Letters: Technology & Socialism (1974)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Technology & Socialism

I found your reply to S. Gamzu (Socialist Standard March 1974) quite perplexing. How many “bases” has Socialism? Two I suggest: an advanced industrial technology and resources, and international proletarian consciousness. Common ownership of the means of production is the means of nullifying capitalist competition and of introducing planned production and the “freeing” of commodities. Common ownership and control is not the basis of Socialism if by basis you mean a necessary and sufficient condition. Socialism is not about providing “a framework within which the means of production could have been developed much more rapidly than under capitalism to the stage where . . .” That is a curiously Bolshevist and Third World “Socialism”. But even so Gamzu was in perfectly good company when he asserted that the Nineteenth Century level of technologico-economic development could not have sustained a socialist mode of production and distribution. As the following quote makes clear Marx recognised this sixteen years before his death: “In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development.” (Capital Vol. 1—Preface to the First German Edition, Kerr. Edn. p. 13).

Indeed without a certain technologico-economic maturity which can be economically ascertained with reference to the necessaries of life, common ownership and democratic control would disintegrate or must degenerate into internecine squabbles among various councils, Regions, Committees or Workers’ Parliaments. Engels’ much neglected article on the principles of communism emphasizes all this.

F. Clunie 

University of Warwick, Coventry.

Reply:

The foundation or basis on which Socialism will be established will be the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution with production for use. But before it becomes possible two pre-conditions must exist. They are, as F. Clunie points out: 1) the material conditions of potential abundance, and 2) a world working class who understand and want Socialism and know how to establish it. Since Marx’s day capitalism has itself developed the first of these necessary pre-conditions. It is the task of Socialists, now as formerly, to speed the development of the second.

We still claim that it was not wrong for Marx in his time to advocate Socialism as we understand it. In the Nineteenth Century this would have meant the rapid development of the means of production under common ownership and democratic control to the point where the full implementation of the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’’ would have been possible. What provisions would have been made in the interim period between a Socialist revolution and the advent of abundance and free access would always depend on the wishes of the majority. At the moment it remains in the realm of speculation.

Our correspondent chides us for claiming that Socialism would have provided a framework for such a development. The passage he quotes from Capital does not bear out the point we think he is trying to make. What Marx was claiming was not that it was not worth advocating Socialism but that at that time (i.e. 1867) the bourgeoisie in Germany had not yet swept away the vestiges of pre-capitalist societies. However, the laws of capitalist production worked “. . . with iron necessity toward inevitable results [i.e. the triumph of the capitalist means of production . . .] The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” After the passage quoted by Clunie the Preface continues:

Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living but also from the dead.

The Bolsheviks (as their emulators in the “Third World” will discover) had no option but to develop capitalist relations of production because Socialism is not a possibility in one country alone. In addition the majority of the population in Russia, as elsewhere, did not want Socialism then as they demonstrably and unfortunately do not want it now.

Finally there is no evidence to support the contention that with a majority understanding the need for Socialism it would “degenerate” because free access was not an immediate possibility. A mass of evidence from the field of anthropology for example shows that men and women can co-operate voluntarily to produce wealth and then share the proceeds of that co-operation.

Editors.

The Class Struggle

Is the political struggle a political struggle? (apologies for the tautology) or is the political mainly an economic struggle?

If it is mainly an economic struggle, what should be our responsibility? What should we all be doing to indicate to others and to satisfy ourselves that it is mainly an economic struggle, so contributing towards making capitalism its own grave-digger.

Or should we all concern ourselves more to be taking steps to end capitalism, to introduce common ownership (socialism)?

B. Baxter

London W.2.

Reply:

Read our Declaration of Principles! Capitalist society has two classes, the owners and the non- owners (the working class); the conflict of interests between them is the class struggle, which goes on all the time.

It has two aspects, the political and the economic. The latter is the daily struggle over wages and working conditions that all workers are in — usually in trade unions. But this is a restricted, mainly defensive struggle and most of those who wage it take capitalism for granted. When the consciousness of the true nature of things arises, the political struggle has to be engaged in: this is to gain control of the means of production and distribution, through the State, to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism.

Therefore if you want to end capitalism and introduce common ownership, you should be taking part in the political struggle, in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Why not make a start by visiting one of our Branches?

Editors.

Northern Ireland

Will you explain why the English Capitalist Class see fit and profitable to remain in Northern Ireland in the teeth of so much bombing, commercial ruination and social disruption over which the dead loss to British Insurance Companies and British businesses must run into hundreds or thousands of millions of £’s through bombing alone? Why do not the English or British Capitalist class secede the North just as they seceded the South over 50 years ago, and leave the job of running their industries to the Irish Government who would replace them?

It seems clear and logical that millions in both the north and the south hate English rule and surely it must seem from this that for the English to stay in Northern Ireland can only accentuate the bombing there as well as to expedite the dangers of bombing major urban regions in England, or even of Scotland or Wales in addition. Therefore, for the English Capitalists to clear out of Ireland completely would not only save them millions in otherwise bombed rubble and a perilously shrunken labour force, but the effect of this would be to prevent skilled and wanted labour from perishing, therefore by so doing would cause profit for themselves to accrue, accordingly. So, secession from the North seems irrefutably the answer; otherwise this bombing and killing must lead directly to the utter suicide of English interests in Northern Ireland, since it is obvious that the domiciled British Army and the North Ireland police cannot and never will stop the rot that is taking place in the north.

T.L.K.

(Name & Address supplied)

Reply:

Our correspondent suggests that English capitalists must be losing rather than gaining by remaining in Northern Ireland, and wonders why they do not abandon it. The question might equally be asked about any armed conflict. The capitalists of a nation are not going to give up their means of production to other hands unless compelled; they look to their government to settle things, either by political agreement or by armed force.

In any case he is wrong. A letter by Professor N. J. Gibson of the University of Ulster, in The Guardian on 4th June 1974, estimated the current gross profits of British and other companies in Northern Ireland at £150 millions a year. But we are without concern for “English interests” and companies’ profits in Northern Ireland or anywhere else. What does concern us is the futile misery and working-class loss of life caused by the continual conflicts which capitalism produces and only Socialism can put an end to.

Editors.

Workers and the Left 

As far as I know you were publicising your principles in 1925, 50 years ago. If every working man voted Labour then they would get in as there is a majority per cent of workers in most districts up and down. How is it then the working class won’t vote for the left? There must be a reason, as they are in the majority.

In any case if a left party got in and put over a left policy, well you see what happened in Spain.

It is said the workers have no savings or money and don’t understand money and that they never innovate business or do things for themselves. And its then a question of what you believe. Will everybody be equal. Anyway I agree there are patches up here of poverty.

Just tell me why the workers do not unite and vote left. Bernard Shaw said in his book Socialism for Women it was because the workers were fobbed off with processions and lotteries. What do you say?

W. Popplewell

Knutsford.

Reply:

You obviously think of “left” as meaning all parties and groups which criticize capitalism and talk about Socialism. The fact however is that what “the left” — i.e. the Communist Party, International Socialists, the I.L.P, etc. — stands for is state capitalism. They are therefore, however they talk, non- or anti-Socialist.

The working class does vote Left, and Right, and Middle-of-the-Road. What it does not vote for, so far, is Socialism. Bernard Shaw’s comment, like many others by him, is a misleading half-truth. The majority of workers are persuaded that capitalism is the natural order. The Socialist Party’s time is spent largely pointing out the obvious, that it isn’t, but workers come to this conclusion themselves too. When they do so in sufficient numbers — that is, when they understand and want Socialism — it can be brought into being.

Editors.

