What's Wrong With Education: How Capitalism Learns ’em (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent figures show that there are over one million adults in the UK who are illiterate. When one considers that compulsory state education has been in existence since the 1870 Education Act, that figure is quite startling. Even if one takes into account that possibly some of that one million are immigrants who were not necessarily educated here, the proportion of illiterates is still very high. In many parts of the country they are trying to tackle the problem. In Birmingham, for example, adult education centres are being established to deal specifically with illiterates. But the Mayor of Birmingham has no doubts about the chances of succeeding in overcoming the problem in his town. “We can’t eliminate illiteracy in Birmingham, but we have to try.” (The Guardian 14th March 1974). Why won’t they eliminate illiteracy in Birmingham, or London or Manchester for that matter? To answer that question one has to see education in its proper context.

Education under capitalism is a topic that always demands and receives much attention. As capitalism’s history unfolds, the importance of education to its continuance becomes more and more obvious. Capitalist society now needs a highly educated work force which can adapt itself to the changing needs of the system. The education world, full of articulate enthusiastic people, is one of great activity. The people involved in the process of imparting knowledge are often more aware than many other similar groups of workers of changes taking place in their own sphere. Great debates will sweep through the education world from time to time, about the place of education in society and how it should be organised and structured. Sometimes the debates are between those that are seen as the preservers of the future élite  against the rest (grammar v comprehensive).

More often the debates take the form of priority issues. Most ideas are regarded as good ones, but they can’t all be implemented at once. So the protagonists of the various education reforms line up like competing football teams, but instead of getting on with the game, squabble over which pitch to play on. Nursery v primary, higher education v lower, university v polytechnic, vocational courses v liberal arts courses, etc. In addition to these the age-old, sterile debate about whether education means to “draw out” or to “stuff in” continues. Currently the stuffer-in seem to be losing ground in terms of educational techniques. What the educationists do not appear to realise, and what the Socialist will always be at pains to point out, is that any discussion on education cannot be divorced from the function of the education system within capitalist society.

Capitalism is a world-wide economic system (i.e. Russia and China too) based on private or state ownership of wealth and the means of producing wealth. Education within that framework has a certain well-defined role. One of the definitions of the word “education”, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is “preparation for the work of life.” In other words, education under capitalism is the process of training the working class (that section of the community that has to sell its abilities to work for a wage or salary in order to live) for work. The type and amount of training that the workers will be given (forced to undergo) depends, looking at capitalist society as a whole, on the technological level of society. It did not matter much a hundred years ago (to the capitalist) if workers could not read or write. Now literacy is demanded for the workers. As one “educational sociologist’' has put it: “The literate factory operative, for example, is not only better able to follow instructions and undertake new tasks but has been trained in the school in habits of order and discipline.” (The Sociology of Education, Olive Banks). Most jobs now require that workers have at least a good basic ability in reading, writing and mathematics.

As well as ensuring that there is a work force adequately trained to cope with the difficulties of production at all levels, the education system also fulfils several other basic functions for capitalist society. It disciplines children into creatures able to control the frustrations that will inevitably arise when faced with dull repetitive processes for forty years. In spreading the education catchment to all children a mass education system also ensures (so far as possible within its own limited horizons) that whatever ability is available to capitalist society gets some sort of chance. The reformists in the education world hail this as their golden land of “equal opportunity.” All it means is that clever children get to the top (where capitalism needs them) instead of just rich ones. The vast majority are still where they will remain all their lives — underneath.

Without this wide spreading of the net, technological advance would not continue. And without technological advance, individual sections of competing capitalist groups (countries) would not remain competitive. The competition between the various nations to sell goods on the world market at a profit, also demands that the workers’ education be continually intensified to create those who are going to be able to produce the technological advance that capitalist society requires. Economists, with callous indifference to the interests of those involved, now call the education process “an investment in human capital.” Above all, the education system has to instil in workers the values, prejudices and concepts of capitalist society. True that society needs some of its workers to think, invent, create etc. But the inventions, thoughts or creations of workers must be channelled into lines conductive to the smooth functioning of a market society.

It is this fundamental point about the purpose of the education system that all the do-gooders and reformists in the education world will never remember. Education as a commodity of capitalist society is not given away to provide some sort of elusive happiness for workers. It is there to ensure that the system of society as at present constituted continues, and from the point of view of the capitalist, improves. Once this is remembered, it becomes clear why not only the teaching methods, but also the subject matter is linked with the status quo. Possibly the best example of this is in the teaching of economics in schools and universities. Economics should be the study of how society works. But if that were taught the recipients might start to question a system that so obviously works against the interests of the vast majority. So instead, economics is taught as a collection of ludicrous theories. None of them bears any resemblance to the real world outside the class room.

Some of the obvious pieces of ideological double-think in standard school and college economics are:

1. That resources are scarce (they are plentiful — it is just under capitalism production and therefore consumption are restricted to what can be sold at a profit);
2. That governments somehow play a neutral rôle in the economics they are supposed to control, in that government action is aimed at producing the best results for all in society — this ignores the fact that society is divided into two classes (capitalist and working) and the interests of the two classes are diamertically opposed, what is good for one must be bad for the others. And, most absurd of all. 
3.  that given certain (impossible) conditions, capitalism’s price mechanism leads to resources being distributed in the best interests of society.

This appalling distortion and intellectual juggling that takes place in many subjects (not just economics) can only occur in an educational system geared not to imparting knowledge but to ensuring the smooth running of private property society. This results in children very largely being forced to learn what capitalist society wants them to know. The Badger in The Wind in the Willows neatly summed up the objects of capitalist education: “We don’t want to teach ’em . . . We want to learn ’em — learn ’em. learn ’em. And what’s more we’re going to do it.”

Educationists, like all reformists, have to realise that the particular social problem with which they are concerned cannot have its contradictions ironed out whilst the causes of those contradictions remain intact. Because capitalist society has as its aim, in producing anything, sale with a view to profit (even if only indirectly, as in education) it cannot take into account the satisfaction of human requirements, where no profit is to be made. And the education system, being but a limb of that society, can only function according to the requirements of that society. The net result as in all aspects of life under capitalism is that workers as a whole have a standard of education (and living) far below society’s possibilities. Those at the very bottom of the ladder end up illiterate.

When mankind ends capitalism, and by its own conscious action replaces it with Socialism, wealth that is produced will be freely available to ail in society. Free access to everything will include free access to knowledge. Education as a process of finding out about the total human environment, will not be an action limited to sections of people’s lives, when forced to learn. Instead, there will be nothing to prevent man’s natural curiosity about the world he lives in continuing to be fulfilled all his life. Like everything else, education will be available to satisfy man’s needs, not as now, for continuing the even running of a system of society that deprives the vast majority of fulfilling life.

Ronnie Warrington

Students against Democracy (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool was proud of The Beatles and its connection with that Cunard Line. What the city thinks of the conference of the National Union of Students held there early April is another thing. Hundreds of delegates from universities, polytechnics etc. assembled for their annual jamboree. Over the years, this conference has endorsed some pretty queer ideas, but 1974 will go down as a vintage year.

