Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information, Target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Notes by the Way: This Millionaire Business (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Millionaire Business

Mr. Bernard Harris, of the Sunday Express, is worried because under Labour Government (he calls it “Socialism”) “you have no chance to-day of starting a business in Britain which will make you a millionaire before you die.” (Sunday Express, April 11th, 1948.) It seems that the harvest of millionaires has been falling for generations so that to-day “there are only 244 millionaires in Britain. They are the people with incomes of £50,000 a year or more.”

Mr. Harris does not go so far as to say that there will be no new millionaires, but he fears they won’t be hard-working lads like their fathers, but will become millionaires the easy way, “by inheritance or out-and-out speculation.”

“The self-made millionaire, in the sense of the man who has created a vast business from small beginnings, is a fast disappearing species. And he is the only valuable kind.”

He quotes an unnamed jam millionaire who was asked 50 years ago “to give 12 rules for making a million,” and replied, “Repeat ‘hard work’ 12 times.”

So the good millionaires make their money by hard work, and the other millionaires are not good ones. This leads to some curious conclusions. Lord Derby, who died in February last, left property valued at £1,937,838 (Evening Standard, April 8th, 1948), but though he inherited his estates and therefore does not fall into Mr. Harris’s group of valuable millionaires, we do not recall that the Sunday Express ever condemned him as an example of a no-good rich man. Nor did Lord Derby think it of himself. When he was Tory Postmaster-General in 1905 it was the postmen whom he thought were no good. He had nasty things to say about some of them who were trying to work up electoral opposition to him and other M.P.s because, after a Committee appointed by the Government had recommended increases of pay, the Government would not carry out the whole of the recommendations. Lord Derby called the postmen blackmailers and bloodsuckers though later he withdrew the “bloodsuckers” when he found what a storm of criticism it produced The postmen, most of them earning probably between 25s. and 30s. a week, were certainly hard-working— their employer saw to that—but it never got them anywhere.

Mr. Harris also tells us that “there were the Wills, of tobacco fame. Eleven members of that family have died since 1909 leaving a total of £38,000,000 between them.”

In November last Sir William Churchman, a director of the Imperial Tobacco Co. and partner in Churchman’s, died worth £1,102,719. (Evening Standard, 7/2/48).

These ladies and gentlemen got their wealth out of business, in the way Mr. Harris approves but if hard work is the explanation one wonders why the hard-working cigarette makers never get into the millionaire group like their employers.

The truth is, of course, that all great fortunes, whether inherited or acquired during the owner’s lifetime, came out of the unpaid labour of the working class.

* * *

The Garibaldi Communists

When Communists fight elections it is on the principle that no dishonesty is barred provided it gets votes. In Italy, according to a correspondent of the Sunday Express (11/4/48), they are appealing to patriotic sentiment.

“The Red Flag is nowhere to be seen; no hammer and sickle signs disfigure the walls. With a lack of scruple that takes the breath away they proclaim Garibaldi their hero. His head appears on most of their posters.”

However, it seems that Garibaldi’s 81-year-old daughter is still alive and she objects to Communists “hiding behind her father’s picture.”

“Her father,” she said, “never approved of Communism.” “It was founded by a German (Marx) who always hated Garibaldi.” (Daily Mail, 12/4/48.)

* * *

“Freedom of the Press” in Russia

In Russia no political party is legal except the Communist Party and no publication is permitted that opposes the Communist Party. At the United Nations Conference at Geneva on 29th March, 1948, an American delegate, Mr. Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, was challenged to produce proof of his statement that in Russia the press is controlled by the Government. According to a Reuter and Associated Press report Manchester Guardian, 30/3/48) he did so by reading out the Statute which in 1931 gave control of publications to a State organisation known as “Gavlit.”

“It authorised the Gavlit administration to forbid the publication of any works containing ‘agitation and propaganda against the Soviet authority and the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ It entrusted Gavlit with ‘preliminary and subsequent control over published literature both from the political-ideological and from the military and economic viewpoints,’ and authorised confiscation of disapproved publications and the prosecution of persons ‘violating the demands of Gavlit, its organs and authorised representatives’.” (Manchester Guardian 30/3/48.)

The News Chronicle's own correspondent at Geneva reported that although the Russian delegate addressed the Conference after the above had been quoted “he made no reference to Mr. Martin’s quotation.” (News Chronicle, 30/3/48.)

* * *

Japan’s the Friend, not China

Honor Tracy, correspondent in Japan of the Observer, reports that American policy has taken a new turn. “Under this policy Japanese economy is to be restored as quickly as possible, with liberal American help, in the hope of creating better conditions, not only in Japan herself but in the Far East as a whole. Japan is thus to become ‘the workshop of Asia’ as she has always claimed is her proper function.” (Observer, 11/4/48.)

The Report continues :

“Travellers returning to Tokyo from China report . . . indignation that the proposed grants and loans to Japan during the present year should be so much greater than what is being offered to China. The American view, on the other hand, is that China is now disintegrating so fast as to make outside help ineffective.”

It looks as if the “brave Eastern allies” in next war may be the Japs, while China qualifies for the position of a horrid dictatorship.

* * *

Lancashire’s Exports

Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, speaking in London on 9th April, 1948, referred to the struggle to find markets abroad for textiles. “Although the problem of production of textiles this year’ is going to be the biggest problem this country has ever faced, the problem of selling them is going to be even greater, particularly in face of the enormous import restrictions in three-quarters of the trading world. We have put strong diplomatic pressure on every country which is imposing restrictions against us and we have in our various trade negotiations made it a cardinal point to try to open the market wherever possible …” (Manchester Guardian, 10/4/48.)

One of Lancashire’s competitors is Japan and another is U.S.A. Mr. Ewing, Chairman of the Bradford Dyers’ Association, according to a Manchester Guardian report of a speech, “was worried about Japanese competition. Exports of Japanese cotton textiles increased rapidly during 1947 and were equal to three-quarters of Lancashire’s trade. The United States was also developing export trade. Mr. Ewing therefore stressed the need for quality and inventiveness.” (Manchester Guardian, 12/4/48.)

In the meantime, while Japan fights to sell more textiles outside Japan, U.S.A. to sell more textiles outside U.S.A., and Britain to sell more outside Britain, the President of the Board of Trade tells us that “if textile, production does not buck up the clothing ration may have to be reduced.” (Daily Mail, 13/4/48.)

* * *

Is the Church an Essential Industry?

A News Chronicle reporter tells readers that “latest figures show that only 4,000 vicars and rectors have a net income of between £400 and £500 a year. Five thousand earn less than £400—and some hundreds have even less than £300. (News Chronicle, 10/4/48.) He says that parents today will not enter their sons for the Church because of the low pay and “a drive has begun to establish a £500 minimum for vicars and £260 for assistant curates.”

This is all very well but is the Church so other worldly that it hasn’t heard about “wage-freezing” and the policy of allowing increases only in essential industries or where there is increased production?

* * *

Social Reform is not Socialism

While the Daily Express (8/4/48) tells us that things are worse here than in America because “in Britain we have Socialism,” the Daily Mail will have none of it. Criticising a speech in which Mr. Attlee claimed we have had our Socialist social revolution the Mail wrote (24/1/48) :

“For such claptrap read ordinary ‘social reform.’ Bigger names stand upon that role than those of Attlee and Bevin. We cite Disraeli, Chamberlain, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Baldwin.”

