From America: The Panama Canal and the right of free access (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the hottest pieces for conversation in America these days is the Carter Administration’s treaty with Panama, scheduled for a pomp-and-ceremonial signing on Wednesday, Sept. 7, in Washington, with a glittering crowd of little Latin-American dictators and other dignitaries in attendance. Ownership of the Panama Canal is to be transferred to the Panamanian Government, effective as of 1999, albeit with continuing US rights in the area of military defense. As of this writing, opinion polls indicate that a sizeable majority of the US population opposes the deal and that, in the end, the US Senate will refuse to ratify. The Government is mounting an all-out propaganda blitz to win over popular sentiment and save the Treaty.

In a nutshell, the positions are: Pro: in the final analysis, it is free access and not ownership that is important. Panamanians in particular, and Latin Americans, in general, are said to feel that 75 years of US ownership of a waterway in their area is enough. Good public relations between US and the latinos demand the transfer. Con: “We” (the us Government) built the Canal and paid for it. It makes no sense to give it away to a tinhorn dictatorship. Surely American military muscle can easily handle the hostile guerrilla action by anti-Yanqui latinos, but to surrender it to Panama would be to invite trouble from the Communist world — particularly Soviet Russia — which might seize control.

There is much meat here for socialists to chew on. But first it may be helpful to have a look at some bare facts concerning the history of the Canal, facts which are easily verified in the history books. To begin with, the “sovereign” nation of Panama came into being just 75 years ago as the fruit of a conspiracy involving a French capitalist consortium, the Government of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Panamanian revolutionists who sought independence from Columbia of which the Isthmus of Panama was a part.

The French capitalist group had recently abandoned its attempt at building a canal across the Isthmus after sinking some $260 million. A major, insurmountable, obstacle for them was malaria-bearing mosquitoes that devastated the work force. Roosevelt's government now commenced negotiations with the Columbian Government to pick up the rights from the French after agreeing to pay some $40 million for their franchise and unfinished work. But the Columbian Parliament stalled, attempting to raise their ante, and the US Congress hemmed and hawed. Then, enter the conspirators, and a Gilbert & Sullivan-type production ensued.

The group of Panamanian rebel-nationalists was set in motion on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and the flag of independence was raised. At the same time, three US warships showed up at Colon and Marines were landed to “restore order”. The entire Columbian military force on the Pacific side was bought off, privates receiving $50 a head and officers more, and the revolution was over — bloodless save for the accidental killing of a Chinaman. The news reached Washington at 11.30 in the morning of Nov. 6, 1903, and the Republic of Panama was recognised before one o’ clock of the same day.

There is much more, of course, to this fascinating tale of intrigue in high circles but the foregoing are, at least, among the more salient facts. American capitalism licked the malaria problem by draining the swamps that provided the breeding ground for the mosquitoes. In other words, rather than waste time swatting the critters or spraying them with the 1903 equivalent of Flit, the US got down to bed-rock — the source — and corrected it, a tactic we can hardly expect capitalism to pursue in its perpetual confrontation with problems such as poverty-in-the-midst-of-porential- abundance; war; discrimination, etc.

Now, what should we make of all this noise about the Canal, today? Does it really matter either to Panamanian or American workers which nation possesses the deed of ownership? President Carter tells us, soberly, that it is not ownership but free access that is really important. Aside from our feeling that this move is an attempt by US capitalism to get further out of the more overt type of colonialism, we can only wish that the majority would apply such reasoning to all of wealth-producing property. The reason that the Treaty is of no import either to American or Panamanian workers is that ownership and free access, under capitalism, is generally confined to the capitalist class, even in cases of government-owned and government-operated industry.

But in the face of this truth there is something strange, even weird, about capitalism. Whether or not the Panama Canal will actually become the property of the Panamanian capitalist class depends on how successful the political leaders are in selling a bill of goods to American and Panamanian workers in order to provide the necessary pressures on the politicians to pass and to ratify the legislation.

Socialists maintain, then, that there are three rather than two positions on the Panama Canal Treaty: (1) Agreement; (2) opposition; (3) a simple working-class declaration: It is not our property so don’t bother us. But think carefully about that point made by President Carter on ownership vs. free access. And apply it to the world situation. The answer is inescapable: World Socialism will mean the end of ownership in the sense of class ownership. And common ownership can only spell free access to all that is in and on the earth, even the Panama Canal, by all mankind.

Harry Morrison, 

WSP, Boston. 

Rise of American Civilisation, Beard 

A New American History, Woodward

New Page: Letter From America column (1977-1978)

As promised, new pages for the blog. These new pages of old Socialist Standard columns will eventually be grouped together in one page at the head of the blog alongside the pages for the current Socialist Standard columns, film reviews and theatre reviews.

Letter From America was a short-lived column written by World Socialist Party of the United States member, Harry Morrison, during the period of the Carter administration. Based out of Boston, Massachusetts, Morrison's articles focused on such subjects as America during a time of recession, US healthcare, the circus that is US politics, and America's supposed 'exceptionalism', amongst other topics. To access the individual articles, click on the months.

