The Review Column: Collapse in South Arabia (1967)

The Review Column from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Collapse in South Arabia

The news of the collapse of the Federal government in South Arabia, and of the British acceptance that they must now deal with one or other of the outlawed nationalist movements there, induced a weird if well-known feeling that we have been here before.

The British presence in the South Arabian Federation, and their propping up of the government, revolved around the importance of the Aden base in protecting British interests in the oilfields of the Arabian Gulf.

It was for this that British soldiers were killed in the area—and themselves did a fair bit of killing. The battle between the occupying troops and the Nationalists had all the usual nastiness, including the atrocities committed by both sides.

It might have been possible for the British “experts” who were running the show to consider the history of similar situations in many other parts of the world—Ireland, Algeria, Cyprus to name only three.

The lesson they might have drawn from all these conflicts is that it is impossible to suppress a nationalist movement for ever and that, after a lot of blood has been shed, a lot of damage done, a lot of hatred provoked on both sides, the occupying government comes to recognise the inevitable and does business with the people it has been calling cowardly terrorists.

Then the “terrorists” became respectable. They attend conferences in sleek limousines, they smile at, and shake hands with, the men who so recently placed a price on their head. They often go on to apply their own suppression to former comrades who rebel against what they consider a sell-out, or who disagree on some other issue.

All this now seems likely to happen in South Arabia. Which not only goes to show how blind are the “experts”, but also how persistent, tangled and poisonous are the conflicts of capitalism, and to what murderous lengths men are driven in their efforts to resolve them.

Half a million unemployed

As the Ministry of Labour’s doleful figures come out, let it not be forgotten that it is a Labour government which says that it has created half a million unemployed.

The Labour Party hold the theory that a government can produce, or abolish, unemployment at will. Whether this is true or not is beside the point, which is that Labour are saying they are responsible for the rise in unemployment, that it has come about as a result of their deliberate policy.

It is not convenient, now, for them to remember some of their promises. Like this one, by James Callaghan at their 1965 conference:

… he had not joined the Labour Party to create unemployment. He was certain that the measures being taken, through regional planning, were the right ones to maintain full employment. (The Guardian, 1/10/65.)

It is not convenient, now, for Labour to remember that the wage freeze was always supposed to be the alternative to unemployment. This was Callaghan, again at the 1965 conference:

This problem of getting increased productivity would be solved either by unemployment and substantial deflation, or by a prices and incomes policy: there is no other way.” (The Guardian, 1/10/65.)

As it turned out, the working class have got it all; a wage freeze, unemployment and what is called “deflation”.

Presumably, if they were pressed on the matter, the Labour Party would still say that this is Socialism. For one thing, their policies seem to be holding the support of a majority of trade union leaders, although what these same leaders would say about the same policies if they came from a Conservative government hardly bears thinking about.

To some extent, then, Labour have had things their way. What it amounts to is that in 1964 there was a dirty job to be done for the British capitalist class and Labour have done it.

The TUC, does it matter?

“I do not think the . . . motion really means a great deal in this context, one way or the other.” That was George Woodcock at this year’s TUC and there are no prizes for guessing why he has suddenly discovered that some of the decisions of this annual gathering don’t really matter.

A long time ago, the Labour Party leadership made it clear that whenever its Annual Conference passed an inconvenient motion it suddenly lost all power and significance as a conference. Only when its decisions were in line with official policy did the Conference become the democratic mouthpiece of a great movement.

Now, apparently, the same thing applies to the TUC. The motion Woodcock was referring to was one from the Shopworkers’ Union which, among other things, protested about unemployment, rising prices and the wage freeze.

It seemed certain that the motion was going to be passed —as it was, despite the application of “Carron’s Law” to the AEU vote—so of course the only thing left for the politically motivated TUC leaders to do was to give advance notice that it didn’t mean anything.

There is no record that Woodcock was equally clear about the TUC’s irrelevance when they later approved motions which supported the government—one on the Wednesday from the ETU which recorded appreciation of the government’s efforts to reduce overseas spending and one on Friday, moved by Carron, which said that the trade union movement should support the government.

It is fair to ask why the TUC bothers to have a Congress, if it is allowed to pass only those resolutions which are approved by the platform. It is fair to ask whether the TUC leaders think it democratic that any decisions it makes which are inconvenient to a Labour government should be ignored.

Perhaps the solution is to hold the Congress only when there is a Conservative government. Then Woodcock and the other leaders can accept the critical motions without any qualms.

Unless, of course, the union membership become aware of their standing and interests under capitalism—and of the job the unions should be doing.

British Motor Car Industry (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor Buchanan once described cars as “adored” by their owners— a sharp comment on the fact that, of all the symbols of working class life in the Sixties, few are the object of such pride and care as the motor car.

Behind this rather neurotic pride, which gives the car sellers their chance, there often lies something less agreeable. Tests carried out by the Consumers’ Association regularly confirm the disappointment experienced by many owners of new cars. Here are some typical comments, from the CA magazine Which? with the price of the car: 

“persistent engine oil leaks” (£998) 

“failure of exhaust system” (£1048) 

“left wheel badly out of balance and slightly buckled” (£609) 

One British car, costing £789, had no fewer than thirty two faults on delivery three of which, said CA, were “probably serious”.

The plain fact is that, as the motor industry has developed greater combines, and as it has intensified the methods of mass production, many of its quality standards have declined in ways which cannot be compensated for by greater technical knowledge and some improved materials. Very few modern cars, for example, have the sort of chassis, bodywork or upholstery to compare with a pre-war model.

The reason is that, just like any other industry, the car firms are chasing their economic tails. They have tens of millions of pounds invested in their production lines and to get a return on this they have to see the cars streaming out of the factory. A Rootes car takes about two and a half hours to build once the basic components are gathered together; Fords of Britain makes about three thousand vehicles a day. As a rough guide, compare this to the fact that at Rolls Royce they will take between two and three months to build a car, and at Jaguar ten weeks.

The Ford Motor Company says all that needs to be said, by way of explanation of this difference:

Quality and service problems. Industry spends vast amounts in trying to cope with these, but mass production and price competition make them inevitable to some extent.” (Notes On British Motor Industry)

What sort of industry is it, which stands behind the mass-produced dream and which can so frankly confess that quality problems are inevitable? About a million men are engaged in the manufacture, sale and service of vehicles in the U.K., about 600,000 of them in manufacture. The car industry is the top British exporting industry, sending out about £750 million worth a year and is important also on the home market; more than two thirds of the national hire purchase debt is for cars.

In the main the industry consists of five big firms—British Motor Holdings (BMH); Ford; Vauxhall; Rootes; Standard Triumph. (Figure One shows the standing of these companies in the British market.) This Big Five account for almost the entire British production of cars ; up to just over a year ago the independent Rover and Jaguar were responsible for almost three per cent of sales but now both these firms have joined one of the big combines. Mergers are now an established part of the industry ; the big firms often take over one or other of their suppliers, or of their rivals, heaping one merger upon another into a massive and intricate combine. (Figure Two shows something of the set-up at B.M.H.)