We can leave them to fight out the issue which party achieved more reforms of capitalism. As Socialists we heartily endorse the statement that it is claptrap to describe social reform as Socialism.

* * *

The “Daily Worker” is disappointed with Indian Capitalism

Socialists never supported the Indian Nationalist movement, knowing well that the propertied interests which financed and controlled it were only concerned with making India safe for Indian capitalism. Not so the Communists. They urged Indian workers to support Nehru and the Congress Party. Now the Daily Worker professes to be astonished because Nehru’s government treats the Indian workers in the same way that they were treated under British rule.

“What is happening in India? The British trade unionist may well rub his eyes in astonishment. Trade union leaders are being arrested and repressive action is being taken against the Communist Party . . .

“Such happenings were frequent under British rule, but India is now said to be free . . . The plain fact is that little has changed in India except that it is now ruled directly by the Indian capitalists, landlords and princes by grace of the British Imperialists.” (Daily Worker, 9/4/48.)

There is nothing to cause astonishment in the discovery that Indian capitalism is like any other hut how comes it that the Daily Worker should ever have supposed that it would he different?

Edgar Hardcastle

So They Say: Protests too much (1977)

The So They Say Column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protests too much

An article in The Spectator of 12th November entitled “The irrelevance of class” which attempts to justify its title by showing how various important men have risen from what are discreetly referred to as “humble births”, reminds us that the class war still prompts professional hacks (and quacks) to issue it, at regular intervals with a formal death certificate. The entire irrelevance of class structure within society led the writer of the article to over 50 column-inches to make his point and if The Spectator is prepared to pay for and publish this sort of thing, we have high hopes for our own submission entitled “The irrelevance of air—hot and cold.”

The inconvenient obstacle to the claim however is one of fact. Obstacles of this nature may or may not impress Spectator’s writers who are prepared to spend a good deal of time apparently in dealing with what they consider “irrelevances”, but it cannot seriously be denied that capitalist society is divided, on the one hand into those who own and control the means of life and on the other, into those who must work for a member of the owning class in order to live. If this class division were non-existent, or irrelevant, we could only express surprise at the great deal of verbiage mustered to assure us of the claim.

Not cricket

Although the owning class as a whole have class interests in common, namely the retention of private- property society and they will unite on issues which may threaten this, each member also has individual interests in the day-to-day business of increasing their particular share of the social wealth, and this process obliges them to enter into battles among themselves. Whereas the working class, the non-owners, represent a class enemy to be held off by a variety of means, other members of the capitalist class are rivals and as such require direct attention.

Fresh diplomatic protests have been tendered by the Government over breaches in agreements by Japanese (Motor) manufacturers to hold down sales in Britain.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

The British motor manufacturers claim that the Japanese are carrying out an “invasion” of the British markets contrary to an undertaking given by the Japanese to restrain sales to the UK. It all sounds very reasonable—an arrangement between friends. The Japanese motor men have argued before that it had all been a misunderstanding and they may well do so again. The fact that the British government now argues the case on behalf of its own national manufacturers shows that they are not deceived. Both parties are aware that “undertakings” are weak restraints on the pressures of capitalist expansion.

Making the point, in the same newspaper, was the Chairman of the Welsh council of the CBI who advises his members that British manufacturers can satisfactorily meet Japanese competition by putting in “the same intensity of effort as the Japanese”, by which he means a greater degree of exploitation of the British working class. This gentleman was speaking from experience. He is the chairman of a machine-tool company.

Last year I put one Japanese firm out of business and two other Japanese firms have given up their markets to me.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

It seems probable that the aforementioned Japanese firms may be petitioning him soon to give an “undertaking” for restraint.

Plenty of problems

The Japanese Prime Minister has become increasingly concerned at the economic problems he faces as the yen rises against other currencies and the exporters are finding it more difficult to compete successfully in overseas markets. He now refers to exports as a “negligible factor in expanding economic growth in future.” The new strategy he revealed is to be the stimulation of home demand by increasing public spending, which we seem to have heard somewhere before.

Mr. Fukuda neatly put his finger on one of the major difficulties facing the Japanese, who are by no means alone in the matter, and shows that capitalism, despite the efforts of so-called planning, simply continues to produce problems and contradictions. The profit motive governs production.

The important thing is to create demand in the midst of the problems of overcapacity and unemployment.

(The Times, 11th November 77)

Capitalist ideologies

The Chinese are said to have approached the British government with a view to ordering Harrier jump-jets. Apparently the so-called socialists are faced with a build up of forces on their border with the other so-called socialists, the Russians. The fact that the British government also refers to itself as “socialist” no doubt lends justification to the approach and completes the picture of this happy socialist band who act so differently from the capitalist governments. To an un-trained eye it would appear to be a straightforward business arrangement.

However Britain is a member of a NATO organization called Cocom whose function is to prevent the sale of weapons and plant for producing them, to “communist” countries. America is also a member and it might be thought that they would, as they are entitled, veto consideration of the order. Surely the Americans would not permit any hole-in-the-wall arrangement between all these “socialists". It appears however that the Americans have an un-trained eye in the matter. They have their reasons too.

The fact that there is a company to company agreement between Hawker Siddeley and Macdonald Douglas to manufacture the Harrier under licence in no way interferes with the sale of the Harrier by Britain to other states, I was authoritatively informed yesterday. A non-British member of Cocom’s coordinating committee told me a few days ago that the United States rarely raised any objection to the export of strategic materials to a Communist country if it was produced or manufactured in America.

(Daily Telegraph, 9th November 77)

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 2 (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

These are the times when unthinking workers look for scapegoats, as they did in Germany in the latter period of the Weimar Republic. There the once proud and powerful Social Democratic Party (SPD) were in government; they unwittingly paved the way for the Nazis. Hence, the concern of the political leaders of Western Europe, North America and Japan. They reason as follows.

The slump of the early ’thirties undermined the established regimes in places like Germany and Japan and many other less powerful countries too. Imitative fascist-type parties sprang up all over Europe (some holding power), gaining support from disenchanted workers. In the case of Germany the Nazis gained power through the ballot box in 1933. In Japan the militarists managed to mobilize popular support against the existing Liberal administration because of the economic situation—unemployment and deflation—not, as now, inflation. The new regime began reflation in 1932 and before the bottom of the world slump had been reached Japanese industry began to recover being propelled along by an aggressive drive in export markets.

This was bad news for capitalist interests whose markets were being successfully penetrated by Japan, e.g. the colonial possessions of the Western industrial states were taking an increasing volume of textiles. This was one of the reasons for “protectionism” of the 1930s, which the governments now wish to avoid. This encouraged Japanese capitalism, with militarists firmly in the saddle, to possess colonies of their own. In 1937 they attacked China, having as early as 1932 driven the Chinese out of Manchuria without any formal declaration of war.

War economy

Germany from 1933 onwards pursued a twin policy of re-armament and so-called "economic self-sufficiency”. Unemployment decreased (although it was still above 1 million in 1936) and the armaments industry and its adjuncts, like the new autobahns and airfields, increased. Many workers were employed on the work connected with numerous Nazi rallies; the 1936 Nuremberg Rally alone cost £2,000,000 to stage. To limit imports, license schemes were introduced and synthetic materials developed, partly to deal with Germany’s balance of trade problem and also geared to their “war economy”.

