Exploitation (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the time of his first arrival in England Marx was surrounded by what was then the most advanced section of capitalist society in the world, and the one showing the greatest contrast between affluence and abject poverty. There were available to him numerous works on economics and government reports, all of which Marx made use of and acknowledged in his book Capital. The following quotation from Vol. I demonstrates this:

  Once for all may I here state, that by classical political economy, I understand that economy which since the time of William Petty has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradiction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systematizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self complacent bourgeois with regard to their own world, to them the best of all worlds.

To Marx capitalism is a system of commodity production, and commodities are the unit of capitalist wealth. The Marxian analysis of capitalist production commences with the analysis of the commodity. A commodity is a useful article, a use-value, produced not for its usefulness to its producer but for exchange. Masses of commodities are put on the market where they exchange for one another. The equation of commodities with diverse use-values in exchange implies the possession of some common quality, otherwise equation would be impossible. All commodities, whatever their differences of use or appearance, are the products of labour: all of them embody a certain amount of human labour and so can be equated with one another.

There are many different kinds of labour, such as the labour of the tailor and that of the miner; they are but different ways of expending the mental and physical energy needed for the production of social wealth. Commodities not only exchange, but exchange in definite quantity—two tons of coal may exchange for one suit of clothes, and not two suits for one ton of coal. This quantitive exchange relationship of commodities is determined by the relative values of the commodities exchanged. A commodity has value to the extent that it contains social labour. In the illustration just used, a suit of clothes is twice as valuable as a ton of coal because there is contained in the suit twice as much social labour as in the ton of coal.

A valuable commodity such as gold is valuable because a considerable amount of social labour is taken to produce a small quantity. If gold were produced with the same expenditure of social labour as is taken to produce chairs, gold would have no more value than chairs. As labour is measured by time, the length of time taken to produce a commodity determines its value. If a suit of clothes is produced in ten hours and is exchanged for two tons of coal, then it follows that the time taken to produce a ton of coal is five hours.

It must not be imagined that Marx argued that the time taken by an individual to produce a commodity determines its value: that would mean otherwise identical commodities produced in different times having different values.

Capitalists do not buy Labour
The capitalist system of production is a system of profit-making. The capitalist expects to, and usually does, receive a greater amount of money at the end of the productive process than he originally put into it. If, as has been stated, commodities are exchanged at their value, the commodities produced for and sold by the capitalist must have a greater value than those purchased by him (raw material, machines, labour-power, etc.). Moreover, the increase in value must take place during the process of manufacture, in which process the commodities he purchases are turned into the finished product he sells. The increase in value implies the addition of labour. But does not the capitalist buy labour along with the raw material, machinery and other means of production, as a commodity at its value?

The capitalist does not buy labour; the commodity he buys from the worker is labour-power. The distinction between labour and labour-power is not a quibble but a fundamental distinction. The power to work or labour is what the worker sells, not the actual work he performs for his employer. Labour-power is a peculiar commodity because it has the power to produce a greater value than its own. The value of labour-power is determined by the value of the necessities for its own production. For example, a worker who consumes commodities containing four hours of labour can work for eight hours, and by so doing creates twice the value of his own labour-power. Because the capitalists have monopolized the ownership of the means of production, the workers are forced to sell their labour-power to them in order to live. In other words they are able to exploit the peculiarity of labour-power described above, and to take from the worker the surplus value created in production.

The existence of a free working class is a necessary condition for capitalist production. Before the workers could be turned into wage-slaves they had to be “freed” from the land and the instruments of labour: they had to be property-less in the means of production. In England this was accomplished by ejecting peasants from the land, and the seizure of common lands. There was thus created a class with no other means of existence than the sale of labour-power to the capitalist employers.

Once there exists the relationship of wage-earner and capitalist, it tends to perpetuate itself. By spending his wages as he must, the worker is forced continuously to sell his labour-power. The capitalists, because of their monopoly of the means of production, are able continuously to buy it and appropriate the surplus-value it creates. This surplus-value is divided into rent paid for land and buildings, interest paid for loans of money, taxes paid to the State for services performed on behalf of capitalism as a whole, and profit. Part of the profit is consumed by the capitalists, and part is reinvested in production.

The rate of reinvestment of profit is determined not by the whims of individual capitalists but by social forces over which they have no control. Competition and market conditions tend to reduce the prices of commodities. To meet this threat without reducing profits, capitalists endeavour to enlarge their businesses so that the costs of production can be reduced; this means the introduction of more efficient machinery, the speeding-up of the work process, and the effecting of economies made possible by large-scale production. Those capitalists who fail to do this will be in danger of being forced out of business.

The growth in size of businesses makes competition even more severe. Small concerns are always in danger of failure; only the largest and best-equipped are able to survive the struggle. Competition, by killing-off the small and less efficient concerns, concentrates control in the hands of relatively few large capitalist monopolies and also causes a continuous improvement in technique and an increase of productive capacity.

However, the same growth creates many problems. At first it requires an increase in the numbers of workers employed, but with advancing technical improvements the rate of employment falls whereas the rate of increase in the numbers of the working class tends to rise. Though these tendencies are offset by others, they are always at least potential pressures against the perpetual need of the working class to be employed. At all times the market for labour-power is subject to the factors which cause market conditions for all commodities to fluctuate. The capitalists have to look for fresh markets in non-capitalist (i.e. undeveloped) countries; and finally the whole world is brought into the stream of capitalist economic life.

Constant and Variable Capital

Technical improvements change the composition of capitals. A larger share is invested in means of production (machines, raw materials, etc.) called by Marx constant capital, and a smaller share in the purchase of labour-power or variable capital. This changed composition produces very important results. The capitalists reckon their profits on the whole of their capital, and any increase of capital that does not result in a corresponding increase of labour-power employed (since that is the only commodity which can produce surplus- value) results in a fall in the rate of profit.

A capital of £100, of which £80 represents constant and £20 variable capital, produces a surplus of—say— £20 and a rate of profit of 20 per cent. A capital of £200, of which £180 represents the constant capital and £20 is the variable capital, with the same exploitation of the workers, will still only produce surplus-value of £20: which means a lower rate of profit, that is 10 per cent.

As more and more capital is assuming the shape of machines (constant capital) and in proportion less is being invested in the purchase of labour-power (variable capital), it follows that the rate of profit is a falling one. In the highly industrialized countries, despite the intensification of exploitation by speeding-up and other methods, there is a continuing long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall. To help overcome it, capitalists export capital to less advanced countries where the proportion of labour-power required in relation to the total capital is high and, as a result, the rate of profit is high also.

As the capitalist industrial system spreads over the world, the problems become wider in extent and more severe in their effects. To protect their interests the capitalists are compelled to form trusts, combines and mergers, and endeavour to restrict or eliminate competition and to restrict production to the requirements of the market.