This assembly debated students’ grants; elected a new President (a political loner we are told) by 21 votes; didn’t agree to send a delegation to Czechoslovakia to see if the Czech students’ union were democratic enough to form links with the NUS (would their journey have been really necessary?). Then came the body blow to democracy and the right of people to express their views. The outcome of this debate intimated they had a lot in common with the Communist-Party-dominated Czechoslovakia.

A majority of the delegates “voted yesterday to take whatever measures were necessary, including disruption of meetings, to prevent members of racialist or fascist organizations from speaking in colleges” (Guardian, 5th April, 1974). Mr. Steve Parry, the union’s Communist national secretary said: “It was all very well to talk about principles of freedom and democracy, but if people had known, in the days when Hitler was campaigning, what they know now, would they have let him speak? One or two individuals disrupting meetings was not enough. There had to be mass action.”

Another presumably intellectual and would-be working-class leader, Mr. H. Feather, wanted to drive the racialist and fascist organizations off the streets — you must pulverize them. All good emotional stuff to warrant a standing ovation, which of course it received.

But let us leave the heady atmosphere of the conference hall and look soberly at what has been suggested. Ideas not popular with students must be suppressed. At the conference these ideas are listed as fascist or racialist, but of course in reality it doesn’t stop there.

The Communist Party who now urge the working class to vote for the Labour Party took a different point of view in 1930. The following is taken from the Daily Worker 29th January, 1930:

  Workshop meetings should be called . . . and resolutions in the support of our Party should be carried, but the mere passing of resolutions is not enough. There should not be a Labour meeting held anywhere, but what the revolutionary workers in that district attend such meetings and fight against the speakers, whoever they are, so-called "left”, “right” or centre”. They should never be allowed to address the workers. This will bring us in conflict with the authorities, but this must be done. The fight can no longer be conducted in a passive manner. We must lead the masses in struggle against this Government and the time has arrived to use every conceivable means of political agitation. The 'Communist Party and its organ, the "Daily Worker" will lead the working class, fighting boldly and openly, against this government of scoundrels and agents of capitalism.

The government of "scoundrels” was the Labour government elected in 1929 whose Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald had been supported by the C.P. for many years. Is further comment necessary?

In 1943 the West Ham branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain challenged the local branch of the Communist Party to debate the respective objects of the parties. A reply from their branch secretary dated 23rd February stated that "the Communist Party has no dealings with murderers, liars, renegades or assassins. The Communist Party of Great Britain refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed.” Methinks they protest too much but we leave our readers to form their own judgement on this outburst from the "holier than thou” brigade. Time and time again, the Communists have tried to break up our outdoor meetings — if not by violence, by concerted hooliganism.

And when it comes to the "Hitler campaign”, might we remind Mr. Parry that the Communist Party were prepared to do a deal with the Nazis in 1939? No question then of violently suppressing the Nazi ideas, but the fêting of Ribbentrop with champagne toasts. The Daily Worker (now Morning Star) had a headline of August 23rd, 1939: The German-Russian talks are A VICTORY FOR PEACE AND SOCIALISM. You could have fooled us.

During the 1939 war the Government shut down the Daily Worker for printing views which were considered to be against the war effort (during the CP spell of opposition to the war). The national press and politicians approved this suppression, and whilst the Daily Worker did nothing to enlighten the workers about Socialism (they were proud of their horse-racing tips), the Socialist Standard (Feb. 1941) stated that the SPGB has its own point of view. True to our basic principles we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has personal experience of what happens when such a decision as that of the NUS is operative. We arranged a debate in North London against the National Front. An opportunity for the audience to weigh up the two conflicting schools of thought — socialist or nationalist. We were of the opinion that the audience would be able to judge for themselves the validity of the arguments. But our dear "lefty” types thought otherwise. They broke up the meeting. Did they consider the audience to be such a bunch of morons that they could not judge? Obviously they did, and this might just be the reason why these “revolutionaries” wish to appoint themselves as leaders of the masses. They know what is good for us — they know what we should hear.

Democracy, never a favourite word in their vocabulary, means a method of conducting affairs where a majority decision is reached on the basis of all information being readily available. Who are these self-styled dictators, who in the name of democracy, wish to decide what we shall or what we shall not hear? The suppression of "unpopular views” by violence does not eradicate these ideas. This can only be done by a free exchange of ideas.

It is obvious that a university education can turn out just as stupid and dangerous people as the ordinary elementary school.

C. M.

So They Say: A Moral Stand, Not Taken (1974)

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

A Moral Stand, Not Taken

“Disillusionment” sweeps among Labour supporters like influenza after, usually, a year or two of the government they put in. This time a month or two has set the virus on its feet. One Labour journalist whose readers may already feel the symptoms is Matthew Coady of the Sunday People. In his “Week in Politics” on 31st March he wrote:

  Britain’s helping hand to Chile is to be withdrawn — and rightly. Mrs. Judith Hart. Minister for Overseas Aid, has made the only possible decision.
. . . This Generals’ bloodbath, which overthrew a Left Wing regime, is reckoned to have cost 10,000 lives, many of them executed after secret trials.
Is this the kind of set-up that Britain should help to under-pin ? Of course it isn’t.
. . . There is always a price for a moral stand. In this case it is the price of copper.

Brave words, but mistaken ones. Contrast them with the front-page story in The Guardian only two weeks later, headed Heffer may go after defying Wilson:

  Mr. Eric Heffer, Minister of State for Industry, last night faced imminent disciplinary action over his speech on Saturday in which he threw overboard the traditions of collective Cabinet responsibility and sharply criticized the Government’s decision to complete an arms contract with Chile.

(Guardian, 15th April)

Perhaps before writing “there is always a price” Coady should have seen what was in the News of the World on the day he said it: Wilson warns of price spiral.

Grow Old Along With Me . . .

A second strange story from a Labour figure was that of Mrs. Marcia Williams, Wilson’s private secretary. On 11th April she made a statement to the press about the “land deals affair” in which her brother bought property with a highly profitable future. Saying “My conscience is dear”, Mrs. Williams explained:

  Employed as I have been, personally, there has been no pension attached to my job . . . I became involved in this venture, nominally, because it was felt that my 25 per cent interest (later reduced to 20 per cent) would provide income over the period of working which could be invested in a pension fund for my retirement.

(Daily Mirror, 11th April)

The fact that there is no pension attached to her job means that Mrs. Williams would have to depend on the State retirement pension. She finds the prospect unacceptable. That is understandable; and it leaves us with the thought that what the Labour government doles out with such self-praise to the working class, its members see as unsufficient to live on

Yes, Sir, That's Whose Baby?

Strange story no. 3. Newspapers on 5th April reported that consultation papers on the road and town accompaniments to the intended Maplin Airport were being rescinded, and the project was therefore now as good as killed off. The Guardian described it as “the Conservative Government’s multi-million pound plan”, and said:

  Mr. Crosland [Secretary for the Environment! has long been opposed to Maplin. On January 16, six weeks before the election, he assured the Commons that a Labour Government would cancel the project within "a matter of weeks”.

