of disinfectant and furniture polish. What is worth mentioning about the odour-ads. is that they are easily the lowest, nastiest and most objectionable of all advertisements at the moment (and that, by the way, is really saying something): where, one wonders, are the good taste and culture of which the capitalist class—and, no doubt, the artists and copywriters, too—has always claimed so much ?

The supreme social myth to-day, and the one which runs through all advertising of the last ten years is that of "standards of living.” Most symbolic of it, currently, is the cigarette advertisement which says "I'm raising my living standard" — by changing to a slightly dearer brand; though this writer's favourite is the television commercial where the woman spreads a margarine-and-paste tea for her family, standing in a five-hundred-pound kitchen. Perhaps the most explicit of all is the American advertisement (quoted by Colin McIver in The Anatomy of Advertising), which says

"I know my husband loves me.
"As surely as I know the sky is blue, that dreams come true, that to-day is my birthday . . .  that surely do I know my husband loves me.
"The soft gleam of our very own Gorham Sterling tells me he is thinking of me at wife, mother, hostess—dreaming and planning for our future together."

Modern advertising is the folklore (nursery rhymes and all—hear the children sing the ad.-men's jingles) of the "standards of living” age. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. While the success of a marriage is judged in Gorham-Sterling terms, the collapse of marriage is a major social problem; while people in to-day's hire-purchase paradise see themselves as far, far better off than ever before there are far, far more social difficulties than ever before. For all that has to be said about advertisements, the real criticism is of the society whose values and failures they reflect. Is there any substantial difference between the German general who said "Guns before butter ” and the rest of the world which puts commercial before human needs?

The only sensible way to organise society is for the satisfaction of human needs—that is, on the basis of ownership by everybody of the means of life and access for everybody to everything there is. No advertisements, of course, in such a world; only then, in fact, would the fine, rich wood of humanity flourish free from the dark, parasitic trees of commercialism.

Robert Barltrop

Housewives: Let Us Face the Future (1949)

From the April 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party 1945 Election pamphlet, “Let Us Face the Future," states that "by good food much ill-health can be prevented,” (P.10.) That’s what Socialists have been saying for years. What the sponsors of this aforesaid pamphlet overlooked is that food is produced primarily for profit. In the Daily Telegraph (3/12/48) a report was published dealing with an inquiry into the health and welfare of housewives made recently by members of the New Sussex Hospital (Brighton), It disclosed that ”88 per cent. of the 61 volunteers showed signs of fatigue ” and “ more than 77 per cent. of the wives were under-nourished.” The inquiry further disclosed that “the effects of fatigue in the housewives exceed those of fatigue in any other worker.” Let us try to imagine the housewife, often with several children, living in tenements or sublets. Her vitality is diminished by repeated childbirths and the daily struggle to cook, wash, shop, clean, and care for her little ones in unsatisfactory surroundings, living on “filler” foods such as bread, margarine and fish and chips.

The problem is one of poverty, a problem which repeatedly asserts itself as the cause of bad health. Despite a world of potential plenty Capitalism destroys food and creates shortages in order to safeguard profits when it becomes necessary. According to a December issue of the Daily Telegraph, hundreds of tons of onions have rotted and only half the 40,000 tons of onions grown on the Cambridgeshire Fens has found a market. Again the Sunday Observer (12/12/48) reported that there is a glut of cabbages and they are ”being ploughed in or fed to livestock." No modification of capitalism can alter this condition of affairs. The solution is to abolish capitalism. Capitalism is only one of the forms of society which have evolved, and Socialism must succeed it if poverty, privilege, slavery, are to give way to comfort, equality and freedom. Unite for Socialism.

Cyril Acton

The Sacred "Family Hearth" (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are often met with the statement that the Socialist proposes to abolish the family and cut the sacred hearth tie. Those whose family relations, from the point of view ot published morality, would not bear investigation fling the taunt that the Socialist is in favour of “free love” and no homes.

A very little investigation will show the emptiness of such statements.