Though the main purpose of these moves is the abolition of competition, it is never accomplished. Trusts and combines are usually national or semi-international in scope, though we are now witnessing the growth and power of multi-national concerns. Though all the producers supplying home markets might be organized in trusts, the capitalist market is the world market, and there the national and semi-international trusts struggle against one another. The effects of such international competition are far more harmful than those of competition between numerous small concerns. Thus, the contradiction between the order and efficiency of production, and the anarchy of the market, becomes and is irreconcilable: the economic crisis becomes a feature of capitalism. The contrast between the relatively increasing poverty of the working class and society’s increasing power for producing wealth becomes greater, as does the contrast between the social character of production and its private or class ownership and control.

In order to resolve this contradiction, the class—that is, the working class which is at present exploited and will continue to be exploited so long as wealth is produced as commodities—this class must take control of political power. This is the power which at the moment makes it perfectly legal for the capitalist class to appropriate the surplus-value produced by the combined efforts of the working class. It must be used now to convert the property relationship in the means of production from the present private or class ownership to one of common ownership: so that wealth—that is, useful things— may be produced because they are useful and necessary. And so society can go forward to its next goal, Socialism.

Robert Ambridge

50 Years Ago: The Capital Levy Exposed (1974)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In previous issues we have dealt with the Labour Party’s scheme for a levy on capital to pay off part of the war debt. It was explained why the levy is merely a matter for the consideration of the capitalist class, who have to decide, on purely financial grounds, whether the levy is advisable in principle and secondly whether it would be wise to institute it so long after the war and in a period of depression.

#    #    #    #

It was . . . from a vote-catching point of view, probably a mistake for the Labour Party to make it their main plank. But for that they would have received the valuable support of the section of the Conservative Party which centres round the Observer . . . but the Conservative Observer was strongly against the levy on account of the undoubted disturbance it would cause (serious if only temporary) in the British financial world.

#    #    #    #

The leaders of the Labour Party were, of course, not blind to the political situation . . .  Mr. Snowden had only a week or so earlier tried to find a way out by proclaiming that while the levy was good, the time was not so opportune, and that the proper moment was just after the war. And then, on Saturday November 26th, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald went considerably farther, and in fact admitted explicitly what we have always said; that the levy was a device to stabilise the capitalist system . . . These are MacDonald’s words in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester :-

   Referring to the Capital Levy, Mr. MacDonald said he found it a most popular topic. It was not a special Labour proposal. Some people imagined they wanted to use it as a malign or magical leverage for the complete change of society. If he were a capitalist and opposed to Socialism, he would support the capital levy.

(Observer 25 November 1923)

During the same week he spoke at Northampton and at Bristol and showed again how little the levy had to do with the workers.

  The capital levy proposal did not come from the Labour Party in the first instance. It came from business men, economists, university professors, and others and the Labour Party had not taken it up until they had enquired into it. When the Labour Party had educated the people it (the capital levy) would become popular and would be applied by other parties.

(The New Age 29 November)

From an article “The Capital Levy— Ramsay MacDonald Supports Our Case”, by H., in the Socialist Standard January 1924.

A Letter to the Liberals (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was sent to Focus, a local Liberal Party news sheet.

It is often suggested that a change of leader and/or party might make a real difference to our everyday life. Those of us who look intelligently at the kind of social system in which we live know that it would not.

We live under capitalism which operates according to its own economic laws, irrespective of changes of government, whether it be Conservative, Labour or Liberal.

There is a basic contradiction in capitalism between social production and class ownership. For while the actual work of producing wealth is done by the cooperative labour of millions — the working class — the means of production (lands, mines, factories etc.) and the products belong to a relatively small section of society only — the capitalists. It is this contradiction that causes modern social problems since it means that production cannot be carried on to meet human needs. The economic law of capitalism is that all enterprises, whether private or nationalized, are operated for profit. If their products cannot be sold at a profit, production is curtailed or brought to a stop. All governments administering capitalism, no matter what principles the individuals profess, have as a clause of their economic policy one which enables profits to flow.

Let us look at one or two problems that this situation creates. Unemployment is an inevitable part of capitalism. Periodically hundreds of thousands, even millions, are thrown out of work for the simple reason that it has become unprofitable to employ them. The pool of unemployed can be called on in times of boom and is as such needed by capitalism. It can also at times serve the purpose of keeping down wage claims. 

People often talk of there being a housing problem, but there is no such problem. There is no reason why enough good houses for all should not be built. The materials exist, so do the building workers and architects. What then stands in the way? The simple fact is that there is not a market for good houses since most people cannot afford to pay for them, and never will be because of the restrictions of the wages system.

Is there a way out? Of course there is, but it demands self-reliance and bold thinking on the part of everyone. The economic system under which we live is man-made and can be altered by man’s action. You can go on frittering away the years in the sterile dispute whether the Conservatives, the Labour Party or the Liberals make a better job of running capitalism, or you can consider the alternative of ending capitalism and putting Socialism in its place. Rely on your own experience and recognise that capitalism has never been and cannot be made to work in the interest of the working class.

The alternative is a social system in which production of goods and the operation of services are carried on solely and directly for use, without buying and selling, profit-making or the wages system. This is what Socialism really means and its basis would be the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the whole community.

Its achievement demands understanding, organisation and democratic action by a Socialist working class. It calls for international co-operation, not of the world’s bankers, but of the world’s workers.

A revolutionary idea and hard to grasp? You have to choose. Either you take action to get Socialism or you have to put up with the consequences of capitalism. There is no third choice!

                                                                                                                   Yours etc.,

WORLD SOCIALIST.

Capitalism's Dilemma (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is in the nature of governments to promise to eradicate evils and make things better for the voters who elected them. It is also in the nature of capitalism to go on being an exploiting system and to be subject to periodical crises and depressions. In the life of any government therefore there is always an even chance that things will get worse instead of better. When this happens, the politicians who masterminded the policy and the economists who advised them look round for an excuse—the workers who didn’t work hard enough, the strikers who didn’t work at all, (even occasionally the workers who worked too hard and produced unsaleable surpluses), the speculators, the greedy bankers who pushed up interest rates, or the capitalists who didn’t invest enough (one of Heath’s excuses).

Now, and probably for several years, a lot of blame is going to be laid on the oil-producing countries which banded together to get a monopoly price for their oil, an action branded as “blackmail”—as if every government which controlled a much-needed commodity did not always get a monopoly price for it if possible.

This excuse is going to be used to obscure the fact that the Heath government’s policies were already in deep trouble before the latest blow from the oil capitalists, and that in many countries there had been for months growing signs of crisis and recession: notably the widespread falls in stock-exchange prices, latterly drastic falls but themselves from levels below those of recent years. What the Financial Times (28 November 1973) found particularly disturbing was that “there is a growing tendency in the market places of the world” to recall that the depression between the wars began with the great fall of share prices in 1929 on Wall Street:

  For the message is clear enough. It is that the pace-setting countries must demonstrate that they are planning meaningful measures to halt the long-term drift towards chaos in international economic and financial affairs which serves to give such new bugbears as the oil crisis an even more devastating impact. Indeed, unless this happens, we may soon be in even greater danger of travelling down the world recession path than we are already.