The fact is that a Labour government originated it all. In 1966 Labour said that a third London airport was needed and should be at Stansted — motorway, town development and all. After protests other sites were named, and in turn protested over, until Maplin was settled upon.

Claiming credit for squashing one’s own idea is quite novel. Perhaps that is the idea behind trading arms to Chile — to take “a moral stand” and stop it, later.

A Fertile Suggestion

Socialists always welcome old friends, and a venerable one has turned up this month. In a letter to The Observer on 7th April A. Rees of Bradford asserted that the poor make themselves poor by having too many children:

  I cannot help thinking that the people in the poverty trap have reproduced themselves into it. The problem is surely the folly of trying to raise children on low wages, breeding poverty as they breed children.

There is scope for some fascinating calculation here. Lord Longford has a large family but is well breeched; how many children would he have had to have to make himself poor? What about Lord Sainsbury? To get into the “poverty trap” by this method he’d have to put out the work to contract.

On the other hand, Mrs. Marcia Williams did not think of avoiding poverty by going to a birth-control clinic. She had a slice of a property deal instead — showing she knows the facts of life better than A. Rees of Bradford.

Unions and Politics

The General Secretary of the TUC made a speech on 28th March which contained valuable information for left-wing militants. First:

  Mr. Murray . . . said yesterday that no Government would do things for the trade union movement without expecting something from the unions in return. Mr. Murray, who was speaking to a parliamentary press gallery luncheon, said the union movement could not expect unquestioning co-operation.

This should dispose of the idea that “political strikes” can bring compliance from governments, or even that a change of government will give militants what they have been shouting for. And to make the point clear, he later referred to the high-spot of the 1972 agitation against the Industrial Relations Act:

  Mr. Murray accepted that the actions of the Pentonville five — the dockers who were saved from gaol only on the intervention of the Official Solicitor — had been regarded as stupid by some. But the incident had shown how important it was not to make martyrs.

(Guardian, 29th March)

At the time, the five dockers were claimed to have been released by the threat of a strike — a great victory for militant solidarity etc. Len Murray now confirms that it was not so. He might have added that six other pickets went to gaol last year without any suggestion that they were martyrs, and the only protest was a mild one at the severity of their sentences.

A Continuing Mess

What would be thought of a newspaper which, through failure of organization, had two blank pages in every issue? or a tobacconist whose packets of twenty cigarettes had only eighteen in? Presumably, that if they could not put their businesses in order they would soon be out of business.

Yet capitalism tries to educate children and fails in an equally elementary respect. A group in the Manchester College of Education wrote in the Education Guardian on 9th April:

  In research carried out recently by the Cadmean Trust it was revealed that 15 in every 100 children leave school virtually illiterate.

The writers call it “a national disgrace”. But after more than a century of educational expansion, continual reorganization, extension of the school-leaving age and so on the basic problem of education is unsolved. Is it not time capitalism was thrown out for inefficiency in this and every other direction?

Robert Barltrop

What's Wrong With Education: Bursting of the 'Comprehensive' Bubble (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the cat is finally out of the education bag — at last. The cracks have finally broken through the paper!

The situation in the Inner London schools is now so disastrous that teachers are telling the papers how, in many of them, it is practically impossible to teach. Truancy has reached catastrophic proportions. According to Dr. Rhodes Boyson MP (late Head of Highbury Grove Comprehensive School) 500,000 children play truant every day; he says “it is creating a new criminal sub-class”. Nobody really knows how many truants there are, because without frequent spot-checks absence is uncontrollable. The kids are voting with their feet. Many of those who sit through the morning to get the school dinner vote with their eyes, glaring balefully at the monkey up front in silent vicious hatred.

All the millions in money, the shiny new glass and plastic buildings, the innumerable experts (there is no field of human endeavour with more bloody "experts” than education!) and “advisers”, the gimmicks and stunts to keep the kids at it till 16 — have, in about half the schools population, lamentably failed.

Above all, it is the dismal failure of the so-called comprehensive schools. These are the hot-beds, the fertile source of the troubles. For twenty-five years the love-child of every sentimental “Lefty”, eventually official Labour Party policy, “comprehensive” was to be the magic key to crack the education problem. It was to give “equality of opportunity” to all, including the academically backward.

Only those who are actually inside the school racket (sorry — “educational profession”!) know the full story of the incredible goings-on in the most notorious giant London comprehensives. The one in North London where the kids piled the desks and chairs in the middle of a class-room and set fire to them. The other one in South London where when the teacher shouted “Will you shut up?” thirty-three boys shouted back in unison “No, we will not!”

So bad has the situation become that the Inner London Authority now has special Truancy Centres (staffed by “experts", of course) where the kids who just will not attend, any school do what they like. According to the London Evening News “what they like” is smashing things up.

The ILEA now wants to abandon “comprehensive” policy and build no more. Having scrapped the smaller, despised “Secondary Moderns” to set up vast comprehensives, small schools have become a desperate administration’s new ideal. Quite outside all the high-minded and noble educational sentiments and theories, the main motive for comprehensives was simply economy — as it was foolishly believed: saving money.

Your contributor was actually present at a meeting of several hundred London teachers in the early days when Mr. Houghton, Chief Education Officer, told them: “I don’t care whether you are for or against comprehensives — I’ve got to find a quarter of a million places on the ninth of September!” A comprehensive school saves at least three headmasters’ salaries (about £5-6,000 p.a. each) and makes many practical economies in buildings, power, heating, maintenance, catering, etc., by working on a large scale. With the result that, with the raising of the school-leaving age, 2,000 or even 2,500 children have been crammed into schools bursting at the seams.

After the war, the Labour Government set up a committee to enquire into education. It came up with the Hadow Report, which was the Bible of the teachers’ training colleges in those days. The old system of sorting elementary-school sheep and grammar-school goats was to be replaced by juniors up to 11; then Grammar, Technical and Secondary Modern up to 15. The now-notorious eleven-plus examination would decide that each child would receive education according to “his age, aptitude and ability”.

Almost as soon as this tri-partite system was introduced, the howls of protest started. True it is that the eleven-plus produced some fantastic results (like the boy whose card was sorted into the wrong box at the office — an eleven-plus failure — who went on to get a Ph.D.). The theory behind “comprehensivation” — yes, that’s what they call it! — was “equality”. Even if a boy couldn’t do differential equations, analyze a sentence, or speak German, he wore the same uniform and played football on the same pitch (although frequently he couldn’t play football either).

Faced with the fact that various kids have different aptitudes — and certainly Socialists have never thought otherwise — an elaborate system of “streaming” and “sets” was set up, to shove some through the university-animated exam, system. The teachers themselves got together and drafted a completely new examination, the Certificate of Secondary Education. Still only a few responded. A flood of learned books has poured out; teams of research sociologists have “proved” that a boy (or girl) in a “home” where money is tight, the telly never stops, there is no spare room and, above all, the parents can hardly read and despise learning—has little chance against a well-fed, contented child with ample room, warmth, light, and (most important of all) the practical example of a genuine delight and pleasure in books and learning.