Germany entered into trade arrangements with countries in South-East Europe and Latin America. These countries agreed to take more exports from Germany in exchange for imports from them, but their volume was only 69 per cent. above 1929; whereas Britain’s exports were then 83 per cent. above that year. Britain had achieved this advantage by bi-lateral arrangements with various countries. The Commonwealth and Empire countries increased their import preferences for each others’ goods and as mentioned above placed restrictive quotas on textiles from Japan.

In spite of all this, unemployment in Britain was still over 1.3 million in 1937. In the June 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard was the following:

When Hitler for the German capitalists says that Germany must expand or explode, find markets or perish, he meets his opposite in Mr. Hudson. British Secretary for Overseas Trade who said in Warsaw on March 21st [1939] that “we are not going to give up any markets to anyone . . . Great Britain is strong enough to fight for markets abroad. Britain is now definitely going to take a greater interest in Eastern Europe”. (From News Chronicle, March 22, 1939). Fighting that at present takes the form of words, trade agreements, loans, guarantees against aggression etc. may. as in 1914 turn into an armed conflict, and that armed conflict will be yet another war produced by capitalist rivalries.

This area of Eastern Europe was Germany’s existing and expanding sphere of influence, for recovering territory lost in the previous imperial conflict—the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Danzig and the Polish Corridor, and Memeland from Lithuania. Germany also had eyes on the Rumanian oilfields (hence the British guarantee to that country in spite of the fascist regime there), and the wheat-growing areas of the Ukraine, in Russia and Poland.

These brief references are to the seeds which helped produce the second world war, and the politicians at the recent London summit conference said so quite openly. By any sense of logic working-class ears should be pricking up at these statements, questions should be asked and conclusions drawn. The Socialist Party does its best to help draw these conclusions and to develop a Socialist awareness.

It was noteworthy that Mr. Fukuda was particularly alive to the dangers of the present slump. He was a young diplomat in London in 1933 at the time of the World Economic Conference which broke up solving nothing, to be followed by “beggar thy neighbour” policies which were already under way prior to the conference. One of the major factors preventing even formal agreement was America’s refusal to stabilize the dollar; Roosevelt having taken them off the Gold Standard with a view to raising US commodity prices as an inducement for investment by the industrialists. This caused the US dollar to fluctuate wildly in the foreign exchanges. The delegates from the other countries at the conference wanted America to stabilize back on the Gold Standard: this Roosevelt refused to do, being pre-occupied with the domestic effects of the Depression.

Crisis capitalism

This was and is crisis capitalism. Predicament—the conflict between national economic interests and the stability of the international trading and monetary systems. This was recognized well enough in 1933. 

The journal The Round Table declared, some months before the Conference at the time of the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa, that "within a few months, conclusions must be reached in the financial and economic field, the effect of which will probably be decisive for or against the happiness of at least one generation of human beings all over the world.”

In September 1933, two months after the conference broke up, the same journal commented: ‘‘The great international conferences have come to little. The pulse of the Disarmament Conference is beating feebly (which began in June 1932) . . . The World Economic Conference has failed to reduce the obstructions to international trade, or even to make a tentative approach to agreement upon a solution of the world’s monetary problems”.

In the Daily Telegraph of May 9th, 1977, the day after this year’s conference, in an Economic Commentary article ‘‘Best view of the summit in few months” the author, Rodney Lord, stated: ‘‘It is idle to expect any great progress on persuading countries to regulate their economies for the general benefit of international stability. Politicians look first to the interests of the people who elected them.” The latter part of that quotation cannot go unchallenged of course—but we know what he means.

Politicians are the custodians of nation-states in a competitive world—that is, custodians for the capitalist class of their particular countries. At the same time they depend on the working class to go along with the arrangement, and have to try to placate them when it is necessary.

Conflicts of ‘national interest’

This conflict of national interest and international stability, with its inherent dangers, was demonstrated in Tokyo only four days after the end of the Economic Summit.

There were reports of a fire in an oilfield in Saudi Arabia which supplies over 30 per cent. of Japan’s crude oil imports. Prices fell on the Tokyo stock market and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry assured the Press that the fire would probably not have a serious effect on Japan’s supplies in the long run.

At the same time Mr. Fukuda, the Prime Minister, told a meeting of business leaders that the government is to press the case for Japan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. He said that at London he had the ‘‘strong impression” that it will be difficult to get America’s approval because of President Carter’s “deep-rooted opposition”. However, Mr. Fukuda assured the businessmen that he was “most determined” to negotiate the issue with the US independently of other countries. The Japanese, apparently, have been shocked by the American President’s nuclear energy policy (from a report in the Daily Telegraph, May 13th).

An indication of Japan’s problems—even though being currently the world’s most successful economy— is the news that from the end of 1971 to the end of 1976, 30,000 shipyard workers lost their jobs. It is estimated that another 25,000 will go before the end of 1978, which is nearly the total workforce in British yards. (From the AUEW journal for May 1977.)

On May 9th the Daily Telegraph reported that British TV manufacturers were protesting to the Government that Japanese TV manufacturers were “bent on destroying” the British industry. This was in response to the plans of the Hitachi Company to build a factory at Tyne and Wear.

Commercial ‘aggrandisement’

The British businessmen said that there was already over-capacity in the industry. 1,751,000 sets were made in 1976 as against 3,000,000 in 1973, and Hitachi’s arrival would increase to 400,000 the number of Japanese colour sets made in Britain. Two other Japanese companies are already established here. Many more jobs would be lost—up to 6,000—than would be created, it was claimed. Hitachi had already a 20 per cent. interest in a Finnish company which is expected to export to Britain for assembly a substantial part of 800,000 total output of colour tubes. It is part of a policy of “commercial aggrandisement” in Europe, say the British capitalists.

No wonder Mr. Fukuda and the other statesmen are worried.

Frank Simkins

To be concluded

The Passing Show: Social revolution in Japan (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social revolution in Japan

Under the above heading The Times told us recently of changes in Japan brought about by the war. But if the reader expects to learn that the wealth producers, the Japanese workers, have taken over, he will be disappointed though he should not be surprised. What in fact the article deals with primarily is the rise of new propertied group and families in place of the old.

The richest man in Japan has an income of 440m. yen (£440,000) a year. He is Mr. Konosuke Matsusha, chairman of the Matsusha Electric Industrial Company. His declared income is nearly twice as large as that of anyone else in the country. According to figures based on tax returns for 1962. the 20 richest men in Japan have incomes ranging from £121,000 to £440,000. All but one are industrialists. Some of the names in the list are almost unknown to the general public and the famous pre-war names—Iwasaki (founders of the Mitsubishi combine), Okura, Mitsui and Sumito Mo—do not appear anywhere.

Of course, there has been no social revolution for the other Japanese, those whose names are always unknown. The latest figures published by the International Labour Office show average earnings in Japanese manufacturing industries, ’’including family allowances and end-of-year bonuses,” as 22,834 Yen, or about £22 16s. 8d. a month.