The car industry’s work is in some part a matter of assembling components which have been produced outside, some by big concerns (electrical equipment by Lucas, propellor shafts by Hardy-Spicer) and some by small family firms (leather by Connolly Bros., cylinder head studs by M.V. Engineering). The economics of mass production force the car firms to store the very minimum of components; B.M.H. at Longbridge hold at most a day’s stock of major production items, Rootes enough trimmed and painted bodies for only one shift. This makes the industry heavily reliant on the dependability of its suppliers—and exceedingly vulnerable to labour disputes.

Strikes are another of the car firms’ big problems. Persistent labour trouble at Ford’s have caused two official inquiries into staff relations there—by Lord Cameron in 1957 and by Mr. D. T. Jack in 1963. Both investigations went over the same ground but neither did the impossible ; neither produced a solution to the problems it was investigating.

But one thing the inquiries did make clear and that was the government’s concern at the importance of the car industry to the economy of British capitalism. When Dagenham sneezes, it is said, the British economy will catch a cold. At the moment Dagenham, and all the other car towns, are exhibiting the symptoms of a prolonged sickness.

In 1966, Vauxhall’s pre-tax profits were £3,666,898—compared to £17,735,372 the year before. In the same period, Ford’s profits before tax fell from £8.9 million to £7.4 million. Most spectacular of them all B.M.H., whose accounting year is timed so that they reported on the full effects of the 1966 car slump, announced a loss of £7.52 million during the first six months of their financial year compared to a pre-tax profit of £5.785 million in the first half of the previous year.

There is an abundance of ominous figures to record the current slump in cars: new car registrations up to July 103,000 down on last year’s; production running about ten per cent lower than in 1966, when sales were in any case 87,000 lower than in 1965. Over the past couple of months sales have picked up but the car makers are not rejoicing; they may be in for their worst winter for over twenty years.

The motor industry has had many such ups and downs (see Figure Three). What is worrying the car firms now is the abundant evidence that they are in for a long period of decline and that any further pressure on their profits will force them to cut down on the capital investment which is so important to their competitive existence. Typical of their comments amid the gloom are:

Success in the motor industry demands a sustained and high level of investment and a vigilant control of costs. Without adequate returns, neither is possible. (Ford’s).

… it is imperative that the Government should take the very first opportunity of permitting our industry to find its natural level, thus allowing it to stabilise production and generate the capital so urgently needed to keep abreast of its foreign competitors. (B.M.H.)

The government’s remedy for this situation has been the by-now classical one of easing hire purchase controls; in June they cut the minimum deposit on H.P. car sales from 40 to 30 per cent and increased the maximum repayment period from 24 to 30 months. In August there was another relaxation; deposit down to 25 per cent, repayment period up to 36 months. The car makers gave a cautious welcome to these measures, although their own suggestions are no more fundamental.

It is instructive now to remember the forecast made in Ford’s 1959 Report, which came out a couple of years before the car industry hit a slump, that the next ten years would be a “decade of opportunity for the motor industry”. Such optimism is common in all capitalism’s industries; only occasionally does one of their spokesmen put his finger on the essential problem, and reveal how hopeless all their remedies are. In the Sunday Times of May 14 last Henry Ford II said it: “We have not yet discovered the secret of making anybody buy our products”.

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Who creates wealth? (1967)

The Finance and Industry Column from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people have a shrewd suspicion that the profits that find their way into the pockets of those who own stocks and shares come out of the wealth produced by those who work. For the capitalist class this is unfortunate since their system runs on profit. To pursue their profit-making in peace they must convince the rest of us that they are doing it for our benefit; they must brand those who link profit with exploitation as ignorant agitators. Sir Peter Runge, a joint vice-chairman of Tate and Lyle and a director of Vickers, in a speech last May, later published by millionaire Labour MP Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press under the title The Role of Profit, had a go at showing that profit does not come from the unpaid labour of those who are employed to work. Here is his specious argument:

Let us look at profit in its first role — as an incentive to create capital, without which economic growth is impossible. Capital can only be created by savings, that is to say by the postponement of consumption. Under a voluntary regime consumption is postponed if it is judged that in doing so there is a consequential advantage. Judgement normally rests on the prospects of having more to consume as a result of the postponement; and clearly the better the prospects the greater the incentive to postpone consumption and thus to save. The extra consumption made possible by having waited is the reward for having saved; it is the profit generated by the capital which has been created. Without the reward there would be no capital formation and therefore no growth and therefore no real increase in standard of living or in real wages. Looked at in this way, the reward of capital — I am not talking about usury — exploits no one; it is an essential part of growth in a free economy.

This seems plausible until you take it to pieces. Take the sentence “capital can only be created by savings, that is to say by the postponement of consumption”. What does Runge mean by capital? We doubt, somehow, that he is using it in the Marxian sense to mean wealth used to exploit wage-labour for profit. Nor does he seem to be using it in the more conventional sense of academic economists to mean wealth used to produce more wealth. He seems merely to mean wealth that is not consumed immediately. In which cases his sentence is not a statement of fact but a definition that capital is postponed consumption. He argues that profit is needed as an incentive to save. In fact, he’s not really talking about profit, properly so-called, at all but about interest, the price of money. To talk, as Runge does, about rewards is just to confuse the issue.

We can assume that Runge is not so stupid as to think that money automatically reproduces itself. Or can we? What are we to make of his claim that “the extra consumption . . . is the profit generated by the capital which has been created”? Perhaps he can explain just how capital (in his sense) produces profit. Since he has defined capital as what is saved, and thus talks interchangeably about the “reward for having saved” and the “reward of capital”, he would seem to be committed to the patently absurd view that profit is produced by waiting. But waiting produces, and can produce, nothing. Waiting, in fact, is doing nothing. If Runge doubts this, let him take a sum of money and lock it up in his safe and wait. We can assure him that he will be waiting a long time before his reward materialises. On the other hand, he could lend it to someone who would use it as productive capital. The factory-owner who borrows the money will use it in his business. In his factory people in his employ will work raw materials into finished goods; they will produce new wealth. Part of this will return to them as wages. The rest belongs to their employer, the factory-owner. This is the source of profit and its subsidiaries, rent and interest. It arises in production from the unpaid labour of those who work. Out of his profit the factory-owner can pay Runge interest for the loan of his money.

Significantly, Runge chooses to steer clear of the realm of production and to discuss instead how interest can be justified. And even here, instead of seeing interest as a price he speaks of rewards, substituting for an economic category, as Marx put it in another context, a sycophantic phrase.

Another capitalist who has an even more absurd view of how wealth is produced is Tory shadow Minister, Sir Keith Joseph. He thinks it is a few thousand top executives who are the “wealth-creators”. In a speech pleading for a reduction of taxes on the rich, as reported for their benefit in the Financial Times of June 26, he declared:

The Government that wants the standard of living to rise so that there is more for all … must start by allowing its wealth-creators to keep more of their earnings. . . . There are at any given time very few wealth-creators probably no more than a few thousand.

We know that capitalism develops social productivity but had not realised that it had gone quite this far. So only a few thousand people mine all the coal, operate the railways, run the factories, shops and offices! Who are they? Who are these super-men? According to Joseph this fantastic feat is performed by

the creative businessmen who detect new needs and new markets or new versions of old needs and old markets for products or services — and set about supplying them; or the managers who have the brains, character and drive to make an organisation more efficient.