Outside the school, the lure of money is compelling. A hefty well-built lad of sixteen can get a job as a hod-carrier at a man’s wage. Small wonder that the bait of examination passes fails to attract!

Thousands of teachers leave training colleges annually filled with a genuine vocational idealism and the intention to dedicate their lives to the education of our children: only to have “their hearts broken” (as they say) and leave to do anything — barmaid, petrol pump, shop — rather than “be driven mad” teaching. Four out of five girls leave in the first year.

The zealous educational reformer has now to swallow the bitter bread of humiliation. The old submissive obedience has gone. The kids are sceptical, intensely suspicious and inquisitive. To them we would say: “Why waste time and effort harassing and barracking the teacher? They are victims of the capitalist system no less (even more) than you. They are working men and women trying to do an extremely onerous and impossibly demanding job. There is something to be learned from even the worst teacher!” And: "Ignorance never helped anybody ’ (Marx).

To the teacher we say: You will never get educational equality in capitalist society. All you can do is maintain an efficient Union to protect you from abuses.

During the recent General Election the school debating society at a large north-west London comprehensive ran a mock election. The Socialist candidate, a sixteen-year-old boy, denounced the Labour Party and exposed nationalization. To cheers from the audience he declared : "We’ve got to learn, we’ve thought too much about Lenin; we’ve got to find out more about Karl Marx!” And they will, too. After all, they are finding out about practically everything else!

Horatio

Letters: Ploughing Back? (1974)

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

Ploughing Back?

I gather from your literature that out of a man’s productive labour his wage is not commensurate with this. In other words his wage is less than the actual value of his labour, the difference going to the capitalist as unearned income. But surely not all of this difference or “profit” goes to the capitalist or shareholder. No doubt some of it does so. Some of it must also go to pay for new capital such as machines, factories etc. and to account for fixed charges such as rent, maintenance costs, electricity bills etc.

To me your argument implies that there is only one factor of production, namely labour. But there are in fact three, namely land, labour and capital. Each of these three must be utilized in the manufacture of the final product. And the cost of the final product must account for each of these three, not just labour. Rent accounts for land, wages account for labour, and profit accounts for capital. No doubt some of this profit goes to the shareholder and thus it can be argued that he is exploiting the worker. True, but not all of it.

Why not create a system whereby the shareholder, or capitalist if you like, is eliminated and all the profit is ploughed back into the industry? The profit margin would be so devised as to form a fixed percentage of the total revenue of the firm and wages would be kept on par with it. So a rise in price of the final product would inevitably mean an equivalent rise in wages. In such a system would the workers still say they were being exploited?

P. C. Green, 

Burnley.

Reply

A capitalist reckons his profit by deducting all his costs of production from the sum which his commodity has realized in the market. The reader suggests that this profit which derives from the unpaid labour of workers, could be divided among those workers minus an agreed amount for re-investment in machinery etc. (and presumbably minus taxation for the maintenance of health services, educational institutions and armed forces etc.).

However, such a system would be no more capable than present-day capitalism of producing goods and services to meet social requirements. Although the capitalist as an individual might be eliminated, the accumulation of capital would continue. In each particular factory or industry production would be dominated by market forces, expanding and contracting in times of greater or lesser economic advantage: in turn bringing periodic unemployment. The ownership and control of the means of production would rest in the hands of innumerable groups of workers, each of which would be a social minority in competition with others, and each making decisions in accordance with its individual economic interests. Propositions regarding the improvement of local working conditions, or of broader social improvements would be considered in the same limited way as they are today — “Is it economic?”

Socialists hold the view that with the natural resources, the labour-power and knowledge available to mankind in the world, human beings are capable of democratically organizing production without anyone being exploited.

Editorial Committee

Labour Vouchers

Surely the answer to S. Gamzu about “Labour Vouchers” (Socialist Standard March 1974) is that they were a measure of TIME and could not have had any meaning as anything else.

Of course they would not distinguish between a miner or Shakespeare and would NOT be “according to need” but TIME worked. In other words a time rationing system.

They would not become money. They would be personal, and probably dated like pension vouchers. Volume I of Capital (Kerr Edn. p.106) points out that Owen’s “labour-money” was no more “money” than a ticket for the theatre.

Horatio.

Work and Socialism

I am amazed by questions put by P. W. Ralphs (letter March 1974) who seems to have completely missed the whole concept of a truly Socialist society as put forward by the Socialist Party.

In a Socialist world there will surely be no “jobs” as such, no employment as exists under capitalism, when one occupation may capture and slowly strangle the individuality and personality of a worker and his family.

In Socialism time now spent “working” will be spent to the benefit of us all, doing things constructive to the maintenance and improvement of society as the Socialist majority sees it.

As a now highly specialized and, in employment terms, narrowly confined medical worker, I recognise the need for many unpleasant tasks in the running of society. I would gladly sweep roads or empty dustbins to maintain a Socialist community, but I would not wish to mine coal or trawl for fish in the Icelandic seas. And if the majority of people thought as I on these last points then society would have to think of alternative power sources (or mining methods) and an alternative food. If the majority disagreed with me, however, then there would logically be enough willing Socialists to maintain these services to the community.

The answer to P. W. Ralphs is simple: in a Socialist world as envisaged by the Socialist Party, the problems he put forward cannot possibly exist. They will be precluded by the social consciousness of the workers of the world, and the problems of capitalism will no longer beset them.

David W. Roberts

Ely.

Logic, Truth and Politics (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socrates taught that all men desire the truth. If they do not, it is because they do not know the truth; once it is told to them, their eyes are opened and they will naturally pursue it.

The briefest look at history and current events makes plain that Socrates was wrong. In all kinds of situations men learn the truth and then act as if it were an unfounded rumour. Indeed, the simple dicta about truth are turned by everyday experience into untruths themselves: “honesty is the best policy” (well, IS it?) and “the unrighteous never prosper” (manifestly, they do). Three public figures have recently said this should not be so, and that truth should prevail in politics. Because most readers of their statements would agree, and at the same time not dream of acting accordingly, it is worth examining what they said to see where the fallacy is.

On 11th March The Times published an article by Enoch Powell on why he did not stand in the General Election. He wrote:

. . . the assumption so widely, even unquestioningly prevalent now, that any correspondence between the proclaimed intentions and policies of political parties and their actions in office cannot, and perhaps even should not, be expected, is certainly unhealthy; for if accepted, it reduces elections and Parliament to a charade.

Powell instanced his own Conservative Party in 1972 introducing a wage-control policy “which at the 1970 election it renounced and repudiated in the most thorough manner”, and pointed out that this required Conservative candidates to be liars:

What is more, it was universally expected (so far as I could tell) that come an election, the same member would find no problem in presenting himself to the electors as the official candidate of a party seeking support and approval for the actual policies he had consistently denounced.

