Act in the Court: Dipti in the dock (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Standing there, just able to see above the top rail of the dock, Dipti did not look like a threat to the very fabric of civilised society. For one thing people who threaten civilisation are supposed to be reckless, defiant, composed. But Dipti was trembling and had desperate tears in her voice. And while she stood there civilisation, unthreatened, carried on outside the court. The list of cases for that day noted that she was charged with False Representation – between this date and that date, against the Benefits Agency, resulting in her being “overpaid” well over ten thousand pounds. In plain words – Daily Mail-speak – she was a Social Security fraudster, a benefits scrounger, a leech sucking the blood of the welfare state – a threat to civilised society.

Cases like this are prosecuted separately from the run-of-the-mill criminal charges, which are handled by the Crown Prosecution Service. Instead the Benefits Agency have their own lawyer to put to the court the details of the offences. The facts were, said the lawyer, that Dipti had applied for Income Support, stating that she had no other income. She had been sent a book of vouchers to cash each fortnight and on each of them she had signified that there had been no changes in her circumstances such as to affect her entitlement to benefit. But for some months she had been working as well. Nobody in court pointed out that the word “working” was hardly the right way to describe her experiences: “low paid, stressful drudgery” would have been more appropriate.

It was just another episode (although this was something the lawyer did not say) in a miserable life. Her parents were too poor to care for her properly and sent her to live with an aunt in England, in the hope that she would do better in another country. And so it turned out for a while, until both the parents died and her aunt, who she regarded as her mother, was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Alone and vulnerable, she was married when she was 18 and had three children. It was not the happiest of unions as her husband was an alcoholic who never had any silly ideas about supporting his children financially, which left Dipti to struggle on as best she could, doing whatever odd job was available, scraping a living for her family. It came as a relief when the husband left the home for good and when he had been gone long enough Dipti was able to get a divorce.

It would have been surprising if the children had come through this emotionally intact. And they didn’t: they behaved as might be expected of children whose short lives had been distorted by insecurity, violence and the stresses to be found in the deeper levels of poverty. They were, all three of them, incapable of coping with what is called – by courts, government agencies, the media – “normal” life. A psychiatrist, trained to brace people’s expectations of society to accept and tolerate the unacceptable and intolerable, would have interviewed each of them and written learned notes to the effect that they were “disturbed”. It is not their job, or within the scope of their training, to assess how “disturbed” is capitalist society; that might bring them to the conclusion that the people who react against the inhuman pressures of that society are sometimes healthier emotionally than those who are at ease with it.

In any case Dipti was too busy to bother about psychiatrists and their theories. She had found a job which suited her, allowing her to work irregular hours which could be fitted around the needs of her children – who were in their teens by then. It did not need any qualifications – she had problems with reading and writing – and provided periodical training. There were however two main snags. One was that it was demanding work and the other was that the wages were very low. It was agency work, as a care assistant, which meant Dipti had to visit people to do basic things which they could not do for themselves. From day to day she did not know where or when she would be asked to work; the agency would telephone her with the jobs on hand for that day. In fact she did get a lot of offers of work from the agency, because she had some huge debts and so was always eager to earn the extra money and she was always reliable and helpful.

There was a third snag. She did not tell the Benefits Agency about her job but carried on claiming Income Support, signing those vouchers to say nothing had changed for her. If she was ever bothered about this she told herself that after all each wage slip showed a reduction for Income Tax and in any case her husband had never paid anything towards the children’s’ upkeep. Did this not entitle her to some money from the state? But agency work is a field well-patrolled by the fraud seekers of the Benefits Agency and eventually they uncovered what Dipti had been up to. When they approached her she did not try to hide anything, although she was shocked when they told her how much she had been illegally paid. Her shock was not lessened when they also told her – a bit late in the day, some may think – that her wages had been low enough to qualify her for Family Credit, which over the period would have been worth some thousands of pounds – about a quarter of the amount she had overclaimed.

The lawyers briefed by the Benefits Agency do not as a rule prosecute with the same zeal as the Crown Prosecution Service. In cases of benefits fraud the facts are usually put to the court in the round, including some details which may make things easier for the person in the dock. So in that sense Dipti was not treated as harshly as she might have been – certainly not as she had feared. But of course the chairman of the bench had heard it all before, many times and he had come to the conclusion that the country was being overrun – and overturned – by people who were getting something for nothing – claiming state benefit which they were not legally entitled to. There is, he informed Dipti, too much of this going on. He had probably familiarised himself with the official estimate that social security fraud costs between £2bn and £4bn a year – and was too shocked to notice that the evidence to support those figures was so weak. It had got to stop. He stopped short of saying that he could do this all by himself. Instead he told Dipti she could well go to prison for this – all options were open. She would have to come back in a few weeks, after further enquiries had been made, when sentence would be passed. Meanwhile she could leave the court and civilisation, with its minority class getting a great deal for nothing through their exploitation of people like Dipti, could go on. Outside the court she grabbed her mobile phone and got on to the agency, asking what work they had for her for what was left of that day.

Ivan

Facts for Socialists. (1907)

From the June 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The contention of the Socialist that the whole working class is sweated is amply proved by the evidence of even our opponents. The National Anti-Sweating League, organised in a vain attempt to deal solely with the worst effects of capitalism, provides in its “Report of the Guildhall Conference on a Minimum Wage,” information from which may be deduced not alone the futility of the League’s attempt to destroy effects without removing the cause, but also the fact that the description given by the Socialist of the position of the working class is not in the slightest exaggerated.

Mr. Stephen Walsh, M.P., in the course of a paper on “Present Steps towards a Minimum Wage”, said:

“The average wage paid by the employer in 1888 was 5s. a day for the collier in the Federation area. Even in the great lock-out in 1893, when the colliers’ earnings had been uplifted by 40 per cent., the collier could not be earning more than 7s. a day. That might be considered to be a big figure compared with other unskilled trades. But the trade was of a very fluctuating character. It must be remembered that the men were not working more than nine days in the fortnight—in the Midlands, pits were not worked more than three or four days a week. That means that the average wage of the coal hewer comes out at about 28s. a week—a figure borne out by statistics of the money paid in compensation claims. That is the very best class of workman.

“It was in 1894 that a Conciliation Board was formed consisting of twelve representatives from each side, with an independent chairman, who was called upon in the event of disagreement. In 1893 the employers asked for 25 per cent. reduction, and it will be remembered what a terrible lock-out ensued, causing suffering not only to the men but to the public. In 1894 the Conciliation Board was formed, and the men assented to a 10 per cent. reduction. In 1894-96 the Board continued. It lapsed for two years, was revived in 1898, and has since been renewed at periods of three years.

“Although the men have this means of defending themselves, they are still earning, roughly, about 28s. a week. Women and boys are very largely outside the union. The girls working on the surface are also not in the union. In fact, it may be said that something like 80 per cent. of the surface hands are not in any organisation, with the consequence that in negotiations with the employers the men are constantly told that these people must be excluded from consideration. The growing youth cannot have his wages determined by the Board, but they are fixed by the employer’s estimate of his usefulness.

“Girl labour on the surface has existed for more than 30 years, and Lancashire especially suffers from it. A few pits in the south-west district and a large number in Scotland also employ girl labour. Thirty years ago girls were paid anything from 1s. 4d. to 2s. 6d. on the pit banks, and they were working, certainly, not longer hours than at present—even shorter hours in Lancashire. The chances are that a woman will now earn from 1s, 3d. to 2s., 1s. 8d. being about the average. As the working hours are about nine and a half per day the wage cornea out very little better than 2d. an hour. It might be said that the work did not require much skill or physical energy. Cleaning the dross is not heavy work, and pushing the waggons has been done away with. But many of the women are exposed to the inclemency of the weather. The fact remains, too, that these girls are earning less than they did 30 years ago, and have to depend partly for a living upon the earnings of fathers and brothers in the mine. In no case, if we take Lancashire, are the women working, even in good years, more than nine days a fortnight; and a wage of 6s. 9d. a week, with a reduction for the club of which she is a member, is utterly insufficient for a woman’s subsistence wage. Twenty-eight shillings a week paid to a collier are practically wages paid to him and his girls, so that their combined wages may eke out a family living.