Bigger and Fewer Breweries

Official figures published in the April issue of Economic Trends showed how far take-overs have gone in industry as a whole. In eight years, 1954-1961, £1,600 million was spent on take-over bids, but of this total nearly half came from the 98 companies each with assets of £25 million or more, though they represent only a tiny proportion of the 2,600 companies whose shares are quoted on the Stock Exchanges of this century. Altogether 3,400 companies were taken over (most of them not quoted on the stock exchange).

One industry in which amalgamation has gone far, but with more to come, is the brewing industry.

In place of a multiplicity of breweries many of them small and local, a writer in the Financial Times (May 25) writes of the industry now being dominated by six major groups.

What the boards aimed to achieve by take-overs was to consolidate brewing and distribution in large regions and thus achieve big economies and larger profits. Local breweries are being closed down and a considerable number of the local ”milds, bitters and light ales” are disappearing, ”no longer worth producing in small quantities.” Standardisation of a smaller number of nationally advertised brews is the order of the day for capitalism in brewing. It is ironic to recall the old argument against Socialism that it would deprive us of the variety of choice that capitalism gave us. Maybe the local varieties were no better (or worse) than the TV advertised popular brands, but that is not what drinkers were told before the change took place.

Common Market under a Cloud

When the drive for British entry into the Common Market was in full and hopeful flood the line taken by its advocates was to say that all was well inside the Six and British industry must be in to share in the benefits.

It was equally to be expected that immediately entry was blackballed by De Gaulle, they should nearly all have a change of heart and say that it really did not matter after all.

Now a few months have passed and some of the earlier arguments have begun to look rather thin. In place of the supposed absence of labour disputes we have seen massive strikes in France and Germany. French farming interests which were partly responsible for the objection to British entry have now brought the French and German governments into conflict, and both of them into conflict with American farmers over the entry of their exports into Europe.

The bloom has gone off the German industrial and stock exchange boom, because of falling profit margins and stronger pressure for wage increases.

At the same time, helped by some industrial recovery and rising profits, many British capitalists and politicians are thinking that they can do better out of Europe, and British exports into the Common Market have increased, as also exports to Russia.

The fact is that both before and after, the arguments were based on wrong or too limited assumptions. The European Common Market carries no more guarantee of permanent rapid expansion than any other large or small region of capitalism, and no more able to escape wage disputes and fluctuating profit margins.

And what happens to one industry inside or outside the Market is not necessarily the experience of other industries. . While motor car exports to Europe have been rising, and the Ready Mix Concrete Company claims record sales on the Continent, one firm, Wilmot Breedon, producers of motors, aircraft engines and domestic appliances, reports that the profits made in Britain were overshadowed by the heavy losses of its French subsidiary.

So for the moment the Common Market is rather out of favour.

What Mr. Profumo did to the Stock Exchange.

One of the emptiest dreams of the capitalists is to imagine to themselves how happy they could all be if only they could go on making, profits without the constant interruption of “politics." One of a cloudless sky politics keeps blowing up. On Monday, June 10th according to the Evening Standard, the London Stock Exchange had its biggest slump since Cuba—not this time the work of one of the K’s, but of Mr. Profumo. “Dealers, nervous about the eventual outcome of the Profumo affair, marked share prices down all round."

The same issue of the Evening Standard had an article asking whether Mr. Profumo, out of politics, can hope to find an outlet for his talents in business. The argument raises diverting side issues:

A man in public office has to have a high moral character and appear totally incorruptible. . . In business, however, standards are not always that high . . . But the business world doesn’t think much of a liar, especially if he gets found out

The writer of the article, the City Editor of the Standard, asks: “If he came knocking at your door would you give him a job ? ” But there is no urgency about it:

The ex-Minister of War comes from a rich family. The Profumos have for many years controlled the £34,000,000 Provident Life Association of London.

Most of the shares are held by trusts in which Mr. Profumo has an important role. In 1961 the trusts sold some £1,000,000 worth of shares for cash in a public issue. But they still own around two-thirds of the company’s Ordinary share capital, Worth some £3,700,000 at current market prices.

Mr. Profumo, of course, is only one of the beneficiaries. But he must draw quite a useful income from the investment.

Last year Provident Life paid out £120,000 in Ordinary dividends, of which the trusts must have received a considerable share.

Edgar Hardcastle

[Press Cuttings.] (1907)

From the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Child Labour on Farms.

It passes one’s comprehension that after 100 years’ legislation on behalf of factory children, the farmer and other individuals may yet employ younger children than were ever dragged into cotton mills, and may work them for longer hours than were ever known in the history of the factory system ! 

Co-operative News.

____________

Street bookmaking is practically dead ; but its place has been taken by bookmaking through the post. This—according to a prominent member of the Metropolitan Police force, who has been engaged for twenty-five years in the prosecution of street bookmakers—is the main result of the new Betting Act increasing the penalties for street betting, which came into operation at the beginning of the year.

So that in getting rid of one evil it is questionable whether a greater evil is not being created. Street betting has probably disappeared, but the betting will be carried on just as much as before. 

Daily Chronicle

____________

Of all the Western industries introduced into Japan, the one which has made the most rapid progress is, says Engineering, that of cotton-spinning and manufacturing. Its products are also those which compete most directly with the corresponding British manufactures. Some of the most enterprising men of the Japanese Empire control the factories; and behind the young industry is the whole force of the paternal Government urging it on. There are 49 cotton-spinning companies in Japan, operating eighty-five mills. At present Japanese mills are making profits, not because of any special skill of their operatives, but simply on account of the difference in price between the raw materials and the simplest forms of manufactures therefrom. It is simply a question of keeping the belt on the tight pulley ; and that they are doing this to the fullest extent is shown by the fact that for the last six months of the period covered by this report, 81 out of 85 mills ran both night and day, and averaged over 22 hours a day.

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The Law Journal, referring to the question raised in the music hall strike whether pickets, whose proceedings lead to the gathering of crowds in the streets can be fined under the provisions of the Highway Act, 1835, having regard to the fact that peaceful picketing is legal under the provisions of the Trades Disputes Act, says it should have supposed that the section was intended to take away doubts as to the legality of picketing itself, and not to make the pickets entitled to over-ride public rights as well as molest individuals in the course of a trade dispute. If Mr. Atherley Jones’s reading of the Trades Disputes Act is correct, pickets would be entitled to trespass on private property in furtherance of their trade dispute.

Blogger's Note:

Llewellyn Atherley-Jones was the son of the famous Chartist, Ernest Jones.

World View: Japan's Tightrope Act (1995)

From the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Japanese economy is moving into recession following the banking crisis and credit crunch. Property prices are on the slide. Business bankruptcies are increasing” (Socialist Standard, November 1992).

When we warned of worsening prospects for the Japanese economy our view was a minority one. The consensus view expressed in the capitalist media was that by government intervention using tax cuts and increased public spending the economic slowdown could be reversed.

At the beginning of 1993 when signs of a developing trade war appeared, the conventional view was that negotiations among the world’s economic superpowers could settle their differences. We stated however "the present trade war cannot be ended by GATT. NAFTA, or G7 summits. It will, continue in one form or another as long as world production is organised for profit rather than use" (Socialist Standard, April 1993).