1977:

• Jun: The Hospitalization business by Harry Morrison
• Jul: Those “Neutral” Agencies of Capitalism by Harry Morrison
• Sep: "Making it" v World Socialism by Harry Morrison

1978

• Jan: Ethics and conflicts by Harry Morrison
• Apr: Snowbound in Boston by Harry Morrison
• Jul: Carter, credibility, confusion by Harry Morrison
• Aug: California's "Boston Tea-Party" by Harry Morrison
• Oct: Business week and the “Marxist assault” by Harry Morrison
• Dec: Those good old “Good as Gold” dollars  by Harry Morrison

From America: Business week and the “Marxist assault” (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Business Week, Avenue of The Americas, New York City, should urge its writers to do their homework. In its issue of July 17, 1978, the Economics department does a review (or comment) on a new attack on Marxian economics, co-authored by four British self-styled Marxists (Barry Hindess, Paul Hirst, Athar Hussain, Anthony Cutler) entitled Marx's ‘Capital’ and Capitalism Today. The magazine’s caption reads: “A Marxist Assault on Marx” and the writer wastes no time in displaying his own ignorance of the barest essentials of the Marxian system.

Item: . . . the labour theory of value . . . holds that products are worth as much as the amount of labour that goes into producing them.

Stated thus the proposition is easy to refute. Why would a “product” (commodity) with more labour incorporated in it because of inferior production technique have more value in the market than a similar commodity produced with modern efficiency? It would not and Marx knew this. That is why he insisted upon using the phrase “socially necessary labour time” and explained it with thoroughness as the average labour time needed to produce an article under normal conditions of production and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. Commodities are not produced for some intrinsic pleasure in production but to sell and realise profit for their owners. Competition in the market place dictates that labour time in the factories be socially necessary.

But this is by no means the worst of the Business Week article. The writer, by an exercise of common horse sense, could nave attacked the credibility of the “Marxist” professors by exposing their naïveté. It does not necessarily follow that one must be pro-Marx to expose faults in anti-Marxist critiques.

Item: ‘There is no such thing as a general theory of prices or production,’ says Hirst of the University of London. ‘The way in which firms make calculations depends on each particular situation,’ he adds.

But of course individual firms must be concerned with one particular problem: achieving profitable increase in capital expended. A knowledge and understanding of general theories of the source of such increase is unnecessary to achieving one’s goal although factory managements succeed best that learn how best to milk their work force. Somehow, even without book knowledge, they realise that the source of their profits is not the prices of their commodities in the market place but the value over and above wages paid, created gratis by the workers.

Except that this seems to be what bothers the professors most about Marxian economics. Capitalism, they contend—according to Business Week—is not one enormous factory. Marxists, they say, neglect such areas of activity as the huge service sector and the vital banking system:

Item: But the most glaring error in Marxist economics, they say, has been to ignore the role that money, credit, and financial institutions play in the economy . .

For example, they point to the variety of financial activity in which companies engage, such as foreign exchange speculation, in addition to production. And they further argue that the expanded role of government monetary authorities and their influence on the banking system, as well as the availability of credit, play a key role in how much profits companies earn. Indeed, government now has the clout to bail out companies that would otherwise go out of business were competition to prevail.

Indeed! The most glaring error of the professors— and of such experts as are found in the Economics department of Business Week—is the ignoring of the role that class has always played in capitalism. The total national capitalist, from away back, and the total international capitalist, in this country, have functioned as the final arbiters in the affairs of individual companies and industries through their states and their international financial and political institutions.

But what has all that to do with the source of profits? Long before the times of Marx, certain economists (Benjamin Franklin among them), observed that what took place in the market was an exchange of equal values. Whence, then, came the profit? Having the clout to determine whether or not a business will survive is not the same thing as producing profit. Such is obviously not the function of banks and governments.

And then the confusion of Business Week and the British “Marxists” becomes confounded because, accepting the myth of socialist nations (Russia, China, Poland, Cuba, etc.) they blame the “marked slowdown in economic growth” of some, such as Russia and Poland, on a blind adherence to Marxist economics.

Item: ". . . By adhering to a narrow interpretation of Marx’s theories, these nations have pursued one-dimensional development programmes, pumping up production in such industries as steel and heavy machinery, while neglecting to improve agricultural yields, expand the production of consumer goods, or provide better cultural and recreational services. According to some Marxists, these countries have sacrificed the socialist ideal for the sake of rapid industrial growth.”

Now why should anybody believe that Marx’s Capital offers a programme or an understanding of how production can be organised within the relationships of wage labour and capital in a manner as to benefit all, or anything more than a minority, of the population? Certainly there were no nations professing to be Marxist or socialist in Marx’s time, no national propaganda machines teaching that wage-labour and capital relationships can be socialist as well as capitalist. He did not have that idiocy to contend with and there is nothing in Capital to indicate that he foresaw such a turn of events.

Yet the woods and streets are filled with true believers of that myth, from plain men and women on the street to economics professors and business magazine writers. The answer to the question of why these “socialist” economies fail to equal those of the more traditional capitalism is not nearly so important as why or how state capitalism gets tied to the analysis in Capital and touted as socialism.

The emphasis of most “socialist” nations on production of capital goods and heavy industry (China and Cuba are cited as exceptions where the “socialist ideal,” presumably, has not been “sacrificed for the sake of rapid industrial growth”—despite the overt attempts of both nations to overcome backwardness) indicates only that they are by very nature capitalist. What is the number one object of capitalist production? As Marx so well put it:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! . . . Therefore, save, save, i.e. reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, of surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth. But what avails lamentation in the face of historical necessity? (Capital, Vol. 1, p. 652 Kerr Ed.)

Whether by traditional bourgeoisie or state bureaucracy functioning as bourgeoisie the primary object still holds.

And yet, out of this concentration on production for the sake of more production eventually must come a mass realisation that the floodgates of abundance for all—the socialist ideal—can be opened simply by abolishing the relationships of wage labour and capital and introducing a world wide system of production for use. That is the message of Capital and Marxism generally.