“Whereas twenty years ago day wage men were earning 4s. to 5s. a day we find that to-day little more than 40 per cent. is suggested to have been placed on their wages.

“I can only say that this apparent improvement in the men’s position is very illusory ; the generosity of the employer has not been applied. As a matter of fact, when the increased hours of work and the higher price of fuel, household commodities and house rent are considered, the day hands in the mine are in a worse condition than they were eighteen years ago.

“Although one of the most powerful of the trade organisations has been endeavouring to establish a minimum wage for the coal mining industry in the federated area, it has so far not succeeded in doing so. An attempt has been made to abolish the piece rate but there is the risk of inviting competition and bringing in the unemployed compelled by physical necessity. It has been generally found that if a man leaves work in a mine the man who takes his place earns sixpence a day or so lower than the wages his predecessor received. Again, the mining tonnage rate is no indication of the earning capacity of a man. The diversities are so infinite that it is impossible to say what a man can earn on a particular tonnage rate, and so the decision is left to the caprice of the official in the mine.

“We have, however, established over large areas not the mere field rate but price lists and working conditions that have focussed and crystallised payment for varying conditions in the mines. But there is a large section of the mines in which this particular work has not been done.

“Nevertheless, 18 years of continuous effort has failed to delete the present wages system, failed to establish a minimum wage. I can only ask the Conference to consider if a great organisation numbering well over three hundred thousand workers has failed to do this what must be the task of establishing a minimum wage in an industrial body which is hardly organised at all.”

Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., in dealing with “Sweating in relation to the National Dividend” said :

“The existence of an enormous number of poor people in what is reputed to be a wealthy country is vaguely known and as vaguely wondered at. It should be the endeavour of everyone who is interested in any one or all of the many phases of poverty to acquaint himself specifically with the best information which is available as to the actual amount of poverty which exists, and as to the facts relating to the manner of distribution of wealth which makes poverty so common. Armed with this material, those who sympathise with the sweated can show with near approximation what amount of underpayment of labour exists throughout the country as a whole, and the criminality of gross underpayment in view of the available resources of the nation.

“By the National Dividend we mean the aggregate of all the incomes, large and small, of the people of the United Kingdom. We can form an approximately correct idea of its extent by adding to the incomes of the income tax paying classes, as ascertained by the Inland Revenue authorities, an estimate of the total amount of wages and small salaries earned by those who have not the pleasure of paying income tax. I give a brief account of how I arrived at the income of the British people in 1904.

“First I take the gross assessment to income tax for 1903-4 which is nearly £903,000,000. I correct this, on the one hand, by deducting items which are not real income, such as the cost to a landlord of repairing his house, etc., and, on the other hand, for amounts of income which ought to come, but which do not come, under the attention of the authorities. These various corrections, with the details of which I do not burden this paper, reduce the £903,000,000 of gross assessment to £830,000,000, which figure represents the net income enjoyed by the income tax paying classes.

“Now that disposes of an enormous amount of income, but only of a very small number of people, for the income tax is levied upon those who are in receipt of upwards of £160 a year, so that we have not got very far in point of population. Below the income tax line we have to deal with not only the whole of what are commonly called the manual labour classes, but with those other orders of poor people who, in a very real sense, are working men, viz., small tradesmen, clerks, shopmen, travellers, canvassers, teachers, agents, small farmers, inn-keepers, lodging house keepers, civil servants, pensioners, and so forth. From a close examination of the census records I have arrived at the conclusion that there are about three millions belonging to those occupations who earn less than £3 a week. How much do they earn on the average ? I have gone over that very carefully and believe that their average earnings cannot be placed higher than £75 a year, ranging from the 8s. or 10s. a week of the office boy to the £3 a week of the superior clerk. Accepting this estimate tentatively, we get as the income of this particular part of the working population £225,000,000.

“It remains to deal with the greatest bulk of all, viz., the manual workers commonly so-called, including, in addition to all those engaged in agricultural, industrial, and domestic service, soldiers, sailors, policemen, and postmen.

“Those, using the census of 1901 as a basis, I estimate to number 15,000,000, men, women, boys, and girls, in the year 1904. Unfortunately, we have not in this country, as we ought to have, a permanent and continuous census of wages. We are very neglectful in the matter of records, and the only official census of wages which we have ever made was got out in 1886 by the Board of Trade. I have used this as a basis and allowed for the changes of wages which have taken place since that date.

“In 1886, the average wage, giving due weights to the respective proportions of men, women, and children, was only 17s. 6d. per week. In 1904, allowing for the general rise in wages in the interval, it amounted to 20s. 6d. per week. It should be borne in mind that this figure represents rates of wages and not earnings. If we want earnings we must make an allowance for idleness from whatever cause arising, whether from sickness, accident, lock-out, strike, weather, slack time, total unemployment, or drink. Allowing for these things, we cannot assume that the average wage is earned for more than 44 weeks out of 52 weeks in such a year as 1904—20s. 6d. a week for 44 weeks means £45 in the year.

“But we have to consider that not all those who figure in the census sheets as manual workers can be counted as normal workers. There is the great army of casuals, ne’er-do-wells, aged persons, men and women broken in health, and last, but not least, those employed in what are called sweated industries. I do not think that, of the 15,000,000 manual workers, we can estimate these most unfortunate of the industrial army at less than one-fifteenth of the whole, or say, 1,000,000 persons. The earnings of these 1,000,000 persons I estimate at £25,000,000 per annum, or an average of about 10s. per week per person.

“The remaining 14,000,000 manual workers I assume to draw the average earnings of £45 a year already referred to, which amounts to £630,000,000. With the £25,000,000 of the unfortunate 1,000,000 persons we arrive at £655,000,000 as the total earnings of the manual labourers in 1904.

“We have now got out the aggregate income of the United Kingdom, made up as follows :—

(a) Those with over £3 a week… £830,000,00

(b) Those with less than £3 a week (Manual workers £655,000,000 plus, lower middle classes,

£225,000,000) ……£880,000,000

……………….£1,710,000,000

“It will be seen that the income respectively above and below the income tax line of £3 per week is almost equal in amount. £830,000,000 lies above the line ; £880,000,000 lies below the line.

“The important consideration now arises, how many people enjoy these respective amounts of income—how many people in our nation of 43,000,000 people have over £3 per week? This important question I have been able to answer, and as the method of obtaining the answer has survived a great deal of both friendly and hostile criticism, it may be taken as being as nearly accurate as is needed for a proper judgment to be formed in the matter. The number of income tax paying individuals is, as nearly as possible, one million. It follows that nearly half of the income of the nation is possessed by one million people, who, if each of them be taken as a representative of a family of five, stand for only 5,000,000 people in the nation of 43,000,000 people. The second half of the national dividend is shared up by the balance of the nation, viz., 38,000,000 of people.

“These are exceedingly significant and extraordinary facts, but even more significant and extraordinary is the further calculation which I will now put before you.

“I have been able to split up the one million income tax payers at the £700 a year line. Between £160 a year and £700 a year there are 750,000 taxpayers, representing 3¾ millions of people, who take only £245,000,000 out of the £830,000,000. The balance of the £830,000,000 is £585,000,000, and this enormous sum is the annual income of only 250,000 taxpayers, who represent with their families not more than 1¼ million of the entire population. Broadly speaking, one-thirtieth of the entire population take more than one-third of the entire national dividend of the country. To put it in another way, 1¼ million people take in rent and interest a sum as large as the entire earnings of the manual labour classes, who, with their dependents, number 30,000,000 of people.

“The 250,000 taxpayers who take nearly £600,000,000 worth of income, include in their number, of course, the owners of practically all the factories, docks, warehouses and workshops of the country. The small number of income tax payers will, perhaps, not seem so surprising if it is remembered that there are only 100,000 factories in the whole of the United Kingdom, while the total number of factories, workshops, docks, wharves, quays, and warehouses registered in the United Kingdom does not amount to more than about 250,000.