Professor Alan Day (Observer, 25 November) also fears that there may be a world depression, firstly because “the industrial world as a whole has enjoyed a boom in the last couple of years” and all may now move into depression together. His second reason is concerned with unemployment and inflation:

  Another reason to fear a world recession is the worldwide struggle against inflation. Our great and universal problem is to achieve reasonably full employment along with reasonable price stability. Indeed taking the world as a whole, this problem is further from a solution than it has ever been.

It is of some interest to note how his views have been modified since, in 1959, he wrote The Economics of Money. There he thought that the cycle of boom and depression “may now have been mastered as a result of the insight into economic processes which has been acquired in the last generation” (p. 66); though he still evidently half believes (against the evidence) that full employment can be achieved by accepting inflation as the price to be paid.

Here is one of the dilemmas of capitalism. In the past twenty-five years every election has been won by a party which promised full employment and no inflation and which then, without a mandate, futilely tried to enforce a “prices and incomes policy” to stop inflation. So where do they go from here. It seems highly unlikely that an election could be won on a policy of “more inflation and full employment” or on a policy of “no inflation and more unemployment”, though of course there is nothing more certain than that they will go on promising one thing and doing another until such time as the workers get wise to it.

Among the possibilities being canvassed is the formation of a coalition government, which, until in due course it falls apart, can ignore what the separate parties promised when elected. Peregrine Worsthorne (who recently scored a bull for silliness by attributing inflation to “the spirit of evil”) hopefully counts on the dissension in the Labour Party as a possible means of enabling the Tory Party to be elected with so large a majority that it can take "authoritative powers including presumably the power to direct labour” (Sunday Telegraph 2 December 1973).

In the meantime Enoch Powell has been gathering support for his policy of going back to nineteenth-century free-for-all, no government control of prices or wages but with the definite commitment to halt inflation. Those who are attracted by the notion that capitalism really would be all right if only inflation is halted should take note of what did happen when, in 1920, inflation was halted by stopping the issue of additional currency notes. Prices did come down with a run; so did wages notwithstanding a big increase in strikes, and unemployment jumped and remained at well over the million mark for years and jumped again when in 1929 a Labour government came into power pledged to reduce it.

Half a century has passed since then. It would seem that most of the non-Marxist economists have learned nothing and forgotten everything, and the trade unions and Labour Party (not to mention the so-called “left- wing” organizations) are still bemused with nationalisation and the other irrelevancies which make up their impossible schemes for improving capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: Peter McKenzie (1974)

Obituary from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with regret that Glasgow Branch report the death of long-serving member Peter McKenzie. Peter had been a Glasgow member since 1940. He was an active and enthusiastic one who was specially valuable as a chairman at Branch meetings: when Peter was in the chair the business was always dealt with in an efficient and thorough fashion.

He was in many ways a link between the younger members of the Branch and the pre- and early-war periods. He was full of anecdotes and stories of the Party’s activities in those days. A cheerful character who had a clearcut, no nonsense style of propaganda, he introduced many workers to the Socialist case. A railway worker, he made many useful contacts among his workmates.

One story illustrates the effect he had in discussion in railway bothies, when the talk got round to politics. During the war, when hysteria and hatred gripped many workers, he argued consistently against war and the other horrors that capitalism produced. Returning to his home from work, after midnight, he found two “gentlemen” awaiting him. They asked where he was born, where his father was born and—being thorough—where his grandfather had been born. After Peter had convinced them that he wasn’t a German spy, they told him he had been reported by one of his workmates. With great relish, Peter told how he returned to his bothy discussions and tried to figure out who among his political opponents was the "patriot”!

He was an outstanding example of the older generation of Glasgow members—a mature man thoroughly grounded in the basics of Marxism and a fearless advocate of Socialism. Besides the Branch’s loss of a valuable member, many of us have lost a warm friend. He is survived by his wife and five children, one of whom is a Party member. To all of them we extend our sympathy at their sudden bereavement.

Subsidizing Food Destruction (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the first pieces of legislation to be presented to the House of Commons this session has been the Horticulture (Special Payments) Bill. The intention of this bill is to provide for payments to be made to commercial growers of horticultural products, especially growers of apples and pears, facing “special difficulties” as a result of Britain’s entry into the Common Market.

These “difficulties” are likely to arise after 1978 by which time Britain’s markets will be completely open to competition from EEC producers. The strength of this competition can be gauged from the fact that British production of pears this year is an estimated 40,000 tons while in the EEC the total amount “withdrawn from the market” (i.e. destroyed) were an estimated 378,000 tons in 1971-72. Obviously with the tariff and quota barriers down these surpluses could provide British growers with plenty of bracing competition which is supposed to do so much good for everyone. However the government intend, through this Bill, to shelter and cushion British growers from any such thing. Minister of Agriculture, Anthony Stodart, told the House of Commons that as a specialised branch of agriculture which had problems of its own horticulture justified different treatment from the rest of industry, and that the government “. . . had a responsibility to growers who must not be sacrificed in the wider national interest” (Hansard, 16 November 1973).

As we have pointed out before, governments, of whatever political persuasion, exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class (i.e. the owners of the means of life). This they do in a number of ways—tariff barriers and subsidies to producers for example — always bearing in mind that by such measures they expect a healthier national capitalism to be the outcome.

The Horticulture (Special Payments) Bill is just such a measure, and has been welcomed as such. Payments are to be made to growers of apples and pears who discontinue production. The scheme is expected to cost £4.5 million to £5 million over the period 1974-78. This figure is far in excess of the £440,000 spent up to mid 1972 under a similar scheme (see Socialist Standard January 1973). There are to be checks on the growers who apply for the “grubbing up” subsidy to ensure that the orchards dug up are not replanted for at least five years. In effect the government are subsidising the destruction of productive resources.

In this way, it is hoped, the competitive efficiency of British horticulture will be improved by reducing the amount of produce reaching the market. As a result market prices are expected to continue their upward trend after a period during the ’sixties when prices stagnated while costs increased. “Surpluses”, that is more being produced than the market can absorb profitably, could upset this state of affairs. As Roger Moate, M.P. for the Kent constituency of Faversham, pointed out:

   It needs only a small amount of surplus at any moment to disrupt the market entirely, and a grower can quickly lose almost his annual profit because of the disruption.

(Hansard, 16 November, 1973)

So once again, in a world where food is short, market considerations get priority over the needs of people. All we need now is for a cynic to point out that the trees dug up could help to alleviate the fuel crisis.