At the end of July this year Cosmo, Japan's fifth largest credit union (these are similar to our building societies) collapsed following the withdrawal by depositors of 60 billion Yen (£425 million). Cosmo which has 15.297 members admitted that bad debts were about ¥170 billion in May with interest in arrears on loans of ¥184 billion. The Bank of Japan was forced to lend Cosmo sufficient to cover the withdrawals. The Japanese Finance Ministry quickly produced a rescue plan to weaken the Yen and thereby boost exports and boost the economy. This consisted of intervention along with the US Federal Reserve to bolster the dollar. Japanese insurance companies will now be allowed to lend in foreign currencies. Accounting rules will be changed to "give Japanese insurers more flexible ways to account for foreign bond holdings and will also let them decide whether to report foreign exchange losses in their accounts . . . Such changes may help insurance companies out of their present fix but at the cost of making their accounts less transparent" (Economist, 5 August).

Banking crisis: Excessive lending in the 1980s is estimated to have left the country’s lenders with bad debts of ¥50,000 billion, almost £350 billion (Daily Telegraph, 1 August). Non-performing loans of Japanese banks, trusts and longterm credit banks at put at around ¥12 trillion (The Banker, July 1995). Problem loans, according to the Director of the Finance Banking Bureaux, amounted to about ¥40,000 billion (£290 billion) equal to almost 10 percent of Japan's gross domestic product (Financial Times, 7 July). In a recent speech the governor of the Bank of Japan stated that:

"the late 1920s Showa depression was triggered by the failure of a very small bank. The issue is not the size of the troubled institution but whether any unrest in the financial system could cause a chain reaction of deposit withdrawals throughout the system” (The Banker, July 1995).

Trade wars: These are not over. Following a last-minute compromise agreement over car imports into Japan from the United States, Kodak complained to the American trade authorities that the Japanese Fuji Film Company was obstructing Kodak’s access to the Japanese market. Trade wars ultimately have no victors. They can end in being extended to the battlefields.

The property bubble: Housing in Japan is estimated to be 19 times as expensive as similar properties in the United States and has been estimated at six times Japanese GDP. Cosmo quadrupled its lending in the space of two years by backing property developers. In December 1994, two other credit unions failed after their property-related loans turned sour (Economist, 5 August). Commercial property has fallen by 50 percent of its value since 1991.

Pension funds: Like other developed countries, Japan has an increasing number of aged people but on a scale that is larger than the UK and other European countries with rapidly increasing pension liabilities. The projected pay-outs have been based on assumptions made when the stock-market was far higher than at present and where commercial property values were booming along with their rentals. But in an economic environment where asset values are falling to a level that cannot cover the amounts borrowed against them the projected pension payouts become questionable. In short the welfare system in Japan is undergoing the same demise as it is elsewhere.

Unemployment: This has for the year 1994 increased to 2.94 percent

Interest rates: The recent cut in the Japanese discount rate to a record low of one percent in the hope of stimulating the economy and the stock-market has had no lasting effect. The Nikkei Dow has lost two-thirds of its value in the last five years. Japanese banks enter a large number of their share holdings at their acquisition value which means that with the fall in the Japanese stock-market they are worth less than the balance sheets imply.

Apart from the previous six attempts since 1992 to prop up the Japanese economy with tax cuts, public spending injections even to the extent of getting the postal savings institute to help by investing in the stock-market all have been of no avail. Why should this latest package of measures announced after the Cosmo collapse be anymore effective? Japan’s problems are deep-seated and long-standing. The present scenario is similar to the l929-30s in the United States.

Japan’s problems cannot be viewed in isolation from the rest of the world economy. A full-blown slump in Japan could have knock-on effect by disruption of capital flows if the Japanese overseas investors start withdrawing their assets from overseas. There is also the consequences of lessened demand for imports.

Once again the financial commentators are suggesting that Japan has reached a point where recovery is the only possible outcome of the recent rescue attempts by the Japanese powers-that-be. We have no hesitation in rejecting these arguments. The worsening problems described above are inherent to the capitalist mode of production. Credit crises, trade wars and the problems dealt with above are inevitable in a system where competing capitalist powers struggle for market dominance in their relentless drive for profit.

Terry Lawlor

So They Say: Nearest and Dearest (1973)

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

Nearest and Dearest

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

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

Englishman offers British citizenship £800.

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

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

Growing Stunts Your Growth

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

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

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

Pay Attention, There !

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

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

Making A Crow Grow

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

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

Rising Tally

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

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

Liberal Sentiments

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

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

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

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

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

A Freudian Misprint

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

Robert Barltrop

Tokyo 1985 (1967)

From the July 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those of you who remember a few years ago the “double your standard of living in twenty-five years” promise from R. A. Butler, The Times, of 27.2.67 should have made interesting reading. It carried an article on page 5 about some of the promises being made currently to the workers of Tokyo. They certainly have a familiar ring.

No housing problems, no smog, a car for everyone of Tokyo’s 4,300,000 families—yet no traffic jams. And so on . . . But this is for twenty years time if they all work hard and if the economy continues to expand, conditions which no planners can control, but this does not stop them planning, of course. Incidentally, do you notice how these “plans” have a longer period set aside for their fulfilment now? No longer do we hear of “five year plans” which were so popular (particularly with left wingers) in the thirties and forties Such are the massive problems of modern capitalism that no “expert” can even pretend to solve them in such a short time.

So now we get a twenty (or 25 or 30) year plan superseded after a year or two by another twenty year plan. Which, in its turn is superseded, and so on. Which keeps workers on their toes in pleasurable expectation, the planers in business, and capitalism generally ticking over.

Crisis in the motor industry (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Set-backs in the car industry are not new. Like other industries, it gets into difficulties each time there is a world depression. This time, however, special factors have combined with the depression to bring many well-established companies to the verge of ruin, and to throw an abnormal number of motor workers out of their jobs. First was the enormous rise in the price of petrol. This reduced overall demand for cars and called for new models more economical in petrol consumption. a change-over to which some companies, including Chryslers, failed to adjust themselves. The whole world pattern of car production and export has been reshaped by the spectacular rise of the Japanese motor industry, challenging the supremacy of the American companies.

In 1960 passenger car production in Japan was a mere 165,000, compared to 6,675,000 in America and 1.359,000 in Britain. Between 1960 and 1974, world production doubled, but output in America rose by only 10 per cent. and their share of the world total fell from 53 to 28 per cent. But in Japan output had jumped to nearly 4 million, putting their car industry in second place to America’s 7,332.000 Now. seven years later. Japan is on the way to being the world’s leading producer of passenger cars, and is already by far the biggest exporter. This happened because output in Japan has gone on growing in the depression while in the rest of the world it has fallen. In 1980 the output of the American company. General Motors, dropped by 26 per cent. and Toyota now challenges General Motors for first place in the world. (The course of events in commercial load vehicles is much the same as in passenger cars.)

The Japanese companies have won their success by invading the home markets of the rest of the world, forcing the local-based companies to compete by reducing prices and often selling at a loss. In spite of motor workers’ wages having been kept below the rise in prices (and in some cases reduced) most of the world’s motor companies are losing money. In America in 1980 the losses were: General Motors £500 million, Fords £677 million, American Motors (owned by Renault) £88 million and Chryslers £767 million — the biggest loss of any company in American history In Britain British Leyland lost £535 million, yet the big Japanese companies all made a profit, for example Toyota £568 million. The number of motor workers has gone on increasing in Japan, but in America 25 per cent have been laid off and the loss of jobs in the British industry is on the way to 100.000. In an earlier setback in 1965-7, the production of motors in Britain fell 10 per cent. Since 1977 output has dropped by 30 per cent.