“There is much talk of small shareholders, but as a matter of fact, shareholders, both large and small, are remarkably few. There is a firm in the City—Messrs. George S. Smith and Son—who collect all shareholders’ names, and make an alphabetical list of them for advertising purposes. Mr. George Smith informs me that there are only 500,000 names on his lists, which are practically complete, so that of the 1,000,000 people above the income tax line, only one-half are shareowners. The whole of the railway stock of the country is owned by only 180,000 people.

“It would be the easiest possible matter, if I had time, to put before you hundreds of current balance sheets, and to show you by existing examples the manufacture in detail of the contrasting elements of Riches and Poverty, which I have already shown you in the gross. The process is going on every where around us, and I hold that it is futile to talk about remedies for sweating while we consent to methods which produce poor people who, in their turn, are catered for by the supply of sweated products. The poor are the chief customers of the sweater.

“I do not propose to place many examples before you, but content myself by presenting several striking ones which may be taken as illustrative rather than exceptional. I have examined for 1904 the balance sheet of Messrs J. Lyons and Co., who employ a very large number of young girls at low wages. I find that the Company’s gross profits on trading for that year are £474,000, while salaries, wages, rents, rates, repairs, horse-keep, maintenance, etc., only come to £327,000. There was, therefore, a net profit of £147,000. I don’t know exactly what salaries and wages come to, but it is clear from the balance sheet that they were less than the £147,000 worth of profit. Thus the sleeping partners got more than the working partners.

“The case of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Electric Supply Company Limited is even clearer. I have the balance sheet for 1905 which shows that the people of Newcastle paid the Company £145,000 for Electric current, etc., and that the Company paid for rent, coal, etc., only £37,000 ; for wages only £34,000, leaving a profit of £74,000. Here the sleeping partners took far more than the working partners.

“Take again the National Telephone Company’s balance sheet for 1904. The public paid the Company £2,000,000, and the total outlay for rents, wages, materials, management, etc., was £1,150,000 leaving a net profit of £850,000. It is perfectly clear from these figures that the sleeping partners took far more than the working partners.

“I should like it to be particularly observed that when I refer to wages in connection with these balance sheets I mean not only wages for manual labour but for mental labour also.

“I repeat that it is unnecessary to multiply examples but these lamentable contrasts between profits and wages are a common-place of limited ability balance sheets.

“It is the fact that the underpayment of labour is deliberately counted upon which makes it possible for company promoters to promise large dividends. Thus, in a gas company prospectus issued in the public press in 1905, it was deliberately calculated that labour, manual and mental, would cost less than £2,000 per annum, while nearly £6,000 of profit per annum would result from the operations.

“It should not be forgotten, also, that ursury grows by what it feeds on. As soon as the big dividend is realised, ursury can claim its capital value in the stock market and the rise in value of the shares, instead of adding to the remuneration of the worker, actually becomes a weapon to be used against him. This, again, I may illustrate. I wrote in the Daily News of the 30 per cent. dividends and the low wages of Messrs. Lyons and Co. An indignant shareholder immediately wrote to me to point out that: “Most of the shareholders have paid £6 or £7 per share, and so get a return of not more than 5 per cent.”

Voice From The Back: Thought for food (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thought for food

Back in the summer, the weather expert in the Guardian chatted about global warming and came to the conclusion that it was capitalism that would cause the problems, not carbon dioxide. She or he said: “[A] Deep Truth about world food supply . . . has been clear since the Science Policy Research Unit made an in depth analysis of climate and world food in the 1970s. There is no difficulty in growing enough food to feed even the increased population of the globe in the 21st century, however the climate changes. The reason why there are famines now, and will be in the future, is that food is not distributed evenly. On many scenarios, the overall effect of global warming will be to increase world food supply. But the haves are likely to have even more, while the have nots experience the droughts and famines. People starve because of politics, not because of the weather.”

It’s a business

As the law stands, dealers in illegal drugs can register their trade for tax purposes and tax officials will protect their identify from the police and other government agencies . . . A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said: “Tax law does not discriminate between profits made from illegal or legal activities. We only report taxpayers to the police if we suspect they are involved in murder” (Independent on Sunday, 16 November)

It’s a crime!

Magistrates in Wales have fined a woman £200 for possessing a tiny piece of cannabis with an estimated street value of 50p. The 23-year-old single mother pleaded guilty to have 0.2 grammes of cannabis at her home in Cernarth, Dyfed, and on top of the fine was order to pay £40 costs. Her solicitor, Mr Alan Lewis, said. “The drug seized was no more than the size of a grain of rice, barely enough to smoke. It was so small she could have brushed it off the table and no one would have known” (Independent on Sunday, 16 November).

New sweatshops

Automatic all distribution (ACD) and information and communication technology (ICT) have enabled call centres to become hugely powerful business machines, and the UK has proudly assumed the mantle of Europe’s “call centre capital”. With more than 250,000 people already employed in call centres, and around 1 million expected to join them by the end of the decade, it is the fastest growing employment sector of the economy . . . Call centres are all about cost reduction. If companies learned one lesson from the recession it was from Direct Line founder Peter Wood’s brainwave: slashing wage bills by replacing hundreds of high street outlets with a shed full of telephones . . . In several of the largest call centres, operators are virtually chained to their desks, even having to ask permission for toilet breaks . . . John Orsmond, chairman of Advertising Research Marketing, which advises advertisers on how to use call centres, says he knows of employers in Scotland paying rates as low as £2.35 an hour.

A grateful nation

An 81-year-old crippled war veteran who was refused a place in a care home by his local authority, threw himself under a train after his pleas for help were ignored, a Northern Ireland inquest heard yesterday . . . Mr McLarnon has been taunted by youths for being an ex-soldier, the court heard. On the day he died, he had visited his local British Legion club—as he usually did—and asked friends for help. He had only 63p in his bank book and did not have enough for his bus fare home. Elizabeth Thompson, nursing manager of the Somme home for ex-soldiers in Belfast, said she had recommended Mr McLarnon’s admittance but the health board has refused to fund it. Health chiefs had been “irate” about the pressure being put on them (Guardian, 13 November).

Giving thanks

As the service of thanksgiving for the life of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith entered its second hour at St John’s in London’s Smith Square on Thursday, the first of the 700-plus congregation began to leave. Baroness Thatcher, who was due at another memorial service, for Viscount Tonypandy, was followed by GEC boss Lord Weinstock and the Earl of Suffolk. In the event the celebration lasted more than two hours, something of a shock for Goldsmith’s widow lady Annabel . . . (Mail on Sunday, 16 November).

Does unemployment matter? (1987)

From the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month, thousands of unemployed people will ignore the call to link Hands Across Britain. The last thing they want to do is to draw attention to the fact that they have no jobs. Instead, they will be quietly returning to the Mediterranean for the spring. The winter sports are now well behind them. The hunting and shooting seasons are over. And they are coming back to their yachts and villas and hotels in the better class resorts all around the shores from Portugal to Greece.

It does not worry them that they are without jobs. They do not suffer depression through feelings of uselessness or lack of purpose in life. They do not fret that their skills are being superseded by new technology. Their self-respect is not damaged in the slightest because they do not work. In fact, they would be insulted if you seriously suggested that they might need to.

The reason for this, of course, is that they are not members of the working class. They do not queue to sign on at the Unemployment Benefit Office. They are not concerned about being credited with their National Insurance contributions, or obtaining Supplementary Benefit, or Rate Rebate, or Rent Allowance, or any of the other scraps of relief for destitute poverty which are becoming essential for a growing percentage of working class people. They have ample wealth. The dividends, rent or interest on their investments flow into their bank accounts in what must seem like a natural stream needing only occasional tending by their stockbroker or accountant. The necessities and even the ordinary comforts of life arrive as a matter of course, so that they are free to get on with the business of living an interesting life.

Nearly all of them are born to this life style, and see nothing remarkable in it. Their family lives and public schooling, followed by the hectic club and social life of Oxford and Cambridge, have given them the confidence and social polish to live like "ladies and gentlemen", receiving courteous service and luxurious surroundings as their due.