It seems strange that Powell in the 1974 election supported Labour, whose policies he had “consistently denounced”; and who did exactly the same thing in reverse, introducing a wage-control policy in 1966 and then repudiating it. Powell’s support was given because of one over-riding reason, the belief that a Labour government would get Britain out of the Common Market. But this highlights the whole question of political practicality, and why leaders eat their words. Necessity drives. One of the most famous lies of modern times was put down to a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, in 1949 when he affirmed repeatedly that the government was not going to devalue the pound — right up to the moment when the government did so. The pious Cripps, of whom Churchill said “there but for the grace of God goes God”, simply did not believe it would be done and was left with the consequences of his own utterances.

Looking for an Honest Man

A different version of Powell’s plaint was given in an article on Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, by the Financial Times Ottawa correspondent on 4th January. Trudeau, it was said, had “undergone a change in his thinking about politics”:

He said that he used to think it would be sufficient to put ‘a reasonable proposition to a person for that person to look at it reasonably, without passion’. He had now learned that this is not true. Nine-tenths of politics . . . appeals to emotions rather than to reason. He said he was sorry about that, but had accepted it as a way of life.

The article also described how Trudeau’s minority Liberal government responded to policies which might have affronted their principles but were successful:

The Tories were astounded at how far Mr. Trudeau had gone . . . Some Liberals concede privately that the PM went further than they would have gone, but they are not complaining. They won the confidence vote . . .

The third condemnation was made by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in a statement to foreign journalists before he left Russia. Answering the question “How can your compatriots and youth show their support for you?” he said:

Everyone must decisively stop co-operating with the lie everywhere he sees it himself-: where they force him to speak, write, quote or sign, or even simply to vote or even to read.
  In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state.
  In breaking with the lie, we are performing a moral act, not a political one and not one that can be punished by criminal law — but an act that would immediately have an effect on our way of life.

(The Times, 22nd January)

The attack on Russian state-capitalist politics may be accurate, but the inference here and elsewhere in Solzhenitsyn’s speech that “truth” holds sway in western countries is very naive. Possibly the foreign journalists he addressed included some whose business in the last war was to show Russia as a land of freedom and warm hearts, Russia then being an ally against Germany. And there are those who think Solzhenitsyn (like Pasternak, who was awarded a Nobel Prize) is a not-much-more-than-mediocre novelist being declared a “great” one for propagandist purposes. What then of truth and lies?

It is easy to assume that irrationality and cynicism rule the world and this is what man is like. Further examples could fill many pages. The politicians who, on retirement, publish memoirs revealing “all” (yes, I knew MacDonald was a fraud — I was his right-hand man). The getting young men to die horribly for “peace and honour” when only trade and profits at at stake. The idiotic religious beliefs still clogging people’s minds (talking of truth, the Catholic Truth Society and the Protestant Truth Society spend most of their lives calling each other liars, and both do the same to other religious “truths”). The fact that most people want to hear not what is logical but what is gratifying.

Making Sense

But in fact it is rational. The talk about truth is equally misleading as the lies and distortions. It can be said that all truths are relative — this view is what separates the scientist from the religious philosopher who sees them as absolute and eternal. However, despite their lofty language it is the relative, practical view which Powell, Trudeau and Solzhenitsyn are expounding. They want "truths” which will lead, respectively, to the Conservative Party adopting different policies; to the Canadian Liberals getting firmer support; and to the overthrow of the regime in Russia. Their policies are going to be continued anyway, and it is justification on logical or moral grounds that is being sought.

What is pursued in a class-divided society is not truth or reason, but interests. If that is understood, the prevarications and sleights-of-hand are not unnecessary departures but rational actions towards certain ends. It is commonly — and mistakenly — believed that politicians know the truth about the economy and what is going on, and choose not to reveal it or use it to feather their own nests: most people will have read into Enoch Powell’s statement that we need honest men in Parliament.

That is altogether irrelevant. Some politicians are Horatio Bottomleys, but there is no substantial difference between their running of capitalism and that of others whose love of fair play is a byword. Of course there have been honest politicians. At least one leader of the Communist Party has had the reputation of being personally a thoroughly decent fellow — but he told the same whopping and self-contradictory lies as if he had been a rogue.

The contrary statement “all men are liars” is as meaningless as Socrates’ axiom that they seek the truth. Statements about the nature of “all men” — or individual “man” — see human beings stripped of their social conditioning and motivation. As Marx pointed out:

Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

(Grundrisse, p. 265)

Within those relations the individuals rationally follow their interests as members of a particular class. It is Powell, Trudeau and Solzhenitsyn who depart from rationality in their statements by proposing that it can be otherwise. Powell’s article says he found that to ask for consistency and truthfulness was “supposed a subtle and tortuous machination for self-advancement”. No doubt it can be — but what is more to the point is that it machinates to conceal the class division and class interests in society.

As for Solzhenitsyn, the belief that people will adopt policies of non-cooperation against the Russian state in the cause of truth alone is pitiful. Undoubtedly working people do and will seek change in Russia — for almost any reason but that, and specifically to defend or further their material interests. It is always possible to imagine revolts there against poor living standards and lack of democratic expression, but not as “a moral act” against the iniquity of lying.

Capitalist society is corrupt from the viewpoint of its pretended morality, dressing up property-protecting laws as high ethics and at the same time making trust between man and man improbable. This is part of the degradation it imposes: what kind of world is it that calls its own going-to-work everyday activity “the RAT race”? We have the paradox of knowing it should not be thus but having like Trudeau to accept — and practise — it “as a way of life”.

The alternative is to establish Socialism. This can and will be done when the majority decide they have had enough of capitalism. The movement for Socialism does not commit the irrationality of seeking truth; what it represents instead is the material interest of the working class. However, it is a fact that the Socialist Party does not have to tell lies to exist, because its object is not domination of one section by another but the emancipation of all mankind. And in the same way, truth will be not debated under Socialism — but will characterize all relationships in society.

Robert Barltrop

Stimulating Party Conference (1974)

Party News from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Easter saw our 70th Annual Conference take place; and how different the Socialist Party’s conferences are from those of other organizations. There are no secret sessions, block votes, rigged decisions, or ovation-seeking speeches by leaders to servile followers. Our conferences consist of men and women deciding democratically on the Party’s work and policy. They are open to the public, and all members’ views count equally.

On Friday and Saturday there were lengthy discussions of the Socialist Standard. Resolutions were passed asking for more material about trade unions and reiterating members’ desire for lively cover designs. Proposals to increase the price were defeated, despite concern about the large annual deficit: our greatest need is to find ways of increasing the circulation. Pamphlet publications were discussed too— the Party wants priority given to re-issuing The Case for Socialism and The Socialist Party; its Principles and Policy. 

On Party organization, proposals for a change of name and to establish an “association” structure for individuals in countries without Socialist parties were lost. Another resolution, to have the possibility of regionalizing Central Branch examined, was carried. The Conference also heard reports from Branches on their activities and problems, in a variety extending from Edinburgh to South Wales — all reflecting the tireless enthusiasm of members everywhere.