Gwynn Thomas

Where Do We Go From Alienation? (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years Marxism has taken on a different look. The existence in German of early philosophical writings of Marx was known since before the war. The English publication in the late nineteen-fifties of The Holy Family and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 set loose the theory of alienation which Marx formulated as a young man and echoed in his work nearly fifteen years later. Its appearance at first was gratifying enough; here was Marxism come in from the cold, as it were, and revealed as humanism.

From there, however, it has become an academic industry. Preliminary and marginal Marx is turned over in repetition of the thirties’ nonsense-debate as to What he Really Meant. Then, it was about political economy; now, about Man. It’s a sad reflection that Marx and Engels meant their work to make explicit the struggle of the working class, and the academics have obstructed that happening by making it as esoteric as possible. An Inaugural Lecture at the London School of Economics in November dealt with “some theoretical aspects of Marx’s original work” under the heading “The Fundamental Marxian Theorem”. A feeling, no doubt, that so valuable a property cannot be left to the workers’ mucky hands.

But from this scholarship world where theses are hatched to fly in ever-decreasing circles, influences seep down. There is the case of the Left, with leadership increasingly claimed as of right through comprehension of Marxism’s alleged inner mysteries. And there is alienation as not only the vogue-word of the times but one pronounced as substitute for an analysis of practically anything. What is to be said about capitalism in 1974? Alienation. How is the subject-life of millions to be explained? They are alienated. The cry of “alienation” has rendered Marxism as a vague universal humanitarianism instead of the mechanics of the class struggle.

Words and Men

Of course Marx had a conception of the nature of man. He saw man’s distinctive ability to “make his vital activity into an object of his will and consciousness”: his power to create his own environment, to change it and thereby change himself. He saw how capitalism militated against human fulfilment in those terms — productive activity, the “species-life” of man, was appropriated from him. Using Feuerbach’s word, he proposed that man under capitalism was alienated from the product of his labour and the act of production; from other men; and ultimately, therefore, from his own nature.

What does “alienation” mean? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary gives it as “estrange” or, in legal application, “transferring ownership to another”. The first is a stilted but everyday one. Jane Austen in Persuasion has: "What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals . . .” The second is found in records of changes in the holding of land, as:

   Further alienation occurred in 1636 to Charles Maynard, one of the Auditors of His Majesties Court of Wards and Liverys, who in 1639 became the purchaser of the manor and the whole of its rights and privileges.

(A Calendar of Deeds, pub. 1923)

It is important that these meanings should not be confused. Up to quite recent years legal actions were occasionally brought by husbands for “alienation of the affections” of their wives. What was envisaged was not estrangement — which had obviously taken place anyway — but the loss of the wife’s services and duties: a matter of property.

The German words Marx used for alienation were “Entfremdung”, “Verausserung” and “Entäusserung” They correspond with the English meanings above, the first two referring to property and the last to personal relations. Marx seems to have used them more or less indistinctly. In the Communist Manifesto “entäusserung des menschlichen wesens” is “alienation of humanity”, and in Vol. I of Capital (p.708, Kerr edn.) the word “entfremden” is used in “estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labour process”.

In his book Marx's Theory of Alienation István Mészáros attempts to explain the difference:

  When the accent is on “externalization’ or “ojectification”, Marx uses the term "Entäusserung” (or terms like “Vergegenständlichung”), whereas “Entfremdung” is used when the author's intention is to emphasize the fact that man is being opposed by a hostile power of his own making, so that he defeats his own purpose.

This explanation is less important than the actual translations into English. Why did Moore and Aveling, who translated Vol. I of Capital, choose and Engels as editor approve “estrange” — and, elsewhere, “divorce”? All three knew Marx and were well placed to render what was in his mind. Yet we know for a certainty that any modern scholar would seize on “alienate”, because the intellectual fashion of the time says so. And with it is conveyed a heavy philosophical package.

Changes of Thinking

The theory of alienation appeared initially as Marx’s first view of the capitalist world, an interim enquiry between the Hegelian philosophy of his youth and his major historical and economic analysis. The academicians will have none of that, however. David McLellan in Marx Before Marxism declares:

   Those who claim to find a break between the ‘young’ and the ‘old’ Marx usually maintain that alienation is a concept that was central to Marx’s early thought but which he abandoned later . . . These statements are, however, inaccurate.

For McLellan, the Grundrisse of 1857-8 is the final word:

  The Grundrisse, then, are as Hegelian as the ‘Paris Manuscripts’ and their publication makes it impossible to maintain that only Marx’s early writings are of philosophical interest, and that in the later Marx specialist economic interests have obscured the earlier humanist vision.

Mészáros takes the same standpoint, pouring scorn on those who believe Marx put aside the alienation concept and quoting from The Holy Family, The German Ideology, the Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus-Value. But difficulties immediately arise. Except the Grundrisse these are all early works, and both Marx and Engels wrote deprecatingly of them later. A. Voden in Reminiscences of Marx and Engels recalled a conversation in 1893 in which Engels refused to have an interest in “publishing old manuscripts from publicistic work of the forties”; and Marx spoke of The German Ideology as having been meant mainly for “self-clarification”. Indeed, The German Ideology—only two years after the 1844 Manuscripts—makes ironical references to “the self-estrangement of man”. Likewise the Communist Manifesto (1848) ridicules the German academics:

  They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”.

(SPGB edition, p. 85)

More Reservations

Having claimed that Marx never gave up the alienation theory, Mészáros has to qualify the assertion:

  But once it is conceived in its broadest outlines—in the Manuscripts of 1844— it becomes possible to let the general term “recede” in the presentation . . . This is why it is not at all surprising to find that the works which followed the Manuscripts of 1844, up to about 1856—and written for publication—are far less densely populated with the word “alienation” than the first broad synthesis.

This is “special pleading” with a vengeance, and it does not stand up for a moment. If Marx really thought on those lines, that having stated a theory there was no need to go on reiterating it, he did not act accordingly over the labour theory of value and the materialist conception of history; these, once begun, never “recede” in his work. To look at this another way, Marx’s main works have been extant for generations. In them the words “alienate” and “estrange”, and statements on the condition of man, have been perfectly comprehensible as part of his economic analysis. It is only the early and preparatory works which put them in the context of a philosophical theory belonging, at that, to Marx’s intercourse with the Hegelians and Feuerbach.

But what about Engels? According to both Mészáros and McLellan, Marx was first influenced towards the alienation concept by Engels’s Outline of a Critique of Political Economy (1843-44); and there is Engels’s own work on Feuerbach. Mészáros and McLellan both lay stress on Marx’s unfulfilled intention to produce an enormous work on mankind, of which Capital was the first “brochure”. It should be taken for granted that Engels, as the lifelong collaborator of Marx, would share the pursuit of the alienation theory and seek to complete what Marx allegedly left unfinished. But not only did Engels dismiss their early philosophical work and describe its “semi-Hegelian language” as “not only untranslatable, but has lost the greater part of its meaning even in German” (letter to Mrs. F. K. Wischnewetsky, 1886); the theory is — despite the wide range of his social investigation — entirely absent from his own post-juvenile writings.