In very different surroundings, thousands of youngsters born into the working class in the last twenty years have begun to accept a dole from the state as their due. Finding no employer to buy their working abilities when they have left comprehensive school or university. they have reconciled themselves to a low effort existence on a low standard of living. If they have left their parents' home, as many have, they live on scratch meals in cold, damp rooms and enjoy wearing second hand clothes. They get up late in the morning because the occupation of doing nothing is warmer and less boring when done in bed.

The forthcoming Conservative election manifesto promises to put an end to this. What concerns Conservatives, however, is not the boredom and frustration of a life of poverty, but the possibility that these youngsters, like their social betters, will grow up with no wish to work. According to Lord Young, the Employment Secretary, the manifesto contains plans to prevent workshy adolescents going straight from school to dole. Those who fail to get a job must accept a place on a Youth Training Scheme. If they refuse, their payments will be stopped. He was asked in a BBC radio interview in March if this scheme really amounted to conscription of the young unemployed. He said. “I would call it the conscription of common sense. I don't think many young people would say, 'I am just entitled to get money and lie in bed.' " But, of course, that depends on whether the young people belong to Lord Young's class or ours.

The Youth Training Scheme, like the succession of schemes launched during two Conservative governments, have almost no organised training in them, because the facilities simply do not exist. The merits of the schemes from the government's point of view are mainly twofold. In the short term, forcing people into workplaces has the effect of exerting a downward pressure on the wage levels of those who are in work. The long-term purpose, however, is to provide work experience. If working class youngsters are to be worth employing the next time industry is ready to make a profit out of them. they must be accustomed to the world of work. They must knuckle down to the discipline of obeying orders and accepting the hierarchical structure of management and bureaucracy. They must come to accept as a fact of life the discomfort and grime and squalor that exist in so many thousands of workplaces. They must get used to the boredom of endlessly repetitive or meaningless operations. They must fight the daily fight to get to work on time, to punch their clock card before they incur a pay stoppage. They must develop a tolerance for the length of the working day. They must get into the rhythm of the working week. And they must learn to look forward gratefully to a lifetime of this stultifying drudgery as being far preferable to being unemployed.

This month, Lord Young and the wealthy unemployed class he represents must all be gratified to see that they have continued support in their schemes to keep the British working class keen to be exploited by them. Support from whom? From the British Labour movement and the political parties of the Left.

Hands Across Britain is a campaign that pleads for jobs. Like the Right To Work marches of a few years ago, it is a thoroughly pro-capitalist demonstration.

  Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!" (Karl Marx: Value, Price & Profit, 1865, sometimes entitled Wages, Price & Profit).

Marx demonstrates repeatedly in his writings that it is not any malfunctioning of the capitalist economy that causes working class people hardship and distress. It is the very system of employment itself: the core of capitalism. Members of the capitalist class are able to spend the spring yachting or gambling on the Riviera only because, somewhere. there are workers producing the wealth that flows into their bank accounts. And their bank accounts accumulate into vaster and vaster fortunes with the onward strides of technology because they own all of society's means of production and distribution and administration. All the new advances and inventions and constructions created by the workers belong, according to the rules, to the owners.

Because the great majority of us do not own this sort of wealth we have no choice but to try to sell them our ability to work for the greater part of our waking lives. Whether they buy and what price they pay depends on the market and our power to bargain. But on average it will be the cost of our keep. When we can not produce an acceptable level of profit for them, they do not buy — we are unemployed.

Margaret Thatcher and other members of the present government have repeatedly outlined what they see as the solution to this problem of unemployment, of not being able to sell our working abilities: we should drop our prices (wages). To encourage this, they have started a scheme which subsidises, at £15 a week, employers who pay less than £55. But it is happening, in any case, in those parts of the country where unemployment levels are high. In Sandwell in the West Midlands, for example, an 18-year-old hairdresser earns £31.75 gross for a 50-hour week. Low pay in this area has become just as much a scourge as unemployment. And it has a long way to go yet if market competitiveness operates fully in determining wages.

Factory workers in South Korea were featured in a television programme earlier this year. In the clean, modern Samsung factory making television receivers the women assembly workers worked a 12½ hour day for 26 days a month for $250, which works out at about 48p an hour. South Korea has a booming economy. The South Korean government, which viciously controls its workers, has also imposed very strict controls on the foreign capital from all over the world which is clamouring to invest there. The Korean capitalist class, and the American companies like Ford, General Motors, IBM, which have ties with Korean companies, do not want to let outsiders share in their exploitation of these new and defenceless recruits to the world's working class. Accordingly, foreigners may invest only through special Korea Funds and Eurobond issues. In this way, Korea gets fairly cheap capital by promising freer investment opportunities in the future.

It is not unemployment but employment that sucks the life blood of Korean workers. And it is the lack of any other means of making a livelihood which forces them to submit to it. They would be worse off if they were unemployed but not much. For them — as for us — unemployment is one of the features of the employment system. What really matters to workers, in or out of work, is how big a fraction of the wealth which they have produced they can get for themselves. Trade union organisation and years of political activity in the older capitalist nations have achieved some modest and precarious safety margins. But the rise of new industrial nations like those of Eastern Asia, while old industrial nations like those of Europe decline, demonstrates the weakness of this way of trying to combat the power of capital. It also demonstrates very forcibly that the working class has got to organise worldwide (as capital does) if we are to avoid being repeatedly outmanoeuvred and used to defeat each other.

While the working class accepts employment we shall inevitably get periodic high unemployment with it. as one of its phases. But what we really want to achieve is freedom from employment. What prevents us is not a shortage of wealth, but the fact that the capitalists own and control all the means of making wealth. And they won't — can't — let them be operated unless they yield a profit. And the logic of profit is a 325-hour month in Korean sweat shops while there is 12 per cent unemployment in Europe.

In human, social terms, this is idiotic. The waste is colossal. The quality of life for most members of our class is poor if not abysmal. We are quite capable of producing ample wealth for everyone — but not until we have got rid of employment and begin to work for ourselves.

Ron Cook

"Higher Prices Mean Fewer Jobs." (1921)

From the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., on Unemployment

Mr. Marriott has been offering a solution for the problem of unemployment, and the headline quoted above from the Evening News (September 13th) is the text he uses.

His article is more moderate in tone, and contains a larger measure of truth and accurate observation than one expects to find nowadays among those newspapers described as "competent to write authoritatively." He starts by making what must necessarily be for his readers a serious and distinctly unusual admission about industrial crises like the present : "Such crises have recurred at more or less regular intervals during the last century and a quarter," but he believes, in spite of this, "that the overthrow of the existing order would involve us in far more acute and general distress than anything we are likely to suffer during the difficult months ahead."

There is more truth in that last remark than Mr. Marriott thought, and I agree that for him it is not an unreasonable statement; but it is necessary to have clearly in mind to whom that "we" refers. "We," the comfortable and leisured class to which Mr. Marriott belongs, are not suffering from the prevailing unemployment, "we" never have so suffered, and, whoever else does, "we" shall see to it that "we" never do. But what of the future ? If capitalism is overthrown, what happens to "us" and our privileged position ? Is it not enough to make the most open-minded of the capitalist economists pause when they find the direction in which their investigations are leading them ; to make them turn back from the path to the future which the workers alone can follow, and announce that the existing system is the sublime height of mankind's upward progress. "After us the deluge" ?

"What, then, is the cause of the phenomenon of recurrent unemployment, and what is the appropriate remedy ?" Mr. Marriott dismisses off-hand the "glib answer of the Communists" that capitalism is the cause, and work or full maintenance, and the immediate abolition of the system, the ultimate remedy.

He admits that crises are "the concomitant of the new order in industry initiated by the industrial revolution," and that unemployment is "an incident—perhaps an inevitable incident—of large-scale production for a world market" ; but this, he says, is not capitalism. I would like then to ask what was the "new order initiated by the industrial revolution" ? What was it if not modern capitalism ? Where can Mr. Marriott find an instance of "large-scale production for the world market" except under capitalism?