Letters from A. R. Richardson, S. Gamzu, C.S. are held over, through lack of space, to the next issue.

The Socialist Standard welcomes letters for publication, putting question about the Socialist case or commenting on articles.

Women’s Lib has got it Wrong (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Baden-Powell wrote a book for young men called Rovering to Success in which the Rocks to beware in the Voyage of Life were drink, horses, irreligion, cuckoos — and women. “Cuckoos” meant holders of all political views other than raw patriotism, and of women Baden-Powell wrote:

This means on the part of the man a deep respect and tender sympathy for them, coupled with a manly strength of mind and strength of body with which to stand up for them . . . and even, on occasion, to help them against their own failings.

A main step to happiness in this direction is to select the right kind of girl. There are woman and there are dolls . . . You have got to catch yourself up in little bits of selfishness on your part, such, for instance, as grousing at the food because it isn’t exactly to your liking, and that sort of thing. Look at things from her point of view.

That was written in 1922. As an illustration that attitudes have not altered very much, a 1972 book on professional footballers called The Glory Game listed their answers to “Do you help in the house?”:

Jennings : I never help in the house. I couldn’t change a nappy. I’ve never washed a dish. She’s never asked me to. I wouldn’t expect her to, neither would she. 

Kinnear : I just want my wife to be a woman, you know, bring up the kids. I’d be the boss, but I'd ask her opinions. 

Pearce : The bloke has to be in charge. A wife shouldn’t be equal. I do the decorating but the baby’s hers. She looks after it.

This is part of one half of the population talking normally about the other half, and it would be surprising if the victims did not cut up rough and talk of “liberation”. The titles of Women’s Lib books are accurate reflections of Baden-Powell and the footballers: Woman's Estate, The Female Eunuch, The Captive Wife. Add to domestic servitude the fact that women are disabled throughout society — excluded, regarded as cheap labour, required to fall in with sexual expectations or be ridiculed. The case for ending such a gross inequality is self-evident to Socialists. The question is whether the Women’s Liberation movement has an analysis and policies which will end it.

Groups and Demands

Women’s Lib came into existence in the late nineteen-sixties. Of course “feminist” organizations were in being long before, for particular purposes like that of the National Union of Women Teachers which ceased to exist when equal pay was granted. Juliet Mitchell, in Woman's Estate, says of the suffragettes:

And indeed when in 1918 in England it [the vote] was given to women over thirty who owned property, the most powerful wing of the movement was satisfied and the force of the struggle evaporated.

The aim of the modern movement is to go to the fundamentals of women’s position in society. Many of those who started it had been in left-wing and protest groups where, finding themselves required to make the tea while the men talked about justice and equality, they concluded that women needed a separate movement of revolt against “patriarchy’’ and “sexism”.

However, Women’s Lib is not a single unified movement. It consists of small autonomous groups under, roughly, four headings:— (a) political, incorporating or accommodating left-wing aims; (b) reformist, seeking particular improvements; (c) feminist, endeavouring to promote “female consciousness”; and (d) radical feminist, rejecting women’s biological rôle. The last is expounded most fully in Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. Its argument is that women’s basic oppression is child-bearing, and that technology — test- tube babies, baby farms, etc. — must be made to bring about an “androgynous culture” which will solve all the problems of mankind.

There is general acceptance of the four demands laid down by the first national women’s conference held at Oxford in 1970: equal pay, equal education and opportunity, 24-hour nurseries, and free contraception and abortion on demand. In fact the Equal Pay Act was passed also in 1970, after being on the trade unions’ agenda and receiving only desultory attention since 1888; it remains to be seen how the employers find ways round it, and the extent to which it will affect women’s positions in the jobs they now hold.

Teaching Division

For — and this is the dilemma for these Liberationists as for all others — they are working within capitalism. Some are at least partly aware of it. For instance, an article “Towards a Statement on Women’s Liberation” by JL and RN in ORA Newsletter No. 4 in 1972 says:

Thus we should be able to explain how the "woman’s rôle” has developed under capitalism; where the origins of that rôle existed before the Industrial Revolution; and why it is that women as a group cannot be liberated under capitalism now.

The statement points out that in the present system “it is not only the woman who is restricted” but children and men are restricted too. It then lists a series of demands for women, beginning with the 1970 four and including campaigns against female fashions and women’s magazines.

But if the article’s own premises are correct, what would be achieved by the measures proposed ? The achievement could only be an exchange of female bondage for male: out of one cage, into another. Perhaps a radical feminist would argue that it is a less uncomfortable cage, but let nobody pretend it is liberation. However, it is not even a matter of different cages. The subjugation of groups by other groups — black by white, have-not by have, female by male — is only a collection of aspects of the single over-riding division on which capitalist society is founded.

Juliet Mitchell in her book gives an ingenuous example of this by speaking of the “anxiety” in Women’s Lib in the US over the “absence of black women in the movement”. Once the claims of groups and sections are acknowledged, it is anyone’s choice which has priority. We are often told of the “divisiveness” of sexism and racism. But the dividing is effective only when the subjects accept it and believe their interests are concerned predominantly with being female, black, or whatever. If it is rejected and the basic working-class identity of interests recognized, there is no obscurity over either the problem or its solution.

Women’s Lib responds to this by saying that the subjugation of women exists, due to men, independently of society and its classes (Millet and the other radical feminists); or that women’s struggles are a special way of attacking capitalism (e.g. Sheila Rowbotham, Woman’s Consciousness, Man's World)’, or that they are a precondition for achieving Socialism (variously understood). A Northern Region conference in June 1972 agreed that its statement of aims should begin with the words:

No women’s liberation without socialist revolution. No socialist revolution without women’s liberation. We aim to change the social relations of reproduction as well as to change the social relations of production.

It was honest, at any rate, for the report of the conference to add: “There was some discussion about whom this was intended for — it was pointed out that ordinary women would not find it very clear.”

Where Reforms Lead

But however the theorizing goes, in practice Women’s Lib lives to make immediate demands for reforms. In many ways it is itself a reflection of changes already taking place. The presumption, as always, is that society can be made to give way to their augmentation, and that if this happens it will end inequalities and confer benefits.

What should be pointed out at once is that the Socialist movement exists precisely because that was found not to be so. Reforms not only do not work like that, but all too frequently recoil. There are two outstanding modern examples of governments “liberating” women and thus obtaining an extra instrument for economic and social manipulation. One is in China, where women have been promoted impressively for the purposes of production, to the accompaniment of rigorous sexual repression. The opposite of the nineteen-thirties’ and -forties’ Russian cult of maternity is pursued, but likewise for demographic reasons: China, it is said, may be a pioneer country in State-authorized free contraception for all.

The other, still more relevant, example is Sweden. There women are little short of what is demanded by Women’s Lib in Europe and USA: wages near men’s, no discrimination in jobs or education, contraception and abortion and divorce all easily obtainable. Sweden should be acclaimed by the Liberationists, but is not. Mitchell affirms that concern with the position of women arises in all countries when their economies demand it:

But in Sweden this alteration is accompanied by a resurgence of explicit discussions (claiming to be disinterested) in women’s rôles. This overt debate can, in fact, obscure the issue; the economic expediency becomes invisible behind the social concern . . . The very stress that Swedish society puts on sexual equality makes it hard to see the oppression of women.

What makes them believe that the same reforms in other countries would not be taken as grist for capitalism’s mill? Indeed the same writer tells us that wages for housework (demanded by Selma James in Women, the Unions and Work) “was supported by conservatives (after all, it is a way of keeping women at home)” in Sweden.