Runge tries to confuse us with his illogical arguments. Joseph just insults our intelligence. Nobody would deny that top executives work, but what about the rest of us, who spend the greater part of our lives in producing wealth that belongs to a privileged and often idle few, do we not create wealth too?

Incidentally Joseph, a Lloyds underwriter and deputy chairman of Bovis Holdings Ltd., hit upon an idea to create wealth for himself (and, of course, for us as well) that never fails. He had the enterprise, brains, character and drive to be born the son of one of the original partners of a construction firm called Bovis.

Why many people look up to men like Sir Peter Runge and Sir Keith Joseph is difficult to understand. They are just human beings like the rest of us, only, perhaps, a little stupid. It is us, the working class, who by applying our energies to nature-given materials produce all new wealth; it is us who run industry and society from top to bottom. Is it not time we did so in our own interests for a change?

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The Alternative to Private Ownership (1967)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The only alternative to the private ownership of the means of production by the few possible today, with the present stage of development of those means, is social ownership—ownership by the whole community. With the means and instruments for the production and distribution of wealth owned and controlled by the whole community there can be no other object in operating them but to produce wealth for the benefit of the community. The means of living belonging to the whole of the people, none is outside their ownership nor, on the other hand, can any person have ownership in these things as an individual, but only as a cell in the social body.

As a consequence of this the whole social fabric must reshape itself. The only means of productively applying it belonging to the community labour-power must come under communal control. No man can purchase it because, in the first place, he has no means of exploiting it, in the second place no worker would desire to sell his labour-power to another since he has the opportunity of exercising it through the communal means, and thirdly, since the whole of the wealth produced under such a system belongs to the community, there is no exchange within the community, and therefore money—the means of exchange— loses its function and its value, and becomes useless for the purchase of labour-power or anything else. The sale of labour-power for wages, then must disappear with the abolition of private property in the instruments of labour. The whole wages system, in fact, must collapse with the change in the property condition, and a new set of relations must arise between social units, in which the relations of master and man can find no place. The class division, by which the people of every country are divided into exploiters and exploited, employers and employed, masters and slaves, rich and poor according as they are propertied or propertyless, must vanish with the rest, giving place to a unified community of workers, socially equal because equal possessors in the economic basis of society— the means and instruments of producing the social wealth.

(From an article by ‘G’ in the Socialist Standard October 1917).

Economic Thought (1967)

Book Review from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A History of Economic Thought by William J. Barber, Pelican. 5s.

Socialists, who have all at least had a go at reading Marx, are familiar with big names in economic thought—Sir William Petty, the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, Ricardo—and even with lesser names now long forgotten like Nassau Senior and his last hour. Marx saw his work as in the tradition of the classical economists like Smith and Ricardo who had set out to study the processes of economic growth and the distribution of income among social classes. Later economic writers turned to the study of prices and the market. Marx called them ‘vulgar’ economists as they tended to take a businessman’s view of economic life. In his discussion of Adam Smith. Barber brings out the different approaches of classical and modern economics:

Smith’s analytical categories contrast sharply with those widely used in much current economic analysis. A prevalent modern approach to income distribution is entirely ‘functional’ in orientation; that is to say, various income payments are treated as rewards to the ‘factors’ contributing to production… In such a ‘functional’ system all class lines are hidden. Smith, on the other hand, began with a social class division and built the greater part of his analytical structure around it.

Barber briefly surveys the contribution to economic thought of Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Marx, Alfred Marshall and Keynes. Malthus is obviously out of place since his contribution was next to nothing. He did open a discussion on population, it is true, but, and Barber notices this too, he contradicted himself in different editions of his main work. He was also a shameless defender of an idle and wealthy leisure class.

Barber’s treatment of Marx is reasonably intelligent though marred by a number of mistakes. He claims that Marx assumed that the rate of exploitation (the ratio of profits to wages) would remain constant over time. Yet Marx devoted much space to describing the means capitalists used to increase it like the lengthening of the working day and the intensification of work. Barber also states that Marx “eliminated the classical concept of rent from his analysis”. Yet Marx discusses this too in some detail. Marx is often wrongly seen as an underconsumptionist so it is odd to read that Marx

was too closely wedded to the classical tradition of Say’s Law to provide a systematic demonstration of cyclical fluctuations. Within his system there could be no deficiency in total demand; only capitalists were in a position to save; and what they saved went into investment expenditure.

Say, a minor French economist, argued that general overproduction or underconsumption was impossible as supply created its own demand; what was not spent was all invested. ‘This conclusion’, as Barber points out, ‘rested on an important, though implicit, assumption: that all income was spent and none hoarded’. Marx never held this view. In fact he was one of the first to see through Say’s Law. He explicitly rejected Say’s views, arguing that the possibility of a crisis arises if the capitalists hoard and don’t re-invest their profits, which they will do if they think there’s no prospect of making any more.

Barber would seem to be taking on the whole of sociology in his criticism of Marx’s ‘social determinism’. To suggest that human action in society can be explained in a scientific way, i.e. in terms of cause and effect, does not commit you to a fatalist view of human behaviour.

Despite these limitations A History of Economic Thought is a useful guide and introduction to the theories of both pre-and post-Marxian economists.

Adam Buick

Reforming Capitalism (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

To avoid misunderstanding about the terms we use, we will state briefly what is meant by reformism and by revolution.

Reformism means the formulation of day to day policies to make superficial adjustments to capitalism through legislation to meet the changing requirements of the system. A reformist party is one which, on the basis of such policies, seeks power to administer capitalism.

By appealing to workers on a programme of reforms, the political agents of capitalism create the illusion of trying to change things. The workers who vote for such parties and policies are being duped into supporting the system which rests upon their exploitation. Revolution stands against all this. It means the abolition of the system which reformists seek to preserve.

Perhaps by using one popular reform as an example we can make the Socialist position more clear.

It can hardly be an exaggeration to say that no single piece of reform legislation in modern times, was ever heralded with such widespread acclaim as the so-called National Health Service Act of 1946.

Politicians of all parties were confident that a way had been worked out to maintain a standard of working class health, cheaply and consistent with industrial efficiency and profitability. Also they had a handy device to fob off any working class unrest with the conditions of post-war capitalism.

The majority of the working class at the time were deluded by the sales talk with which the act was presented to them and widely regarded it as free state benevolence for which they should be duly grateful.

The idea of free access to wealth is incompatible with the private property basis of capitalism.

There can be no “little bits’ of Socialism. It’s all or nothing. And this is just why the National Health Service has not fulfilled its promise. The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain never expected otherwise and published a pamphlet called Beveridge Re-organises Poverty five years before the Act came into force. Two references from this pamphlet will show the line of our approach. We quoted the Beveridge Report as follows:

“.. . that each individual citizen is more likely to concentrate upon his war effort if he feels his government will be ready in time for that better world . . .”

and Samuel Courtauld’s comment on the Report:

“.. . social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long-term investment the country could make. It will not undermine the morale of the nation’s workers: it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costs.” (Manchester Guardian 19 Feb. 1943).