Although Mr. Marriott cannot face his own conclusions, he admits our case in its entirety. Unemployment is part, and an essential part of the system under which we live. He even goes so far as to speak of "that reserve of labour upon which the periodic prosperity of an industry is dependent." It is, in fact, just because Mr. Marriott cannot help but recognise, as we do, that capitalism and unemployment are inseparable, that he does not even claim to have found the solution he set out to discover.

The utmost he can do is to suggest the speediest and least difficult way out of the present state of stagnation, without touching what he himself admits to be the real problem, the recurring crises.

Again, he tells us that prior to the present era chronic unemployment was unknown. Why, then, must we acknowledge our impotence to escape an alleged "inexorable economic law" which had no terrors for our ancestors of some hundreds of years ago ? Are we patiently to accept starvation for our class, knowing as we do that our powers of wealth production are a hundred times greater than then, just because of the class-biassed economic theories of Mr. Marriott ?

"So long as countries were self-supporting in agriculture and industry, crises occurred only at rare intervals, being the outcome of pestilence or famine, or some great upheaval in the natural world." Poverty is no longer the result of natural phenomena; it is a product of society itself, of artificially restricted production, and unequal distribution of the product.

Mr. Marriott criticises the "Communists" for wanting to return to pre-capitalist conditions, but does not give evidence that they ever propagated such an absurdity. Anyhow, we know, and Mr. Marriott knows, that it cannot be done.

The case Mr. Marriott has to meet is this. He admits the existence in the recent past of a form of social organisation to which unemployment was unknown; he admits also the enormous increase of productivity since the inception of modern capitalism. What, then, is the factor, or what even is the kind of factor, which prohibits production for use instead of for private profit ?

In further criticism of the "Communists" he cites the experience of Louis Blanc in 1848 with his "national workshops" and the application of the theory of "the right to work." He rightly says the provision of full maintenance for the unemployed is incompatible with the continuance of capitalism. Louis Blanc learned by experience what everyone now knows to be true. But here, again, Mr. Marriott might observe that the "Communist Party" have explicitly conceded the impossibility of their demand being met; it would mean "suicide for the capitalist class." Incidentally, it illustrates the dangerous tendency of "Communist Party" propaganda that the uninstructed sympathy of the unemployed should be gained by promises incapable of fulfilment.

Now we come to Mr. Marriott's remedy. It is that the wages of those still in work must be lowered. Lower wages—lower prices—more foreign trade—work for the unemployed.

It looks sound, but the chain has weak links. Firstly, lower wages mean not lower prices, but higher profits; and, secondly, this solution, if otherwise genuine, can only help one country at the expense of others. Can that be a solution for a problem of world-wide magnitude ? There is no corner of the capitalist earth immune from the effects of industrial, commercial, and financial depression.

The argument that the workers must accept less wages to enable their employers to compete with the sweating "foreign" manufacturer is used in every country in the world, unfortunately with some effect. But has anyone ever heard of an employers' association which proposed to deal with such a situation by assisting the unfortunate foreign worker to organise and improve his status ? No, because the capitalist will always sell his goods at the maximum the market will bear, and he knows that the paying of a wage higher than he can compel his employees to accept is a dead loss to him, a subtraction from his profits.

True, prices must come down, for the simple and sufficient reason that stocks in hands are great and the owners cannot all wait indefinitely for an increased demand. They want ready money, and must sell at a reduction, at a loss even. Every penny, therefore, they can knock off their labour costs is a clear gain to them. Hence Mr. Marriott's anxiety on behalf of the capitalist class to persuade the out-of-work that his enemy is the employed man who stands out against wage cuts. In conclusion, as
against Mr. Marriott's dicta that "the utmost the workless can claim is subsistence," and that "those in work must be content with something not much above that level," our advice is, that while capitalism lasts, the workers, whatever their condition, in work or out, will get, and will be entitled to, just as much as they can compel the capitalist class to give them. It is to be hoped that they will soon become so dissatisfied with their meagre portion that they will join us in getting the whole
lot, the earth.

Edgar Hardcastle

Rear View: Science v. superstition (2020)

The Rear View Column from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Science v. superstition

Donald Trump’s appointment of vice-president Pence as head of the US response to the coronavirus provoked rage and ridicule from health professionals and others. Pence is a lawyer. Does he expect to stop the virus by serving it a writ?! Socialists here are perhaps for the first time in agreement with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: ‘Mike Pence literally does not believe in science,’ she tweeted… ‘It is utterly irresponsible to put him in charge of the US coronavirus response as the world sits on the cusp of a pandemic. This decision could cost people their lives. Pence’s past decisions already have,’ she said. Ocasio-Cortez reminded people of Pence’s credentials for the job: ‘While he was governor of Indiana, he oversaw an HIV crisis that was so severe that at its peak, 20 new cases of HIV were diagnosed every week. As governor, Pence’s science denial contributed to one of the worst HIV outbreaks in Indiana’s history’ (theguardian.com, 28 February).


Reform or revolution

Given a choice between a voice of reason Democrat such as AOC and a bible-thumping, science-denying Republican e.g. Pence, who is more deserving of the socialist vote? Neither. Both support capitalism. Science aside, the real question is do we want to end war and want or not? Leftist luminaries, including Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich and Michael Albert ignore the lessons of history and support the ‘lesser evil’. Their open letter (truthdig. com, 24 January) states ‘…real solutions require Trump out of office. Real solutions will become far more probable with Sanders or Warren in office… ‘ Slavoj Zizek agrees: ‘…US political life to be radically reinvented… Sanders is to be unconditionally supported’ (rt. com, 11 February). The Sanders ‘meantime’ must be a capitalist meantime and is no responsibility of those who seek to replace it with a better system. The establishment of socialism depends on a majority of us withdrawing our support of capitalism. It becomes practicable only to the extent that socialist ideas are accepted, and it will become a reality when action in line with those ideas is taken. Supporting Sanders or any leader amounts to trying to patch up capitalism, the existence of which is the cause of the problems we all want to solve.


More of the same

That reformists such as Sanders do not represent a threat to the status quo is confirmed by history and current mainstream comment. ‘It should be clear to anyone who is not trying to frighten voters that Sanders is a social democrat… ‘(marketwatch.com, 11 February). MarketWatch, it should be noted, is an American financial information website that provides business news, analysis, and stock market data. It is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp, which also owns The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. Similarly, we read: ‘In capitalist mecca Las Vegas, social democrat Sanders cements Democratic front-runner status’ (cbc.ca, 23 February). ‘Like most Democrats, Kimberly Carr said she’d vote for anyone against Trump. But she wants Sanders. The VIP host at the Bellagio supported Elizabeth Warren, then switched to Sanders on the second ballot in Saturday’s caucuses. She said the party needs someone with fire in the belly and bold policy ideas to take on Trump. ‘Eugene Debs knew better: ‘The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles’ (1904).


Then and now

Fifty years earlier, one former slave wrote: ‘The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers’ (Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855). Today, ‘Target Workers Unite recently released a survey of more than 500 Target workers around the US, representing 382 different stores in 44 states. Only 12.7% of the workers who responded said they could survive on the wages from Target alone, with 56% of workers citing they have run out of food while employed at Target, and 12.8% of workers reported experiencing homelessness’ (‘Target raised wages. Then it cut workers’ hours and doubled their workload’, theguardian.com, 27 February). Target’s annual gross profit for 2019 was $22.057bn. Post November’s presidential election, it will be business as usual.

Poverty and the minimum wage (1984)

From the January 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is, and always has been, a feature of capitalism that there are big differences in wealth and income between rich property-owners and propertyless workers, but also big differences in wages within the working class. The solution is to get rid of capitalism and establish socialism, in which there will be no incomes from property ownership and no wages system: all the members of society will have free access to the products of industry. At one time leading members of the Labour Party, including Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, endorsed that idea. The first chairman and leader of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, declared that the Labour Party existed to achieve it. The Labour Party then abandoned the aim its leaders had once proclaimed (or, as they said, “postponed” it). They did so on the ground that it was essential to be “practical" and to deal at once with the pressing evils of capitalism.

