Cooking the Books: Guns before butter (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘National security’, admirals, generals and air chief marshals are telling us, is ‘the first duty of any government’. In a sense they are right. The first duty of a government is to ensure security, though not of the population it rules over; it’s the security of its capitalist class, to protect them from being taken over by the armed forces of a rival capitalist state.

To do this, the government has to equip, train and maintain a military force armed with the most up-to-date weapons of individual and mass destruction that it can afford. This has to be paid for out of taxes that ultimately fall on the profits of the capitalist class. As the government’s ’first duty’, such spending takes priority over other government spending, as summed in the saying ‘Guns before butter’.

That was the heading of the editorial in the Times on 19 February. ‘To underpin Europe’s security’, it thundered, ‘Sir Keir Starmer must expand defence spending in a time of economic difficulty. That means taking an axe to the bloated welfare system.’ A week later Starmer announced that the Labour government would increase military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027 and later to 3 percent. Labour intended to take an axe to the welfare system anyway, so Starmer said that it was ‘overseas aid’ that would be cut to pay for this.

Paul Mason, the former Trotskyist who once wrote a book called PostCapitalism but now works for a thinktank financed by the Ministry of Defence, welcomed this as something he had been calling for. His job requires him to think up reasons why defence spending should be increased and one that he has deployed is that it will stimulate growth. Last July he wrote an article headed Rearm, And The Economy Will Grow (tinyurl.com/mrxezm3j ). His evidence for this was pretty thin:

‘Anecdotally, where defence investment is actually happening it is a major driver of growth. Barrow-in-Furness, according to one senior trade union contact, is starting to boom. The old Debenhams store, which shut down in 2021, is set to reopen as an apprentice training centre; hundreds of apprenticeships a year are being lined up.’

Given the way that GDP is calculated, any increase in government spending will increase GDP but this doesn’t mean that this will lead to growth in the longer term. In another simplistic propaganda piece last July, Defence spending: A waste of money? (tinyurl.com/7p7j7vbe ), Mason attempted to refute the argument that ‘defence spending reduces economic growth’. Since defence spending is paid for from profits and profits are the source of finance for growth in the sense of capital accumulation, it would seem obvious that defence spending tends to reduce growth.

Mason’s counter-argument was that extra defence spending would act as a better ‘fiscal stimulus’ than other forms of government spending but this assumes that the capitalist economy can be stimulated by government spending, as taught by Keynes but refuted in practice. In essence, he is advocating what has been called ‘military Keynesianism’. When he was a Trotskyist he might have called this a ‘permanent arms economy’. Only then he would have opposed it. Now he is advocating it.

Government spending on arms is a drag on capital accumulation but it is a necessary expense, and so not a waste, for capitalism. In that sense capitalism is a permanent arms economy.

The Socialist Party and National Defence. (1929)

From the April 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do We Want a Navy?
In the Morning Post (February 25th), the late Right Hon. Stephen Walsh, M.P., wrote an article under the title “Labour Party and National Defence." In it he explained the attitude of a Labour Government to questions affecting the organisation and use of the Army, Navy and Air Force. As he was Secretary for War in the Labour Government, he spoke with authority and knowledge, and as he was an enthusiastic supporter of the war in 1914, and of conscription, and an avowed believer in the need to maintain the British Empire, it is not surprising that his views received ungrudging approval from the editor of the Morning Post. It is, of course, true that not all of Mr. Walsh’s Labour colleagues were so boldly jingo during the war, nor so unrepentantly imperialistic now. But on the fundamental problem of national defence, Mr. Walsh could speak for his party, and his views would be endorsed by practically all the influential groups in it, from J. H. Thomas to the I.L.P.

Mr. Walsh’s words are that the Army, Navy and Air Force are required in order that “the British citizen . . may pursue his daily avocation in security.’' This is a statement acceptable by Tories, Liberals, and the Labour Party alike. It is not accepted by the Socialist Party.

Who is the “British citizen” and what is his “daily avocation”?

To come straight to the point, a point obscured by Mr. Walsh’s use of undefined terms like “the nation,” “our country,” etc., British citizens and, in fact the citizens of all the capitalistic world, consist of two main classes. On the one side there are the propertied few, who live on property incomes, without the need to work for their living. On the other side are the great majority who are propertyless and are compelled to sell their working power for wages or salaries, to the propertied class. The one class has property to lose, and a privileged position to lose, wealth and security to lose. The other class count themselves fortunate only in being able to find employment, and life even then is arduous and insecure. The Capitalist class, in short, have something worth defending, and for its defence they maintain, and will maintain, whatever armed forces they think necessary. Non-resistance to an attack by other capitalist governments, or defeat in war, means to them the loss of something material. Thus defeat in the Great War, the subsequent imposition of indemnities, the loss of colonies, meant the extraction of wealth from the pockets of the German capitalists— the only class who could pay—and the loss of opportunities for lucrative colonial investment. The burden of defeat has not, in fact, fallen on the German workers. The employers in defeated Germany can afford to depress the standard of living of their employees below efficiency level, no more, and no less, than can employers in victorious Britain.