Harry Morrison

(WSP-US Boston)

From America: Those good old “Good as Gold” dollars (1978)

Letter From America from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

One question agitating Americans today, as much as any other, is: what has gone wrong with the US dollar in world markets? How does one explain the acute illness of this proud currency, the money that was almost thought to be as good as gold? Because it has made front page news in America in recent times and seems to be getting no better fast, even people who never have much of it, are worried and somewhat crestfallen. There was always that vicarious thrill in knowing that “our” money was so universally venerated. What’s it all about?

The answer, in a word, is “pollution”. There are far too many US dollars held by financial and multinational institutions around the world. “No need to redeem them for gold”, was the assurance when the blizzard of US currency hit Europe in the 60s. “They’re as good as gold”. (Not that there was that much gold in the US Treasury but there was always America’s strong trading ability to bank on). And the quantity of US dollars in foreign hands, today, is out of all proportion to what is needed to consummate the trade that American capitalism can generate.

And thereby hangs another tale because, in theory, devaluation of a nation’s currency is supposed to bring increased trade for that nation’s exporters and this is not happening here. The adverse trade balance remains maddeningly huge and sharp debate concerning its causes is stirred among the “doctors” of economics. But whatever else may be involved, the fact is that this once top manufacturing nation is feeling the competition from an assortment of relatively vibrant economies in Europe and the Orient with more modern plant, equipment, and marketing “know-how”. Those “good-as-gold” US dollars in foreign hands have become so many not-so-hot IOUs and heavy holders are trying to get out from under by changing them into Japanese yen and Swiss francs rather than trading them for US goods.

The truth is that the US dollar has not been “as good as gold” for a long time. In fact, the Nixon Administration, in 1971, officially untied the dollar from gold and declared it as inconvertible to bullion everywhere, as it had been domestically since the first term of Franklin Roosevelt some forty-five years ago. So, while in those years following the Nixon action the dollar remained relatively strong and generally acceptable in Western Europe and Japan, propped up by hope, Nemesis was waiting in the wings.

To begin with, money is a commodity. It must be a commodity because it is used as a means of effecting the circulation of and setting a value upon commodities generally. And so, the quantity of paper bills and metal pieces that serve to represent money — gold — must bear a recognisable resemblance to the quantity of real money they represent. Otherwise they would be worth, on the average, the equivalent of the socially necessary labour time required to produce and reproduce them — damned little, indeed! So when paper currency and metal coins are churned out in America’s mints with little regard for actual money stores, eventually the bitter truth must sink into the heads of those who hold huge amounts of the stuff. Especially when it becomes apparent that US industry cannot compete so effectively on world markets.

(Not that this in an unalloyed evil for US capitalism. The Government, for example, wins a large quantity of those devalued dollars when it sells off portions of its gold bullion — the weaker the dollar the costlier the gold in terms of dollars. And since bond holders and other domestic creditors are guaranteed repayment in US dollars with no provision made for devaluation — it becomes a windfall for the capitalist class, as a whole. All big borrowers, in fact, have seldom had it so good although bankers, understandably, are responding by raising their interest rates and are discouraging long-term loans. And currency speculators, as patriotic as the next, no doubt, are making hay out of the difficulties of the American currency).

But what, if anything, does all this signify to US workers? Most of those who travel abroad will find it difficult to survive unless they visit the soft currency nations, where American money is still respected, and even then will find it difficult to live in the manner they have been accustomed to back home. But the over-production of currency in US mints also translates into continuing inflation in this country and while the rate is lower than in the competing nations it is high enough to bring more than the usual clamour by organised labour for substantial pay increases.

And there is at least one significant change about this otherwise predictable happening. A considerable and rising number of those in the forefront of “labour unrest” are public, or government, employees. In fact, the summer and early fall of 1978 seem to have brought a veritable tidal wave of strike action and threatened strike action by policemen, fire fighters, school teachers, transportation workers, postal workers, garbage collectors, and others in “public employ” forbidden by law to strike. Police and fire fighters, bus drivers and school teachers have in many instances gone to gaol for spurning court orders to return to work. And a number of postal workers, along with many of the fire fighters and policemen, have been summarily fired and forever blackballed from employment in those endeavours. (In the case of the postal workers, there is now an imposed settlement by a Government mediator on the cards and the possibility of more wildcatting by disgruntled employees in protest over the loss of ratification rights by the union membership).

What makes this current trend more interesting is that “public employees” are paid entirely out of tax revenue. The basic arguments of managements of such enterprises are: (1) we can’t find the money without a tax increase and nobody wants that, or (2) we must not make a settlement that is inflationary. A majority of those directly involved are doubtless unwilling to accept such reasoning, but since the majority of the working class believes it pays taxes and will have to foot the added bill, general support for such strikes is uncommon.

In truth, taxes come from surplus value, which is the property of the capitalist class. Certainly it adds to inflation when increases are paid by printing added currency. But there is no law that forbids the capitalists from taking less profit and assigning more of surplus value to those who operate their essential services — no law, that is, but the jungle law of capitalism ordaining that capitalists must strive for greater rather than lesser profit or be destroyed by competition.

Socialists find it worthy of note that public employees, even school teachers and police, now seem to identify more with their fellow workers than once was the case. And yet we hesitate to see the millenium resulting from it. Our pleasure is tempered sharply by the knowledge, gained through long years of experience, that union militancy does not lead, in itself, to understanding the class nature of capitalism and the need to abolish it. Police, militant or not, return to their jobs of protecting the masters’ property and clubbing other militant workers who threaten or defy the law. “We’re only doing our job!” they argue. Teachers resume their task of preparing future wage slaves for a general acceptance of class society and see nothing objectionable about that. And workers, generally, are content with the gains they make in their wages and conditions of work.