Whether, after nearly twenty years, this reform has lived up to the hopes of the capitalist class, we cannot say, but for the workers it should be a hard-earned experience in the futility of reformism. Far from anything being free, the last twenty years have been one long moan by successive Labour and Tory leaders about the costs of the “service”. There has been an unending trail of legislation making adjustments to the Act itself, largely concerned with money matters. In October 1949, just over a year after the Act came into force, the then Labour Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee announced proposed charges of one shilling for each NHS prescription. Although this proposal was endorsed by the Labour Parliament, it was not until March 1952 that the Tory Government put it into effect. It should be noted that the present Labour Government’s removal of the charges was followed by the most ruthless and sustained attack upon wages in post-war years.

After only five years of NHS in May 1953 Aneurin Bevan was complaining about the high cost of prescriptions. Proprietary dexedrine had cost £400,000 in 1952, when its chemical equivalent would have cost £158,000 over the same period. (The British National Health Service (p. 84) by D. Mc. I. Johnson.)

Three years later the Guillebaud Report on the cost of National Health Service was published, but despite much earnest delving into bureaucratic machinery, nothing more was heard.

Section 2 of the NHS (Family Planning) Act 1967 gives local health authorities power to make charges for certain contraceptives, according to ‘means’ and subject to the approval of the Minister of Health.

Although this might conjure up some humorous situations in one’s mind, it is anything but funny to read about the conditions of near breakdown in the health administration which are so widespread to-day, after nearly twenty years of this capitalist panacea.

Thousands of disillusioned doctors going abroad to get away from it; surgeons in over-crowded hospitals working a 90 hour week; people waiting for kidney operations, who well may die simply because the machines are expensive; old, decaying hospitals with hopelessly inadequate amenities; nurses as ruthlessly driven for long hours and low wages as ever. In the midst of this situation the Tory government in 1963, published a Hospital Plan for England and Wales. This proposed the spending of £600 million in a ten years programme of hospital building up to 1973. This figure for ten years is about one-third of the amount then being spent yearly on armaments. A fitting comment on the priorities of capitalism. Although it must be said that much has been achieved on the technical side of surgery and research, this is a tribute to the workers in these fields and has nothing to do with the NHS as such. In fact much research is still carried out which is financed by voluntary contributions including investigation into the causes of such diseases as cancer.

The conclusion is inescapable, reforms must be looked at against the general background of capitalism. If human welfare is to become our main consideration, this system must make way for Socialism.

Harry Baldwin

Marx’s View of Man (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principles of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain and of its Companion Parties abroad are based on the main theories of Karl Marx, social revolutionary writer of the mid-nineteenth century. One of the criticisms often levelled against Marx is that ‘he puts too much emphasis on the material aspect of man and not enough on the spiritual and moral side’.

Materialism is the doctrine that says that nothing exists but matter and its movements and modification. To enlarge on this, we may say for example that the human brain is a highly developed form of matter and that the mind is the sum total of its activities. Through his brain and his senses man perceives certain conditions in the world around him; conditions that make up the environment in which he lives. He then interprets these conditions. His ideas are, therefore, not created in a vacuum. His concepts such as Freedom, Truth, Good and Evil, are not absolute but are subject to change; not separate entities but qualified by conditions.

This particular criticism of Marx’s works arises because he maintained that the determining factor in history was the way in which man produced his means of living. In this production man forms certain social relations which are of paramount importance because they form the basis of the system of society in which he lives. Marx found that at a certain stage these social relations took the form of opposing class interests, and so he said that all written history is the history of class struggles. The system of capitalism existed in the time of Marx although of course not as highly developed as it is today. Marx defined the class system of capitalism as consisting of a capitalist (ruling) class and a working (subject) class. The capitalist class owns and controls the means of production and distribution of wealth like food, oil, copper and coal. The working class own virtually nothing but their ability to work. Therefore, in order to live they have to sell their labour power to the owning class to gain access to the means of production and to produce wealth. The workers are paid wages in return for their labour power, but the amount of money they receive is not the full value they create. Wages usually hover around the accepted subsistence level. The balance of the value of their labour (over and above their wages) forms profit and this keeps the owning class in luxury. The system of capitalism consists of a contradiction between socially produced wealth and the private or sectional ownership of the means of wealth production.

Included in the means of production and distribution are those for producing and distributing ideas. These means are the educational and advertising media: schools, colleges, universities, press, television, radio. They are owned by the capitalist class just as much as the land, factories, airways or mines. Having control of these media, the ruling class is able to spread and give an appearance of validity to ideas which are actually invalid because they have no bearing whatsoever on real human interests. To explain and justify a social system which works only in their own interests, they spread ideas of nationalism, patriotism, leadership, hero-worship, prejudice and religion. Economists, politicians, sociologists, historians, churchmen, lawyers—all play their part in this presentation of a good image for capitalism. The drawbacks of the system are either ‘explained’ as necessary evils in the best of all possible worlds, or else it is said that they are capable of cure within the status quo by ‘practical reform’ or belief in God. It is tacitly assumed that capitalism is natural and absolute.

Ruling class ideas of morality—in line with their other ideas—suit their particular interests. This is strikingly shown by the fact that in peacetime it is ‘wrong’ to kill because the taking of human life is most often connected with crimes against private property—for instance, bank and mail robberies. On the other hand in wartime it is ‘right’ to kill, for national capitalist interests need to be defended (by workers) when their masters’ quarrels (over markets, sources of raw materials and strategic positions, basically) can no longer be resolved without the use of force.

Because of its control of the means of communication, the ideas of the ruling class become the accepted ideas in society—often termed orthodox ideas.

Explaining the idea from the conditions and not the conditions from the idea is characteristic of Marx and is the materialist method that Socialists use. Far from being indifferent to what is termed our ‘spiritual’ or ‘moral’ welfare, Marx stressed the really human qualities of Man. He refers both to money and to the idea of god as examples of human alienation because they involve a transference of man’s own powers to an outside force—to the detriment of man himself.

We have only to look at some of the worst aspects of human behaviour under capitalism to see that drug-peddling, alcoholism, prostitution, blackmail, are reactions to a private property form of society, a society of buying and selling, profit and exploitation. If we define human beings as predominantly good or bad, we are being idealist and getting nowhere. Human behaviour varies from society to society.

When the working class channels its intelligence towards its own liberation it will by political action take the means of production and distribution out of the hands of the capitalists and place them at the disposal of the whole of humanity. This act will be its last act as a class for in so doing it will have established the first classless society in written history—Socialism. When wealth is no longer produced to make a profit by its sale but to satisfy the wants and needs of all, those ideas which belong to capitalism will have disintegrated and come down like Alice’s Pack of Cards. In Socialism, the criterion for all things will be human reason; the preservation and betterment of human life, untainted by human alienation, will have top priority.

J. MCL

SPGB Meetings (1967)

Party News from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Materialism & Religion (1967)

Book Review from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Survival of God in the Scientific Age by Alan Isaacs, Pelican, 5s.