Sunday featured a full discussion of electoral activity and plans for candidatures and propaganda work in future elections. Time was spent on a detailed report on the Women’s Liberation movement prepared by a committee which has been at work nearly a year, and the outcome was Conference passing overwhelmingly a resolution that membership of Women’s Lib is incompatible with membership of the Socialist Party. This was followed by debate on trade unions . . . and then we ran out of time.

There were many other questions between these major ones: whether members’ dues should go up, the need for more speakers and writers, leaflets, press correspondence. And some additional good things. On Friday the Conference was addressed by a Socialist from Rome who had come specially to be with us, and fraternal messages from our Companion Parties abroad were read. The same evening, a large audience gathered in Conway Hall for the lecture on “The Powers of Government”; a stream of questions, and immense interest generated. Saturday night, a cheery social at the Head Office.

As always, it was a good-humoured and fruitful Conference, full of ideas. Now the delegates have returned to their Branches to work on its decisions in the continuing struggle for Socialism.

70 Years of the S.P.G.B. and the Socialist Standard (1974)

Party News from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Overheard In The Club (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers?

  Salt of the earth! Grand chaps! Where would we be without ’em? — They run everything for us. I can go away on a three-months’ cruise, confident that when I come back everything will be running smoothly. They make us excellent food, fine clothes, spacious houses, hotels, clubs, yachts, cars. They run our ships and planes and racing stables, keep our country estates fine and neat. All we need to do is look in occasionally — show an interest, express the thanks of the directors and shareholders — they appreciate that. And they never complain — not really. Niggles about wage rates sometimes, of course, but they never actually begrudge us our wealth or complain about how we use it. Proud to work for us, and yet not bitter when we have to lay them off or when they get too old to be useful. That shows real dignity. No doubt about it — hard work, and even hard times, breeds grand people! I’d be proud to be one of ’em — if I had to. Some of the nicest people I know are workers — my valet, for instance.

50 Years Ago: Who are the brain workers? (1974)

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

In order to combat working-class discontent the Daily Mail had urged “the men who do the brain work of this country” to give up their Sunday golf and devote the day to teaching the workers and correcting their “misapprehensions”.

How artfully the case is put! The manager, the professor, the cleric, the M.A., the B.A., and all the other lettered gentry; in other words the “Intellectuals” or salaried officials are obviously those to whom the Daily Mail points a reproving finger. How these people will swell with importance on reading such complimentary remarks. And yet it is nothing but “spoof”. “Spoof” for the “intellectual” and “spoof” for the worker.

* * *

Who are the intellectuals, the salaried officials anyway? They are simply a particular section of the working class, the most backward section, the most abject slaves — they who kiss the hand that smites them. They receive “honourable mention” when their performances assist the interests of the employers and the sack when their performances are unsuccessful. Like other workers they depend for their living upon the sale of their energies, and, like other workers, they go under if they can’t find a ready sale for such energies.

All work done by workers under capitalism requires the use of brains, and each kind of work is equally necessary.

The term “brain worker” is only a sop thrown to a particular section to ensure the continued support of capitalism by that section. The sop is thrown with the old principle in the mind of the thrower — “Divide and conquer". Set one section of workers against another and each will be so taken up with their sectional quarrel that they will overlook their fundamental solidarity as wage-workers.

[From an unsigned editorial 'King Canute Up-to-date' in the Socialist Standard, May 1924.]

You Have Got What You Voted For (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last few weeks the politicians and commentators have been disputing about what the electors wanted, what the new Government will do, what will be in its next budget, will the policies work and will it mean more “socialism” or less. They are wasting their time and yours. The main outlines of your future in the next few years are already determined, and it would be just the same with a Tory Government, a Tory-Lib. coalition or a three-party government — a little more there, a little less here but nothing essentially different.

Thirty one Million Voters all Agreed

On a superficial view the electors who voted on 28 February wanted different policies, Tory, Labour, Liberal; or Scottish, Welsh and Irish Nationalism. What in fact they voted for is capitalism, with small variations of no importance. Capitalism with a face lift; capitalism inside or outside Europe; capitalism with a degree of autonomy in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The electors wanted capitalism not Socialism. They have got what they voted for.

What about Nationalization ?

But isn’t the Labour Party different? Does it not stand for more nationalization? Indeed it does. As a result of the work of the Attlee Government after the war we have had a quarter of a century of nationalization in a number of major industries. A quarter of a century for the workers to discover that it doesn’t make a ha’porth of difference. Nationalization is State Capitalism; the so-called “mixed economy” is a mixture of private and State capitalism. Nationalization solves no problem for the workers either here or in Russia and other State-capitalist countries. It has nothing to do with Socialism.

One small event in the recent election shows what kind of party the Labour Party is, for that life-long Tory, Enoch Powell, a dedicated supporter of capitalism, found it possible to vote Labour and tell others to do the same merely on the issue of keeping British capitalism out of capitalist Europe.

Back to the "Good Old Days''

A farcical aspect of the present situation is that these parties of capitalism, Tory, Labour, Liberal and Nationalist, have been forced by capitalism itself to abandon their belief in the futile doctrine of managing capitalism so as to make life better for all. In fact, if not in words, they have had to admit that they can’t manage it and that the best hope they can offer is to go back to the mythical “good old days”.

• Replace a prospective 15 per cent rise of prices by perhaps getting it down to 12 per cent or 10 per cent. Back to poverty on £20 a week instead of poverty on £25 a week.
• Get unemployment down to the level it used to be.
• Go back to the “happy” days before the Prices and Incomes policy and the Industrial Relations Act.
• Get house-building up to the levels of a few years ago.
• Not forgetting that permanent feature in the speeches of every Prime Minister at all times and in all countries — call on the workers to work harder!

Nothing can be done to make capitalism satisfactory for the working class. Socialism is the only hope, not only for Britain but for the world.

Edgar Hardcastle

Leaflet Publication (1974)

Party News from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has come to our notice that a number of propaganda leaflets purporting to be issued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain are circulating in the Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and possibly Glasgow areas. These leaflets have not been published by the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we do not therefore accept responsibility for their contents.

Issued by the Executive Committee.

TU Politics, Marx and the Labour Party (1974)

Book Review from the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Labour: The Unions and the Party” by Bill Simpson. (George Allen & Unwin. £4.50. 250 pages.)

This is an interesting book but not for the conclusions it reaches, which are much as to be expected from a trade-union general secretary on the National Executive of the Labour Party. Its interest comes from the fact that the author, in his attempt to justify the Labour Party, finds it necessary to do so by proving that Marx is out-of-date, that capitalism today is not as Marx expected it to be, and that the Labour Party, guided by Bernstein, Burnham, Keynes and others, now knows how to control and direct capitalism in the way it should go.

As background material he examines the events leading up to the formation of the Labour Party, discusses some of the controversies of the time, and sketches its history, including the General Strike and the attempts to control inflation by wages and incomes policies. In answer to the questions he poses he concludes that trade unions should go in for politics and not “direct action”, and should affiliate to the Labour Party.