If only inflation would vanish! they reason today, either forgetting or not knowing of those long periods of deflation, when prices fell (including the price of their labour power), when hamburger was a quarter-or-less a pound but quarters were hard to come by, when the American dollar was a good as gold (at least outside the United States) and American industrial superiority was universally recognised. Were American workers better off in those times? If you don’t remember or never knew look it up or ask those who do.

Harry Morrison 

(WSPUS Boston)

From America: California's "Boston Tea-Party" (1978)

Letter From America from the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The state of California has long been known as a hatchery of unusual religious and political movements. The list is a long one even in the lifetime of the average senior citizen today. Now, lightning strikes at the California ballot boxes in the form of a tax revolt, dubbed by its instigators a modern version of the Boston Tea Party, directed against property tax rates and Government spending, and ordaining limits on such rates so low as to shake the political structure of the State to its roots and put fear into public employees from coast to coast. The thunder from that first bolt, and others to come, will reverberate long before subsiding. It represents a cry from the hearts of masses of workers who have not yet learned the real cause of their misery and who are bringing joy to a section of the capitalist class — big property owners — providing them with windfall profits such as they have not seen in many a moon.

The effect in California was quick: noticeable numbers of state, county and municipal workers received immediate “pink slips” (dismissal — Ed. Comm.) and most other public employees are on an unofficial “red alert”; summer classes in schools have been cancelled along with other, social, programmes; some localities have even lost their fire stations, which now sport posters advising: "If your house is on fire call Jarvis” (leader of the movement and co-sponsor of the so-called Jarvis-Gann Amendment). The extent of the cutbacks may have been exaggerated since the State politicians are sitting on a huge tax surplus which will be parcelled out in relief to the communities. But the message, nevertheless, seems clear. There is widespread disapproval among employed workers of the “fat” in State services, generally, and welfare programmes in particular. The crux of the problem, according to popular misconception, is Government mismanagement of the monies milked from long-suffering tax-payers with whom the working class strongly identifies. Does the working class really pay taxes, if not directly on a home then indirectly through higher rents, not to mention everything else they buy and through the withholding on their pay? Before discussing this question a brief explanation of the American elections system may be in order.

Presidential elections are four years apart but one-third of the US Senate, 100 per cent, of the House of Representatives, a percentage of state Governors, and other political state officers are up for grabs every two years. Besides the regular elections in November, however, many of the states have primary elections earlier in the year in which the voters have an opportunity to determine the candidates the contesting parties will field in November. Along with the political hopefuls there is usually a list of propositions (proposed amendments to the state constitution) that appear on the ballot. In the case of California, the ballot in June, 1978, carried the proposition that now limits the property tax to 1 per cent, of assessment and confronts the State apparatus with a loss of about 50 percent. of its annual revenue (some $7 billion, it is claimed). Mr. Jarvis, incidentally, is director of the California Apartment Association. He and Paul Gann, another big real estate operator, lobbied unsuccessfully in Sacramento for years for legislative action to reduce the property tax. They finally must have realised that it is easier to bamboozle the working class — a majority of the voters — than the politicians and so crusaded for the petitions needed to put the proposition on the ballot. If the politicians won’t curb their outrageous spending let us, the taxpayers, cut the spendable monies — show them who is the boss. This was the message sold to the working class of California. They bought it with gusto.

Now what about the obsession the working class has with taxes? A large number of wage and salaried workers do “own” some real estate in the form of generally heavily mortgaged homes. By far the majority of city dwellers, however, are rent-paying tenants. Do landlords really charge off their property taxes, or even most of them, in the rents? If this were true they would have little, indeed, to complain about. The fact is that landlords confront tenants in the same relationship as merchant to customer. They have a commodity for sale (the use of an apartment for a limited period) which the tenant buys. They will then get as much for their commodity as the market will bear, regardless of the bite of the tax assessors. What the market will bear is determined by the demand and the supply in the particular area. There are areas, even in California .where rents are relatively cheap because those who can afford better prefer not to live in them.

As for working-class home owners who do have to send revenues to City Hall: in the final analysis their income derives entirely, or almost so, from wages or salaries — just as is the case with tenants. As Engels puts it, concisely, in The Housing Question: “‘Taxes’! A matter that interests the bourgeoisie very much but the worker only very little. What the worker pays in taxes goes in the long run into the cost of production of labour power and must therefore be compensated for by the capitalist”. This terse statement sums it all up. Property taxes, gasoline taxes, withholding taxes? The assumption is that without them real wages would be greater.

Is the so-called modern Tea Party a harbinger of a return, nation-wide, to conditions of the Thirties? We are not prophets, or gamblers, but a safe bet would be that the monies needed to maintain some sort of adequate social services, including Welfare, will continue to be raised in one way or another for the foreseeable future. But whether more of the tax burden will be levied by the Federal Government or not, the various sections of the capitalist class will go on trying to shift the burden from one set of shoulders to another. And the workers will go on allowing themselves to be kidded into supporting one group or other of their exploiters — until they get the message that the enemy is not taxes but the wages system itself.

Harry Morrison

WSP (Boston)

From America: Carter, credibility, confusion (1978)

Letter From America from the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ebb and flow of popularity “out there”, where it counts, is a matter of grave and continuing concern to political leaders. Whether it be a totalitarian regime, such as exist in the “Communist” nations or the limited parliamentary democracy as we have in the West, the ruling clique must keep its collective ear to the ground at all times if it would keep its collective head on its shoulders.