Socialists are materialists. We see no reason for concluding that a supernatural agency, popularly called “god”, has operated or is operating in the universe. The origin and evolution of the physical world, of life, of the mind, of man and of the idea of god itself can be explained adequately without recourse to the concept of a supernatural agency. As for the so-called ultimate origin of the universe, in seeking this we may well be begging the question by assuming that it has an origin.

Religion claims to be able to prove the existence of an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being both from logic and from experience. The arguments from pure logic have long since been discredited Indeed, we might add, though Isaacs does not, that the atheist—who tries to prove the logical impossibility of god’s existence—always seems to fare better, his trump being “Why did a perfect being produce an imperfect world?” Interesting as these arguments may be they really get us nowhere. What we want is evidence. There have been people who have claimed that god or some other supernatural being like the so-called virgin Mary has revealed itself to them. However, their claims cannot be checked and such people are generally either mentally abnormal or ill (psychopaths) or have worked themselves by chanting, self-flagellation or starvation into an abnormal state of mind.

Nobody with the least knowledge of scientific method, would accept such testimony as evidence for the existence of a supernatural agency. Yet millions upon millions of people put faith in such revelations as set down in such books as the Bible, and they do so even if, as in the case of the alleged Christ, there is some doubt that he lived at all.

Why? Why do people not see the so-called religious experiences for what they are, the ravings of psychopaths? Clearly there must be other factors, psychological or social, disposing people to this blind faith. Isaacs concentrates, perhaps too much, on the psychological—the fear of death, infertility and loneliness. We, as historical materialists, would look rather to the social: the function of religion as “the heart of a heartless world” and later as a prop for class societies.

Isaacs covers all this very well and we can recommend this book to all seeking to understand the problem of religion, especially as Isaacs, as Humanists are wont these days, leans over backwards to be fair to religion.

However, for a man so competent at sweeping away religious superstitions in the physical and mental worlds, Isaacs has some odd prejudices about man in society. He holds that leadership, and credulous followers, are necessary for any community to survive; and that no civilised society can exist without coercion and punishment. He is also committed to the views that wars arise from human nature.

Certainly Isaacs does speak of a coming “rational civilisation” and holds out the prospect of a time when mankind will

Be able to settle down to the massive task of planning its food production, its families, and its resources so that the benefits of human endeavour can be shared equitably amongst its members.

But he suggests that this could only come if the leaders of society change their ways and he’s sceptical about this:

. . . in the event one knows that there is about as much chance of homo sapiens learning to live in peace and prosperity, as there was of homo habilis producing the quantum theory.

So a world of peace and plenty is not possible with homo sapiens. For this we must await the evolution of, quite literally, a new man. This is what comes of reading too much of Julian Huxley! Seriously, though, this is just a sophisticated version of the “human nature” objection to Socialism.

It is possible for human beings, as they are now, to create a world of peace and prosperity. What is required is not a further evolution of the mind, but a change in the basis of society. Clearly the people of the world cannot use the resources of the world to satisfy their needs unless they own and control them. It is only on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production that a world of peace and prosperity can be created. For this, men need only apply their existing capacity to reason to the problem and then act to change society.

Isaacs suggests that no society could exist today without coercion and punishment to maintain order. So means are needed, he argues, for “the suppression of greed in the common good.” Ironically, this low view of man has a religious origin. It is a secularised version of the theory of original sin, of the doctrine that man is born evil and so must be tamed to live in society. This argument used as a defence of all authoritarian religion, all government and all class rule. Socialists reject it as a slander on mankind. Man acts from a great variety of motives, conscious and unconscious, but are we justified in arguing that his psychology is a barrier to a free society? Socialists say no. Quite apart from the fact that a man’s psychology cannot be separated from his social background, how man acts depends to a very large extent on the social environment in which he is brought up and lives.

For instance, Isaacs lists three types of defectors which he thinks would have to be dealt with in any society: the instinctive (mentally abnormal people); the emotional (people whose judgement is temporarily blurred by emotion); and the rational (“the professional criminals who I are confident of their ability to outwit the system”). The first two types would exist, in any society, including Socialism, but to deal with them why would there be need of “an elaborate judicial system and an effective police force”? Instinctive defectors are clearly in need of medical treatment or supervision. The best way to deal with emotional defectors would be, as William Morris suggested, to let them be and their “punishment” (if it can be called such) would be their own remorse. But what about the rational defectors, the professional criminals? Yes, what about them? Why in a world in which every member of society has free access to the things needed to live and enjoy life should anyone set about trying to outwit the system?

Thus in a classless world of peace and prosperity the case for a social organ of coercion breaks down. In such a society it would be unnecessary.

Adam Buick

Poor Kids (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Minister of State at the Department of Economic Affairs, Peter Shore, is reported to be the author of one of the most embarrassing documents ever written—the 1964 Labour Party election manifesto The New Britain. For his own good we may hope that Shore’s work at the DEA will be sufficiently taxing to take his mind off the many promises made in that programme which have not been kept.

There was, for example, a lot about the alleged failures and cynicism of the Conservatives. Take a look at this:

 . . .  the nagging problems the Tories stupidly (in some cases callously) brushed aside . . .  Social Security benefits which have fallen below the minimum levels of human need . . .

Labour, we were told, would run things differently. They had, after all, come up the hard way; Harold Wilson could remember the kids without any boots, the late Nye Bevan had once made a speech about social priorities and there were even still a few miners among the Labour M.P.s, if they could be sorted out among the keen, smooth, ambitious university graduates.

The first thing to say about what are called—perhaps in jest—social security benefits is that it is nothing new for them to be falling below the minimum levels of human need. Sometimes, indeed, they have been deliberately designed that way. However outraged the tone of Labour’s manifesto, the fact is that no government ever anticipates this situation and actually pays out benefits so far above the minimum levels that they remove the danger of them falling below the level, at least for a very long time.

Instead, governments spend a lot of time investigating the fact that the benefits have fallen in value, producing recommendations to bring them up again and in arguing about whether they can afford to carry out their own recommendations.

This has been the background to every enquiry into social security. But whatever patching up a government may do they never complete the repair—as fast as one hole is plugged another opens up, and then another. No matter how they attempt to distribute the overall poverty of the working class, some section of workers is always in dire need, in conditions which are themselves a problem demanding immediate action.

So it was when Beveridge (assisted by a much younger Harold Wilson) came to the unsurprising conclusion that the scheme which had been operating before the war would be hopelessly inadequate in post-war conditions. So it was as each successive government increased one or other social security payment, hailing each rise as a permanent solution to the poverty problem. So it is now, in Harold Wilson’s heaven.

Today, about one million children in this country are living at a level below the basic National Assistance rates. Over half of these are in homes where the father is in full time employment but has a wage which is too low, or a family which is too big, or both. Many social reformers have been shocked to find out that these conditions exist, because they were supposed to have been abolished by family allowances and the other provisions of the “Welfare State”.

But apart from anything else, the buying power of the allowances has been worn away by the continuous rise in prices. On 13 March last Margaret Herbison (who was then Minister of Social Security) said that to restore the purchasing power of the ten shilling family allowance, for third and subsequent children, to the level it stood at when it was introduced would need an increase to 13/7d.