Find the Right Answer

The Women’s Liberation movement is not different from other reformist organizations which choose to put immediate aims before a revolutionary change in society. Engels traced the origin of the suppression of women to that of private property, and he and Marx showed how it was maintained throughout historical transformations up to modern times. Private ownership turns liberation movements into the agents of ruling classes; common ownership alone can give the facility for new kinds of relationships.

The alternative case of the radical feminists, that women’s suppression is not societal but is the male at work, is no case at all. Their belief in this “human nature” argument is the antithesis of radicalism — what it supports is the ruling-class yarn that lords and masters are not made but born. On the other hand, some research done in the Women’s Lib cause provides fresh insights into capitalism and how things can be under Socialism: about parent-child relationships, or the studies of conditioning made in books like Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

It is a fact that some Women’s Lib has become (no doubt against others’ wish) a partial front organization for Communists, IS, anarchists and other left-wing groups with other aims. It is likewise a fact that, even were Socialists favourably disposed to it, male ones would be barred from most of its meetings; and we do not distinguish between male and female chauvinists. Socialists are opposed to Women’s Lib. We are for liberation, indeed — of the whole of mankind, and whoever wants the liberation of any part of it must join with us. And if from woman’s estate, she will find that in the Socialist movement the distinction is not made. We exist as comrades with one object in common.

Robert Barltrop

A Pleading Capitalist (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

We received from a Socialist Standard reader a copy of a statement issued in March 1974 by the Managing Director of IPC Newspapers Ltd. to trade-union representatives, and were asked for our comments. Here is the reply we sent.

Dear Mr—,

Your letter together with Percy Roberts’ statement on behalf of IPC Newspapers Ltd. in his address to Print & Engineering Union representatives in March has been handed-on to my committee and I have been asked to make some comments on the statement.

Firstly I should say that I am not sure of Mr. Roberts’ actual position in terms of ownership within IPC Newspapers Ltd., and as you will see, I have assumed that he does have a stake of some kind and is a member of the capitalist class. It may be that he is in fact a highly paid employee himself, but the basis of my comment will still hold.

I should also point out that I am not in a position to query any of the figures and statistics contained in his statement. I note his very generous offer in the final paragraph to examine the books, but simply have not got the time (and to be honest, the inclination) to take him up. I suspect that most of his employees are in a similar position.

Generally speaking though, whenever a member of the capitalist class wants to “ensure everyone knows the facts” (page 1) you may be certain that the facts he wants his employees to know are those which will form the basis for the defence by the owners against any attempts to increase wages by the workers. This whole statement in fact has been clearly designed for such a purpose. And in addition to the abundance of figures he offers, several veiled threats of redundancies are interspersed to bring the point home.

In the 4th paragraph on page 1 we see the classic appeal by capitalists to placate “rebellious” workers, and to inspire “sensible” workers:

The immediate future is a period of considerable challenge to the industry and to IPC Newspapers. The way in which we work together—management and unions— will decide how successful we shall be.

A Grim Promise

“Succesful” is the key word, and Socialists ask what is meant by it. Success to Mr. Roberts is a bigger profit, success to his workers is specified in items 1 & 2 in his “Implications for the future” (page 8):

1. To maintain the present standard of living of our employees.
2. To give job security to our employees.

It is to be hoped that those reading these two items fully appreciate what is meant. They mean that those employees who are currently beset by such problems as rent or mortgage payments, shortage of money to purchase clothes, furniture, food and the many other essentials of life: Or those who are currently “going short” of these essentials because they are saving to buy a car, or a refrigerator (or any other of the so-called “luxury” items), that these members of the working class, after the success Mr. Roberts refers to, will be in precisely the same position as they are at present.

Should some employees remain dissatisfied with this, Mr. Roberts will doubtless refer them to the graph re-printed on page 7 showing how far up the wage relativities league table they are. Of course this will not change their problems, or their class position in the slightest. It would be interesting to know how much higher up Mr. Roberts, and the members of the capitalist class, would come were they to be included in such a table.

When the worker is promised job security, he is being given the promise that his employer will continue to dictate to him the hours he keeps, the conditions under which he will work and so on. The employer is also promising that he will continue to exploit the worker. This is soon seen as a most peculiar form of success.

A Look at Profit

You may find in your discussions with your fellows that they may concede these points “in theory” but they will want to be “realistic”. Mr. Roberts is clearly hoping that you will see that he too is trying to be “realistic”, he is appealing to the “common-sense” of his employees. He wants you all to be fair with him, and why shouldn’t he? After all he’s just managed to lose £lm.

But Socialists would ask where is this common-sense in working men who continue to vote for political parties representing the capitalist class. It is indeed a strange state of affairs when we live in a society which is capable of producing an abundance of goods for the benefit of all men, yet that production is restricted artificially because a minority of men and women who form the capitalist class, can see no profit at the end of the day. Workers after all produce all the goods and services, they run the capitalist system from top to bottom, and yet they own virtually nothing of the means of production . . . except their right to defend them in times of war, and the right to be subservient to them in times of peace.

The figure which Mr. Roberts places a lot of emphasis on (and quite rightly, as he is the Managing Director) is that of total profit. It appears, though it is by no means made clear, that the figures he quotes (eg: £4,004,000 profit for 72/73) are the gross profits. He goes on to ask rhetorically:

But is £4m a ‘good’ profit on a turnover of more than £60m in the ‘good’ years?

Presumably his employees have enough to worry about already without adding this “problem” to their list. For one thing they should remember that any profit has been created by their own efforts — yet of course, it belongs to the employer (one of the facts that Mr. Roberts is not so anxious for everyone to examine). The employees should not blame themselves too much for only producing a surplus in 1973 of a measly £4m.

The rate of profit for that year would therefore be 6.6% (ie: £4m divided by £60m) and it is true, as Mr. Roberts says, that the Building Societies would have offered a greater % return. However, all industries have varying rates of profit and it is irrelevant for a capitalist to point to other industries where profits are higher for the time being in order to complain about profit rates within his own industry.

Our Practical Suggestion

To be strictly practical, it might be worth remembering that although Mr. Roberts reckons the assets of IPC Newspapers Ltd., have to be “certainly not less than £60m” this sum can only be realized if he can find a buyer. Assuming that there are other capitalists drifting around with £60m to spend, would they purchase his assets? It seems likely, after all his depressing talk, that they would be more attracted by the thought of putting it into the Building Societies themselves!

You might ask your fellow workers how this £60m of assets came to be accumulated in the first place. It is capital amassed over the years by the continual process of exploitation.

Perhaps your fellows would be interested to know the rate of exploitation in 1972/3. Although the rate of profit is 6.6%, the rate of surplus-value (ie. the rate of extraction of unpaid labour) is a far higher percentage:

Wages & Salaries £22,345,000

Profit £ 4,004,000

The rate of exploitation = Profit divided by Wages, i.e. 17.9%.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain as you will probably know, takes no part in supporting the interests of one section of workers against one set of employers, or vice versa. The document which you have sent can only be examined by us for what it is, a shot in the class war. We represent the political interests of the working class as a whole and do not activate for employers to lower profits from 2z to lz any more than we exhort workers to try to attain 4y wages where before they only had 3y wages. An above-average wage in one industry necessarily implies a below-average wage in another. We are opposed to capitalism as a whole, high profits or low profits, high wages or low wages.

Unfortunately it is the belief of many individual workers that the most positive step they can take in life is to constantly struggle for higher wages. It is no end in itself, and while workers persist solely in such a struggle and ignore Socialist ideas, they help to perpetuate capitalism.

