SPGB Meetings (1976)

Party News from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Artists in Capitalism (1975)

From the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you have ever roamed the fields and lanes of the countryside and perhaps marvelled at the sight of the sun catching the trees, or the side of the hills, and finally set up your easel and started to paint, you will know something of the pleasure and joy of the amateur artist. This is work done for the satisfaction it brings, not for money. The growth and popularity of painting as a leisure-time activity has been accompanied and stimulated by a continuous flood of books and materials. There is a wide range of books and magazines dealing with numerous aspects of art, artists, art history, and techniques. All kinds of new and often gimmicky materials come on to the market; the motive for their production is profit, not for the purpose of helping artists produce works of art.

What is art under capitalism? Whatever people think it is, or ought to be, the overwhelming fact is that capitalism reduces it like everything else to the status of a commodity — something to be bought and sold. Consider the recent boom in sales of works of art. Capitalists visit plush galleries and auction rooms to invest in them in order to increase their wealth, or if they feel it is a safeguard against depreciation of their money. Or they may, as some do, buy them as a show of status (or even sometimes because they like them). But whatever the reason, it is only the capitalist class who can afford original works of art.

Capitalism on one hand saturates us with art in a multiplicity of ways. It comes in the form of cheap prints of old and modern masters to be bought in any number of different kinds of shops. It comes in masses of mass-produced ornamental commodities, and from the television screen like the very popular Sir Kenneth Clark series, programmes of individual artists, different schools of art, and a host of others. Yet on the other hand capitalism denies the vast majority any participation in creative activity.

Slaves of the Market

How does capitalism accomplish this denial of art?

Why is it that productive activity under capitalism is devoid of pleasure and art? It is because the worker is divorced from the means of production and his product. Hence there is no relation between the productive process and the needs of the producers as human beings. The workers are not engaged in producing useful things for the purpose of satisfying human needs. Profit is the goal of production; all effort must be harnessed to this end. This is the negation of human fulfilment and of art, an impossibility for their development.

The means of production and the product are alienated from the worker. They exist for him outside of his control, and they are only brought together with the needs of expanding capital, and so long as the worker continues to produce not only the value of his own wages but a surplus value over and above his wages. For the capitalist, his interest in the means of production and the product exists only for him as owner of private property, to use as capital and the increase of capital, not as a user of them for the purpose of creating useful things. Art can only result when it is a necessary function in the lives of people in society, when it plays a part in the production of the things society requires. That is, when man has control of his own production related to his needs. Capitalism requires the reverse.

What about the professional artists, those men and women who produce the work exhibited to be sold from the various galleries? What is their position in capitalism? The artist of today is subject to changing fashion, he must constantly be ahead of trends. He must produce for exhibitions (the market), try to anticipate the attitudes of the critics, and like a film star must constantly stay in the lime-light. He must be something of a celebrity, to be interviewed and photographed, otherwise he may be hurled back from success to join thousands of others who hope that one day they may achieve success.

Some artists have been moved to express some of the tragedies of capitalism, whether it be the loneliness and wretchedness of old age, the horrors of war, the mentally sick, or whatever else, and have left a record of this social system. An artist of this kind cannot help but express his experience and what he sees round him. If what he expresses is disturbing or ugly, then it is because his social conditions are disturbing and ugly; those are the conditions of capitalism. Then there are those artists who work in one of the branches of advertising or commercial art. They design the material which constantly bombards us from the television screen, the magazines, hoardings, and of course the stream of brochures and coupons that are stuffed through the letter box.

The world of advertising is the area of the art movement known as “pop art,” so called because it draws for its subject-matter on the techniques of commercial art, advertizing, comic strips, photographs of film stars, soup-tins and packaging showing brand names. Covering all the paraphernalia of what has come to be known as “pop culture” (all of which has become increasingly part of the environment of capitalism). Pop art is a very obvious example of ideas and their expression being the outcome of material conditions, in particular of the capitalist mode of production.

One of the ideas nurtured by capitalism which has spilled over as part of the ideology of pop art is that of the throw-away society, where commodities are made to be quickly cast aside and replaced with new ones. How clearly the profit motive shines through! This idea was echoed by Andy Warhol the pop artist in his famous remark “everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” It could be that there is a lesson to be learnt from pop art insofar as its treatment of the superficial and the banal highlights the degree of triviality which the condition of human life under capitalism has attained.