In the United States of America, where Presidential power is now constitutionally limited to an 8-year maximum (two terms), it is no less true. The popular surge that sweeps one group to control of the White House can dissipate quickly in the wake of adverse events that are beyond the control of whoever may be, supposedly, at the helm. Not much more than a year after taking office, a great many of his erstwhile supporters have all but ditched Mr. Carter and are casting their lines for a substitute to challenge him in the next Democratic Party Primary elections in 1980. They are already gambling that their Jimmy, their latest Man on the White Horse, has had it. And President Carter, in the prescribed manner, has been compelled to return to campaigning and waving a big stick (“jawboning” as they call it) at Big Business, Big Labor, the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association, all of which is calculated to endear him to many millions of voters and to shore up his sagging popularity.

It is, to be sure, early and “our” Jimmy could, conceivably, be pulled out of his current tailspin by some political “victory” in Congress, by an apparent sharp improvement in inflation and/or unemployment figures, or even by escalations and outbreaks in the Middle East, Africa, or elsewhere that might rally the majority around their current leaders. But for those whose careers are intertwined with the politics of Presidential aspirants, it not too soon to seek a new bandwagon. Their eyes are fixed upon the opinion polls and they seem to see the handwriting on the wall: a significant majority of the voters, according to the polls, feel that President Carter is “not doing a good job”; over 65 per cent of “influential” Americans believe that Carter is doing “somewhat worse” or “much worse” than expectations; and Senator Edward Kennedy, by a whopping majority, leads Jimmy Carter as an acceptable candidate in the 1980 elections (even though Kennedy has stated, with apparent firmness, that he will not run for the office and will support Carter).

At this point, it should be noted that there are certain more imminent dangers facing the Democrats in the wake of their current leader’s plummeting popularity and credibility. In the Congressional (“off-year”) elections scheduled for next November, there will be about twice the usual number of House seats up for grabs because some 40 Congressmen are calling it quits — not contesting. Normally, the party in power loses seats in the “off-year” races but this time, Republicans are drooling at the opportunity to make big gains because of a Democratic President who is widely regarded as inept.

Now that, in substance, is the situation in US politics today and no more need be stated here. Public opinion polls — and elections — are political barometers and everyone reads them in their own way. It does not matter a tinker’s damn which clique captures power in Washington; whether the Man (or perhaps, someday, a Woman) is good looking or ugly; white, black, or “other”; “straight” or “gay”; religious — of whatsoever variety — or atheist; liberal, conservative or radical (right or left). If the mandate is one of continuing a society based upon wage labor and capital; buying and selling; private or state ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth; the politicians’ performance is going to be, basically, the same. The brand name is of no importance, it is the generic name that counts. Wage labor and capital, whatever it might be called, means capitalism and while capitalism may be manipulated, in one way or another, by one variety or another of political and economic theorist it cannot be controlled.

So let us read America’s political barometer as it registers today, disregarding the particular, preferential indications and concentrating upon the general ones. The polls tell us that there is no discernible opposition in America to the present Capitalist society. The very fact that Carter has lost credibility and popularity among masses of the population and that these disappointed and disgruntled ethnics, blue collars, white collars, and whatever, are searching for a new champion to lead them proves the point. True, neither Gallup nor Harris nor any other polling organisation has ever put the one, important, question to a test: do you favour the outright abolition of the system of production for sale on a market with view to profit and the immediate introduction of a society based upon production for use, free right of access by all mankind to all that is in and on the earth? Do you favour capitalism or socialism? Such a question, at this stage, would cost the pollsters, themselves, credibility.

And yet that is the only question worth asking the electorate. We will continue to watch the political barometers for signs of meaningful change and do whatever is possible to spread the word. What else can one do that makes sense in a world of so much nonsense and confusion?

Harry Morrison,

WSP Boston

From America: Those “Neutral” Agencies of Capitalism (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps the number one source of confusion on the economics of capitalism, among capitalists and workers alike, is the fact that we live in a class society and that the needs of the capitalist class — as a class — are paramount. Since those needs are indissolubly wrapped up in the process by which labour is legally stripped of the enormous quantity of wealth it creates over and above what it gets in wages, for the perpetuation of capitalism as a system of society, any Government agency that purports to arbitrate the separate and distinct rights of labor and “management” can be neutral only within the framework of the capitalist philosophy, itself.

On the one hand, it must regulate and restrict labor in its attempts to organize while, on the other, it dictates to individual business the scope of its resistance and/or cooperation in such efforts. But the overall emphasis must be to keep capitalism operating as smoothly as is humanly possible. If, in the process, the agency tramps on the bunions of businesses by making decisions favorable to workers in labor disputes — or vice versa — what the hell! It’s all for the greater glory of capitalism. In the skirmishes between the owning and working class, each side wins some and loses some but the system, itself, always emerges the winner.

In the USA we have the National Labor Relations Board established as an “independent agency” of the Government by the National Labor Relations Act of July 5, 1935 (labor’s supposed “Bill of Rights”) during the first term of that widely recognized “champion of workers’ rights”, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and amended at various intervals since. The stated purpose:

The act affirms the right of employees to self organization and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing or to refrain from any or all such activities. To effectuate this policy, the act prohibits certain unfair labor practices and authorizes the Board to designate appropriate units for collective bargaining and to conduct secret ballots to determine the exclusive representative of employees. (United States Government Organization MANUAL 1967-68).