Only with the introduction of Socialism will the problems of capitalism end. You might (if you have not already) ask your fellow workers why they do not help to introduce Socialism. If they tell you that they do not think it will work, you may show them that they are already making a social system work, and one which runs against their own interests. Mr. Roberts could testify to this; he had £4m worth of evidence to show for it in 1973. Are your fellows incapable of making society work in the interests of all? We have been asking for some time that they give it real thought.

Yours fraternally,

Alan D'Arcy

for the Socialist Standard Editorial Committee.

My Perfect Partner (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Has anybody got eleven quid to spare ? I’ve just been computerized. I filled in the coupon in the Sunday magazine supplement, and up it came.

My perfect partner is “Jacky” — and “she will be happy to meet me.” The computer has picked her out of 60,000 people, although whether they were all women it didn’t say. She is my “ideal mate”, it says. She is 5’ 2½ inches tall, divorced, has brown hair, is very attractive (she says) and broad-minded, enthusiastic, and has a “rewarding occupation” (I think it means “works”) in a shop.

She likes folk-music, dancing, parties, television, car-driving, literature, the cinema, classical music, good food and travel. So there’s only one stumbling block to this blissful consummation. That eleven quid! Yes, you see, the outfit with the computer need this amount to run the machine.

But wait a minute! If I pay the eleven quid I get six more “even better” really compatible people like “Jacky”. How the other six can be better when “Jacky” is already my “perfect partner”, they don’t say. While for 18 quid I can keep on collecting perfect partners, six at a time, indefinitely. As they say in the North of England, “Bloody ’ell!”

But to get the additional six “even better” perfect partners, I’ve got to give even more information about myself. Apart from height, weight, I have to give social background (sounds more like foreground to me) : am I working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class or upper class ?

Am I “unattractive”, divorced, separated or single, what colour are my politics, left wing, centre or right wing ? Do I drink (meaning intoxicants) ? Am I a professional or manual worker ? Do I smoke ? What is my educational background? (What! No GCE’s?) And lastly my interests.

Do I like the social sciences, painting, bridge, sailing, television, jazz, science, acting, good food, riding, swimming, tennis, political activity, sports or travel ? Together with my own personality profile I must indicate those points 1 fancy in my “ideal”.

I might list, say, six feet tall, upper class, unattractive, brown hair, pale skin, atheist, left wing, professional degree, acting, political activity — and probably get Vanessa Redgrave. Or height 5’ 8”, working class, unattractive, red hair, atheist, left wing, professional, political activity, and get landed with Joan Lestor — or (Christ!) Barbara Castle.

My trouble is I don’t want somebody who likes “television and good food” or “dancing and driving”. What I need is somebody with phenomenal shorthand and typing speeds, a first-class editor skilled at turning my mediocre efforts into brilliant masterpieces. Above all, somebody with a nice warm shoulder to cry on when the editors of the Socialist Standard cruelly reject my inspired contributions.

As the Brochure says, “Today we are in the space age. The old ‘school — work — early marriage’ syndrome is disappearing. A whole new generation of mobile young people is at large in the world.” (That seems a fairly safe assertion.) “At the press of a computer button your life goes into a higher gear.” (I thought it was high enough already.)

“Say good-bye to the boring problems of ‘What shall I do this week-end?’ Cut down on lonely visits to the library” (but I love the library, I said so in my answers) “and the launderette” (I wish it was lonely: it’s always packed when I go).

“Start to lead a fuller life with ‘sympatico’ people.” What a smashing idea! “Most of our members,” it says, “are busy, successful, intelligent people with varied interests. Already one thousand marriages can be attributed to our computer.”

So who needs Socialism ? All I need is the eleven quid ! Perhaps some lefties in the Labour Party could get this computer dating nationalized! Then it would be free! Everybody would have a “perfect partner” from the Social Security. Women’s Lib would evaporate. Perhaps we could extend the computer idea!

Are you poor ? Do you work hard ? Are you satisfied ? Is your job monotonous ? Have you had enough of reforms ? Do you like capitalism ? Would you like it abolished ?

If enough people answered these questions, we wouldn’t need computers — only ballot boxes.

Horatio.

50 Years Ago: Socialism and Religion (1974)

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

One who accepts the Socialist position, and realises therefore, the implications of its scientific basis, has no place as a member of the “holy” Church of Christianity. The superstition and submission taught by religion is in direct opposition to the philosophy of Socialism.

Our pamphlet [Socialism and Religion] was a bombshell to the professional politicians of the social reform parties. John M. Work, the secretary of the “S. P. of America,” tried to minimise its influence by saying the pamphlet was an irresponsible statement. The “Socialist Labour Party,” in reply to questions, continually answered in the words of De Leon that Religion was a private matter, and that a Socialist could hold any opinion he liked about the matter. And the I.W.W. in their leaflets repudiated being “anti-religious,” and said “members of the I.W.W. differ as much in their political and religious views as do members of any other organisation” 

“Communist” politicians anxious to “get in” are careful to dodge the question of religion. At Kelvingrove Bye-Election, where Ferguson ran under Labour Party auspices, a complaint was made that some orator attacked religion. The Communist paper “The Worker” (June 7th, 1924), says: “We cannot say we heard of any Communist orator attacking religion as mentioned by the special correspondent.” It further states that “it is absurd to suggest that Communist speakers generally attacked religion.” The same dodging of the materialist nature of Socialism was made by the Catholic Francis Meynell when editor of the “Communist,” who answered an enquirer by stating that while the logical person must recognise the conflict between Socialism and Religion, logical people are as rare as white blackbirds.

[From an article Socialism and Religion by W. Edgar. Socialist Standard, July 1924.]

So They Say: Yes, Who Does? (1974)

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

Yes, Who Does?

“Just who does make the decisions on housing — one of the most sensitive political issues in Britain?” asked Matthew Coady in the Sunday People's “Week in Politics” on 9th June.

He recalled the document “Better Homes — the Next Priorities” produced by the Heath government last year. Its “tough stuff” was not included in the Tory Housing Bill eight months later; and the Labour critic of their absence was Anthony Crosland MP. Coady went on:

   Mr. Crosland is now Britain’s housing supremo and has HE seized his chance to right these wrongs which so affronted him ?
   The answer, alas, is NO . . . Although it contains useful and welcome reforms, his new housing bill is not very different from that which the Tories sought to introduce early this year.

“So,” Coady demands, “WHO rules the roost on housing?”


Wrongs They Can't Right

“These wrongs” in the housing situation were emphasized in The Guardian. On 1st June it reported COUNCILS FEAR SLUMS MAY STAY ON:

   Local authorities with some of the worst housing stock in the country, fear that the Housing Action Areas planned by the Government may divert effort from slum clearance and rebuilding programmes which are essential for the future.

Attempts to solve one problem lead to another; but so do attempts to solve the other one. On 5th June the Guardian Planning Correspondent told that the five major city areas outside London — Tyneside, West Yorkshire, S.E. Lancashire, Merseyside and the West Midlands — in the twelve months up to March “demolished or closed 11,276 more slums and adjoining properties than they managed to build new”. She went on:

  This zeal to demolish cannot but have intensified the overall housing problem in each city. It comes on top of rising house prices which have put buying beyond the means of many average families, thus increasing the pressure and size of local waiting lists. Their hopes of council accommodation are in turn reduced by the need to rehouse families from the clearance areas.

And on 11th June it was HOUSE SLUMP GOES ON:

  The house building industry in Britain is sinking to its lowest level for 18 years. A Government survey estimates that only about 155.000 private houses will be started this year. The last time the figure was at this level — 30 per cent down on last year — was in 1958.