A Sterile Concept

It is possible, of course, to brush off Engels on the grounds that he was not Marx. That is what Kamenka. in The Ethical Foundations of Marxism, attempts to do. However, in the Introduction to Marx and Engels : Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, Lewis S. Feuer argues and offers evidence that for Marx the alienation theory was a youthful aberration which he shared Engel’s wish to forget. He points out that Marx’s last published writing, A Workers' Enquiry (1880), showed him preoccupied with further economic research “into the deeds and misdeeds of capitalist exploitation” (Marx’s own words):

  It consisted of a hundred questions directed to workers as to their conditions, their treatment by their employers and governmental agencies, their conditions at home, their diet, their children, the frequency and duration of strikes, the workingmen’s societies, and so on.

And in 1881 Marx wrote to a Russian correspondent about his friend Ray Lankester’s essay Degeneration. Of Marx’s interest in it, Feuer says: “Evidently it was related to an even more basic questioning of his philosophical standpoint which he never articulated.”

What then are we left with? A theory which Marx may or may not have retained; which Engels apparently discarded altogether; of uncertain terminology; and in the absence of which, Marxism has existed as a lucid, coherent and not-at-all-deficient body. Its being put in the fore of left-wing Marxism has damaged that coherence, despite claims that it gives “a fuller view”. Bertell Oilman in his book Alienation presents value, appropriation, the money-system etc. as facets of alienation; Mészáros asserts the importance of economics to be as

  a vital link in the programme of gaining mastery over the various causal factors involved, serving the purpose of practically superseding alienation in all spheres of life.

This does not expand the existing view of Marxism: it diminishes it. If a working man understands (in fact, he already does) that he is estranged from life’s potentialities by being exploited, that is proper consciousness. But if he is to be asked to say he is first and foremost alienated, and exploited as part of it, that is futile.

Meaning and Purpose

This brings us to the question: where does the theory of alienation lead? Any theory is going to be reduced in frequent usage to the common-or-garden, and at this level it has already become sheer do-gooding with a highfalutin name. Four years ago a TV programme on political dissent showed a member of a well-known left-wing group expounding alienation: “There — on the other side of that wall — you could die, and nobody would know about it!” Of course there is an appeal in this kind of “theorizing”, and being able to invoke the pre-scientific Marx for it. It is not only more romantic but easier than learning the economics of capitalism.

At the academic level, however, there is not much improvement. Oilman gives a clear and readable account of the alienation theory, but seems conscious at the end of the problem of not knowing what to do with it: his critical summary turns out to be chiefly a criticism of Marx’s economic categories after all. And Mészáros, after attacking the “hot air”, “falsifications” and “grotesque ideas” of misinterpreters of Marx, emerges as a supporter of the regimes in Cuba, China and Eastern Europe and a believer that the critical breakdown of capitalism is almost upon us. Since this is merely the old rubbish of the Left, the alienation theory looks to have been brought forward as a convoluted support for it.

  

Only one conclusion is possible. The Marxian Socialism which makes sense is founded on the economic theory of Marx about which there is no surmise. It does not at all exclude “human” considerations; on the contrary, it has no meaning if it does not begin from indignation at what capitalism does to the great majority of people. But nor can it have meaning unless it is understood to be rooted in the class struggle. The way to Marx’s “human society” is not through contemplating “freedom as essence” (Oilman’s phrase) but by consciousness aimed at abolishing exploitation.

Robert Barltrop

Obituary: Hilda McClatchie (1974)

Obituary from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Hilda McClatchie, who was just eighty years old, died on 9th November and was cremated at Golders Green on 15th November 1973. Hilda, the partner of Gilbert McClatchie (“Gilmac”) joined the Party in May 1912. She was the sister of Adolph Kohn, who up to the time of his death during World War II was a constant contributor to the Socialist Standard and a well-known lecturer and debater for the Party.

It was in the Socialist Party that Hilda and Gilbert met to form a life-long association. During the early part of the First World War Gilbert McClatchie was the General Secretary of the Party, but with the introduction of conscription in 1916 he, like many of the male members of the Party, had to go "underground” and live and work as best they could without identity papers (or at least genuine ones!) As opponents of the war they were liable to arrest and imprisonment, and indeed many members ended up in prison after appearing before farcical tribunals who swept aside any objection to the war unless it was based on religious-conscientious grounds. "Gilmac” escaped to Ireland—where he was born—whilst Hilda’s brother Adolph, as did several others, went to the USA. Hilda then became General Secretary and was one of the band of intrepid women members who played a large part in keeping the Party organisation in existence during that war.

Scotland Yard twice raided our premises in King’s Cross, once when an Executive meeting was due to take place. Hilda was tipped off in time and managed to keep the arriving members from getting too near to Head Office (some E.C. members used to surface from "underground” in order to attend these meetings). Twice she was interrogated at Scotland Yard on the whereabouts of some male members and attempts were made to obtain from her a list of Party members—without success.

On another occasion she was for some time cross-examined regarding an article written by Adolph Kohn in the USA and found on a seaman attempting to smuggle it into the country for delivery to the Party. She was very well-informed, and an active member until 1948 when she was stricken with an illness from which she never completely recovered.

To Comrade Gilbert McClatchie and daughter Jenny we offer our comradely sympathy.

Arthur and Phyllis George

BDS Election Campaign (1974)

Party News from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten, our companion Socialist Party in Austria, decided to put up a candidate in the Vienna municipal elections which were due to take place in the spring of 1974. Due to the total lack of ability on the part of the elected Mayor, the SPO (the Austrian Social Democratic Party) were forced to recall him and put forward a new man. As it was feared that their opponents would use the intervening period until 1974, the SPO, who are the majority Party, decided to bring the elections forward to 21st October 1973. This made extra problems for us in that, with our meagre resources, we had to try and obtain the 100 signatures in a much shorter time and, in the event, this proved impossible and we managed only 73. In spite of this we regard our activities as having been successful. It was the greatest effort ever made by the BDS. Never before have we visited so many people in such a short time and made them aware of our existence. We have made a great number of new contacts which we hope to follow up in the next months. With our papers and posters, together with our leaflet, thousands of people have been made aware of our Party and our political standpoint.

This time there were 3,000 copies of the Internationales Freies Wort (usually 2,000). Of these 1,100 were sent by post to ordinary supporters of the SPO and another 1,500 were distributed free to contacts we made. 400 went to subscribers and other regular purchasers. As well as this we had 3000 posters; to date, approximately 1,500 of these have been posted. However, as the contents are not exclusively directed at these elections, we shall be using the remainder for other activities. Apart from this we printed a leaflet (10,000 copies) of which we actually distributed 9,000 in house-to-house distribution.