As far as the world depression is concerned, with its consequent reduction of sales of motor vehicles world-wide (except in Japan), the companies can count on capitalism reversing the downward trend and expanding again some time or other. Many companies (including British Leyland) are investing in new models with that in view. But none of the governments has discovered a method of bringing about recovery and preventing further depressions in the future. Capitalism goes its own way whatever policies governments follow. This ineffectiveness of government policy was highlighted in Britain by the manifesto of 364 economists declaring that the Thatcher government policies are wrong and will not bring about "sustained economic recovery”. There is no policy that will do this, but if the 364 think there is, why have they not let us into the secret? After two centuries of capitalism and a score of depressions during which every possible variation of government policy has been and failed, all they can offer us is that "the time has come . . . to consider urgently which alternative offers the most hope". In other words, the 364, many of them responsible for advising past failed policies, cannot even agree among themselves on what to do.

In all the countries invaded by the cheap Japanese motor vehicles, the companies and the Unions have responded by urging their governments to curb imports; in the first place by agreement with Japan, and failing that, by imposing import restrictions. Officials of the Transport and General Workers’ Union told MPs at a meeting in the House of Commons: “The British car industry will be dead within five years without import controls” (The Times 4/3/81). The demand for import restrictions does not even pretend to be a policy for protecting the world's car workers against unemployment. It would merely reduce unemployment in some countries and increase it in Japan The Japanese companies estimate that a 15 per cent cut in their exports would put 70,000 Japanese workers out of their jobs (The Times 31/3/81).

Japanese motors are not the only ones being sold in the British market. The countries of origin include America, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and a Rumanian car is to be on sale here in the autumn. There is, of course, a reverse movement. British Leyland (along with car firms in Europe and America) is hoping to get into the Japanese market, and is planning to export its cars to Europe. Jointly with Peugeot they are to assemble and market a Peugeot car in Australia.

In several countries the hard-pressed motor companies have succeeded in getting government subsidies or loans. Contrary to declared government policy, British Leyland recently received £990 million and Chrysler of America have been saved, at least temporarily, from bankruptcy by a US government-backed loan of £360 million last year and £180 million this year. President Reagan’s statement: “This does not imply that this government approves of baling out private companies in difficulties”, sounds like Sir Keith Joseph telling MPs how it comes about that the Thatcher government has reluctantly adopted the same policy.

Having exploited to the full the direct export of cars to foreign markets, Japanese companies are now planning to set up plants inside these markets. They are negotiating to manufacture in Britain, thereby gaining unrestricted access to the whole EEC market, providing they use materials that are 80 per cent EEC origin.

One of these companies is Nissan, makers of the Datsun. They plan to invest £275 million, to produce 200,000 cars a year, subject to finding a site of the right size and location, and reaching agreement with the components companies and the trade unions. Nissan already has. or is planning, car plants in America, Mexico, Spain. Italy, Australia and Taiwan, and plans to manufacture motor components in Ireland. Toyota, Japan's largest motor company, has so far not favoured setting up plants abroad, but it is reported (Sunday Times 22/3/81) that they are considering joint production with Fords in America.

British Leyland has reached agreement to build a Honda-designed car in Britain and discussions are reported to have reached agreement on joint production of the Mini-Metro in Japan. Japanese cars dominate world exports because they are competitive in price and quality. The Chairman and Managing Director of Fords in Britain said:— "The Japanese, more than anyone, have the ability to produce high quality vehicles on a massive scale at low cost." (Daily Mail 4/4/81). (He also said that Nissan’s plan to set up a plant in Britain “could be catastrophic for this country’s motor industry”.)

Whatever may have been true in the past, it is not because wages in Japan are lower. Car workers’ wages in Japan are now higher than the British. The Japanese companies score because their productivity (output per worker) is higher. Their plants are all new, or relatively new, and all use the latest and most efficient machinery and techniques. They have developed more efficient methods of management and work organisation, avoiding costly production hold-ups through delays in the chain of processes, and using fewer staff in supervision and control. Having succeeded in getting continuous strike-free production in motor plants in Japan, the managements are looking for the same in Britain. According to an article in the Financial Times (25.2.81) the Nissan Company in its search for the right site will not look at plants or districts with a record of frequent strikes.

A problem British motor companies have had to handle is the multiplicity of unions. Lord Scanlon said in 1972, when he was President of the Engineering Union, that it takes members of 38 separate unions to make a motor car (Sunday Times 9/4/72).

The Nissan Company is insisting as one of the conditions for setting up its plant in Britain that there must be agreement for only one union to represent all the workers. Whether and how this obstacle can be overcome with the unions remains to be seen. The company is also insisting on the abolition of union demarcation practices. The Japanese style of manning is already being copied to a limited extent by Fords at Dagenham, with a proposal to abolish the whole grade of General Foreman.

As regards the future of American and European motor companies, an article in the Financial Times (23/2/81) takes the line that their only way to survive is to equal the high productivity and quality control of the Japanese companies, by learning to apply Japanese techniques in their factories. Those who fail to do so will go under, as happened in the American television industry, when it was faced with an onslaught from Japanese exporters similar to that in the motor industry.

British Leyland hopes to reduce its losses in 1981-2, but expects to take from five to ten years to achieve “business results of a standard which will attract external funds on normal commercial terms". (Financial Times 20/3/81). Some observers think that it will never pay its way and is doomed to founder.

In the all-pervading gloom that overhangs the British motor industry, there is one small corner in which the sun still shines. The Financial Times (20/3/81) reported: “Sir Michael Edwards. B.L. Chairman, has almost completed arrangements to sign his first contract with the company. This is expected to raise his salary to about £100,000 a year".

Running Commentary: Miracle or Myth (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Miracle or Myth

When all is said and done, the reason British workers are encouraged into awestruck admiration towards Japan is because it is where the workforce are supposed to submit happily to their own intensely organised, single minded exploitation. Japanese workers. we are told, don't come out on strike; they wouldn't know a demarcation dispute if one came up and punched the clock beside them in the morning; Japanese managers wear the same work clothes, eat in the same canteen, do the same physical jerks, as the workers on the assembly lines. A Japanese company doesn't just employ its workers, it operates like a second family to them, taking care of them all their lives.

This, to take the argument further, is what has made Japan the second richest country in the world. Considering their defeat in the last war. it's nothing short of an economic miracle. Why don't British workers follow the example — kick out the trouble-making union leaders and learn to love working hard for the shareholders?

Well one reason is. perhaps, the evidence that Japan is not a land of unrelieved contentment. For example the suicide rate there has been rising dramatically during recent years. The figure for 1986 was the highest ever and averaged at one suicide every 20 minutes; 55 per cent were by people aged between 40 and 64. The reason, according to the National Police Agency, is ". . . the stresses of Japan's competitive society".

In 1985 the Japanese Ministry of Labour found that almost half the absences of more than one week due to sickness were caused by some stress related illness. One in 30 office employees needed treatment for mental disorder such as schizophrenia, depression or alcoholism.