One of the immediate problems that they were going to deal with at once was the existence of large numbers of workers on very low pay. All sorts of remedies have been tried but have been a total failure. Not only is the problem still with us but, according to an independent body — the Low Pay Unit — the lowest paid workers were relatively worse off in 1980 than they had been 95 years earlier when figures were first collected. The Labour Party's programme at the last General Election brought the failure story up to date:

 The next Labour Government will launch an offensive against low pay as part of our strategy for equality. The problem of low pay remains acute both in relative and absolute terms. If low pay at present is defined as less than two-thirds of average male manual workers’ earnings, there were 3 million full-time low-paid workers in 1982, of whom 2 million were women workers. Adding to these figures young workers, part-time workers and home workers, produces a total in the region of about 6 million — a great majority of whom are women.

One supposed remedy was more nationalisation and the expansion of local government services; but many of the “low-paid” are to be found in central and local government and the nationalised industries.

Another alleged cure for poverty was the Beveridge social security scheme after World War II and its accompanying pledge of “full employment” and no more depressions. It has failed in both respects. Along with 3½ million unemployed the depression has increased the number of “low-paid" workers. And this is the SDP-Liberal Alliance's verdict on the social security aspect:

  William Beveridge has been mutilated over the years. Instead of a basic benefit, which was to secure for the old, the sick and the unemployed a tolerable minimum standard of living as of right, we have a complex network of benefits dependent on 44 different means tests. Many people are dependent on benefits which are woefully inadequate.

So the Alliance sees the need for a new Beveridge scheme to remove the accumulated deficiencies of the old one, and to include a new feature, the payment of benefit to low-paid workers in addition to their wages.

Another remedy was to be the election of a Labour government. Their 1918 programme, Labour and the new Social Order, committed a future Labour government to introduce a “national minimum” wage to be applied by law in all fields — employment, unemployment, the sick and the pensioners. In 1935 the leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee, in his book The Will and the Way to Socialism, said that the next Labour government would create “an equalitarian society" — the rich and the poor would both disappear. "It would", he wrote, "work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses". When he became Prime Minister in 1945 it was his government which introduced the first of the "incomes policies" designed, among other things, to prevent wages from rising.

At one time it was thought that the remedy for low pay was trade union organisation, but it came up against the problem of industries in which unions did not exist or were quite ineffective. In 1909 the Liberal government created “trade boards" (later renamed Wages Councils) for the industries with "sweated" wages. The councils, made up of representatives of employers and workers, along with “independent" members, were empowered to fix minimum rates which were enforced by law. Wages Councils still exist and it is among the workers in these industries that many of the Labour Party’s "low paid” are to be found. An extension of the Wages Council minimum rates for separate industries, is the proposal for a national minimum to apply generally. The 1983 Labour Party election programme included the statement "we will also discuss with the TUC the possibility of introducing a statutory minimum wage", and this has been taken up by Neil Kinnock.

The minimum wage schemes come up against the facts of life of capitalism. The capitalists are in business to make profit; from the capitalist standpoint the only productive worker is one who brings profit to his employer. If the capitalists cannot make profit by employing workers, they do not employ them. While many companies can adjust themselves to paying wages negotiated with the unions and still make a profit, there are others who can stay in business only if they can get workers at very low pay. If compelled to pay more, they fold up..

This situation was dealt with in 1973 in a report by the Prices and Incomes Board, who said that the enforcement of higher rates in certain low pay fields "results in unemployment among low paid workers whom employers no longer consider worth employing at the higher rates". Some advocates of minimum rates show a remarkable blindness to the realities of capitalism. Where it is a question of the criminal law they know, from the millions of crimes every year, that the enactment of laws against bank robberies, burglaries and so on, does not mean that those crimes do not happen. Where it concerns statutory minimum wages they think it is different, but it is not. The Low Pay Unit reported in 1976 about the Wages Council industries: "In 1974, the last year for which figures are available, 13.4 per cent of employers checked as a matter of routine, were paying below the legal minimum compared with 7.9 per cent four years before". In 1983 the Unit reported: "Last year 35.1 per cent of employers inspected were paying below the minimum compared with 31.5 per cent the year before".

What happens, particularly at times of heavy unemployment, is that workers receiving less than the legal minimum prefer to keep their jobs rather than report the underpayment. In the depression years of the Thirties the National Congress of the Agricultural Workers Union said that more than half the farm workers were being paid less than the legal minimum wage and cases were known of agricultural workers who, having received illegally withheld pay after an inspector had intervened, gave the money back to the farmer in order to keep their jobs.

Realising that the levels of minimum wages they wanted to enforce would result in workers losing their jobs, some advocates of statutory minimum wages have proposed to get over the difficulty by the government subsidising the industries concerned. This was in fact done under the Corn Production Act 1917. The Act guaranteed prices to farmers for their produce and introduced minimum rates for farm workers in order to meet the shortage of food caused by the German submarine attacks on shipping. The farmers did very well out of it, but farm workers' wages failed even to keep up with the increased cost of living. When the war-time emergency was over the Act was scrapped. Farming is heavily subsidised now and farm workers have statutory minimum wages, but it has not prevented farm workers being among the Labour Party's 6 million low paid.

All the schemes in three quarters of a century to solve the problem of “low pay” have failed, and further schemes promise no greater success. The Socialist Party of Great Britain was right in the first place in holding that this and the other problems of capitalism will not be solved while capitalism continues.

Edgar Hardcastle

Living on Low Wages (2019)

From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1865 Karl Marx advised workers to drop the conservative motto ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ and instead advocate the abolition of the wages system. Over a century and a half later, reformers are still ignoring Marx’s view, and the Living Wage Foundation campaigns for ‘the simple idea that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay’. In June the Foundation made a submission to the Low Pay Commission, from which the following information is taken.

The Living Wage (or real Living Wage) is set above the legal minimum, and is intended to enable workers to make ends meet; it is currently £10.55 an hour in London and £9 an hour in the rest of the UK. Over one-fifth of workers receive less than this. Insecure work is a major part of the problem, and it was recently reported that one worker in ten (4.7 million people) now works in the precarious gig economy (Guardian 28 June).

Low pay affects some groups of workers in particular, such as bar staff, waiters, sales assistants and care workers. Some parts of the country (Northern Ireland, East Midlands and Wales) are considerably above the average for the proportion of low-paid workers. More women then men are paid below the Living Wage, and the figures are also higher for disabled workers and those who are black or of Bangladeshi or Pakistani descent.

Workers aged under 25 are only entitled to the minimum wage (£7.70 an hour for someone aged 21 to 24), while those over 25 must be paid the national living wage of £8.21 an hour. The report makes it clear that paying the legal minimum leaves workers struggling to keep their heads above water: ‘A full time worker earning the government’s “national living wage” currently earns over £1,500 a year less than they would on the real Living Wage – equivalent to over a year’s average gas and electricity or three months’ average rent.’ It is also claimed that paying the Living Wage benefits employers too, in terms of workers performing better and there being less turnover of staff. Nevertheless, most FTSE 100 companies have not undertaken to pay this rate.

What all this shows is that twenty-first century capitalism cannot provide decent living standards for most workers. Low pay and insecurity, not to mention the risk of unemployment, make their lives a constant struggle to keep going. All those years ago, Marx certainly had the right idea.

Paul Bennett

Socialist Brevities. (1929)

From the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hey Presto!

Merlin and Cagliostrio were reputed to be the thing in wizards in their day. Of recent years the Welsh Wizard has eclipsed their old-time wonders. Ninepence for fourpence, for instance. But ninepence! What would you say to 2,666.6 ninepences for fourpence? Or, in good English, one hundred jimmy o’ goblins for fourpence! Not done, you say? Oh, well, you don’t read your newspapers. Besides, you do not realise the miraculous nature of the capitalist system. Read, mark, luke—I mean learn—etc., the following instance of modern necromancy as reported in the Daily News, 25.1.29:—

£100 for 4d.