Part of Life

It has long been seen by some that art is divorced from everyday life, and attempts have been made to try and bring art to the common people (the working class). All these attempts are doomed to failure, as they only deal in effects, not with the cause. For art to play a part in the life of man, in his productive activity, a complete reconstruction of society is needed. Anything short of that inevitably must fail. Art cannot stand above the affairs of society; it must for its healthy development be part and parcel of the everyday activity of society.

Is there no hope then for art, for men and women to take part in creative activity as part of the work necessary to society, and the full development of its people (a completeness of development because, in the act of producing, the whole human being is produced, by bringing into play the intellectual and creative faculties?) So long as the cure is sought by trying to reform capitalism, sadly the answer must be no. When the means of life are owned in common the basis for truly human life will have been established. The practice of art will become part of life to take its place in enriching human experience and achievement.

P. Young

Labour-Power and Wages (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The particular form of society in which we live is capitalism which is composed of two classes, defining class as relationship to the means of production. The capitalist class own the means of production, which enables them to exploit the working class and to live luxuriously on the surplus-value the workers produce. The working class have no ownership in the means of production and must therefore, to live, sell the only commodity they possess: : their mental and physical energies, viz., labour-power.

Labour-power is not to be confused with labour; the latter is the function of the former. Labour-power, being a commodity, is subject to the same economic laws as other commodities. The value of any commodity is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour-time required for its reproduction. In applying this yardstick we shall see that labour-power exists in the living individual: therefore the value of labour-power resolves into the means of subsistence, food, clothing, living accommodation, all the things required to reproduce the labour-power for the employment in which it is engaged. This includes provision for the worker’s family, as his children must replace him in the labour market.

The purely physical means of subsistence required to keep the worker sufficiently supplied with energy to continue in working order is qualified by historical or social elements; these reflect wants arising from developing social conditions, and varying standards of living obtained by workers in different countries. The value of labour-power may therefore vary within certain limits. It may, for example, be increased by the expansion of the social element, or the social element may be brought nearer to the bare means of subsistence just sufficient to keep the worker as exploitable material. Any further reduction, reducing wages beyond the physical element, would result in labour-power failing in normal efficiency.

Wages are the price of labour-power, the expression of its value in terms of money, although price and value are not necessarily identical. Wages therefore may rise above or fall below the value of labour- power, depending on the pressure of capital on one side and the resistance workers are able to put up. A constant struggle takes place as a necessary result of the wages system. The worker must always try to maintain his standard of living, the capitalist will always try to increase his profit.

The value produced in a working day is divided into two parts. The first is that which has to be returned to the worker as wages. The remainder is appropriated by the capitalist class as owners of the means of production, and is called surplus-value. Clearly the one cannot increase without the other decreasing. Also, wages can never rise above the point where the average amount of profit is threatened to any extent. However, it is a mistake to suppose that this conflict of interests constitutes the class struggle. It is one part of the class struggle, a necessary but limited one. The ultimate struggle is over the ownership of the means of production and distribution, and its prosecution requires comprehensive political action.

Failing that, the basic position of the wage-worker remains unaltered. As we have seen, labour-power is a commodity and like other commodities has value. But it is unique among commodities in that by its use, i.e. when the worker produces by applying his energies to natural resources and raw material, he creates value. He not only adds value, but more value than that of his labour-power. It is the difference between what the worker receives as wages, and the total value he produces, that is the source of the capitalist’s profit. The worker must supply the capitalist with surplus-value in order that he may work for his own livelihood.

Socialists ask their fellow members of the working class to look beyond the wages system, to become conscious of the need to move on to an altogether different society. A society where wages would have no place, there would be no wage-working class, and no capitalist to appropriate what is produced. Property society has served its purpose. Socialism will give rise to new social relations corresponding to the ownership of the means of living being in the hands of the world community. The aim should be to abolish the wages system and to replace it by a system where people can freely take the things they require, as they will freely take part in producing them.