The book is full of references to Marx and to Marxists inside and outside the Labour Party; to socialist society; socialist principle, revolution and revolutionaries, and so on: but none of this is to be taken literally. His ideas of Marx are hazy like those of the people he calls “Marxists”. His “revolutionaries” are not revolutionary (people who want some modification of capitalism are not revolutionaries because they use direct action or violence) and his “socialism” has no relation to what Marx and Socialists mean by the term. He does not mention the Socialist Party of Great Britain or answer our case. For him socialism means the current Labour Party concept of private and State capitalism (nationalization) and the Keynesian techniques of “managing the economy”.

The few quotations from Marx in the book include a complete misunderstanding of the traditionally misused statement by Marx that “Force is the midwife of every social system pregnant with a new one”. Mr. Simpson uses it as heading of a chapter (Chapter 7) which deals with the syndicalist-“direct action” ferment of the years before 1914, thus making it appear that Marx was advocating the use of force against the State power. The point Marx was making was the direct opposite; he was showing the way in which force is at the disposal of those who are in control of “the power of the State, the concentrated and organised power of society”. (See Capital Vol. I, Chapter XXXI, “The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”.)

Marx noted the forms taken by this force, from “brute force” used by colonial powers in their colonies to “the national debt, the modern mode of taxation and the protective system” which were used by the capitalists through their control of State power “to hasten, hothouse fashion, the transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one”.

Mr. Simpson’s idea of revolution and revolutionaries is illustrated by his belief that the strikes in the period up to 1914 meant that revolution was imminent:

What would have happened if the war had not started is difficult to forecast. This much can be said: if there was a time when revolutionary change was near in Britain it was surely then. (Page 69)

So the workers who had voted for capitalism in the election of 1910, and did so again in 1918, and for five years in between had been fighting to defend British capitalism at the behest of (among others) the union leaders who had been organizing the strikes, were bent on revolution — but when their leaders waved a flag at them they decided to call the whole thing off!

The argument as Mr. Simpson presents it is that while Marx “explained clearly how the capitalist system worked in a technical sense” (p. 131) he failed to forecast correctly the forces that would be operating later in an advanced capitalist society. He was wrong, says Mr. Simpson, about the concentration of capital, wrong about the workers becoming poorer, and did not foresee how it would be possible for a Labour government using Keynesian techniques to keep unemployment down to a very low level and avoid crises, so that since the nineteen-thirties all we have had according to Mr. Simpson is “a few uncomfortable lurches” (p.125).

If Mr. Simpson had understood Marx's clear exposition of what happens when a government steadily depreciates the currency, he would see that it is precisely the Keynesian techniques that have been largely responsible for the price level now being six times what it was in 1938. As it is, he has no idea what inflation is all about.

On unemployment he disregards the continuous powerful upsurge since the nineteen-fifties, to its peak in 1972. Registered unemployment then went over the million mark but his leader, Harold Wilson, contended that the real number of people out of work (registered and unregistered) “was nearer three million” (speech at Liverpool, Financial Times 10th April 72). And is Mr. Simpson still sure that the present crisis is just a “lurch”? The Labour Party Election Manifesto in February 1974 used very different language: “the most serious political and economic crisis since 1945”, and “economic perils of a new dimension; we face a crowning test of our democracy”.

When Mr. Simpson claims that the continued existence of large numbers of small businesses and retail shops shows that Marx was wrong about concentration, he not only ignores the flood of amalgamations and takeovers that are common knowledge but also leaves out of account that in every crisis (as at present) the small firms become more vulnerable. At all times their independence and that of small retail shops is more nominal than real.

He quotes the higher standard of living of workers as disproof of Marx. He says (p.120) that according to Marx “the mass of the people would become so poor (“the pauperization of the masses as he called it”) that the system would collapse and there would be a revolutionary change in society”. What Marx actually wrote was: “in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse”. It was social position, not falling real wages, that Marx referred to. His co-worker Frederick Engels saw the matter in proper perspective. When in 1892 he observed that British workers “are undoubtedly better off than before 1848” and that the condition of those in trade unions “has remarkedly improved”, he did not think this was a denial of the general view held by Marx himself. (The Condition of the Working Class in England, Frederick Engels, 1973 edn. pages 34 & 35.) But Mr. Simpson may be just finding out that in the present “lurch”, notwithstanding a Labour government, many workers are going to see their real wages falling.

Marx never supposed that capitalism would disappear of its own accord simply because of its internal contradictions and the workers’ poverty; it would need to be abolished and replaced by Socialism through the conscious organized action of the working class gaining control of State power.

Throughout his book Mr. Simpson treats the theoretical conflict between Marx and his Labour Party critics as if it is merely about different ways of achieving Labour-Party “managed capitalism”. He nowhere faces up to the fact that for Marx Socialism meant a fundamentally different social system, involving for example production solely for use, and the abolition of buying and selling and the wages system. This ought to have been considered by him because some of the people active in forming the Labour Party, including Keir Hardie, Shaw, and Sidney Webb, had broadly accepted it and presumably believed that it would be achieved by the Labour Party. It is strange that a trade-unionist who claims to know Marx does not even mention Marx’s plea to the unions to aim for the abolition of the wages system instead of seeking “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”, which is what the unions and the Labour Party continue to offer them.

What, in effect, Mr. Simpson and his Party are saying is that capitalism is now different because it is “controlled” and therefore Socialism in the real sense is not necessary even if possible. So the justification of the Labour Party falls back on the arguments of those among its founders who, like David Shackleton, said in 1906: leave Socialism alone and get on with “something practical”. This basically is Mr. Simpson’s position though he is not entirely happy with it, for he notes (p.51) some of the “social evils seventy years ago yet which are still far from resolved”. Unemployment is one he names.

Another was housing, and not even the most satisfied Labourite can believe that the problem has been solved. It was not a Labour leader in 1906 who said “the number of homeless is increasing week by week and waiting lists are growing” but Labour’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Dennis Healey, in his Budget speech on 26th March 1974.

One of the sillier beliefs of the Keynesian Labourites was that their control of capitalism gives them control of interest rates, which they could reduce at will. As it happens, in the year of the formation of the Labour Party an organization calling itself “The Workers’ National Housing Association” was jubilant because they had been promised government financial aid for housebuilding of £4¼ million at interest of 3¼%. Current interest rates arc about four times as much, but when on 14th March this year the Labour Government was asked what they were going to do to stabilize interest rates their spokesman in the House of Commons, the Paymaster General, replied:

Interest rates will in the future, as in the past, have to be responsive to changes in domestic and external conditions.

Marx explained this a hundred years ago.

For Mr. Simpson all the efforts of Labour governments to improve capitalism are “socialist” and he tells with evident pride that John Wheatley, Housing Minister in the 1924 Labour government, “put through an excellent Housing Act”. Socialist? Not at all, said Wheatley himself:

The proposals which I am submitting are real capitalism — an attempt to patch up, in the interests of humanity, a capitalist ordered society.

