They'd like us all to be social ostriches (1945)

From the May 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuttall's Standard Dictionary gives this as its chief definition of the word Democracy: “Government by all classes for the benefit of all classes." This sounds like a condensed blueprint for a Fascist Utopia: it is in any case an invaluable contribution to the grand art of teaching people how not to learn (about realities, anyway). It has long been recognised by the master class that one of the best ways of keeping their masterhood secure is to induce all other people to believe in “class co-operation." That is, co-operation by all the legion of underdogs to keep the top-dogs on top. Government by robbers and robbed for “the benefit of both" . . . . Only Walt Disney could do justice to such a subject! Suave gents in polished Fleet Street offices like us to think of "class" as meaning nothing more serious than whether we aspirate our H's and make sucking noises when we drink. Inequality is “natural"; you must have masters “to lead." As a matter of fact, the anxiety of the master class to have us believe that there ain’t no such animal as the opposition of class interests, is a direct admission that they know there is all right, and they fear the day when enough of us will recognise the fact so clearly, in all its naked hideousness, that we'll use the power that is ours to put an end to the division of society into two classes.

TWO classes: Let us emphasise the number. They like us to think of society being split up into a large number of sections, each determined, not by the way we get our living, but by such qualities as ability, intelligence, assiduity, etc.: Every soldier with a field marshal's baton in his knapsack, every office boy with a managing director’s fountain pen sprouting in his waistcoat pocket. The way up is hard, but everyone has the chance; go to it, my boy, go to it!

Church, cinema, press, all preach the doctrine that the way to Paradise is open to all. It is our own fault if we sin and botch it. And so kind is our social system, that for those who fall by the wayside, there is always charity and reform. . . . No, we've even gone one better than that: instead of charity, which stinks a bit, we're going to have Beveridge, or some other brand of “social insurance," so we won't go getting dangerous ideas about the social system being fundamentally at fault and Socialism being the only solution.

But we are so perverse that we persist in thinking for ourselves, despite the contemporary machinery for the mass-production of ready-made ideas that surrounds us from the cradle up. We persist in discovering that there are only two classes—the owners and the workers, and all other sections of society, such as the “middle class," have but a tenuous, perilous hold on independent existence: just one serious slump-crisis of the system which makes (and is made by) the two-class division, and your “middle class” manager, secretary, technician, etc., soon discovers that he is in the working class.

Similarly, if a member of the working class, by unusual good fortune, becomes possessed of the means for what used (in less polite and more realistic days) to be called an independent existence, he automatically climbs out of the working class, into the master class, and it is as much in his interest as it is against that of the working class to seek to preserve the capitalist system.

John Jennings

How Socialism "Works" (1945)

From the April 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A difficulty with most people is that they do not understand “How Socialism would ‘work.' ” Especially mysterious to them is the idea of anything being able to “work" if it does not “pay.” Now, we cannot blame these people for their inability to comprehend these matters. We should not get sore when they accuse us of being unpractical theorists. For the plain simple fact of the matter is that the great majority of people are far too busy working —i.e., producing, first of all, a profit for their boss, and second, a wage for themselves—to worry about the scientific whys and wherefores of these things. What we call “politics" embracing as it does, or should do, the complicated subject of economics, is pretty well big enough to be a full-time job to study adequately.

Nevertheless, some at any rate of the salient facts of the matter are easy enough to understand when summarised, once we get out of our minds the mass of unnecessary complications, misrepresentations, and lies with which the ruling class seeks to discourage and confuse the enquirer.

The great central truth of Socialism tests on a straightforward, elementary fact that a moment’s reflection will show to everyone as valid and obvious. It is this: that there is in the world sufficient of everything for everyone’s requirements, and where it is not immediately available (as, for instance, cotton does not grow in England), it exists somewhere, or can be produced end transported. In other words, we have the raw materials, the crops, the factories, the transport, the labour, and the machinery (or the means of making new, extra machinery): all we need is a sane, simple method of setting all these to work, move, and be used by means of a co-operative interdependent plan.

There is no need to ask, “Will it ‘pay’?” Because, under Socialism, there won't be any need for a thing to “pay” anymore. If everything everyone requires is provided, that is all there is need to worry about. The worker—worker “by hand or brain”—need only contribute the amount of (physical or mental) effort required of him (or her) and all will be automatically entitled to whatever they require in the way of food, clothing, shelter, travel, etc., etc. We must look at the necessary activity of mankind as one process, not as we are encouraged to do under Capitalism, as a host of different actions, most of them for different ends.