This, the most ambitious activity of the BDS to date was also, of course, the most expensive and has completely exhausted our resources. We spent 9000 schilling (approx. £200) and, in spite of generous support of members and sympathisers, and in spite of the help of the comrades in Britain, some of the bills are still outstanding. (Donations please to BDS, see address on p. 15).

Nevertheless we feel it right that we should use all possible opportunities to put forward our objective, Socialism, to as many people as possible.

Socialist Economics: 1. Commodities (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Economics Series

It is impossible to understand the way in which the Capitalist system works without some knowledge of basic Marxian economics. Such knowledge is invaluable to the Socialist because he can use it to expose the myth that the capitalist is the lynch-pin of society and without him, civilization would perish.

The Marxist theory of value is based upon the analysis of the commodity. Marx describes the commodity as being the “cell form” of capitalist society, and that wealth within capitalism presents itself as a vast accumulation of commodities.

First and foremost, a commodity is a product of human labour under definite social conditions of production which can only apply to capitalist society. It is an article produced for sale or exchange with a view to profit. It contains two diametrical opposites—Use-Value and Exchange-Value.

Use-Value is the utility of an article and is something concrete. Food can be eaten. Homes can be lived in. Clothes can be worn. This is self-apparent. But as we Socialists are well aware, the production of use-values is not the prime function of capitalist society. That function is the production of Exchange-Value.

Exchange-Value or price is the proportion in which commodities exchange with each other. A thing possesses exchange-value only to the person who has no use for it and loses its exchange value when its use-value asserts itself or is eventually lost in consumption.

Commodity production is peculiar to capitalist society. When we talk about commodity production we mean a condition where the dominant means and almost the entire means of social production are devoted to the production of articles for sale and exchange. Commodities have been produced in past societies before capitalism, but their production was confined to the handicraftsmen or to incidental surpluses. Their production was never a mass social process as it is today. It is only in capitalist society that commodity production becomes the prevailing mode of production.

Use-value has nothing to do with whether or not an object or service is useful to humanity. The whole economy of capitalism has a multitude of products and services which are incontestably useless, and indeed harmful. Nuclear weapons; military bases; equipment for armies; banking, insurance and the whole apparatus of wholesale and retail. The institutions and services, however, are useful to capitalism and use-value in this context is related to the needs of capitalism and whatever these needs may be from time to time.

The most practical way to find out whether an article or service is useful or not is when it is offered for sale. If no-one wants it, then it is socially useless whatever its virtues in other respects. Production of that particular commodity or service would then cease as its reproduction would be unnecessary. To put it another way, the production of any commodity or group of commodities which cannot be marketed or sold is useless by capitalist standards. The fact that a social need may exist for unwanted commodities has nothing to do with the case. There is no morality in capitalist economics.

Some things which are bought and sold are not commodities. Bearing in mind that (a) a commodity must contain a certain amount of human labour and (b) that it must be capable of being reproduced we find that there are a number of instances where this does not apply.

Land (excluding buildings) for example contains no value; there is no labour involved in its production. It cannot be reproduced. Nevertheless, land is bought and sold; it has a price, and that price is determined by competition between buyers. A woman’s virtue is not a commodity but we know that virtue may be sold by prostitution. Likewise with a man’s character. You can buy a man’s character by bribing him. What happens in effect is that these non-commodities assume the commodity form. They take on an abstract exchange-value, and successfully masquerade as the real thing. Likewise with works of art.

The value and consequently the price of a commodity is determined by the amount of social labour spent on its production. Social labour includes the materials used in the productive process and is measured in time.

There is one important qualification and that is that the labour must be socially necessary. If this were not the case, the more inefficient and time-wasting processes would produce the most value, which is nonsense. Socially necessary labour means the average time that is spent in any field of production or distribution in the manufacture of articles or services. For example, if crude oil was shipped from Europe to the Middle East, the cost of society’s time, including the element of wear and tear on the ship etc., could not be added to the product because this would have been unnecessary labour (as crude oil is found in abundance in the Middle East). Again, if a group of capitalists decided to erect a factory on the Island of Tristan de Cunha or some other remote spot, say for the manufacture of textiles, the cost of the textiles would not have a greater value on account of the cost of shipment, transport and other charges, for the obvious reason that the areas for producing textiles are mainly concentrated in industrial areas with all the attendant services of railways, roads etc. Again (although the example may be open to question due to the capitalist energy crisis), if a firm decided to build Hansom cabs to be drawn by horses to replace taxi-cabs, the social time spent on these would be quite valueless, as this commodity (transport) by horse-drawn carriage is obsolete and is not used by society outside of its novelty value which is minute.

Socially necessary labour must take into consideration the things which society now requires, and the average methods through which they can be obtained. This average working raises another question, and that is whether by using the latest machinery the value of the product is less than that of similar products produced by relatively old machinery, because the time spent on the former is naturally less. The answer is that we have to take an average throughout the whole field of this production in particular. In the coal-mining industry throughout the world, methods of extracting coal vary from working narrow seams to exploiting huge faces by coal-cutting machinery. The hand-cut coal is not more valuable, and in any case the entire production of coal cannot be carried out by hand. Neither can it be entirely carried out by machinery; therefore the average time is proportioned between the two methods. Again, if we take ten firms with varying degrees of efficiency say from 1-10, the average would be 5 and this would represent the social necessary labour time. Socially necessary labour is the substance of value, or conversely value has for its substance embodied or congealed labour.

We shall have a look at another aspect of Marxian economics in a further article.

Jim D'Arcy

Revolutionary Art & Socialism (1974)

Book Reviews from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris. His Life, Work and Friends by Philip Henderson. Penguin. 90p.

Political Writings of William Morris ed. by A. L. Morton. Lawrence and Wishart. £1.

William Morris was a Victorian poet and designer and it is as such that he is probably best known to the general public. But for the last ten or so years in his life he was also a revolutionary socialist and pioneer Marxist in Britain. He was born in 1834, the son of wealthy capitalist parents and as a result enjoyed an independent income all his life. Not that he chose not to work. Far from it. He interested himself, and tried his hand at, nearly every craft from dyeing to printing (setting up a business to sell the products of such crafts to the "swinish rich”), a living proof of the proposition that men will choose to work even if they are not forced to.

Work was always central to Morris’ whole outlook, even before he became a Socialist. While at Oxford in the 1850’s he became involved with a group of romantic artists known as the pre-Raphaelites because they reckoned that painting had degenerated after the Middle Ages with Raphael, the first Reformation painter. Morris, naturally, tried his hand at painting but became more famous as a poet. The general tenor of the pre-Raphaelite criticism was that mediaeval society was better for "art” than the industrial society which followed it. However “art” was not used in the sense just of paintings, sculptures, etc. but was defined by John Ruskin as the expression of man’s pleasure in his labour. Morris wholeheartedly endorsed this definition of art, with its implication that men would spontaneously produce beautiful things — things of everyday use, not mere decorations — if they enjoyed their work. This product of enjoyable work Morris called “popular art”. It was a recognition that capitalism denied most men pleasure in their work that led him to become a socialist in 1883, not long before he reached the age of 50.