The government’s answer to this is to increase family allowances—again—by seven shillings for second and subsequent children. This will happen next April; meanwhile a part payment of an extra five shillings is being made for fourth and subsequent children. This is part of what the newspapers like to call a package deal; also in next April, school meals will go up by 6d. a day and welfare milk by 2d. a pint. The government are also considering decreasing the income tax allowance which can be claimed for children; when he announced the higher family allowances in the Commons last July Patrick Gordon Walker said:

  . . . it would be logical, in considering how it should be paid for, to consider, among other things, some adjustment of the income tax allowances which affect families.

The widespread reaction to this package deal was dissatisfaction, especially among those who had assumed that only a Tory government would stoop to imposing increases in the price of welfare foods, cutting education and so on. Margaret Herbison left the government over it, thus removing one of those useful Ministers who build for themselves a reputation for protecting the poor and underprivileged—and who have been known to use this reputation to soothe indignant and disappointed delegates at Labour conferences. Herbison’s colours, however tattered, had been nailed to the mast:

   There is no doubt that children of the low-wage earners are suffering serious deprivation at the present time and we have got to do something about it. (21 November 1966).
   .  .  . every child born should have as its very birthright the opportunity to develop to its full capacity, enjoying the benefits of a good home, education and culture. Where poverty exists, these things are not possible .  .  . (20 April 1967).

It was clear that the protesters were beating themselves against the usual brick wall and we do not have to look far to find the reason. The key to a great deal of Labour’s policy in government is their concern over the level and the direction of investment in industry. This was the motive behind the setting up of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, it is the motive behind much current taxation policy and it is the motive behind the Bill which is now being prepared, which will extend the government’s powers beyond those of the IRC and will give it a stronger hand in allocating and controlling industrial investment. All this will be done in co-operation with private industry. According to The Times of 29 August, over £100 million is likely to be spent when the Bill is passed, including “tens of millions of pounds" towards building an aluminium plant in this country. As good a description of this policy as any was given by Tory leader Edward Heath, in a statement he issued on 2 September, when he advised private industry not to kowtow to the government ".  .  . in order to get money for investment which the Labour government’s taxation makes it impossible to get inside the firm or on the open market.”

What this means is that, no matter what the theories, the desires, the hopes, of Labour supporters, there is only a strictly limited amount of money available for education, welfare foods, family allowances and so on. Within that amount the government have shuffled the figures about — increasing here, cutting there, trying to justify the imposition of a new-style means test—to try to convince everyone that they are doing something about working class problems.

Since most of the participants in the argument over family allowances have made free use of the word poverty, it is as well if we decide what we mean by it. Poverty is simply depending on a wage for a living. When a worker is in employment he may get enough to keep him at a level of poverty at which he can run a car, have a washing machine and hang those abominable strips of plastic curtaining in his doorway. But if for any reason he cannot work, or if his personal circumstances are such that his wage is stretched until it snaps, he finds himself among the statistics, under the eye of the sociologists and perhaps eventually of a Ministry.

The Child Poverty Action Group is one of the organisations which make it their business to uncover examples of this:

   A woman of 30, suffering from multiple sclerosis, with two boys of 8 and 5, writes: “We are in debt because over the last few years my husband has lost a lot of time off work to see to the children when I have been too ill to manage.”
   This year with my husband off work with his accident, I really dread Christmas. I have to try not to think of it.
  A 36-year-old man confined to a wheel chair due to polio, married with 5 children, was made redundant through the cancellation of TSR 2. Now, on sickness benefit, his financial problems are acute.

The whole point—which is missed by organisations like Child Poverty Action—is that these privations afflict only one section of the population—those who depend on their wage for a living. The other section—the capitalist class—have no money problems if they are ill or have large families and being out of work is not something which worries them because they don’t depend on working for their living. Miss Mervyn Pike, although she is the Tory Shadow Minister of Social Security, showed the Commons last December that she also knows this: “We all recognise that all large families, except those who are very rich, have greater difficulties than smaller families.”

It follows from this (although of course Miss Pike was not interested in where her opinions were leading her) that working class poverty, which sometimes becomes working class destitution, is an unavoidable product of the class division of capitalist society and there can be no cure for it as long as capitalism lasts.

This is the root reason for the failure of the Labour government, which has shocked so many of its supporters. Last April two of these—Professors Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend — signed a letter sent to all members of the Cabinet which appealed to them to “. . .  restore the Government’s sense of social priorities ” and ended “. . .  it is doubtful whether our aim can be achieved unless members of the Cabinet are prepared to consider people with problems, rather than departments with traditional responsibilities.”

There could be no more bitter condemnation than this. The Wilson government has disappointed many of its friends, it has broken its promises. Its policies have been exposed as futile, it has a long list of failures, even by its own standards, to its name; it bids fair to go down as one of the most cynical governments for a very long time. What holds it together? In The Times of 31 July there was an interesting pointed article by David Wood which ended with this passage

   By his wits Harold Wilson put Labour in power, and they know that it is only by his wits that they can stay there. That is the covenant between the Prime Minister and his troubled party, and in party politics there is none more binding.

Is this, after three years of power, what Labour has come to? If Wood is right the party which boasted they were going to build the new Britain has the same sort of “unity” as a gang of hunted criminals. Meanwhile there are still those million children, who do not understand about political infighting, or financial juggling, but who are hungry and suffering.

Ivan.

(Some of the information in this article was supplied by the Child Poverty Action Group. We thank them) .

What's Happening in China? (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is China communist? Look at the trouble in Hong Kong and you will get the answer.

It started in May with an industrial dispute between the employees of a factory and the owners over pay and conditions of work. The Hong Kong Communist Party used the dispute to make political capital and were backed by the Chinese Government on the Mainland. The rioting spread to a large overcrowded working-class area where many badly paid and frustrated young workers joined in. Some of the local capitalists panicked and prepared to move out; many rushed to change their local currency for gold. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange went dead, prices slumped and for a day or so not a single bargain was done.

As the British Administration of this Crown Colony cracked down heavily with police anti-riot squads on the dissatisfied workers, they probably silently sniggered at the Chinese Government’s dodge of using foreign adventures to divert the attention of the mainland workers from their problems at home—a dodge they would recognise as so often having been resorted to in the West.

The trouble continues with shots across the frontier, killing and wounding of workers in Hong Kong.

Mainland China is still in the throes of Red Guard trouble which at times appears almost like a civil war and the present seems a propitious time for analysing the origins and background of the Cultural Revolution, as this upheaval is euphemistically termed. Charges and counter-charges, vilification, discussion about The Thoughts of Mao and what he really means when correctly interpreted, all act as a smokescreen which conceals the basic differences, which are in fact largely economic, between the two groups of antagonists who are fighting to control China and impose their ideas of how capitalism should be developed there. This is the cause of the so-called Communist Party dividing into two mutually hostile groups, which, for simplicity’s sake we refer to as the old-time Communist Party leadership and the modern managerial elite.

The old-time members of the Communist Party organised the agrarian revolt throughout the countryside and finally won the civil war against the Nationalists in 1949 by the successful use of guerrilla fighting.