The assumption is, of course, that the interests of labor and those of capital are one: to maintain full production and, on the face of it, this would seem to be self-evident. Can there be any doubt that workers must, generally, have employment in order to survive? On the other hand, is it not plain that full production provides the greatest opportunity for a healthy economy? So why, then, is a “neutral” Government agency required to administer such obvious “apparentness?” To referee, so to speak, what is a continual slugfest between those “partners” in US capitalism? And is this not a strange sort of partnership, an odd common interest, when in the month of April, 1977:

Some 308,000 workers were involved in S50 strikes . . . when idleness attributed to labor turmoil rose for the third straight month. The Labor Department said 3 million work days were lost to strikes during April, about 1 million days more than the previous month.

(Boston Globe, 28th May 1977.)

No. Governments and their agencies can never represent the real interests of the working class because their very existence implies a master-slave relationship and the consequent need to hide it with a facade of “freedom” and “neutrality.” But there is more to this proposition than meets the eye of most, including the typical militant and left-wing champion of workers’ “rights.” The emphasis is not one of a simple struggle between individual (or even collective) capitalist industries and their particular working people but, rather, a determination on the part both of capital and labor-union hierarchies to maintain the present mode of production — class ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production and the wages, prices, profits system that goes with it. And any “victories” won by workers are pyrrhic victories because slaves cannot win anything of significance in a slave society.

And that is why the “executive committee of the capitalist class” and its agencies could not care less if it maims individual capitalists — regardless of their size — in the process of serving the total national interests. In US history, especially since the creation of the NLRB, there have been many instances of individual and collective working-class “victories.” Yet the American working class remains — with its brothers and sisters everywhere — sunk in wage slavery. A general recognition of this truth will be the first step toward freedom.

Harry Morrison, WSP, Boston.

From America: The Hospitalization business (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

When considering a subject such as the dispensing of health care to the working class a Socialist begins with a basic assumption, one which fits the real world of our times: The working class, generally, must be kept in some sort of adequate health if it is to function reasonably well and so requires a degree of medical attention along with the other items that go into producing and maintaining labour power—food, clothing, housing, transportation, luxuries of a sort. And it need hardly be stated that the well-being of the capitalist class dictates that the costs of producing and maintaining labour-power be constantly monitored and held in check. Hence, the continual hue and cry in the USA over the question of a national health programme.

As it is, today, there are various types of plans, some privately operated, with their own hospitals and staffs, by large capitalist industries and by some labour unions. There are also the state-regulated Blue Cross-Blue Shield Plans in which many employers of labour offer their help, totally or in part, as a “fringe benefit” (or equivalent plans sold by private insurance companies). And there are the Federal and State-operated Medicare (for 65-and-over) and Medicaid (for the indigent). But these plans are all expensive to operate and, in some cases, not too satisfactory in coverage and seem to invite a large element of graft and corruption. So, because the central organs of capitalist power are deeply involved, as it is, it is all understandable why opposition to some form of national health plan in this bulwark of “Free Enterprise” is steadily eroding.

In the meantime, the Carter Administration has stepped into the hospital picture and announced that it will seek to legislate a 9 per cent, per annum ceiling on hospital rate increases. (The going in-patient rate in Boston teaching hospitals, for example, hovers around $175.00 per day plus the various extra medical and surgical charges, and steadily rising. The costs of out-patient care, too, because of the sophisticated new equipment and highly trained technicians available, reach astronomical heights which can easily cause the uninitiated in other lands to believe that American workers are indeed wealthy). And hospitals, generally and understandably, are reacting unfavourably. The dispensing of health care might be their business but the proper balancing of books is equally important in a capitalist society, even for “non-profit” institutions. “We will have to cut back on patient care”, scream the administrators. And there are some interesting observations that can be made about the business.

For hospital administrators must steer a hazardous course between what to them are twin horrors: government “interference” (excepting when such interference is requested) and unionization of their personnel. Unions have made some inroads into American hospitals but they are by no means general and their strength is certainly limited. So, it is all but impossible for administrators to blame rising fees on union demands. But this is only half of the story.

There has sprung up a lucrative business of “union busting" public relations firms that has been meeting with much success in the hospital industry. In a column in Boston’s Real Paper for Oct. 16, 1976, we read:

Last spring, Massachusetts Hospital Workers began union drives . . . The hospitals responded by calling in heavy- duty outsiders, the Chicago-based labour relations firm. Melnick, Mickus and McKeown. which three years ago at B.I. (Beth Israel) helped defeat another organizing attempt. The Hospital Workers . . . added that the consultants cost the hospitals $150.00 an hour at a time when hospital rates are soaring . . .

Certain local politicians introduced a bill in the Mass. House aimed at such practices. The following quote from Vol. V, No. 13, of the MHA (Massachusetts Hospital Research & Educational Assoc.) Monday Report tells the story:

MHA membership reacted quickly and sharply last week, helping to thwart a bill outlawing certain labour relations expenses. The association had testified before the Health Care Committee in mid-March, opposing House 2889 which aims to remove from reimbursement any costs a hospital incurs when coping with union organizing efforts . . .

The member hospitals were alerted, the Senators contacted and the bill defeated, at least for the time being and the Health Care Committee promises to “follow it closely.”

Now the problems of hospital workers will not be solved by union organization notwithstanding certain advantages. Nor will workers, generally, be benefited if and when hospitals can no longer charge off union- busting costs to operating expenses. Hospital administrators are, primarily, business people and will always fix rates at what the market will bear. They are sellers of the commodity health care and that’s how it has been and will be until the working class gets rid of the commodity society—capitalism.

Harmo, WSP, Boston.

From America: Ethics and conflicts (1978)

A Letter from America from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ethics: the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. More and more is this word ethics becoming a commonplace in America. Switch on your TV or radio and you frequently catch discussions by politicians, business people, or youngsters aspiring toward a business or a political career on that subject. How much of a percentage of profit is within the bounds of ethics? How far may a political office-holder go in private business operations without being guilty of conflict of interest? And so on.