Before that he had been on the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, first taking an active part in politics in the agitation against war with Russia following Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria in 1876. Morris became the treasurer of the Eastern Question Association and wrote a manifesto on its behalf addressed "To the Workingmen of England”, thus showing that even at this time Morris relied on the working class to carry out his political ideas. In the 1880 election he worked for the return of Gladstone, but soon became disillusioned with the new Liberal government. He made contact with various trade unionists and working-class political organisations and in 1883 joined the Democratic Federation. This was an association of working-class radical clubs formed in 1881.

Soon after Morris joined, it changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation, proclaiming Socialism as its aim and Marxism as its theory, though in fact it never did outlive its radical-Liberal origins as it continued to advocate also the same reforms of capitalism it always had. Morris set about studying Marx, reading Capital where, understandably in view of his background, he preferred the historical parts on the rise of modern capitalist industry and its effect on the working class rather than the abstract economic theory. Nevertheless there can be no doubt at all that Morris did master sufficient of Marx’s ideas — on history and society as well as economics — to be regarded as a Marxian socialist. A reading of Morton’s selection of his political writings will confirm this 

Hyndman, the man who had been largely instrumental in founding the Democratic Federation, was an authoritarian and tried to run the SDF as his personal organisation. This led to discontent and eventually, at the very end of 1884, to a split in which Morris, somewhat reluctantly, became the key figure in the breakaway Socialist League. Unlike the SDF, the Socialist League had no programme of reforms, which it regarded as mere palliatives; it saw its task as simply to “make Socialists”, as William Morris put it, thus in many aspects anticipating the policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was founded twenty years later as another breakaway from the reform-mongering SDF.

William Morris found himself as the main theorist of the anti-reform, make-socialists policy of the Socialist League. At times this brought him to the verge of an anti-parliamentary position since he thought that to enter parliament would be to become bogged down in reformist politics, but he never did deny that in the course of the socialist revolution the working class would have to capture political power including parliament. This refusal to advocate the use of parliament to get reforms upset a group, including Marx’s daughter Eleanor, who in the end broke away from the Socialist League. This left Morris at the mercy of the real anti-parliamentarians and anarchists, who eventually came to dominate the League with their advocacy of violence and bomb-throwing. In 1890 Morris and the Hammersmith branch seceded, carrying on independent socialist activity as the Hammersmith Socialist Society.

During these six years Morris was a real Socialist activist. Besides being editor of Commonweal, the League’s journal, he spoke indoors and outdoors up and down the country. A number of these talks (including some while he was still in the SDF) are reprinted in Morton’s book. They can leave no doubt as to Morris’ socialist understanding:

   Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, i.e., convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles into practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible ("Where Are We Now?”, 1890, p. 226).
   Intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel. If our ideas of a new Society are anything more than a dream, these three qualities must animate the due effective majority of the working people; and then, I say, the thing will be done ("Communism", 1893, p. 229).

Part of Morris’ first public profession of his socialist views, a lecture delivered at University College Oxford in November 1884, was republished by the SPGB in 1907 and again in 1962, under the title Art, Labour and Socialism. This, like many of his earlier lectures, was addressed to his fellow-members of the bourgeois middle class rather than to the working class, but it still makes good reading (though, in this writer’s opinion, two of his other lectures, whose titles Useful Work versus Useless Toil and How We Live and How We Might Live speak for themselves, are better). Morris’ message was that enjoyable work should be available to all men and women but that capitalism denies such “popular art” to the propertyless working class and that only Socialism, a classless society of equals, can provide it. Morris also wrote two books, in the form of utopian romances, which are again good socialist — and Marxist — propaganda: A Dream of John Ball (a brilliant application of the materialist conception of history to the Peasants Revolt of 1381) and of course News from Nowhere.

Towards the end of his life, it must be pointed out, Morris modified his attitude to the use of parliament to try to get reforms and become reconciled to the SDF, though he never rejoined it. But he still insisted that such action must only be a means to the end of creating a determined Socialist majority, which alone could establish Socialism. He died in 1896.

Henderson’s biography is now reprinted as a paperback. Readable enough, it shows little sympathy for Morris’ socialist views, criticising him for supposed inconsistency in being a Socialist and art-lover. This perhaps is because Henderson accepts the myth that Russia is socialist. But, surely, Russia is the “state socialism” — or, as we would say today, state capitalism — Morris always disliked. He certainly would not have regarded Russia as socialist.

Adam Buick

So They Say: Rouble Backhanders (1974)

The So They Say Column from the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rouble Backhanders

A "Housing Scandal" was reported in The Times on 6th November. A Trade Minister, a Mayor, a chief city architect and various senior officials were sacked for corrupt practices and "numerous instances of gross violations of legality".

Those involved are charged with abusing their official positions by allotting housing space through favouritism, and flagrant contravention of the laws and regulations.  . . . (The Mayor) was removed for abetting various people in the illegal possession of flats and by his general acquiescence. The chief architect was dismissed for neglecting long-range plans for the city's future development, for falling to improve the quality of construction work and the unauthorized occupancy of a flat in the same board of trade housing development.

This sounds like an extract from the Poulson proceedings, but it is not. The report comes from the Times' Moscow correspondent, and refers to Tbilisi, the capital of the Soviet Republic of Georgia. We used to hear that this sort of thing happened only in the "decadent" west' but capitalism has the same effects everywhere.

Moves in a Mysterious Way

Some time ago and American sued thirty churches for redress after an injury to him was attributed to an "Act of God". heath and Wilson may both be thinking on similar lines. Under the headline HEATH WARNING ON UNCONTROLLABLE ECONOMIC FORCES, the Prime Minister was recently reported speaking of things beyond him: 

. . . we are faced by economic forces outside the nation's control which affect the livelihood of every man, woman and child in this country. (Times, 6th December 1973)

The same night, Wilson expressed the same sentiment in a party political broadcast:

But the leader of the Opposition said he would not blame everything that was happening on the Government. "For example, I've made it clear I do not think they are responsible for the present oil crisis . . . Some aspects of world prices, foodstuffs, are not their responsibility."

So these Men of Destiny, casting masterful eyes on the turbulence round them, say — what? That they are stumped.

Ask Them Another

However, it must not be thought that the current economic troubles are due to the ineptitude of fatheads like Heath and Wilson. Similar admissions are now being made by heads of state and erstwhile whizz-kids all over the world. On 2nd December the Sunday Times Business News had JAPAN: BRAKES ON THE BULLET ECONOMY. The Tokyo correspondent wrote:

The oil crisis, commodity shortages, a Cabinet re-shuffle including a change of Finance Minister, not to mention he usual uncertainties of economic forecasting, all these have thrown Japan's exports into a state of nearly total confusion.
The Economic Planning Agency admits: "It is impossible to give a responsible answer." A more assured member of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry says: "Nobody really knows, but . . ."