The regular procession to the divorce courts and the legislation relating to illegitimate children, together with the frequent newspaper articles relating to sexual problems, bear witness to the fact that “free love,” of a very sordid description, is already widespread at the present moment.

And what of the hearth tie? What is this sacred family life that the wicked Socialist would destroy?

An article in the Manchester Guardian (2/5/23) gives a little information on the point. It deals with a report on “Excessive Sickness in Dundee" prepared by the Executive Board of the General Federation of Trade Unions Approved Society.

From this article we learn that the percentage of married women in Dundee that are working is 41.4, or nearly half!

  “Sir William Henderson, giving evidence before a sub-committee, said that in most confinement cases there was the difficulty of getting the women themselves to knock off work in time; they were loath to do it. It was also very difficult to check the resumption of work.”

Sir William is not reported as giving the reason that made the women loath to knock off work. Yet the reason is simple. It is not because they are in love with work —it is because they and those that depend more or less upon them must have bread. The articles states :

  "Eleven women whom Miss Quaile visited had, between them, given birth to 78 children, 48 of whom were dead—a death rate of 62 per cent. 'One poor thing’ had given birth to twelve children, all of whom were dead.
 “ ‘These facts—and they are but an epitome of those which lie to the hand of every social investigator—reveal enough' the report states, ‘indeed too much for the sensitive soul, of what is happening, not only in Dundee, but in every centre where life has become unnaturally crowded and complex. Unholy greed and social shortsightedness, resulting in overworked and ill-nourished and ill-trained womanhood; little children, too, thousands of them, carelessly given transient existences—nothing for them but to whimper out in misery too helplessly horrible for contemplation the attenuated span of life which congenital folly and post natal ignorance and criminality have allotted them.’”

What an appalling picture of life under Capitalism? Are these the sacred precincts the Socialist is taunted for attempting to invade?

Family life? What family life has the average modern wage-slave that he should fear its destruction? Working or looking for work through the hours of daylight—in a multitude of cases, both he, his wife, and often his children also. Home at night to a room or rooms that are only called home for appearance sake. In poverty and squalor they eat what the scantily furnished cupboard can provide, then sink into semi-torpor brought on by bad nourishment and excessive toil.

This state of affairs arises from the fact that the worker depends for his livelihood upon finding occupation the carrying on of which will provide profit for the owners of the means of production.

When the means of production are converted into the common property of all members of society, it will be possible for all to enjoy the fruits of labour without excessive toil under bad conditions. Then no one will depend for his existence upon the whim or the desire for profit of another. Men and women, freed from dependence upon property, will mate as mutual affection and mutual admiration dictate, and no property inspired laws will bind them to sordid, joyless lives.

Gilmac.

A Talk To Wives and Mothers. (1928)

From the May 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t you sometimes think that it might be pleasant if your day’s work finished at the same time as your husband’s—or the average working man’s—even though his working day is too long?

Don’t you wish you could have 1½ days “off” a week, free from the constant worry of meals and work, an opportunity to enjoy life along with your menfolk?

You cannot heave a sigh of relief when the hooter goes, even though you have worked all day. The hooter only calls you to more work when the family return to meals. Don’t you wish you could leave your thoughts of work behind you at the same time as most men do?

How often are you able to fulfil the hopes of your youth and spend happy evenings with your husband? You are too tired and too busy to share his leisure time with him.

Why be content to scrape along week after week and year after year without relief from the same monotonous work when there are so many who live in luxury and yet have never worked? Surely the reward of work should be pleasure, and not misery and more work.

Has it never occurred to you that, instead of pottering about in your home all day and a good part of the night, it should be possible for the work to be done collectively (as in hotels and institutions), and the children could have large, airy nurseries and large gardens instead of the stuffy living rooms they now have.

Wouldn’t you like your children to have the same opportunities as the rich person’s child?