In passing, it is noteworthy that such concerns do surface among a population which—according to some members of the scientific community and most defenders of a competitive as opposed to a cooperative society— are naturally greedy and inherently inclined to get the better of one another. Interesting indeed that a system that legally enshrines the warning: caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) seems unable to suppress outraged reaction to certain consequences of that philosophy. Particularly now, in what has been called the post-Watergate era, are politicians who make up the several branches of the Federal Government fair game for investigative reporters and watchdog organizations. (Prime target today seems to be Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, quite possibly the second most powerful person in the US political scheme and, ironically, one of the first to “put the finger” on then President Nixon and to bring him down in disgrace. He has been a suspected link in the favor-buying activities in Washington of the South Korean CIA and he is currently being exposed in a personal “conflict of interest” operation; in brief, using his high office as a means of feathering his nest in a private business deal.)

The population, most of it working-class, is expected to be concerned about such matters. “It is our money they are squandering and appropriating . ." we are told by the petitioners for Congressional codes of ethics. And the reaction, generally, to the efforts of the crusaders for honest government falls into an expected pattern: (1) Agreement, “let’s put a stop to it!” or (2) a shrug of the shoulders and an attitude, expressed or silent, “what difference does it make? They’re all thieves!” All too infrequently is the petitioner confronted with the real world by a socialist who “tells it like it is”.

Whose Money?

The fact is that it is not our money and it is not the sort of crusade that those who must work for a living should interest themselves in. But it makes more sense to understand why this is so rather than to merely shrug it off as normal thievery. For with understanding can come desire to do something intelligent about ending the social arrangement that really does create our problems. It is not the illegal or shady operations, the conflicts of interest, by business people or politicians that bring us our miseries. The loot involved here is not working-class money but part of the surplus-value that has been legally expropriated from us in the honest operation of the capitalist system. “But see here!” they complain. “All that throwing around of Government money means that we have to pay more for everything.” Just like the effect on prices of shoplifting, according to popular propaganda. Any sort of thievery or extortion or conflict of interest forces prices upward, they argue.

But this is nonsense, as reflection should show. Prices are not determined, arbitrarily, by purveyors of merchandise. In the long run, they reflect the socially-necessary labor-time in the commodities and they are certainly affected by the state of the world market and by supply and demand. Merchandizers know that competition prevents them from marking prices up, at will. But there is another side to this question.

Can one imagine the effect on prices were illegal activity of all sorts to end? “Crime stocks” would plummet, bankrupting those companies involved in producing the variety of equipment used in combatting crime; unemployment would soar to all-time record highs; the sharp increase in Government moneys needed to augment social agencies would bring ruinous levels of inflation. Viewed from that angle (“conflict of interest”) violators, ordinary swindlers, and thieves of all sorts are performing a useful function in stabilizing prices to some extent, at least. So bourgeois economics would say . . .

So the question that should bother working people is: does it really matter to those whose lot it is to produce and surrender their surplus-value that a percentage of the loot is hi-jacked from the original expropriators? We think not. And as far as ethics is concerned, the very concept arises when the moral principles desired are not operable. Would you welcome a world in which mankind lives and works in harmony, where the interests of each are the interests of all, where conflict of interest is impossible? Such a world is possible but not before we get rid of world capitalism.

Harmo, WSP, Boston.

From America: "Making it" v World Socialism (1977)

A Letter from America from the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the entertainment business, good lines that catch the attention of the viewer are not easy to come by and many a Show Biz personality—whatever the field —must sweat blood to hold interest. Happily, though, there is one tried-and-true exception to this rule and any number of movie, radio and TV stars have used it to good advantage. It is the reminiscing by a successful one of his and his family’s earlier bout with poverty. If there is one tale that never goes stale with most audiences it is the saga of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, as the saying goes, or making it against the world on one’s merit. Having been the butt of capitalist propaganda from nursery school times, it is little wonder that the average worker continues to get a vicarious thrill from the rags-to- riches story.

Not that we would challenge the argument that it is still possible to work one’s way up the “ladder.” It is being done and we are more apt to hear of it now because of the growth of the media, particularly TV. But unlike news broadcasting, which features disasters, plain-and-simple entertainment does not generally deal with those who fall off the “ladder” or get stuck on the bottom rungs. It is the exceptional success that gets the play. For the entire philosophy and rationale of modern capitalism rests on the possibility of rising from rags to riches or, at the very least, the opportunity to combat and overcome economic adversity.

True, there is widespread admiration, even veneration—in America as in the “old countries"—for those who have inherited their wealth and status and who have never been compelled to do a day’s “honest” work in their entire lives. We have our “royalty,” too — the Rockefellers, Fords, Du Ponts, Kennedys, etc., almost any of whom have been or could be represented in the elective bodies of the land. But this is somewhat of an aberration in the general scheme of American capitalism. Lurking behind all of the professional representation of “black and city poor” in the USA by organizations—such as National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League is the philosophy of an individual’s right to “make it” if he has “what it takes” and is not being deliberately shut out by those in political control.