There was a symmetry between this and the item below it, headed THE US: NO ONE REALLY KNOWS. It spoke of forecasts of "unemployment nearly doubling to 7.5 per cent. or 8 per cent", and went on:

Most professional economists now admit that they have only the vaguest notions of what will happen in the next 12 months . . . no one knows how US export trade—considered to be one of the strong factors of the American economy—will be affected by economic slowdowns in Europe and Japan.

All now agree unanimously — but, being "experts" only temporarily — with the Socialist Party's case that capitalism cannot be controlled.

Alone I Did It

An example of the absurdity and anarchy of capitalism is shown in a report from Brazil. Like every other country, Brazil has sought "growth". As elsewhere, this is supposed to promise higher living standards for the workers — but, of course, not in the foreseeable future. Antonio Delfim Netto, "the Erhardt of Brazil's economic miracle" is quoted six months ago explaining what would happen of wages rose: "Easy, there would be runaway inflation." 

But labour shortages have enabled Brazilian workers to demand, and get, higher wages. And this has enabled the pragmatic Delfim (a) to admit that growth has nothing for the working class, and (b) to pretend he arranged for a labour shortage instead.

Last week Professor Delfim admitted that Brazil's chosen vehicle of expansion (the market economy) did not provide any mechanism for reducing the level of inequality, but professed himself happy with the effect which the emerging shortages of labour have produced. "This," he said, "is what we have worked for all the time." (Guardian, 4th December 1973)

Obviously this "miracle-worker' hasn't a clue, except to making up ingenuous answers. What will he say when labour shortage gives way to redundancies?

Beware of Them — They're Like Us

We have from America a leaflet headed WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COMMUNISM, apparently issued by the FBI. It urges every citizen to look out for "espionage, sabotage, and subversion activities". What it refers to, of course, is state capitalism: the first thing people should know about Communism is that it does not exist in the places implied, Russia, Cuba, China, etc.

But even taking the leaflet at its face value, it contains a curious self-contradiction. One side says, quoting J. Edgar Hoover:

Why is Communism a threat to you? Communists want to control everything: where you live, where you work, what you are paid, what streetcars you ride (or whether you walk), how your children are educated, what you may not and must read and write . . . 

On the other side people are told they can combat Communism by:

1. Being good students (doing a good job at school)
2. Being good citizens at home and in the community
3. Learning more about the history of America
4. Being willing to do their share for our country.

Thus, the way to prevent being told what to do, what to read, etc. is to let yourself be told what to do, what to read, etc. Which highlights the fact that there is no difference worth troubling about.

Putting it Simply

We are often told that the language of Socialist economics is too weighty for the man in the street who reads football reports. The report of Queens Park Rangers v. Sheffield United in The Observer on 9th December began:

The leather spheroid never looked like evading the custodian.

It means nobody could get the ball past the goalkeeper.

Robert Barltrop

Who said the Class Struggle was Dead? (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who accept present-day society see strikes and industrial conflict as an avoidable mistake. Wilson and the Labour Party, for instance, accuse the Tories of "splitting the nation" as if what they call the nation has ever been united. Tory backwoodsmen, on the other hand, see all sorts of "leftwing agitators" behind strikes. Industrial psychologists blame it all on outdated attitudes. None of them face up to the fact that industrial conflict is built into present-day society and is quite unavoidable as long as it lasts.

The purpose of production today is not the satisfaction of human needs but profit. So a car factory is not essentially a place where cars are made but a place where profits are made; and the same goes for shipyards, coal mines, railways, docks, warehouses, offices and all other workplaces, irrespective of whether they are private or State owned, The source of these profits, as of all wealth, is the labour of all those who work. Industrial psychologists and others may regard this as one of their "outdated attitudes" but, argue as they may, they cannot refute the fact that wealth can only be produced by human beings working on nature-given materials and that therefore any non-work income such as profits must come out of the labour of those who do work.

Workers are paid as wages or salaries about enough to keep them and their families in efficient working order, but can and do produce much more than this, the surplus over and above their wages being the source of profit. Workers accept these terms because, having no other source of income, they are compelled to work for wages for those who own and control the means of production.

Present-day society, capitalism, then, is based upon the exploitation of the working class. Trade unions were formed to try to mitigate this exploitation since experience showed that, if workers put up no resistance, employers take advantage of this weakness to increase profits at the expense of wages. The trade union struggle is basically a defensive struggle against such downward pressures on wages or, what amounts to the same thing, a response to money prices rising faster than money wages.

In 1972, after all, the miners only claimed to be fighting to restore their standard of living of four or five years previously. And most trade union struggles are the same: to maintain, rather than improve, their members' standard of living. Figures confirm this. According to New Society (25 February, 1971), in the period 1959 to 1970 the net real income of the average wage-earner (that is, his take home pay plus family allowances) rose only 19 per cent, or less than 2 per cent. a year. Hardly a confirmation of the claim that trade unions are responsible for rising prices, growing unemployment, etc., etc., because of the huge wage increases they are alleged to have got for their members. Rather it is a confirmation of their limited role of maintaining standards; that, in fact, despite strikes and tough bargaining, trade unions have to run fast just to stay still. Present-day society, in other words, forces workers to struggle just to maintain their standard of living, let alone improve it.

But the wages struggle is just one aspect of the class struggle. Ultimately this is a struggle by the workers for the ownership and control of the means of production, whether or not they realise this (and most of them at the moment unfortunately do not). The logic of their position in society as an exploited, wealth-producing class compels them to struggle for this, at first unconsciously and later consciously.

This working-class struggle of which the struggle over wages and working conditions is bit the industrial aspect, will go on as long as workers are the subject class in society. The logic of the workers' social position dictates this. This is why strikes are built into present-day society and cannot be abolished by psychologists or repressive laws; not even state capitalist Russia and Eastern Europe, for all their police state dictatorships, have been able to prevent the workers struggling against their exploitation.

To win, however, the workers' struggle must move beyond the spontaneous industrial level and become conscious and political. For capitalist ownership of the means of production is in the end maintained by their control of political power which the political backwardness of the working class gives them. Let there be no doubt about this. The workers, including those who from time to time have to take industrial action to maintain their living standards, vote for political parties which, in practice, always act to confirm capitalist control of the means of production: for Labour or the Tories, both of which have no desire to change the system of accumulating capital out of the profits produced by the working class.

What is needed is a conscious political movement aimed at ending capitalist class ownership and control of the means of production, thereby abolishing classes (including the working class). This done, a new society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interests of the whole community will have been established. On this basis production for sale with a view to profit can be replaced by the planned production of wealth solely to satisfy human needs and, given modern technology, a society of abundance achieved with free access to goods and services in accordance with the old Socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Adam Buick