It is no coincidence that these social ailments are appearing in such strength just as Japan s economy hits trouble in world markets. This has posed extra problems for managers and executives — the higher paid, higher stressed workers and many of them have taken their own lives rather than face the reality that, for millions of people, the Japanese economic miracle is a myth. It is not the Japanese workers who are the second richest in the world but the capitalist class there — the parasites who own the means of life.

Japan has been described by a psychiatrist as a country of ". . . 121 million people . . . ruthlessly competing with each other while desperately pretending to be co-operative". Does that sound like a place of secure happiness? Does it sound like a miracle of prosperity and mutual help? Or does it sound like the capitalist system which workers know and hate all over the world, all the time — but writ large for its distress and destructiveness.

Release

Douglas Hurd is the latest of the Home Secretaries who have declared their intention to bring an end to overcrowding in the prisons. Nearly twenty years ago the "liberal" Roy Jenkins warned that a prison population of 40,000 would be "intolerable"; the fact that recently it exceeded 50,000 and continues to hover around that level says something about the tolerant nature of Home Secretaries, not to mention the prisoners and prison staff. During his time at the Home Office Leon Brittan — who set something of a record by managing to upset the police, prison officers and prisoners pretty well all at once — promised to end the overspill of remand prisoners into police station cells. Yet until last month hundreds of prisoners were spending months crammed into those gloomy, insanitary conditions, at the end of which they may have been acquitted of the charges against them or given a non-custodial sentence.

Hurd's "solution" to the overcrowding has been to slash the sentences imposed on minor offenders so that anyone getting twelve months or less is released after half their sentence instead of after two thirds as before. As a result nearly 4000 prisoners were abruptly ejected from the gaols of Britain during August.

Leon Brittan did not approve: "a sad development for British justice" he called it. But what need was there for him — and for anyone who suffered nightmares at the prospect of hordes of dangerous thugs roaming the streets — are social inadequates, which means inadequate not only to keep up in capitalism's rat race but also inadequate in the crimes they commit in their efforts to keep up. For many of these the exact date of release matters little for within a fairly short time the seemingly inexorable cycle of destitution, crime and prison — perhaps speeded up by addiction or alcoholism -— will begin again. One authoritative estimate says that 80 per cent of short term prisoners emerge from gaol to face acute housing problems — which must make even Leon Brittan wonder why they should want to come out.

Hurd's reform is the latest in a long list which have failed to stop the rise of the prison population. There have been suspended sentences; community service; bail hostels and parole, to name only a few. In many cases there is little doubt that courts have adjusted their sentences upwards to compensate for such measures and the expectation is that this will happen to take account of Hurd's half remission.

No reform will affect, let alone solve, this problem. The roots of crime lie in the very system which needs a state machine with its police, judicial and penal organs, to protect the property right of the ruling class. No Home Secretary could ever have —- or want — a brief to do anything about that.

Success

Rudolf Hess' dramatic flight to Britain during the last war was at first met with a sort of stunned optimism. Did this mean that the Nazi leadership was breaking up. that in spite of the fact that Panzers had swept over half of the Continent Germany was on the verge of defeat? But this was soon followed by an official reticence; one theory about this is that the British government decided it was best to devalue the whole episode by labelling Hess as mad, placing him in the "care" of a squad of psychiatrists. At all events, the episode saved Hess from the death sentence at Nuremburg although what would have happened to him if the war had gone the other way. . .

The most popular theory about the reasons for Hess' flight is that he was trying to negotiate an Anglo/German alliance against Russia, which was about to be attacked by Germany. Of course such a proposal was bound to fail — at least at that time, when the British ruling class were in no doubt about the source of the principal threat to their standing and where their interests therefore lay.

It is a different situation today. Although he was not responsible for it, Hess may well have looked with an ironic satisfaction on the present unity between Britain and West Germany, directed as it is against Russia. Over the past forty-odd years the basic interests of capitalism have remained unchanged but their elements have been re-arranged, rather like a kaleidoscope, so that some countries which were once allies are now enemies and vice versa. Capitalism's history is littered with such changes, notably in the case of relations between the British and the German ruling classes.

These changes bring obvious problems to the makers of national propaganda. The wartime alliance between Britain and Russia was represented by both sides as a unity in defence of democracy. Now the alliance between Britain and Germany, aimed against Russia, is justified with the same reason. The only way to make any sense of this is through grasping the fact that wars — including 1939/45 are not fought to save democracy. In the last war the nature of Nazi Germany enabled the British propaganda machine to persuade many workers to join the war effort under the delusion that they were fighting for some worthwhile, human objective and to conceal the truth — that the war was fought to protect the economic interests of their national class of exploiting parasites.

The essential cynicism and lies of capitalism are rarely revealed more clearly than in wartime. One thing about the flight of Rudolf Hess is that from beginning to end it was subject to this treatment. Even his death was a matter of international wrangling, of one ruling class trying for advantage over the others. As a one-time political leader himself, he could have asked for no more appropriate end.

News in Review: Japan, tough competitor (1965)

The News in Review column from the July 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

You'll note that part of the third paragraph under 'Japan, tough competitor' is garbled. Obviously part of that paragraph is missing and, unfortunately, there was no correction in subsequent issues of the Standard. You'll just have to suffer  . . . just like I did.

P.S.

If you click on this link under the 'For Queen and country' column, you'll see footage of a young Tariq Ali.

Japan, tough competitor

The products of Japanese industry have always been strong competitors in the markets of the world.

In many cases, they have beaten British goods by sheer superiority in delivery, price and quality. Because many British workers regard the Japanese as inferior people, their economic victories have always been difficult to explain away. The solution to this was to popularise three stories, all of them designed to illustrate that the Japanese were treacherous little Oriental monkeys. This impression stirred up a lot of feelings which were successfully exploited after Pearl Harbour.

Briefly, the stories were: That all Japanese worker also gets a lot of what a time when British miners were continuously fighting against enforced cuts in their pay); That the Japanese were incapable of giving birth to an original idea and made up for this by simply pirating the designs of other countries (as if this was confined to the industries of only one country—international patents actions are going on all the time); That Japan was a country where only light industry could flourish—the heavier stuff had to be left to the sturdy Europeans (unemployed shipyard and steel mill workers could be excused for not appreciating the force of this point).

If there was ever any truth in these stories, there is very little in them today. Wages in Japan now compare with those in most other industrial countries; the Japanese worker also gets a lot of what are called fringe benefits—cheap housing, holidays, food and so on.

Japanese products are now becoming known for the originality of their design. They pioneered the mass production of the portable transistor radio (blast them). The Honda motor cycle now commands sixty per cent of the United States market. They have recently introduced a new car—the Daihatsu Compagno Berlina—to the British market which is notable for the number of “extras” (fog lamps, stainless steel bumpers, etc.) it has, all included in the near competitive price.

Other countries, in fact, are now stealing Japanese ideas. The plague of transistor radios is now being fed by British products. A Dutch shipbuilding firm has defied the patent on a Japanese-designed liner bow and American and West German firms have recently bought a new steel-making process from Japan.

Finally, Japanese heavy industry is booming ahead. This year, the steel industry there expects to produce thirty-nine million tons of crude steel (in 1949 production was nil—the British industry’s capacity of crude steel for 1965 was estimated in the recent White Paper at about thirty million tons.) Japanese shipyards expect to lay down the keels of two and a half million tons of shipping in 1965.