The whole character of this process can be summed up in the time-honoured phrase, “production solely for use instead of profit.”

But, the confirmed objector will interpose, if nothing “pays,” if nothing yields a profit, how about the replacement of worn-out machinery, how about all the costs involved and the materials, etc., required in the processes of production? The answer is obvious enough : all needs, will be automatically met by the overwhelmingly plentiful production under a planned Socialist economy : but it is a fact that the deliberate under education and miseducation of the masses which is a deliberate and fundamental part of the capitalist art of government has succeeded in presenting this as a major, practically insoluble, problem for the “uninitiated.”

Skilful, and unprincipled, use of this “Will it pay?” bogey has driven many of the unwary into accepting the “nationalisation” idea, instead of Socialism. Nationalisation conforms to the “profit and loss” method which is familiar to and understood by all who have lived under capitalism. It conforms very neatly to all the capitalist rules, and produces pretty much the same results.

John Jennings

Welsh Workers See Storms Ahead (1945)

From the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A typical piece of modem capitalist industrial development—affecting principally the Swansea-Llanelly area this time—was announced towards the end of January by Mr. Hugh Dalton, President of the Board of Trade (South Wales Evening Post, January 29, 1945). It is an occasion with some useful lessons for Socialists.

It followed closely upon arrangements for merging two of Britain's largest steel and tinplate concerns—Richard Thomas's and Baldwins—and was dead in line with the modern capitalist tendency to concentrate wealth and prosperity in fewer and fewer hands. Now Mr. Dalton, with a pontifical gravity well suited to a political administrator of grand imperial capitalism, proclaimed that Richard Thomas’s, Baldwins, Quest, Keen, Nettlefolds, Briton Ferry Steel and Llanelly Steel were collaborating with a view .to the erection of a hot-strip mill for tinplates and sheets at Port Talbot. This was heralded by the local evening paper with the sort of gravely respectful headlines that it uses for royal visits. The renovation of archbishoprics, and sensations in stocks-and-shares adventures. “Four companies combining to modernise industry,” it commences, quite moderate, rising crescendo to a perfect paean of worshipful ecstasy—'‘Passing of bad old days.”

Before we allow ourselves to be lifted into the blue by the angelic upsurge of adoration for those modern saints, the captains of industry, let us look at some of the cold sober facts that are always related to this sort of capitalist attainment (which is, of course, the usual, inevitable flowering of Big Business).

Concentration of capital—fewer capitalists owning more—is the integral factor. Second aspect is that of a major offensive in the perpetual war between contending capitalist interests. In this case, the war for markets between the American and British steel and tinplate industries. The Americans won a great initial advantage by their early adoption of the "strip mill ” system, whereby the whole process of production, from raw material to finished bulk product, is carried out on one site, like the introduction of a pig into one end of a machine and its emergence as neatly labelled sausages at the other. American steel and tinplates, produced more cheaply than their British competitor, bade fair to dominate the markets of the world. All the blood shed on the Western Front could not damp the ardour of the coming battle on the industrial field. To-day the hand is grasped, to-morrow the throat:, what does it matter to the industrial princes? This hungry, frustrated unemployed are unspectacular casualties. . . . 

But here comes the British counter-blow: British interests, too, adopt the strip mill. A strategic victory! But before we cheer ourselves hoarse, let us look at the probable cost. It is not peculiar; it always happens on grand occasions of this sort: it has happened before, or other things like it, in our rough island story, and it will happen again. In this case, one single huge highly economical concern will be able to dominate Britain's share of a great world industry from Port Talbot. To the West, in places like the Dulais and Llwchwr districts, the older-fashioned methods will be unable to compete: unemployment will increase in those areas astronomically, and only a small number of the displaced could be absorbed in the new strip mill. There will be many slender post-war wage packets (or dole packets!) in West Glamorgan, but "these things, you know, must be in every famous victory."

Yet, goodness knows, there is enough need for things made of steel and tinned plate to keep a dozen Port Talbots and a lot more Gorseinons, Loughors, etc., working full-pelt for ever; and it could be that way, too, if only we had Socialism, and things were produced solely for use instead of as commodities to bring profits for the owner class. Under capitalism improved methods of production, such as strip mill, mean higher and safer profits for the owner class. They also threaten many workers, often whole communities, with poverty, insecurity, ruin. Under Socialism such improvements will mean a higher standard of living for the whole community.

John Jennings