  In the early stages of the Ner-Sag meeting, when the first revelations were made, but before they reached the Stock Exchange, a man rushed from the meeting to telephone his stockbroker (writes a City correspondent).
  He told them to sell 500 Ner-Sag shares which he did not possess. He sold at 17s. per share. He telephoned his brokers in the afternoon and told them to buy back the 500 shares to cover his bargain. He bought them back at 12/6 each.
  On February 7, the next Stock Exchange Pay Day, his brokers will pay him a little over £100.
  All that this “bear" operation will have cost him is 4d. for two telephone calls.

No wands, no incantations, no stinks, no ritual of any sort! All done by kindness. A wonderful system, capitalism!


Strange Bedfellows.

Wages seem to have got so high lately that they must soon be out of reach altogether. They are, of course, for some million and a half workers now. Yes, these “excessive” wages are an awful curse! This does not apply, however, to the “wages of superintendence,” or whatever the “economists” might call the “bunce” pouched by the non-workers.

There should be a law to stop paying wages altogether and let the workers eat one another. This would keep down the “surplus” population, I have little doubt. If you read the paragraph below, taken from the Daily Herald for 7.2.29, you will readily see that a substantial decrease in the wages of the worker would ease some of the unrest and discontent of the capitalists from which industry is suffering so acutely at the present time:—

BANKER WANTS WAGES CUT.

  But his Dividend is 18 per cent.

 Mr. Henry Allan, chairman of the Clydesdale Bank, moved at the annual meeting at Glasgow, yesterday, that the dividend on Ordinary shares should be 18 per cent., and then proceeded to complain of what he himself called high wages.
  Business conditions during the past year, said Mr. Allan, were disappointing. The unemployment figures showed a large increase. Unfortunately the remedy was very difficult. In the outstanding case of the railwaymen, high wages were actually fortified by Act of Parliament.
  The evil of excessive wages was aggravated by the general fall in prices which followed the return of the gold standard. Prices had fallen about 15 per cent. since 1924, without any corresponding reduction in wages.
  The 18 per cent. dividend was adopted.

Now, boys, let us all pull together and try to make that 18 per cent. into 1,800 per cent. !


Those Pampered Workers.

East is East and West is West
   And ne’er the twain shall meet-O!
Left is Left and Right is Right
   (With knobs), ditto repeato!

                                                   Anon.

What philosophical depths are plumbed by these lines! What fecundity of thought! But lately I have been assailed by doubts as to whether they apply always and without exceptions. “Liberalism,” for instance, whatever else it may be, I am told, is “Liberalism.”

Similarly, I suppose, “Labour” is “Labour,” and that might or might not explain anything or nothing, whichever may be chosen. But that Labour stalwart, J. A. Hobson, has been contending recently that there is no real difference between the aims and policies of the Liberal and the “Labour” Parties !

In an article in the Manchester Guardian (8.2.29) entitled “ Liberalism and Labour,” he advocates co-operation between the two parties on the grounds that the Liberal programme “presents a sufficient body of agreement with the adopted policy of the Labour Party to warrant thoughtful members of that party in looking favourably on co-operation.”

So, it would appear that although Mr. Hobson belongs to the Labour Party, “Hobson’s Choice” is not too well grounded. H. N. Brailsford and others agree with Hobson.

Now read the following extract from the article referred to :—

   The declaration of Labour in favour of “public ownership" of foundation industries, such as land, railroads, power, and banking, may seem at first sight a fatal obstacle to co-operation. But is there much substance in it? Labour does not propose to confiscate these undertakings. Its nationalisation would have to be financed by public bond issues, which for the most part would be taken in exchange for the existing share and debenture capital of the concern so “ nationalised.”
  Fixed interest would still be paid to the persons who had invested their capital in these undertakings. Would this differ appreciably from the Liberal proposal to leave the ownership of the undertakings intact, but to put them on a fixed interest or debenture basis?

Having now learnt what “ Socialism” is, I invite you to read what the Morning Post, in an editorial (11.2.29) has to say about this conception of Socialism —

  They (the Labour Party) have said a thousand times: “We do not believe in your 'capitalist' system yet they now propose to administer that “system,” and better, apparently, than those who do believe in it.
  We can understand the logic and appreciate the honesty of Socialists who seek office in order to establish Socialism; but we cannot understand the mental or moral position of Socialists who propose to take office in order to continue Capitalism. And we suggest to our readers to put these simple tests to. the professions and promises of our Socialist leaders. Do they propose to put Socialism in practice? If they do, do we want Socialism? If they do not, then why should we want them?

Isn’t this too cruel to the Labour Party! To be bombarded with the same ammunition by both the Morning Post and the Socialist Standard! No, I can’t believe those lines now!

Out Of Their Own Mouths.

On page 3 of the circular issued by the Labour Press Service great prominence is given to a statement regarding Unemployment Benefit (February 13th):—

THE HONEST UNEMPLOYED GET LESS 
CONSIDERATION FROM THE GOVERNMENT THAN CONVICTS DO.

The Government pays :—
£1 9s. 5d. a week to keep a convict in a Convict Prison.
£2 4s. 5d. a week to keep a convict in a Preventive Detention Prison.
£1 6s. 9d. to keep an offender in a Borstal Institution.
But it only pays—
17s. a week Unemployment Benefit to keep an honest workman who has the misfortune to be unemployed.
The Labour Party has repeatedly asked the Government to increase the amount of benefit for the unemployed.
The Government has refused all these requests, and has actually reduced the benefit of many of the unemployed instead of increasing it.

Then on page 4 we are informed how a Labour Government will tackle the unemployment “problem” :—

  Proper maintenance for the unemployed until re-absorbed.  Until they are re-absorbed into industry, a Labour Government would see that the unemployed are treated more humanely than at present. It would increase Unemployment Benefits to 20s. for men over 18, and 18s. for women over 18; it would raise the allowance for a wife or housekeeper to 10s. weekly, and the allowance per child from 2s. to 5s.; and it would make similar increases in the benefits of young workers.
  At the same time, by the discouragement of luxury spending and the direct increase of purchasing power in the hands of the workers, through better provision against unemployment, sickness, invalidity and old age, a Labour Government would increase the demand for staple commodities and powerfully assist the restoration of the chief industries of the country.

In other words, until the unemployed are re-absorbed into industry the Labour Government will pay to a man over 18 9s. 5d. a week less than it costs to keep a convict in a Convict Prison, £1 4s. 5d. a week less than it costs to keep a convict in a Preventive Detention Prison, 6s. 9d. a week less than it costs to keep an offender in a Borstal Institution.

Note how the Labour Government would “powerfully assist” the restoration of the chief industries of the country by disorganising some of the “chief industries”, of . the country—the “ luxury trades.” 

Providence, presumably, will be left the task of re-absorbing the workers in the luxury trades who would be thrown out of work by the application of the suggested remedy.

Sarcastigator.

Rural Poverty. The Situation Reviewed. (1921)

From the February 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just Ask for What You Want.

Under the heading : "How to Overcome Poverty in Rural Districts," the Daily Herald for Saturday, the 18th December, reports a meeting of a Trades Council at Halesworth in Suffolk, at which agricultural workers' representatives supported a resolution requesting an immediate increase in wages. The reason for this request is clear enough. The agricultural workers of Halesworth find that the cost of living continues to increase, and it becomes more and more difficult to live on the wages they get; they therefore ask that the Agricultural Wages Board, a body set up under the Corn Production Act, shall order an increase of the minimum wage at present applicable in Suffolk. So far so good, but the supporters of the resolution do not explain why they expect the Board to order this increase, nor what they propose to do should they refuse. Apparently no explanation is considered necessary.

It might be said that the Corn Production Act was intended to "secure for able bodied men wages which, in the opinion of the Board, are adequate to promote efficiency, and to enable any man in an ordinary case to maintain himself and his family in accordance with such a standard of comfort as may be reasonable in relation to the nature of his occupation."

Who are to Decide the Standard ?

That is true, but it is as well to remember that the problem of deciding what is a decent standard was not to be left to the workers themselves to decide. It will be useful here to consider the conditions which necessitated the Corn Production Act, and the motives of its promoters, and to return later to the particular problem of the Suffolk workers.