The capitalist needs efficiency in his wage-slaves for the production of profit, just as the farmer needs well-fed horses and cattle. And the extent to which the German workers can, by organisation and otherwise, secure standards over and above the level required to make them efficient wealth-producers, is not importantly affected by the defeat or victory of their employers in a war with foreign capitalist states. It is conditioned by the forces of the capitalist system itself, and by the political needs of the ruling class. In times when their position is endangered from abroad, rather than in the piping times of peace, the ruling class are most willing to give concessions to their wage-slaves.

The war left the position of the German working-class and the condition of the British working-class just what it was before 1914. Both countries in 1914 were capitalist countries, governed by and for the capitalist class. The same is true in 1919 and 1929, with this difference, that whereas the British capitalists are wealthier than ever, their German colleagues have had to pay the price of military defeat.

Figures issued by German official sources disclose something of the extent of the loss of Germany’s propertied class. (See “Observer,” March 17th.) In 1914, there were 15,549 persons with fortunes of one million marks or over; now there are only 2,235, and owners of more than £500,000 have decreased from 229 to 33.

Mr. Walsh wrote of carrying on our “daily avocation in security.” We can now give more precise meaning to the phrase. The “daily avocation” of the capitalist class is the extraction of profit from the exploitation of the working-class, by whose labour wealth is produced.

German capitalists and British capitalists need armed forces to protect their privileged position, and these armed forces are intended to be used not only in war with foreign states, but also against members of the working-class who rebel against the system, whether individually or collectively. This we see in times of industrial conflict, strikes, lock-outs, etc.

Members of the working-class, on the other hand, do not enjoy the possession of battleships and howitzers, poison-gas, and aeroplanes to enable them to pursue their “daily avocation in security,” because the threat to them comes not from foreign capitalists in particular, but from the capitalist class in general. The ruling class in Germany in 1914 did not construct great armaments at enormous cost in order to disturb the normal pre-war army of British unemployed in their “daily avocation” of looking for a job; nor to rob the workers o( their slums, nor to interfere with the activities of those British workers who were fortunate enough to have employment. The object of the capitalist class in general is to exploit the working class. When capitalist states quarrel, the object of the quarrel and the prize for the victor is a re-division of the wealth of which the working-class are, under capitalism, normally robbed. Armaments exist to give the capitalists security. The position of the workers is as secure or insecure in defeat as in victory. The workers have nothing to defend. National Defence is a purely capitalist question. Not national defence, but the overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Correspondence of Marx and Engels (1937)

Book Review from the January 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Correspondence of Marx and Engels pp. 534. (Martin Lawrence, Ltd., 12s. 6d.) 

The above letters, dating from 1846 to 1895, and numbering over two hundred, cover a wide range of subjects, topical as well as theoretical.

Industrial developments in various countries, and political movements arising therefrom, coupled with conflicting economic theories and philosophical methods are all brought under review. It is, of course, out of the question that such a collection should make smooth, connected reading or that all parts should be of equal value. Some of the letters are of outstanding merit and well worthy of preservation. An almost equal number are of only historical interest as illustrating the development of their immature ideas and the points on which they erred even later in life.

Among the most interesting of the former class may be mentioned the letter of April 18th, 1883, written by Engels to Van Patten. Engels here declares that it had always been the view of Marx and himself that “the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the State and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society-anew.”

In opposition to the anarchists, who proclaimed the abolition of the State as the first and last word of the revolution, Marx and Engels always insisted on the necessity, to the workers, of political power. This would be the means whereby the revolution (i.e., the substitution of common ownership for ownership by the capitalist class) would be carried out. The disappearance of the State would result from this. It was thus regarded as an effect of the revolution, not its primary condition. (Lengthy extracts from this letter were reproduced in the Socialist Standard in January, 1935.)

Other interesting letters are the six written by Marx or Engels to Danielson on the development of capitalism in Russia. They argued that a Socialist revolution in Western Europe was the only means by which Russia could escape the normal development of capitalism.