All of this means that, even after the pre-war methods have been discarded, Japan remains a strong rival in the world of capitalism. Indeed, under a powerful central control from the government, she is probably now a tougher proposition than ever.

In this process, several favourite myths have been laid low. This is not to say that, if at some time in the future Japan once more becomes involved in an international dispute, other myths, equally false, will not be concocted to explain away the immovable fact that the nations of capitalism are perpetually in dispute over the division of the spoils of exploitation.

For Queen and country

It would be better for everyone, including the young people themselves, if the antics of university students were not taken so seriously.

Universities are often among the most active units of what Peter Simple calls the Protest Industry. But when the undergraduates leave their youth behind them they usually forget the restless days of protest and fall into line with capitalism’s requirements of docility.

This is the background to the recent Queen and Country debate at the Oxford Union, which aroused such a lot of criticism, most of it based on the incorrect assumption that the motion was going to be carried.

It would be interesting to know what all those indignant letter-writers think about the Oxford students, now that they have signified that they will fight for Queen and Country.

In any case, the indignation was always misplaced. It is not uncommon for university unions to debate—and sometimes to pass—motions which sound very daring. In 1914, the Oxford Union voted against Britain being a member of the Triple Entente; in 1927 the Cambridge Union was in favour of pacifism; a few years later Oxford said that they preferred the Red Flag to the Union Jack.

And, of course, in 1933 Oxford decided that in no circumstances would they fight for King and Country.

Well, what happened? Among the supporters of that famous decision were at least two members of the present government whose present policy, as we all know, is to persuade other people to fight for Queen and Country in Malaysia, Arabia and other points East of Suez. These two are Anthony Greenwood and Michael Stewart.

It is difficult to trace what happened to most of the other 275 young people who voted for the motion. According to the proposer of this year’s motion, in 1939 they were “first in the fight against fascism.”

In other words, they did fight for King and Country after all, although perhaps under the deception that it was for some other, more worthy, motive. Apparently, they did not expect the British ruling class to try to mislead anyone about the causes of the Second World War.

In the event, the rebellious students of 1933 were as easy to deceive as any mental clodhopper who had never got within sight of the dreaming spires.

It is said that many statesmen—Hitler, Joseph Kennedy—accepted the 1933 motion as proof that the British working class would not fight in another war. If this is true, it only goes to show how badly capitalist politicians can misjudge a situation.

The 1965 debate, then, should not be given undue significance. Perhaps it was a publicity stunt, aimed at needling exactly the sort of people whose hostility was provoked. There is no reason to suppose that, if a war came, the rebellious students will not once again consign their university days to an embarrassed memory, and go dutifully out to fight for the interests of British capitalism. (Perhaps it will be in alliance with Nasser and Nkrumah, as Sir Richard Acland, who supported the motion, would like.)

Whatever the Queen and Country debate may suggest, of one thing it is innocent. It had no hint of enlightenment about the cause of capitalism’s wars, nor of determination to oppose them.

For university students and for the rest of the working class, that enlightenment is in the future.

China in Africa

An unexpected result of nuclear weapons in the hands of great powers, and the precarious Balance of Terror that has resulted, has been to increase rather than decrease the bargaining power of small nations.

Contrary to what might have been expected a decade or so ago, we have witnessed many cheeky acts of defiance by small and industrially backward nations towards great powers, which could probably overrun them in half a day without even using their nuclear weapons.

Attacking embassies and burning flags on the one hand, and nationalising the assets of some vast combine on the other, have become quite common place.

The smaller powers bank on the presumption that any move against them by one block, will bring the others hot foot to their rescue. Not, needless to say, because of any love towards the nation in question, but because they fear that an advantage may be gained by their opponents. While the giants manoeuvre for position, the little fellows nip about between their feet.

This is risky, as there is always a danger of getting trodden on. If the issue is really big enough the great powers will go ahead, and the small country is liable to become a graveyard. But in this jungle of Capitalism all methods must be used to forward the interest of the ruling class. One of the most successful ways of doing this is for a small power to try to milk a large power, or several if possible, for economic aid while committing themselves to as little as possible.

This position has been spotlighted again by the visit of the Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai to Africa, and his concentration on small and weak Tanzania. After all China is one of the world’s great powers and Chou En-lai is one of their top politicians. Palmerston or Bismark did not trail around, personally, to out of the way places, but times have changed and the struggle has become much more acute. No advantage, however small, can be passed over and so the visits of Heads of States, all over the place, goes on.

Chou En-lai appears to have had a rather mixed reception, as illustrated by President Kenyatta’s attack. Chou En-lai’s statement, on his last visit that “revolutionary prospects in Africa are excellent," did not go down very well with the new African leaders.

After all having just pulled off one upheaval, which has put them in the saddle, they are not likely to welcome another, which would probably put them out of it.

German visit

If it is true that history repeats itself, this is only another way of saying that capitalism’s problems are as persistent and repetitive as the ruling classes’ methods of dealing with them.

In 1904 Edward VII paid his famous visit to France, which sealed the alliance known as the Entente Cordiale, bringing to a close a century of enmity between Britain and France.

The visit was hailed as a great step towards peace—some especially wretched commentators actually went so far as to call the lewd and gluttonous King Edward the Peacemaker.

They probably were aware that the Franco-British alliance was made not in the cause of peace but as a shield against a greater and more immediate threat than the two countries offered to each other.

In 1904 the expansive menace of Germany was taking definite shape and the future was unmistakeable to the diplomats and the politicians. So the Entente was sealed, and the King packed off to France to give public, if vulgar, evidence of it.

Since then, there has been fifty years of persistent enmity between the British and German ruling classes. This situation had to end sometime, as the power line-up changed, as new markets were developed, as new weapons came on to the scene, as new threats emerged.

Both Britain and Germany are now united against the threat of Soviet Russia; both countries want to see Russian imperialism in Europe contained.

At the same time, both countries are now at odds with French ambitions, personified so aptly in the massive figure of de Gaulle, to see Europe united against both Russian and American encroachments—but under French domination.

The British ruling class are still wooing the Common Market; Germany is by no means hostile to these advances but once again the obstruction comes from Paris. (Britain is currently investigating the back alleys into Europe; witness Wilson’s recent visit to Vienna, where he pleaded for closer relations between E.E.C. and E.F.T.A.)

Thus the interests of the German and British ruling classes coincide at several important points. In addition, Germany has shown over the past twenty years that the expansionist ambitions of the first half of this century are laid to rest.

However powerful a competitor Germany may be, there is no sign of a resurgence of the explosive nationalism of 1914 and 1939. The time is ripe for another Entente Cordiale to be sealed— this time between Germany and Britain, directed partly against France. Thus history repeats itself, although the principal actors have changed their places.

This was the symbolism of last May’s visit by the Queen to Germany. She was doing there the same sordid job as her great-grandfather did in France in 1904.

Some German newspapers complained that the Queen did not smile enough at the welcoming crowds. Perhaps she was tired, or bored, or fed up with her well-paid job as the figurehead of British capitalism. But any politician could have told her (and for all we know one or two have) that she was making a serious mistake.

Capitalism's diplomacy demands that no matter how devious the bargaining, how ruthless the treachery, the leading public actors do not give way to any human feelings, but all the time smile, darn you, smile.