Obliged for the Answer

Socialists have always known the reason for the persistence of the housing problem. It is simply that capitalism produces things, including houses, not for people’s needs but only for profit. In case it is thought “experts” would dismiss this as a silly explanation, an “expert” has just said it is so. Writing about the finances of housing in the June issue of Property and Investment Review, Anthony Shiffley says:

   To appreciate the problems we must first clear our minds of certain pre-conceptions. First, and most important, we must rid ourselves of the notion that a house building company is some kind of fairy god-mother dispensing dwellings to meet the needs of the people. It is nothing of the kind. It is a purveyor of land on which in most, but not all cases houses have been built.

A Mote and Beam Story

According to the 8-volume History of the Second World War published by Purnell in 1966, 24,517,000 combatants on both sides were killed, of whom 452,000 came from Britain and the Commonwealth countries. It may be assumed that the number in the navy approached or ran into six figures.

So it was strange to see in the Sunday Mirror on 12th May an item on the shock and concern because a young sailor had died — through falling from a window — after seeing the horrific film “The Exorcist”. A picture showed navy policemen asking questions at a cinema, and a navy spokesman was reported:

   "Although there is no proof that the film had any connection with it, there are suggestions that it might have done.” He added: “The Navy does have responsibility for these young boys.”

Any young man’s death is a sad happening. But there seems to be a rum sense of proportion here.

Communists as Ever

The new regime in Portugal, following the coup on 25th April, announced on 9th June the establishment of diplomatic relations with Russia and Yugoslavia. In addition, according to a Guardian report, the Communist Party in Portugal has come into the open. The CP secretary-general, Dr. Alvaro Cunhal, is Minister without Portfolio in the new Cabinet and a Communist trade-union leader, Acelino Concalces, has become Labour Minister.

The Portuguese working class, specially the Left, no doubt looked forward to something good. Alvaro Cunhal quickly told them otherwise:

   Much to the dismay of Maoists and Trotskyites, who appear to be the party’s most vociferous enemies, he has appealed to workers to be responsible and cooperative in their demands for higher wages, pleading for a unified front between the people and the armed forces’ movement.

(Guardian, 10th June)

What is Portuguese for Plus ça change, plus ça reste la méme chose?

Pass the Pistol

In the 1929  depression tales were told of ruined American businessmen queueing to jump from high buildings. It is now reported from Japan:

   Hirozawa Toshikuni was Japan’s first business suicide of the financial new year . . .  In March three heads of small firms, capitalised at about £13,000, sought relief from bankruptcy in death. In that month, 1,306 firms folded: the largest number since May, 1968 — 500 to 600 bankruptcies is the monthly average.

(Guardian, 5th June)

The report says the suicide rate “is an indicator of the economy"—in particular, of the monetary squeeze which is the government’s attempted remedy for its share of the worldwide economic troubles. Less than two years ago, Japan’s spectacular growth led to its being called “the bullet economy”; the phrase seems to have taken another meaning now.

Nothing to do with Class

In an interview published in The Observer on 9th June, Prince Charles explained (i) that he was not at all confined to “a narrow circle” of friends; (ii) that he was "perfectly free” to marry outside royalty and aristocracy — “It’s nothing to do with class, it’s to do with compatibility”; (iii) that he had no preconceived ideas of special education for his future children, and (iv) that the Services had done for him “what they had done for thousands of other young men from every walk of life”.

Interviewed later at her parents’ home in Wolverhampton, Miss Ruby Glumm told of the Prince’s circle of friends. “He comes up the Bingo with my mum and Florry and me, and he’s ever so familiar with all the girls from the brawn factory where I work.” She confirmed the rumours of romance and the Prince’s freedom to marry as he liked, and said she would be calling on the vicar tomorrow on her way home from the pre-natal clinic. As for education, she referred to his remarks about the Services and said jovially: “I bet Crippen Street Secondary Modern can do for royal kids all it’s done for thousands round here.”

Robert Barltrop

The French Presidential Election (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spring 1974 in France and the presidential election gets the full “American” treatment. To regale the electors there are live television debates, whistle-stop helicopter tours and pop stars singing for their favourite candidate. Opinion polls come and go and one even looks beneath the show-biz facade by finding that approximately 2 per cent, of voters in their twenties are happy with things as they are. And when we get down to the real nitty-gritty, the issues are the familiar ones: inflation, housing, pensions, taxes and unemployment. Such problems, of course, each of the dozen contestants must faithfully promise to put right at the first possible moment.

The two who survive the first round are François Mitterand, the left-wing champion of both “Socialist” and “Communist” parties, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Minister of Finance and politically a Liberal. What follows is a tooth and nail affair, a battle of wits with no quarter given or asked and incomparably high in entertainment value.

Mitterand, the railwayman’s son, plays on his humble background and consequent understanding of the needs of working people. Giscard, the rich aristocrat, deplores his opponents’ claim to a monopoly of compassion and proclaims himself “a man of heart as well as privilege”. Needless to say, both candidates, in their promises, cater for all sections of the community, from immigrants to pensioners from small traders to women. Both pledge change, prosperity, social equality and all the other familiar vaguenesses which trip off politicians’ lips at election time.

In the end Giscard, by the narrowest of margins, wins through. Perhaps it’s his “red scare” campaign that’s worked ? But if so, only just and next time he’s going to find it even more difficult to convince people that a tame Communist Party finger in the government pie represents a genuine Soviet-style threat to “individual liberty” and “democracy”. Again perhaps the French people, looking at Britain’s experience, are genuinely haunted by the spectre of “collectivism” (as Giscard labels Mitterand’s heavy nationalization plans). But the simplest and most likely explanation is that Giscard has proved the slightly superior showman, the better image-projector as they say these days.

Shadow of De Gaulle

What now? Well, a cast-iron certainty is that many of the new president’s pledges of social reform will be broken. Partly out of the usual need of capitalism’s rulers to adopt to economic and political conditions beyond their control. But also because Giscard will not wield anything like the same degree of personal power as his predecessors, Pompidou and De Gaulle. De Gaulle enjoyed a kind of Churchillian prestige amongst the majority of deputies in parliament and this earned him their almost unquestioning obedience. Hence he was able to rule France almost as a dictator over a period of 11 years. If he sometimes “bent” the constitution, he did so with the full compliance both of those deputies and of the voters who had elected them. At the end of that time (1969) these self-same deputies and voters cried “enough” and. showing where the power really lay, consigned their dictator to the political scrapheap. Pompidou was prudent enough to cotton on to the remains of his master’s personal prestige and, with the official tag of the -ism named after him, he too had parliament very much in his pocket.

Giscard will have a far thornier time of it. A member of the small Independent Republican Party, the poor relation of the ruling coalition, he commands nothing like the same parliamentary support or esteem as Pompidou or De Gaulle. De Gaulle’s faithful followers remember Giscard’s back-stabbing volte-face in 1969. After serving the General for a decade as Finance Minister, he turned round and opposed him in the referendum which ended his career. In these elections he has further antagonized those deputies (a large minority in the house) who call themselves Gaullists by pitting himself against (and beating out of sight) the official Gaullist candidate, Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

No great love for Giscard but fear of a left-wing success rallied most of these deputies to his cause in the run-off. He will have to tread warily in the time to come if he is not to suffer the humiliation of parliamentary vetoes to his measures. He will find it doubly difficult to satisfy these “supporters”, as they themselves are no longer united except in name, and in practice represent a whole range of different expectations.