Of particular value is their joint letter to the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party, written in September, 1879, dealing with the internal condition and unsound policies of that organisation. The following extract might have been written this year about the British Labour Party, which is deeply engrossed in the problem of winning over the so-called ”middle-class” by pandering to their prejudices and ignorance: —

   In the opinion of these gentlemen, then, the Social- Democratic Party should not be a one-sided workers’ party, but an all-sided party of “everyone imbued with a true love of humanity.” It must prove this, above all, by laying aside its crude proletarian passions and placing itself under the guidance of educated, philanthropic bourgeois in order to “cultivate good taste” and ‘‘learn good form . . . .” Then, too, “numerous adherents from the circles of the educated and propertied classes will make their appearance. . . .  ”
   German Socialism has “attached too much importance to the winning of the masses and in so doing has neglected energetic (!) propaganda among the so-called upper strata of society,” and then “the Party still lacks men fitted to represent it in the Reichstag.” It is, however, “desirable and necessary to entrust the mandate to men who have the time and opportunity to make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the relevant materials. The simple worker and small self-employed man . . . has the necessary leisure for this only in rare and exceptional cases.” So elect bourgeois!
   In short: the working-class of itself is incapable of its own emancipation.

Patching up Capitalism

Then Marx and Engels went on to ridicule the notion, familiar to-day in Labour Party—I.L.P.— Communist circles, that it is necessary to concentrate on immediate demands and leave Socialism to the future.

      “Let no one misunderstand us”; we do not want “to give up our Party and our programme, but think that for years hence we shall have enough to do if we concentrate our whole strength and energy upon the attainment of certain immediate aims. . . . ”

This is what Marx and Engels had to say about that: —

     The programme is not to be given up, but only postponed—to an indefinite period. One accepts it, though not really for one’s own lifetime, but posthumously as an heirloom to be handed down to one’s children and grandchildren. In the meantime, one devotes one’s “whole strength and energy” to all sorts of petty rubbish and the patching up of the capitalist order of society, in order at least to produce the appearance of something happening without at the same time scaring the bourgeoisie. There I must really praise the Communist, Mique, who proved his unshakable belief in the inevitable overthrow of capitalist society in the course of the next few hundred years by heartily carrying on swindles, contributing his honest best to the crash of 1873, and so really doing something to assist the collapse of the existing order.

The letter contains much more of the same kind, Marx and Engels urging that if non-workers join the Socialist Movement “the first condition is that they should not bring any remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them, but should whole-heartedly adopt the proletarian point of view.”

Considering the time and circumstances under which it was written, the letter to the leaders of the German S.D.P. is a fairly vigorous statement of the case against “reformism” as a basis for a political party.

Bernstein, however, its foremost representative, became editor of The Social Democrat within a year or so of this letter. Marx and Engels appear to have swallowed their threats to sever connection with the Party. Marx died two or three years after; but during the following decade Engels developed a most ill-founded optimism concerning the Party they had jointly criticised.

Marx and Engels on War

It is when we come to their letters on the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1, and Engels' letters to Bebel in September and October, 1891, on the coming European conflict (page 488 et seq.) that we find lacking in moments of practical crisis some of the brilliance which marks most of the theoretical passages.

During the Franco-Prussian War they appear to have been hypnotised by the supposed necessity for national defence.

Socialists, who remember to what uses the doctrine “national defence” was put in 1914-18, will find the arguments of Marx and Engels, in this connection, extremely unconvincing, and it is interesting to notice that Lenin, of all people, appears to have swallowed them (see footnote, pp. 297-8). Just as “liberty,” in the mouth of the capitalist, means his freedom to exploit the workers, so does “national defence" mean the protection of his share in the international swag.

As the war progressed Engels appears to have developed doubts as to its "defensive" character, but twenty years afterwards (September, 1891) he still cherished similar ideas. Anticipating the wider outbreak of hostilities, he wrote to Bebel (p. 490), “If we (Germany) are victorious our Party will come into power. The victory of Germany is therefore the victory of the revolution, and if it comes to war we must not only desire victory, but further it by every means. . . .” (The end of the sentence is omitted in the volume.) If, then, the Social Democratic Party in Germany, like the Labour Party in this country, betrayed the interests of the working class in 1914, they did but follow the path indicated by Frederick Engels.

They could, however, have recalled the words of 1847 to the effect that "the workers have no country," "they have nothing of their own to fortify and secure," "they have only their chains to lose" and “The executive of the modern state is but a committee of the capitalist class" (Communist Manifesto).

These words have encircled the globe in numerous languages, while the lapses of Marx and Engels into ideas of national defence have sunk into obscurity. It may restrain some workers from a tendency to hero worship and to suspension of their critical judgment, to be reminded that Marx and Engels could go badly astray on certain questions.

In general, it is, of course, also necessary to remember that this is a volume of letters written for private reading, not for publication. They were for that reason often in the nature of “thinking aloud," a groping towards conclusions rather than a statement of definite conclusions.

The volume is well indexed, and the text is illuminated by numerous biographical and historical footnotes. The student will, however, need to be flushed with more than ardour, in view of the price.

Eric Boden