The capitalist or employing class lives by exploiting the workers ; this means that out of

the whole product of their labour the workers receive only a part, and not a large part. Speaking generally, they get sufficient to enable them to work and to bring children into the world who will carry on when they are worn out—just like horses, with the one great difference that a horse costs money and must be fed and tended even when temporarily not required to work, while men cost nothing and can be stood off when work is slack, because their employer is under no obligation to keep them, and knows that they can be replaced at any time. In any industry, therefore, the employers are primarily interested in the exploitation of their own employees. Their interests are served by having production as high, and wages as low, as possible, even to the extent of injuring the health of the workers. An individual employer does not have to consider the health and fitness of future generations, and in consequence physical deterioration has been the lot of the workers in every land under the present system of society.

The Bespoilers MUST Protect Against Themselves.

However, the more far-sighted capitalists and their advisers realise the necessity of protecting the more helpless workers against a too ruthless exploitation, in order to safeguard the future of the race and in particular so that they can effectively resist the attacks of other countries in time of war.

The rivalry which exists between national groups of capitalists occasionally becomes so acute as to lead to open war. The workers are then called upon to defend the interests of their masters, and if it is desirable to have efficient factory hands it is doubly so to have alert, fit, and capable soldiers to stand the strain of modern warfare. It is,for these reasons that Factory Acts and the statutory limitation of hours and other restrictive measures are introduced, often in face of the bitter opposition of sections of employers who will suffer immediate loss, or who fail to appreciate the need for them. The minimum wage clause of the Corn Production Act was intended to give the agricultural labourer the same amount of protection as had already been granted to town workers.

Why the Act was passed.

The Act itself owed its origin to the famine that threatened the Allies, and this country in particular, in the early years of the war. An acute shortage of shipping, aggravated by the haphazard attacks of the German raiders, and later by the sustained submarine war, had been required to teach our rulers that a larger proportion of our food supply could and must be produced at home. They decided that farmers had to be induced to plough up grass land and in this and other ways to increase considerably their corn acreage, and as corn-growing had been declining for many years owing to the cheapness of imported corn, the inducement took the form of guaranteeing prices at a high level for a number of years. It was, of course, out of the question to compel farmers to assist in smashing Germany without reward ; that was reserved for mere property less workers.

Capitalists "Getting Wise."

The experiences of war had taught our militarists and the Government's agricultural advisers one or two other things as well. The medical examinations had revealed a startlingly low level of fitness among rural workers. Little and poor food, bad housing, and heavy work at too early an age, had had a disastrous effect on a once virile country population. What could not be done for the workers' own benefit had to be done in a hurry when it was a question of "food for the guns" in our masters' war.

Besides this the more wide awake of the agriculturists had made another discovery : that it does not pay to employ unhealthy and undersized workers. Experiments in Hampshire showed that the agricultural workers had sunk to so low a level there that higher wages and piece rates would not lead to greater production. Generations of under-feeding and bad housing had robbed labourers of the Southern counties of the vitality required to enable them to respond to these forms of inducement so successful elsewhere.

Just think how distressed Thomas and Clynes and other pro-capitalist Labour leaders must have felt at the idea of workers who couldn't increase their output and their employers' profits !

So it was done! The Corn Production Act says that the agricultural worker must have a decent standard of life.

What was meant, of course, was that just enough should be given to make it possible to get more profits and better soldiers. Poor Sir Frederick Banbury, gallant old Tory that he is, had a horrible nightmare when he thought this innovation might give the land workers leisure to think, and to be extravagant. "What is necessary," he declared, "is that you should have your labourers content with their position and have their minds intent upon their work," and "I know for a fact . . . there were men doing casual work who earned from their point of view quite enough in four days to enable them to do nothing for the remaining two days."

No Need for Uneasiness.

But he need not have worried. The minimum fixed upon was 25s , which has since been increased with rising prices to 46s !

The Government were soon satisfied that sufficient had been done to meet future military requirements. When Lloyd George, with the assistance of some millions of soldiers, and at the cost of a million workers' lives, had won the war, they recovered from their first panic. They were also satisfied that the agricultural unions, whose rapid growth they had foreseen and desired, could be trusted to see that at least the most hideous features of rural degradation were to some extent removed. As a matter of fact agricultural wages have increased by a greater percentage than those in most industries since pre-war days.

Now that the object of the Act has been considered there comes the question of the working of the machinery it set up to deal with wages. There is in every county a committee composed of equal numbers of representatives of farmers and workers together with some neutral members. These committees are advisory only, and a central board sitting in London alone has the power to make orders, against the wishes of the district committees if necessary.

The Real Object of the Scheme.

These Halesworth workers, like many others, appear to think that their representatives merely have to ask for an increase and explain the justice of their case to get what they want. They think it is just a question of the disposal of votes that settles the amount that shall be paid. The farmers' representatives will be expected to oppose any application just out of cussedness, but if the neutrals do so too it will be ascribed to their anti-labour bias. Both farmers and labourers frequently ask for the removal of some or all of these neutral members. That is because they both fail to understand the idea underlying Trade Boards and Arbitration Courts so much in evidence in recent years. Their real object is to prevent stoppage of work and generally to remove friction and promote the smooth running of the wheels of industry. It is true the method hasn't always been a success either here or in America, or in Australia or other countries where it has been extensively used. That, however, can be put down to some extent to the indiscreet way some Governments have introduced it. It has been so far successful that there is no likelihood of its being abandoned.

What Does Matter.

The workers suffer when they strike, but this doesn't matter in the least to their employers if it were not for the fact that the latter suffer too. The employers have the State behind them and all the chances are in their favour, but even if they were certain of victory they would still prefer a less expensive way of settling disputes. A stoppage of work means no profits, idle machinery, unfulfilled contracts, and the loss of markets to home and foreign competitors.

The ability of the workers at any given time to get a larger share of what they produce depends, not upon the eloquence of their representatives, but on their powers to demand it. A whole intellectual armoury of moral arguments will fail to convince an employer of the justice of a claim if the labour market is overcrowded. If he knows that there are a dozen men willing to take the place of each of his employees for the same or less wages, he will also know that he can reduce wages with impunity. Well organised workers will take advantage of every favourable opportunity to get higher wages, and will fight to prevent any reduction. These are the occasions when strikes are likely to occur, and Arbitration Boards and similar bodies aim at eliminating that risk.

A Useful Function.

In agriculture the District Wages Committees serve to gather information about the strength of feeling on any particular question. The representatives of farmers and labourers themselves are in a position to know what action their members will be prepared to take. When one side makes a demand on the Central Board it will almost certainly be opposed by the other. The neutral members, under the skilful guidance of the independent chairman, and acting oil reports from the District Committees, will then endeavour to effect a compromise. They must decide on a figure sufficiently high to take the backbone out of the discontent of the workers, and sufficiently low to be accepted under protest by the employers. Both sides then report their "victory" to those they represent, and everything goes more or less smoothly until further increase in prices produces more discontent.

A Bad Outlook.

Just now there is commercial stagnation everywhere. Expectations of the break in prices which, was, according to the Daily Herald, to be the beginning of the new world for the workers, and rumours on every hand of impending bankruptcies, are adding thousands to the already immense army of unemployed. Seasonal unemployment, which meant the standing off of older men and boys at this time of the year, has been a constant feature of rural life, but this has now been aggravated by the competition of unemployed town workers, many of whom, of course, will only recently have left the land for better paid factory jobs.

The Nett Result.

The net result is that agricultural workers are not now in a position to demand more money, and the land workers at Halesworth, like those in almost every country, like the workers in every industry, must remain discontented. The most closely organised and highly skilled trades will fight hard, but their success can only be moderate indeed. In the capitalist system repeated unemployment and continual poverty and insecurity are the lot of the workers, and no sectional struggles against its effects can be of lasting benefit while the mass of them support the system through their failure to understand their position in it.

The immediate task of the workers is to study the structure and origin of capitalism, and to learn that there are no short cuts to emancipation ; that the solution of the problem of poverty in every industry and in every continent is the same—the abolition of the system of society which requires that the great majority shall be poor in order that a favoured few may live idle and luxurious lives.

Edgar Hardcastle