Both groups are agreed that war with the U.S.A. is inevitable. But the Old Guard plan that the professional army should absorb the brunt of the first shock of war but would be finally smashed. The army command should then knuckle-down and retreat—beaten—leaving the prosecution of the war in the hands of the guerrilla forces who they believe would eventually win.

These old campaigners, with their muddle-headed ideals and their fixed policies based on success in the now distant past in conditions that now no longer exist, have had their day. But like the old soldiers in the song, they never seem to die and are taking an unconscionable long time in fading away—too long for the likes of the up and coming management bureaucracy.

But the younger modern army officers are not taking this lying down—they are pressing forward to train the soldiers in the efficient technology of killing with modern equipment including the nuclear missiles which they are rapidly developing. They are horrified at the idea of confining their abilities to the training of an old fashioned amateur militia in what they regard as outmoded methods.

The Communist Party membership were drawn from the same class as the former mandarin administrators. For instance, Mao tse-Tung, who is a well-known poet and scholar, is the son of a landowner and employer of labour who could afford an expensive education for his son. Chou en-Lai, the Prime Minister, is a scion of a traditional mandarin family. The rest of the Party came from much the same background. So, the educated elite flocked in; the ordinary worker being conspicuous by his absence.

In the civil sector the Communist Party successfully roused the population to the policy of tighter belts and more work (so familiar to the workers of the West) by frenzied political exhortation.

The original leaders have remained practically unchanged in their ideas and policies, except, of course, that they are growing older (Mao tse-Tung, for instance, is 73).

But China, caught in the maelstrom of world capitalist techniques, developing with great' rapidity and, of course, in the concomitant power politics, is catching up with breathtaking speed.

The new bureaucracy of the Communist Party are not confined to the administration of the state machine; they are also in the management of the tremendous number of State Corporations running the factories, mines, transport, importing and exporting, and banks, in addition to the vast civil engineering enterprises. The young professional army officers of the 2½ million army, together with the allied nuclear missile scientists, are included in the elite.

These slick unprincipled executives, with a hankering for the good life and not for the continual sacrifices demanded by the Establishment, see the outdated policies of the old-timers as the burden of the past hanging around their necks like millstones and rendering these oldsters unsuitable for the important governing positions they still fill.

But they are as modern as their opposite numbers in Western Capitalism and trained in the sophisticated professional and management techniques, which owe very little to political haranguing in the efficient exploitation of the working-class.

At the heart of the political turmoil is the dispute over economics. Sun yeh-Fang, director of the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, spokesman of the anti-Mao brigade, makes no secret of his views that China should be run by orthodox Capitalist economic policies:

  In deciding what projects should receive investment funds, the State should insist that priority be based on potential profits. Capital should go to those projects that promise the greatest returns—any other criterion, Sun says, will be disastrous.
  If there is any question of taking political factors into account, he seems to argue, these too should be weighed up on the basis of their implications for future profits. The hallowed slogan of “putting politics in command" is derided as the "lazy-bone's" economics. Sun believes that the “Law of Value” must guide the economy at every step. By this be appears to mean basing economic activities on their returns to the economy and letting prices reflect the need to regulate the economy on the principle of profitability. (Far Eastern Economic Review—2/2/67.).

Then there is the disaffection of the urban working class with their pay and conditions. By now granting improvements where they feel they have to, the management elite are rallying this expanding labour force under their banner, and thus putting another nail in the coffin of the die-hards.

The reason for Mao tse-Tung organising a separate Red Guard is that the Communist Party, of which he is nominally chairman, being largely composed of the new style bright young people, is not so amenable to his commands as formerly, and so he has had to go outside this organisation to create a loyal and reliable following.

So it seems that the present ruling group is in the process of losing the support of the educated elite, but whoever wins out in this internal struggle for power, Mao tse-Tung will be likely to stay in nominal control because of the great prestige that has made him so useful not merely as a labour leader but almost as a God—as their Prophet of “Communism”.

This process of building-up Mao as a combined labour-leader, soothsayer and general know-all has taken many years and a great deal of money to accomplish and cannot be thrown away. The agnostic authoritarian dogma of the Communist Party, so similar to the Confucianism which was used for training the elite in former times, needs a God as orthodox religion does and Mao tse-Tung fills this vacuum.

Whichever side wins it will not be the Chinese workers, either in the cities or on the farms, even if it is they who are doing the actual fighting and suffering the casualties. It is not their interests that are being fought for. But part of the profits of their exploitation will provide large salaries and emoluments for the high-ranking managerial and military echelons in addition to paying the interest on capital invested.

Frank Offord

Aspect: The Future according to Galbraith (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Autumn of 1966 Harvard Professor of Economics J. K. Galbraith gave a much publicised series of lectures on the B.B.C. Home Service. They were part of a book on which he had been working for many years and which he now publishes under the title The New Industrial State. (Hamish Hamilton, 42s.).

In it he describes and explains the rise of the big industrial corporations in America; tells us how they are evolving towards a planned society not foreseen by the supporters of Nineteenth Century capitalism or by socialists; and that where America leads the rest of the world will follow.

Before the era of the big corporations the individual capitalist had to compete with his rivals in a market and at prices neither of which he could control: he also had to fight the trade unions. His sole object was to make as much profit as possible. This, says Galbraith, is still true in the world of the independent retailer, the farmer and the like :

Here prices are not controlled. Here the consumer is sovereign. Here pecuniary motivation is unimpaired, (p. 395)

But according to Galbraith, it is otherwise in the “industrial system”, that is among the “mature corporations” such as General Motors, Standard Oil, Fords, Du Pont, etc. (he names ten of them). Here it is the few big corporations who determine prices and create the market by advertising. They are no longer concerned to show maximum profit because the shareholders, who do want maximum profit, have lost control to the group of technicians, sales executives, engineers, scientists, designers etc. He defines them as all who bring “specialised knowledge, talent, or experience to group decision-making” (p.71) and calls them the “Technostructure”.

The interests and aspirations of the Technostructure lie in their own jobs, their security and prestige, all of which are to be achieved by promoting the technological efficiency and expansion of the corporation to which they belong and by cultivating close relationships with the governmental authorities who regulate and stabilise the general wage and price levels and secure an approximation to full employment. He sees the big corporations possibly merging with the state apparatus. He also sees the trade unions as a declining force.

An essential point in this argument is that the big corporations are able to finance their own expansion out of undistributed profits and have thus freed themselves from dependence on the money market and the banking world through which they formerly raised capital.

He also maintains that (subject to some qualifications), the trend towards control of industrial organisations by the “Technostructure” is in evidence in Russia, and in nationalised industries everywhere.

At the end of the road, unless we are saved by the enlightened intervention of the educationalists and scientists in collaboration with the Technostructure, we shall live our disciplined and liberty-less lives in a world of corporations (private and public) narrowly devoted to the purposes of production, expansion and technological advance.

Much of this ground has been covered before though without the systematic treatment given it by Galbraith. The first name that comes to mind is James Burnham with his The Managerial Revolution published in 1942; but with a surprising indifference. Burnham saw his models of the Managerial state in Germany, Russia and America. For him the 1939 war was “the first formative war of managerial society”. It would be followed, he said, by wars for world domination between the only three possible centres, America, Europe and the Far East. (See Penguin edition 1945 pages 219 & 220). Galbraith sees the Managerial revolution producing the exact opposite, a coming together of the “free world” and the “communist world” because “it will dispose of the notion of inevitable conflict based on irreconcilable difference” (P.391).