Item: The writer, James Baldwin, appearing recently on an educational Network broadcast, defended the looters in the recent NY City blackout, most of whom were black (as were their small-business victims). The looters had been conditioned, he contended, by the advertizing of a “consumer oriented” society to acquire status items so, when the opportunity presented itself, they took advantage of it. The problem, according to Baldwin, is that black workers are being deliberately deprived of the opportunity to live a good life by being denied good jobs with “decent” wages. The fault does not lie with the organization of society on the basis of wage-labor and capital, it would seem, but with those who are in a position to shut out blacks, especially, from opportunities to “make it.” An interesting aspect of that affair was the fact that those who committed arson as well as theft, did their victims a favour—at least those who were covered by fire insurance. On the other hand, and also of academic interest, was the response of horror from the authorities at the magnitude of the crime of looting. Hundreds of the culprits were incarcerated in cells with no facilities, and with no communication with lawyers or family permitted, during a record heat-wave while awaiting for days for arraignment. “Let the punishment fit the crime!” One example of “Human Rights” in the USA.

Now, Socialists maintain a “hands off” stance in regard to activity such as helping the city poor to “make it.” It is not that we object, in any way, to individual workers beating this jungle system. We all must live until we die and certainly it is easier to live under capitalism when one enjoys comparative affluence. Nor are we concerned, as an organization, with the manner in which one “makes it”—whether through inheritance or by one’s wits, legally or otherwise. Our goal is to spread a different gospel. It no longer makes sense to maintain a society wherein individuals have the need to acquire economic or political power in any degree whatsoever. Capitalist mass production techniques have long since made possible a world in which every man, woman and child can be secure by having the right to access to the goods and services that provide security. Modern capitalism must concern itself more and more with damning this potential by slamming production floodgates to accommodate a market. It is possible, given a sane system of society, to change the meaning of “making it.” When brain power no longer must be wasted on “beating the system” the frontier of the future will be unlimited.

Harmo, WSP, Boston.

From America: Snowbound in Boston (1978)

A Letter from America from the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time these words are published, the blizzard of 1978 that inundated the northeast coast of the USA with the largest snowfall in anybody’s memory, obliterated all highways and shut down most of the means of transportation, will be but a memory. They are being written on Feb. 8, the second day of the Governor’s Emergency and the pending Federal Disaster edicts that have put Boston and Massachusetts, generally, in the control of State and Federal authority. After more than 24 hours of steadily and rapidly accumulating snow— to a record total of 27 inches—plus hurricane-force winds of up to 100 miles an hour throughout the period, the clean-up operation has just begun. It is the second full day of following orders to remain at home and nothing much is moving in the Greater Boston area other than emergency equipment, police, soldiers, underground rapid transit, and so on.

Up-to-the-minute information on what is happening is being provided by the various TV and Radio stations and networks—as long as there are no breakdowns in transmitting equipment, and enough of a working staff is on the job, electronic news dispensing goes on. So there is no lack of the usual things that accompany disasters to write of—rescuing of trapped motorists in the thousands of stranded cars on the highways surrounding the city, life-saving operations along oceanfront residential areas where houses by the dozens were being destroyed by angry tides, general cooperation among “intrinsically competitive” (as some “scientists” would have it) human beings—and so forth. We shall leave that aspect to the professional journalists and concentrate upon some thoughts of what is happening from a socialist perspective.

To make a beginning, let us examine the state (small s) and its function in situations of this nature. The smaller divisions, such as city, town and country governments, soon must appeal to the main, centralized, authorities for help, so State (large S) and Federal politicians and troops take over. The Mayor takes a back seat. A sour-voiced Mayor Kevin White, of Boston, speaking over the radio via telephone, averred that “nobody” wants a Federal Disaster situation—something that is required before Federal troops and equipment can join in the rescue and clean-up efforts, it seems. (In Boston’s case, a convoy of army trucks has already arrived from a nearby Federal barracks while some 40 troop-and- equipment carrying planes are scheduled to land at the airport as soon as runways are cleared.) So the Governor of Massachusetts and the Federal politicians take over and the free publicity afforded them had a monetary value in the millions, particularly so in the case of Governor Michael Dukakis who must campaign for re-election this year.

But all of this is neither here nor there—really—to the mass of the working class. What is vital to the ruling class is that this enforced—and generally unpaid —respite from the daily grind does not last too long. When airports and railways are again operating, the well-heeled can take a well-needed vacation in sunnier climes. The rest of us stay put, trapped by financial circumstances even though no longer trapped by snow. Even the Federal troops will resume their daily grind of military duty, whatever, in their usual quarters when the Boston emergency is over.

Which brings us to the whole question of armed forces, why they exist, and whether or not a brand new, world socialist, society would need them. We have written, in the past, and will no doubt write more in the future, of the need for military in a world of competing nations and hostile economic classes. At this time, we shall touch upon this other duty that armies are frequently assigned—rescue and cleanup operations in areas of natural disasters. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons and deluges of rain or snow can well be expected to occur in a socialist world—such disasters are a-political. A well-trained and well-equipped force will always have to be available to handle such emergencies.

But note well: guns and other lethal weapons serve no purpose in humanitarian operations. Discouragement of and protection against looting, the so-called ugliest crime? (ugliest because it strikes at the vitals of capitalist rights). In Boston it didn’t take long before arrests became commonplace, seemingly concentrated in black, ghetto areas. Whv did the looters not satisfy themselves with merely taking merchandise, avoiding wanton destruction of property, as one TV newsman asked? It might well be that the vandalism among these black workers was a reaction against “whitey”. To militant blacks, even black businessmen can be thought of as a part of the white “Establishment”.

In any event, ethnic and “racial” hatreds could not exist in a sanely-organized world where the economic basis for such hatreds would be absent. Nor is looting conceivable in a society based upon common ownership and free right of access by all mankind to all of its needs. Is such a society impossible to achieve? Only if it proves to be impossible to organise a majority of the working class for such an immediate goal. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, socialists insist it is possible and shun all other political activity. This, is the (socialist) message from snowbound Boston, Mass.

Harry Morrison