(Hansard, 3rd June 1924)

This is what the Labour Party has been doing for years, patching up capitalism. Workers, inside and outside trade unions, should certainly take an interest in politics — but for Socialism, not for Labour Party capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialist Economics: 5. Capital (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Economics Series

“The lazy men squandered their substance whilst the diligent saved theirs—thus Capital was born from thrift.” This fairy tale has about as much real application to the origins of Capital as Adam’s Rib has to the origins of women. The important point is: how are private fortunes created and how do they grow?

We know that prior to the capitalist system of production the producers owned their means of production, and the primitive accumulation of capital is nothing less than the process of divorcing the producers from their means of production and turning them into capital. When this process is completed historically we arrive at the situation which exists today, where the producers are totally alienated from the social means of production. They are propertyless wage-workers selling their life-activity to their employers, with enough to live on and sometimes not even that.

Capital has not existed from all time. It commenced in Europe out of the ruins of the old Feudal society around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a social relation of production, and came into existence with the production of commodities and their circulation. The circulation of commodities means the development of an exchange system which finds its ultimate expression in the introduction of a monetary system. Any stated sum of money is representative of any stated quantity of commodities or Value. Money is the final product of the circulation of commodities, and capital appears in the first instance in that form. But capital can also appear in the form of a sum of commodities (Values); raw materials, instruments of labour, in fact, any sum of Exchange Values. What distinguishes the commodities comprising capital from any other group of commodities is the way in which they are used. The object behind their use must always be to produce a greater Value than that existing. Capital functions solely to produce a Surplus-Value greater than the sum originally advanced, either in the monetary form or in the commodity form, or both.

It is important to differentiate between capital trading transactions and share or stock dealings carried out mainly on the world’s stock exchanges between rival stockholders and investors, each trying to improve his financial position individually, or in a group. These represent transfers of capital between various people and institutions. They do not add to the total wealth, but change the ownership of existing wealth (Value), much in the same way as you can move furniture from one room to the other within the same house. You finish up with the same furniture but in different rooms. One man’s loss is another man’s gain.

The function of capital production is to increase existing wealth. The production of wealth cannot, therefore, depend on trading transactions, neither can it depend on nature or heaven, despite “the Lord’s bounty.” When the parson gives thanks every harvest festival “when all is safely gathered in”, it should never be forgotten that every day is harvest day for the capitalist, sowing capital and reaping Surplus Value.

Raw materials, and even the most sophisticated machinery, or gold bars, do not possess magical powers, and cannot increase their own Value merely by being placed together in any sphere of production. Being inanimate objects they are dependent on men, either to produce them in the first instance, or to maintain or supervise their operation. Living Labour is vital to the whole function of capital. If the machine or the materials cannot change their Value, and if there is an additional or Surplus Value created, then it could only have come from living labour, there being no other possible source. The legendary brilliance of the capitalist, his organizing ability, and other associated fables, have little to do with the social production of wealth and its accumulation. Some are clever, some are industrious, most are ignorant of the source of their wealth, inefficient and self-indulgent. Were they all in the first category it would make no difference, because the fact remains that capital is a social relation of production working independently from personalities clever, stupid, or mediocre.

The social capital mainly consists of the means of production and distribution; factories, industrial complexes, oil wells, mineral workings, means of transport, ships, aeroplanes, railways and road transport systems, agricultural land, plantations, etc. Most of these have been created gradually by workers long since dead. This is the accumulated labour (Value) of the past which provides the basis for the living labourers’ productive activity in the present. The employer (capitalist) allows the worker access to this existing social capital, created by the worker’s predecessors, for the sole and specific purpose of adding a greater Value than that previously existing. This marriage between living labour and capital (past Labour) is a necessary condition for the social extraction of Surplus-Value. But, as has been stated, the element of Surplus-Value, or Profit, cannot come from a fixed quantity of accumulated wealth. If anything, without the fertilization of living labour the accumulated wealth of the past which exists in the objects of social labour—factories, machinery, road systems, industrial centres, shipyards, cultivated land, etc.— would deteriorate and eventually become wasted assets. Living labour serving capital therefore performs two functions: first it produces a Surplus-Value working together with the accumulated labour of the past; and second, and by virtue of its productive activity, it preserves the means of production from decay. Every act of production is, in effect, also an act of reproduction, and it is through this act of reproduction that the means of production remain intact, and are preserved for the capitalist.

The employers, as a class, who own the social capital, buy social labour-power, giving wages in return. The amount of the capital is described by Socialists as Variable capital, because we claim that it alone changes in quantity at the end of the productive process. This is because the workers produce more Value than they receive back in the amount of wages paid to them. The difference is described by us as the rate of Surplus-Value, or exploitation. If a company pays annually the sum of £1 million in wages, and £9 million in raw materials, machinery, etc. (£10 million total), and shows a profit of £1 million, the rate of exploitation is 100 per cent irrespective of the claim of the capitalist that he only earns 10 per cent. The variation upwards in total Value has been entirely due to living labour.

On the other hand, if a capitalist spends £10 million in wages and £1 million on raw materials, fuel, machinery, etc. and shows a profit of £1 million, the rate of exploitation would be 10 per cent.

The rate of exploitation is measured against the amount paid out in the form of wages, and not the total capital. The constant capital vested in machinery, raw materials, fuel, buildings, etc., is constantly replaced, or constantly reproduced by the capitalist adding the Value of these elements to the commodities which he produces. Constant capital cannot add any additional Value to the products, other than that contained within itself. In fact, it is only through the agency of human labour power during the productive process that dead capital (accumulated labour) gives birth to new additional Value.

Capitalism is basically a system of accumulation, and that portion of Surplus-Value which is not consumed by the capitalists on luxury living, is remitted to the fund of accumulated labour, where it can serve as fresh capital to exploit workers again and again, increasing with every phase of circulation. It is indeed the dead hand of the past weighing heavily like an Alp on the living. The greater the fund of accumulated capital the greater the pressure on the workers to serve that capital, to augment it ad infinitum.

It is often stated by supporters of capitalism that capital has opened up new horizons, and that men have access to things and technological discoveries previously undreamed of. But it should be remembered that men, together with their fellow men, live in society and create their own environment. That environment is anti-social, because men’s creative ability is stifled as they do not own or control the means of production. It is hardly an argument to suggest that man is adequately compensated for this social loss by the ownership of TVs, motor cars and central heating. As Marx stated: “Whether his wages be high or low, or whether the chains that bind him be made of gold, the worker is as firmly riveted to capital as was Prometheus to the rock.”

Capital appears to have a separate existence outside the control of man. As a social relation, it Frankenstein-like, dominates all forms of human behaviour, where everything is related to the money principle. The measure of a man is his wealth not his intellect or culture. The ability of a man is determined by his financial power. The big spender has inherited the earth—that is why he is a big spender. Capitalism has created a phoney culture, and has debased man’s intellect to the level of a commodity. Happily we have not all succumbed to its pernicious influence, and we know, and are optimistic enough to believe, that society can be turned the right way up—which means that civilisation can survive and prosper without capital.

Jim D'Arcy