P. Young

Why Not More Socialists? (1974)

From the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain claims that the majority of the working class are capable of understanding Socialism. This being so we are often asked the question, why then, are there not many more Socialists? At present the vast majority of workers mistakenly can only see the solution to their problems in reforming capitalism in one way or another. Capitalism itself is not questioned, it is only the patching up of its effects that is attempted.

From our point of view, one of trying to make Socialist ideas known, the problem is not one of understanding, but of communication. Today information is mainly passed on by television, radio, and the press, to which the SPGB is virtually denied access. Consequently with our limited resources our activities in spreading Socialist knowledge are confined to what we are able to do in the way of writing and distributing our literature, out-door and indoor meetings, and discussion with people we come into contact with at work or anywhere else. There was a time when political meetings took place in the open on street corners where one could go and listen to speakers almost any day of the week. A minority voice stood some chance of being heard then. With the advent of television those days are gone and minorities without access to the modern forms of mass communication have found it increasingly difficult to make their voices heard.

What is seen and heard in the mass media is the misuse of the word Socialism, and distortions of Marx’s ideas. This means that we are called upon to waste a lot of time in explaining what Socialism is not, that Socialism does not yet exist anywhere. What is important about the mass media is not so much that they create attitudes and values but that they continue to reinforce existing ones. Socialist ideas are not propagated in a vacuum but within capitalist society, meeting all the obstacles and prejudice of capitalist ideology. A great deal of expense and time is spent perpetuating attitudes which maintain the capitalist system. Marx wrote, and it still applies today, that “The prevailing ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class.”

It may be concluded that there seems little chance of establishing Socialism and such a conclusion would be correct if it were simply a question of the efforts of the SPGB alone. Important as these efforts are, they are not in themselves sufficient to prepare the working class for the establishment of Socialism. Working in opposition to capitalist ideology are the facts of capitalism itself. Capitalism has not only produced the material conditions of potential abundance, where the forces of production conflict with the property relations, but has also brought into being the working class whose necessary task is to act in their own interest in abolishing the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour.

It is also a fact that capitalism will not let workers rest content, it is forever throwing problems in their way. Old problems such as poverty and relatively new ones such as pollution, drug addiction, increasing mental illness and many others. All the time capitalism with some fresh horror demands that we sit up and take notice. Of course “escape”, provided by TV, bingo or the football match is always forthcoming. But it is no solution. The problems, tragedies and frustrations of capitalism are not so easily escaped.

Also capitalism needs to educate and train its workers in order that they may be able to carry out the functions necessary to the ever changing technology and the race for profits. Capitalism puts an emphasis on scientific method and adaptability, yet work on a factory production line for instance requires that a man should be merely an appendage of the machine, with his movements dictated by the machine. In the Daily Telegraph (18th May) Peter Knight wrote, referring to a BBC-2 programme dealing with Ford factory workers:

The programme vividly depicted the noisy, monotonous routine of the production line where men lose their identities as they work with almost robot efficiency. As one pointed out, they are programmed to do one thing and that is the one thing they keep on doing.

For those workers, like many, the kind of job they do is only a source of frustration to them. How many workers anywhere gain satisfaction from their jobs? It is another of the many pressures of capitalism which will continue to drum into the heads of its victims the need to change the system of society which forces many of its members for the best part of their working lives to live like robots.

To those who say “Yes Socialism is a good idea, but you will never get the majority of people to understand it,” we ask: If you can understand Socialism, why not then the majority of people? Members of the Socialist Party are no more or less intelligent than most other people. What we say is that if you think Socialism is such a good idea why not find out more about it? Then join with us in helping to explain it to fellow workers so at least they may have the opportunity of deciding for themselves.

For those who think us idealists and say “Yes it sounds like a very fine ideal, but reality just does not work like that", we reply that Socialism is not an ideal. It is based on the sound facts of the way human society evolves, and the way capitalism works. We are not asking for a change of heart — we are asking for the conversion of the means of production from private or state ownership to common ownership. This is not an ideal but a practical and material demand that is in line with the interests of workers throughout the world. If you still think we are after an impossible ideal listen to Engels who wrote in Socialism Utopian and Scientific:

The final causes of all social changes and political revolusions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy but in the economics of each particular epoch.