Iron Necessity

Finally nobody, not even his enemies, denies the new president certain talents and advantages. He is highly intelligent, speaks English well and has a close personal friendship with the new German leader, Herr Schmidt. This bodes well, say some. He will rule France wisely, communicate easily with Britain and America and work in unison with West Germany. Hence a new era of harmony and cooperation, both at home and abroad. The reality of the matter is quite different. Anyone seriously thinking that such attributes in a politician can make a worthwhile impact on the jungle of problems created by the ups and downs of the world market is in for some severe disappointments. Monsieur Giscard d’Estaing will soon find out, like so many before him, that capitalism imposes like an iron necessity on its administrators the most unpalatable constraints and limitations.

The French electors too will find out that the “choice of societies” M. Giscard d’Estaing said they were voting for was in fact a choice of different tinkerings with the same society. That society is capitalism. When Giscard’s private free enterprise brand of it fails to satisfy them, as it unquestionably will, perhaps next time they will turn to François Mitterand’s state-controlled variety of the same thing. One thing is certain. As long as they continue to support parties and politicians agreeing to administer this society, they will see no basic change in their conditions of life. Only when they have the understanding to introduce a Socialist community of  voluntary work and free access, can they look forward to their full share in the wealth of the world. Then they will have made the real “choice of societies”.

The Trotskyist Vote Interpreted

Trotskyists of all shades will be jubilant with the 649,414 (2.69%) votes cast for their two candidates in the first round of the French presidential election. This means well over half a million workers ready to take up arms for a Trotskyist revolution. Or does it? Before young Lefties gets too excited, let's take a closer look at those figures.

Arlette Laguiller polled 595,370 (2.33%) votes and Alain Krivine 94,044 (0.36%). Both candidates, following the usual Trotskyist policy, invited their supporters to transfer second round votes to the United Left representative, François Mitterand. Now an opinion poll breakdown of the likely destination of these votes showed that, although the vast majority of Krivine’s supporters were following his advice, only some 60% of Laguiller’s were doing the same. The remaining 35- 40% were set to vote for the so-called right-wing candidate, Giscard d’Estaing! 

What happened ? Well most of Laguiller’s supporters were women attracted not by her Trotskyism but by the modish Women’s Liberation side of her platform. In the run-off those genuinely interested in reforms for women went on to vote for the candidate they considered was offering the most in that sphere (and they both seemed to be offering an equal bundle). Those who had simply cast a vague kind of protest vote for Laguiller (and first rounds are well known for protest votes) turned, like most of their male compatriots, to one of the two “respectable” candidates who made the greatest personal impression upon them.

The “pure” Trotskyist, Krivine, with his 90 thousand, collected less than half as many votes as in the 1969 presidentials.* And even this cannot be considered as an accurate measure of the support for Trotskyism, as on low percentage votes a good proportion are cast by chance or in error. While continuing to let themselves be taken in by the traditional capitalist parties, the French working class at least has the good sense to reject the far more dangerous nonsense aired by the followers of Trotsky.

Howard Moss

*Then he polled 236,263 (1 per cent.).

Editorial: Fascism, Violence and the Left (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 15th June in London the National Front held a march to a meeting to protest against an amnesty for illegal immigrants. An attack on the march was made by left-wing groups, culminating in a battle with mounted police in Red Lion Square, and a young student was killed.

The inevitable accusations of “police brutality”, the headlines and questions in Parliament ensued. All this followed the National Union of Students’ resolution to prevent “fascists” and “racists” speaking. On 18th June the International Marxist Group announced that unless a July march of Orangemen supported by National Front is banned, it will attack that too.

The policies and attitudes of the National Front are detestable. So are those of the International Marxist Group and its collaborators. The latter include the Communist spokesmen for the National Union of Students who have expounded its policy of forcible suppression, and the Labour fools in the scarcely-known but ill-named “Liberation” group.

Their assertion is that unless “fascism” is crushed we are in danger of the rise of a dictatorship party, which would suppress democracy and persecute its opponents and those it did not favour. If that danger exists it is represented equally by the IMG, the Communist Party and other organizations of the left. What is THEIR aim ? To suppress democracy and put down rivals.

Like the Communist Party when it made a policy of attacking British Union of Fascists marches in the nineteen-thirties, IMG hope to obtain support by posing as the defenders of freedom. But the CP’s policy then did not apply only to fascists. At one period Labour Party meetings were ordered to be broken up. At other times our own meetings have been shouted down and disrupted. Make no mistake about this: these protesters are not Marxists or liberationists or democrats, but power-seekers wanting to suppress whoever disagrees with them.

What have the National Front, IMG and the Communist Party in common? It is not simply that all are would-be dictators; they all uphold capitalism, each aiming to run it in a particular way. A safeguard against them is needed, but it cannot come from force. The only safeguard is Socialist understanding : let any of them state their case, and have its worthless stupidity publicly demolished.

That is what these “defenders of freedom” fear. When the Socialist Party held a debate with the National Front, members of International Socialists came to shout down BOTH speakers. They did not want the fascists’ claptrap exposed — because it would have exposed theirs too. To them, a brawl in the streets is preferable to argument, and the support of hooligans acceptable because they cannot get that of enlightened working men and women.

The problem for the working class is not fascism but capitalism. Racism and other forms of oppression are symptoms of it. Socialists feel as strongly as anyone about them; and we know the solution of them to be the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement with Socialism.

6. Surplus Value (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Economics Series

Capitalism's innermost secret is the production and the accumulation of surplus value. This is sub-divided into Profit, Interest and Rent, and it is the blessed trinity dominating the entire international economic and political structure of the capitalist world. The seed corn of Surplus Value is Labour-power. Labour-power is now a commodity. It is different from all other commodities in that it produces more Value than it takes to reproduce itself. The mental and physical capabilities of human beings are thus appropriated as commodities and set to work to produce other commodities.

Social freedom, despite the high sounding phrases, is nothing less than permission to sell labour power from employer to employer,  who are the only people in a position of purchasing it. And this is taken to be in the natural order of things. It, however, is not nature which produces this strange relation, nor is the social basis of selling labour-power a normal social practice which has existed throughout the history of civilized society. On the contrary, the emergence of the commodity labour-power has been the result of many historical developments of propertied society, culminating in the establishment of the capitalist form of production.

Certain historical conditions are necessary before the product of labour-power can become a commodity, and these historical conditions apply equally to living labour-power itself. These conditions are:—

1. That the means of exchange must be developed.
2. That the means of production must be privately owned and operated socially.
3. That the labourer must be separated from his means of production.

The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour which is socially necessary to produce it, and no more than is socially necessary. If the labour time remains constant the Value remains constant. New production methods cut the time required, and consequently reduce the Value. Other factors intervene like increased skill, state of science etc. When mineral deposits for instance, become less accessible so as to increase the labour time socially necessary, this increases the Value. We have a society where homogeneous human labour working within an average social time is expended in producing a huge mass of commodities. At any given period during the life of that society, a definite amount of value is produced.

Exploitation is, therefore, measured in time which is translated into monetary symbols. Time is money — a vulgar description for a most anti-social practice. If a group of workers each work 160 hours monthly for an employer, and the employer makes a profit at the end of 12 months, then where does the profit come from? The raw materials used in the productive processes cannot add to their value, nor can the machinery add to its own value. In fact, it transfers its value to the products as it wears out. Plant and industrial installations are in the same category. Likewise with the bricks and mortar of the factory, steel mill and shipyard. The worker has not been cheated because on average he receives the value of the commodity which he sells to the employer for wages — his labour-power.

Surplus-value is not created by trading transactions, even by cartels or monopolies. A manufacturer may corner a market and grab the lion’s share of the profit to the detriment of other capitalist groups. But no monopoly can create surplus value. In any case, goods have to be produced before they can be sold, and the producing capitalist would expect to make a profit apart from his trading partner’s profit. The only possible explanation left to us is that surplus-value comes from labour-power.