The first few years of a child’s life are most important, as not only do they naturally require a lot of care, but until they are about five years of age they are not able to go out for air by themselves, and air, as well as good food, they must have to prepare them for the future. The working-class mother cannot afford to employ a nursemaid to take the child out all day, and is not allowed to keep other children at home to do so. It is only at great sacrifice that she takes a child out for about two or three hours a day, and what a rush of work awaits her return. How can children be kept in first-class condition when they are stunted for want of air, and when the mother is too busy to give them the attention they require and cannot afford good food?

Don’t leave it to the men to improve your lot. You should understand the conditions under which you work better than they. You should know what scheming you have to do to make the week’s money buy what is required of it, just as other sections of workers know their own particular conditions best, the miner, factory worker, etc.

Organise yourselves. Ask yourselves why marriage and children should mean the abandonment of all your leisure and the weary, never-ending work.

Talk the matter over as to whether you cannot alter the existing state of affairs.

Wives and mothers, all women, in fact, you must not think that it is out of your reach to alter the state of affairs under which you live. You have a vote, and therefore a say in the matter as to how you should carry on. You must help to improve conditions along with the menfolk, if not for your own sake, at least for your children’s. You would not like them to struggle along just as you have done. It is not enough and no excuse to say that things will not alter in your lifetime, so why bother to think about it. That has been said too long, and if those who said it in the past had given the matter more serious attention and thought of their children, we would have been nearer getting our desires now. Your husband may be in work now, but you never know for how long. Your children may also have their turn at unemployment, and, as time goes on, the unemployment throng will tend to be greater even than now.

Is it fair to bring children into such an unpromising future without endeavouring to do your share in improving their opportunities ?

We all want to get the best the world can offer. Let me give you an illustration as to how you may obtain your desire in actual fact, and the illustration can be enlarged according to requirements. Suppose a number of women met and came to the conclusion that they could work better together on a large scale at specified work, and instead of each, as at present, being “head cook and bottle washer,” nursemaid, housemaid, kitchen maid, dressmaker and cook rolled into one, they decided to amalgamate and work collectively, with all its possibilities. How much more airy their surroundings could be, and how much less work there need be. It would take much less time in proportion to cook for 100 people collectively than for the same number in a number of houses as at present, to say nothing of present washing day troubles. Among the women carrying out this arrangement, no doubt some would be better at one type of work than another, so that, while some do the cooking, others do the sewing and others give their attention to the children, and perhaps have a change of work in turn. By this method the day’s work could be shortened for all, and if the men must do different work from the women, they could have more comfortable surroundings to return to and a companionable wife, instead of returning home to a small, crowded house or rooms and a harassed drudge, tired of the million and one jobs she has to perform.

If all people worked to produce what all require, and each had a guarantee that they would by that means be sure of getting the necessaries of life, there is no telling how soon the work could be done and what pleasures life could hold out.

Don’t think that it sounds all right, but your next-door neighbour could not be trusted to do things so well as yourself, because no doubt that neighbour is thinking the same of you.

As a general rule, every mother does her best for her offspring, however much they may differ from each other in temperament. It is only the cares of life and the narrowness of it that cause us to mistrust our neighbour. At bottom, we are all bent on getting as much pleasure out of life as we can, and if we can work better collectively, the struggle need not be so hard. Most of us prefer to enjoy ourselves collectively, do we not? You cannot improve matters on your own. Do not isolate yourselves so much, but get together and talk about things with a view to improving your lot.

Your grandmother carried on much as you are doing now. Must your children do likewise ?

Whether your family live by brains and your neighbours by muscle, or vice versa, both work hard, and should be alike as regards having the necessaries of life. If your family consists of various types of workers, surely you do not give one less to eat than another. You give them the best you have.

Why not apply the results of work in the same manner, collectively—each have the best obtainable, each do the best they can?

This is the end which the Socialist Party of Great Britain have in view and are organised to obtain. Not a pittance, but at least a sufficiency for all.

I said you have a vote and should therefore have a say as to how you should live. Why not?

Perhaps in our next issue I will tell you what the vote has to do with your present struggle, and how voting a particular way could relieve you of a harassed life.

Hilda McClatchie