Galbraith here makes one of several references to Marx, most of which betray an almost total failure to understand what Marx held to be the nature of capitalism. He charges Marx with not having foreseen this coming convergence: on the contrary Marx did foresee that Russia would become, as it has, a capitalist state. But Marx did not explain that the conflict between capitalist states as being due to their unlikeness but to their likeness. As he wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “The Bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle . . .  at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries”. They are in conflict over markets, raw material sources and strategic points.

Russian and American capitalism may indeed find common ground for a time (as they did in the last war) but not for the reason he gives. Then it was the need to resist German and Japanese expansion. Next time it may be the need to contain Chinese expansion.

Galbraith's confusion is the common one of supposing that socialism (or communism) in the Marxian sense means nationalisation or state capitalism. The consequence is that although he has a chapter on “Socialism” and many references to it elsewhere he nowhere even considers the possibility of the human race finding the solution to the problems he raises by going over to a classless social system without wages, prices, profits or production for sale.

The evidence Galbraith gives to support his case is in almost every instance exaggerated, or based on trends which may be reversed or is mere assumption about what may happen.

It is indeed true that a tendency in recent years in this country has been for big companies to rely more on providing capital for expansion out of undistributed profits, instead of raising capital from outside. It is however, partly the result of the method of taxing company profits, which could be altered again. Even so we have such examples as ICI raising £60 million in 1966 by loan stock, and three big companies, English Electric, Associated Electrical Industries and Rolls-Royce, which between them have outstanding loans from banks and acceptance houses of nearly £100 million. They at least have not become self-financing.

Galbraith believes that the propertied class as a whole, though its interest would be served by getting maximum dividends and by curbing the big near-monopolies, will passively allow the Technostructure to thwart it. There are, however, influential groups in political parties and business circles determined to prevent this. In the last resort it will be settled by government action one way or another.

Then there is his belief that the trade unions are declining. He bases this on the fall in the number of industrial workers (blue-collar workers in American terminology) among whom trade unionism has been strong, and that white-collar workers (clerical, technical, administrative etc.) though growing in number are “not within the reach of unions”. With growing affluence, he says, the workers in the corporations are on better terms with their employers and less militant; but at the time of writing 160,000 American workers are on strike against one of his named corporations, Ford, and other motor companies are likely to be involved.

The position of trade unionism among British white-collar workers was examined recently by George Sayers Bain in the British Journal of Industrial Relations (November 1966) and while showing a remarkable growth of white-collar unionism in recent years he reaches a conclusion rather like that of Galbraith, on the ground that so far only a small proportion are organised. But is this conclusive? At one time trade unionism was confined largely to craftsmen and it was argued then that “unskilled” workers were unorganisable.

The non-manual workers affiliated to the TUC, covering civil servants, local government staffs, draughtsmen, supervisory and technical workers, professional, clerical and entertainment workers have increased from 917,000 in 1947 to 1,679,000 in 1966: to which should be added about 300,000 teachers. Why should this trend not continue? On present evidence it will.

In support of his case that it wont continue Galbraith relies heavily on the “affluence" of workers in the industrial countries and on the ability of governments, using Keynesian techniques, to maintain nearly full employment. Millions of workers do not share his optimism on either count, not forgetting the current British unemployment of 600,000, expected to rise substantially this winter; and the “low unemployment" of about three million in USA, commonly regarded as understating the real number. Included in the unemployed in Britain are quite a lot of Galbraith’s ‘Technostructure”. They suddenly found that they were not in control after all.

If the strike of Ford workers knocks a big hole in Galbraith’s belief about trade unions, another event in USA does the same for his belief that the big corporations so dominate the market that they can fix the prices at which they sell their products. One of his ten corporations is Du Pont, the largest chemical company in the world. It was reported in the London Times (9 September) that Du Pont had announced an expected fall of twenty per cent in their profit this year. And the reason? “a sharp decline in the prices of synthetic fibres". So much for the Galbraith theory.

Among Galbraith’s misleading references to Marx are his statement (p.290) that Marx assumed "the progressive immiseration of the working class” and that as revolution was inevitable according to Marx, why was it necessary to advocate it. (p.321).

He overlooks that Mara’s statement about the lot of the worker growing worse was set in relation to the accumulation of capital and “be his payment high or low”. And Marx, who insisted that man makes his own history, never supposed that socialism could be achieved without the conscious act of the organised socialist working class.

Marx would, for example, not have subscribed to Galbraith’s despairing doctrine (p396) that the belief “that he can decide the character of his economic system" is no more than “the vanity of the modern man”.

Modern man does not have to resign himself to Galbraith’s grim new industrial state.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Week of Meetings in London (1967)

Party News from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain organised a demonstration for Socialism in Trafalgar Square on Sunday afternoon, September 3rd. Despite uncertain weather there was a large crowd throughout the 2½ hour meeting, listening to the socialist case and putting questions to the speakers.

Over £16 worth of socialist pamphlets and journals were bought by interested workers, including 480 copies of the Socialist Standard. (In addition 300 Socialist Standards were sold in Hyde Park on the same day.) Our introductory leaflets in different languages were also much in demand and helped us to explain the Socialist Party’s position to workers from France, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam and elsewhere.

A photograph of the meeting which appeared next day in The Times picked out very nicely one of our slogans calling for “Abolition of the Wages System”. Surely the first time that phrase has appeared in those august columns!

Monday September 4th

The newly formed Camden group held its first meeting—on “Israel, Vietnam, Biafra— Problems for the Left”—on Monday evening. Over forty people turned up to discuss these issues.

The group meets at ‘The Enterprise’, Chalk Farm Road—which is opposite the Round House. The room is comfortable and the atmosphere relaxed and informal. So if you want to discuss socialist ideas, or have other views which you would like to give an airing, why not come along to the next meeting?

Thursday 7th September

The Socialist Party held two teach-ins on Thursday evening. One was at Conway Hall, where representatives from Oxfam, the United Nations Association, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the SPGB opened a discussion on “World Hunger—What is the solution?" Although most of those present were not members of the Socialist Party, the audience was keenly aware of the deficiencies in the ‘solutions’ to world hunger put forward by the various reformist organisations. The socialist analysis of food shortages came across as the only positive and constructive answer to this problem of capitalism.

The other teach-in, organised jointly by West London and Greenford branches, was also well-attended. There was a wide-ranging discussion on Socialism and socialist tactics, with various brands of trotskysists and other would-be socialists ‘arguing’ a case for entrism.

Sunday 10th September

The week ended with a five-hour meeting in Hyde Park. A string of party members spoke from a specially erected platform on the grass. There was some lively discussion and on more than one occasion a member of the audience was given the platform in order to explain his objections to Socialism, a socialist speaker then replying. Party literature was again selling briskly and—many workers from Germany and Austria were interested in the Wiener Freie Wort—the organ of our comrades in the League of Democratic Socialists.