The capitalist buys labour-power in order to use it and puts the seller to work, providing the raw materials, machinery, factories, etc., the subjects of labour power, or the place where the labour process is to be carried on. Labour-power in motion becomes Labour, that is, it becomes congealed in the objects it produces. The capitalist buys labour-power, but he sells labour, and that labour is presented to us as a vast conglomeration of commodities. The value of labour-power and the value of labour are not the same thing. The commodities are sold, and the cycle is repeated. The capitalist buys labour power for money (wages) (M); labour power becomes labour (products, commodities) (C); commodities are sold (money) (M) — M.C.M. But the commodities are sold at their value not at the cost of production. That value is determined by the amount of socially useful labour contained in them. No capitalist sells goods or services at the cost of producing them — he is not in business merely to receive his money back.

Wages represent a certain period of time which the worker contracts to work for the employer, whether it be an hourly or weekly rate, or a monthly salary. He must, at some point, require to produce the value of his own wages. So, if a proportion of the working day is devoted to this purpose, then it becomes necessary for him to labour up to the point where he has in effect produced the value of his own wages. This is necessary labour. It follows that if he continues to work beyond this period of necessary labour he is in effect rendering a certain amount of superfluous labour, or surplus labour. The worker does not own his labour, this is the property of the capitalist. He owns his labour-power; indeed it would be hard to separate it from him as it exists in the form of muscle, brain and nerve, the human organism. He is, therefore, making a gift to his employer for every atom of time he spends in the labour process over and above that necessary to reproduce the value of his wages, which is the necessary labour-time. It is precisely this surplus labour-time which manifests itself in the physical products of labour (values), and this becomes surplus value, an additional quantity for which the capitalist has not paid.

We speak of time only at this juncture, but the workers are supplied, in addition to raw materials, with highly developed machinery and other sophisticated tools of production; the tempo of production is intensified. The greater the degree of production which can be achieved using up-to-date methods and techniques within the same time, or even less time, means that the rate of exploitation is higher, because the necessary labour time will have been reduced and the surplus labour time increased. This is what happens in real life. The TU movement has for years been trying to cut down the workers’ hours, although most Trade Unions have long-term agreements whereby their members work considerable amounts of overtime. The official working week has been reduced in most industries to around 40 hours in 1973, as compared to 52 hours per week in 1900, but even allowing for the additional number of workers in industry, production has increased at least two-fold, and this has been due to the extension of machinery over a whole range of labour processes. It is the capitalist who stands to benefit by this, as he benefits by every advance in science and technology. Whilst wages have risen above prices compared with 1900, the rate of exploitation has increased, and the capitalist class are much better off. Marx put it succinctly : “The bigger the banquet, the bigger the crumbs which fall from the table.”

The capitalists do not arbitrarily fix their profits over their cost of production. They sell the goods for what they think the market will stand, but the starting point is what it costs them. It is, however, the secret of commodities that, when brought to the market, they will exchange with other commodities according to the amount of socially-necessary labour time contained within them, and no capitalist knows this, although he will obviously know the amount of time his process has taken. Value contains surplus-value. The fact that articles do not always sell at their Value — sometimes above sometimes below — does not alter this rule. Buying and selling influence prices — they do not determine them. Profit is not made from trading transactions but from the productive process. The surplus product becomes the surplus value — the surplus value is the social fund from which the profits of all sections of the capitalist class — bankers, landlords and industrialists — are derived.

It is not our concern to take sides in disputes which occur from time to time between sections of the capitalist class on whether landlords’ or bankers’ profits are too high and industrialists’ too low. This is a matter for the Labour Party and the small fry of the Left, who usually side with the industrial capitalist. It is sufficient for our purpose to show where surplus-value comes from and not its final destination. We know it doesn’t go to members of the working class.

Surplus value is produced at the point of production and not during the process of circulation, i.e. banking, insurance and commerce. Whilst it is true to say that only productive workers produce surplus-value, it is equally true to say that all workers are exploited. How would the banking capitalist appropriate his share of the surplus value unless he employed bank clerks, accountants, etc. to appropriate it on his behalf? Where would the landlords get their share without the chartered surveyor, rent-collector and estate agents and clerical staff? How would capitalism function without street cleaners, refuse collectors, health services, and every other service, including police, civil servants and other ancillary workers?

Whilst the basic mechanism shows the original source of surplus-value to be labour-power at the point of production, in fact you cannot separate the main divisions of capital which through custom and the division of labour have historically impressed themselves on the capitalist mode of production — banking capital; industrial capital; landlord capital. Capitalism has to be taken as an organic whole, or an indivisible system. The extraction of surplus-value is a social act, consequently the entire resources of the body politic exist for that one purpose.

Every member of the working class plays a part, either directly or indirectly, and all are therefore exploited.

This is the final article in the present series. They have been based entirely on Marx’s Labour Theory of Value, and were intended purely as an introduction to a more detailed study of the subject of Political Economy and the mammoth contribution by Marx.

Jim D'Arcy

The Audible Unsung Ally (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The BBC enjoys, probably justly, the reputation of being the most “respectable”, honest and impartial broadcasting organization in the world. As such, a global audience tunes in to its programmes in many languages which go out around the clock.

Having said that, a comparatively short article in The Guardian of 16th May 1974 explains just what, within the context of capitalism, such a reputation for honesty and impartiality means.

The article dealing with the proposed cuts in expenditure on overseas broadcasting is, most aptly, entitled “A business ally in jeopardy”. About half-way through comes the first really significant paragraph:

The BBC World Service means a lot of things to many people. One of its lesser known activities, however, is the influence it has on Britain’s exports.

This ally of British manufacturers broadcasts a variety of programmes expounding the achievements of British industry and technology. Mr. G. E. Mansell, Managing Director of the BBC’S External Services, is quoted as saying:

We not only mention British Science, technology, industry and exports, but we report any noteworthy achievements in these fields on our world news bulletins, on Radio Newsreel and the various magazine and specialist programmes we broadcast.

Also, when British overseas exhibitions and promotions are mounted, the BBC foreign language services usually broadcast programmes on the event and the companies and products involved. Later Mr. Mansell states: 

The very existence of a British broadcasting service which is respected everywhere for its efficiency and integrity reflects well on the efficiency and integrity of the UK and helps to create a favourable climate for the British exporter.

Enquiries resulting from these programmes are passed straight to the manufacturers. That this has proved vastly profitable to the latter can be seen from the following.

In 1973 BBC External Services received 300,000 enquiries from all over the world. 4,500 of these were generated by just one programme “New Ideas”. A “News from Britain” broadcast in Japanese brought 1,000 enquiries. From a BBC survey of 300 companies, 49 per cent, reported enquiries directly resulting from broadcasts; some had as many as 200. One company, Halden Engines, stated that they were over-run (our emphasis) with enquiries after mention on the German and World Services. Their order books for 2-stroke engines are full and they plan to open a new factory to meet the increased demand.

Today the External Services broadcast approximately 100 hours a day in 40 languages and BBC statistics show that they have 60 million regular (daily!) listeners and a further 72 million tune in occasionally.

Some time ago we saw a lot of posters proclaiming “It pays to advertise”. Obviously it is even more profitable if the most respected broadcasting corporation in the world will do it for you; not just without charge, but without even being asked to do so!

Eva Goodman

The Politics of Confrontation (1974)

Book Review from the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Strategy For A Living Revolution”, by George Lakey. W. H. Freeman & Co., San Francisco, 1973. $2.95.

The Socialist case is a clear and logical one but its advancement is held back by muddling and incorrect ideas constantly pumped at the workers through the media and books such as this one. Purporting to show us the way to a fundamentally different kind of society it in fact shows us the confusion that exists in the author’s mind. Whilst it is true that the book is well intentioned we must remember that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Lakey, a “prominent Quaker activist”, paints an exotic picture of Eastern promise but his “Living Revolution” turns out to consist of many of those misconceptions which the Socialist Party has spent nearly 70 years discrediting. According to Lakey, in striving for a more “egalitarian society” we must make “people mobilise their own power for confrontation with the status quo . . . defy the police”. We must make “propaganda of the deed” by “mass dilemma demonstrations” and boycotting of “social institutions . . . reactionary schools and churches”, and go in for a policy of “mass non-cooperation” (all non-violently) until the constant crises caused by this action will in turn cause the “dissolution of the old value system”, and hey presto! we get our new society.

However, this terminology does not hide from the Socialist that after “non-violent transnational” revolution has taken place there remains the hideous skeleton of capitalism. Lakey does not question the fundamental relationship of capitalism, i.e. that of wage labour and capital and the fact that the vast majority of the population have to sell their labour-power to the tiny handful of those that own capital, and thereby the means whereby other men must live. Lakey’s ideas are a hotchpotch of the left-winger, the pacifist and of course the eternal reformer. The kind of campaigns he advocates "are largely built around specific concrete demands”. (Anti-racial-discriminations, protests, etc.)

Socialism will not and cannot be brought about by confrontations or non co-operation of any kind but only by the working class taking conscious and political action to achieve it. As for confronting the powers of the State — non-violently or otherwise — few things could more quickly lead to cynicism and possibly the spilling of workers’ blood. Nor will any amount of crises topple capitalism; it will always struggle back just so long as the workers continue to allow it to do so, which they do actively by voting for the capitalist parties or passively by default. Lakey’s constant references to the “socialist countries” (Russia, China etc.) are completely misleading as Socialism cannot exist in one country. Just as capitalism today is the international society dominant in all countries of the world it follows that when it is replaced by Socialism this too must be on a world-wide basis.

As for reforming capitalism, the Socialist recognizes that any attempt to knock the rough edges off capitalism will not only fail in solving any basic social problem but will sidetrack the workers from the real path for their emancipation—Socialism. The SPGB has the only “concrete demand” that really matters: ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM.

Tony D'Arcy

Capitalism in Australia (1974)

From the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the end of the second world war two-and-a-half million workers from Europe, including a million from Britain, have gone to Australia. The majority go in the hope that they are going to make a fresh start and are leaving their problems behind them. They have been attracted by advertizing. (One slogan declares “We are making Australia a better place to live in”.) The emigrants are going there to work. To be more accurate they will be “getting a living”, but as they will be doing the bidding of some employer they are not free men and women.

Australia is a one-country Island-Continent. Its recorded history did not start until 1788 when the first Europeans arrived. Prior to that this huge land mass was an unknown land and, when discovered, was inhabited only by a handful of Aborigines. It was occupied without opposition, never knew feudalism, and has not known revolution or civil war. The early settlers “brought” capitalism with them and set in motion all the paraphernalia. The capitalist system was therefore imported into Australia.

Australia has vast prairies, formidable deserts, rich grazing lands, plentiful minerals, beautiful beaches. Its population has grown to 13,000,000, most of whom live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and small towns along the east coast. With Darwin, Adelaide and Perth, these cities are the major centres of commerce. World capitalism has booms and slumps, and Australia in its short history has experienced both. In the 19th century there were two slumps, in 1842 and 1892, but recovery was stimulated each time because of gold discoveries. Gold rushes always attract fresh emigrants with tradesmen, shopkeepers and so forth in their wake. By the turn of the century, capitalist development was again on the upgrade. After the first world war there was a boom which encouraged still more migrants but it was short-lived, for Australia did not escape the effects of the 1929 world depression. The older generation of the working class remember those years: the unemployment, the Labour Exchanges and the grinding poverty.

Today, Australia is called an “Awakening Giant”. It presents itself as an expanding capitalist country making the most of the “Winds of Change”. Its agricultural and mineral wealth are being exploited to the full. Exports in minerals alone (iron ore, zinc, lead, coal, copper) bring in millions of dollars annually. Vast amounts of capital, Australian and foreign, is invested to develop industry of every kind. The cities of Sydney and Melbourne with their teeming freeways, their busy dock areas and airports, their skyscraper office blocks, are the outward symbols of Australian capitalism. At the same time they testify where some of the surplus-value extracted by the exploitation of the working class has gone.

Propagandists describe Australia today as “the country of the future”, "young and vigorous”, and so on. But such words are idle chatter as far as workers are concerned. In Australia, as in all capitalist countries, the working class does not share in profits: those go to the capitalist class, the owners. During the boom period in Australia, for the capitalist it means full order-books, profit and prosperity. For the working class it means “full employment” and “regular wages” — which means rushing to and from work and the usual struggle to make ends meet.

In Australia wages appear to be high, but appearances are deceptive. The workers have to fight to maintain their wage levels in relation to increasing prices. A recent report in the Daily Mail said (9 May 1974):

A new campaign is being launched to lure Britons to well paid jobs in Australia. Miners will be offered about £100 per week and Electrical Fitters about £60 per week. The booming Kalgoorlie gold and nickel mines are hoping to take on 400 Britons in the next three years.

Like every other commodity, the price for labour-power fluctuates around its value according to supply and demand. There is an urgent demand for miners but in other trades £50 a week would be considered average. A trip around the shopping precincts, the big stores and the car showrooms makes clear the workers have access to little when the prices of goods are considered. Much in evidence are signs advertizing Easy Terms, Weekly Accounts and “Lay- By”, in other words workers have to mortgage their wages to get things they need. If they were receiving half as much as the propagandists imply, none of these tricks would have to be employed. In addition to food, clothing and the running of a car to get them to work, are their mortgages and rents. Many workers live out their lives in blocks of flats and others in Commission (Council) Houses. It is true they have access to the beautiful beaches and can go surfing or swimming. Sport is encouraged and Australian Rules football and cricket are popular, but what fundamental difference is there between the lives of the workers of Australia and those in Europe or USA? In the final analysis there is no difference. In the article in the Daily Mail appeared also the words of an Australian Government spokesman: “The money for Miners is good but it’s bloody hard work”.

About 2¼ million are organized in the trade-union movement; strikes are quite frequent. There is “National Arbitration Machinery” to cover the whole country in the event of strikes overlapping from one State to another. Each State has its own Industrial Tribune to intervene in strikes, make binding agreements and fix minimum wage rates. These bodies pretend the class struggle does not exist and are anti-working class as they uphold the whole structure of the wages system. Their existence and functions will end when the wages system itself is abolished by a Socialist working class.

To go to the polling booth in Australia is compulsory, but workers do not show much interest in politics. This is probably the result of conditions since the war for the younger generation especially. For 23 years there was a coalition Government of Liberals (read Tories) and Country Party but a year ago this was replaced by the Australian Labour Party. Not that it will make any difference. All are reformist parties. They act in the interest of the capitalist class, and the working class will have to learn this.

A small Socialist Party of Australia was formed nearly fifty years ago and groups exist in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. These groups are endeavouring, as do Socialists everywhere, to gain the ear of their fellow workers. The distances are vast, but nevertheless they keep in touch, distribute Socialist literature and use every opportunity to explain the cause of poverty, insecurity and war. The movement will grow. They are conscious of the fact that they are the only Party of Socialism and of the working class in Australia. They are indeed worthy of being one of the Companion Parties of Socialism. What more fitting phrase can be used to summarize their efforts other than “Good on You!”

J. C. Gormley