The material conditions for Socialism have long been in existence. All that is needed is for the majority of the working class to realise their common interest in abolishing capitalism. That mighty force would then have arisen, the class-conscious working class with one objective — the establishment of Socialism. With this end in view, and armed with Socialist knowledge, the working class will fulfill their role. This great and final act as members of the working class will free them from the chains of the wage-labour and capital relationship which now holds them in its grip. Then they will emerge as men and women in a classless society, securely resting on the sound basis of the common ownership in the means of production. The wars, the rat-race, the poverty and all the other evils which arise from property society would then have gone from the scene of a truly human society. Men, women and children would then be free to develop their potential and their relations with each other as human beings.

P. Young

No Value Under Socialism! (1975)

From the August 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealth under capitalist society takes the form of commodities. Although commodities must be articles of use, their distinguishing characteristic is that first and foremost they are produced for sale with a view to making a profit. Buying and selling is the exchange of commodities with money acting as a medium of circulation. Commodities are exchangeable because they are the material depositories of exchange value.

Value has nothing to do with the physical properties of a commodity. However much we may examine its physical structure, we will not discover therein one scrap of value. This is because value is purely a social product, not a natural one. Definite historical conditions are necessary for the full development of exchange value, those conditions are capitalist production. Insofar as commodities have value, they are the embodiments of one identical social substance, viz. human labour. When we speak of value we are not referring to the useful qualities a commodity may have. We are referring to how much it is worth, its exchange value.

The labour which creates value is abstract homogeneous human labour, the average labour of society. This average labour may vary, depending on the stage reached in society’s powers of production, on its technology, but not any particular time it is given. A particular commodity can be exchanged for any other however diverse their uses may be provided they be equal in value. If we take two different commodities in the proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions are, a given quantity of one can be equated to some quantity of the other. This equation tells us there exists something common to both in equal quantities. Yet this third thing is neither the one nor the other, it is that both are products of labour.

We have been dealing with what constitutes value, and its social nature, but the magnitude of value contained in a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time it takes to produce it. Only necessary labour time counts because that is all society requires in the production of exchange values. Any commodity which owing to inefficiency took longer for its production than the time socially necessary would not represent more value, and would have to sell on the market for the same as those produced in the time socially needed.

Again a particular commodity may at one time contain more value than at another. This would be when owing to greater difficulty in the technical or natural conditions of production the socially necessary Labour time would increase, and therefore also the value of the commodity. The reverse would obtain when owing to greater productivity of labour, due to improved machinery, or more favourable natural conditions, it would then take less socially necessary labour time to produce, therefore a decrease in its value.

Do the products of labour always have to take the form of commodities, where man loses control of his own product? Only in competitive capitalist society where production is determined by the profit motive and the market, and the great productive technology necessitated by capitalism is only allowed to function in the interests of accumulating capital.

People in Socialist society in contrast will be able to produce and plan in relation to human requirements. There will be no commodities, therefore, no value and no surplus-value. The means of production will not be owned by a privileged class. Socialism will bring into line production with satisfying human needs.

Let us look a little closer at what production for the satisfaction of human needs means. Two aspects of production would apply under Socialism which do not under capitalism. First the quantitative requirements of society would be satisfied owing to the tremendous impetus Socialism would give to production in the release of a huge number of men and materials, now engaged in the requirements of capitalism. Those men and materials would be contributing to the satisfaction of human needs.

To give some idea of the scale of the release of men and materials which Socialism would give, just consider some of the things, necessary to capitalism which would have no place in Socialism. Such things as the production of weapons of war, the vast quantities of materials and paper used in commerce including packaging, advertising, banks and offices. The machinery, paper and metal used for money is no small item. Then add to this the energy required, human and otherwise. Yet, we have merely scratched the surface, the list is endless. Men have filled books about it; Vance Packard in his book The Waste Makers describes in detail the mountains of rubbish produced. The continuous change of superficial style and the built-in obsolescence, all in an effort to sell more, so that the owners of the means of production may increase their profit. All is accepted as normal practice by capitalism’s standards.

The people of Socialism then, would produce for use and not for profit thereby satisfying the quantitative aspect of production. Then there is the aspect of the function of man labouring, the satisfaction to be obtained from doing something useful and creative. How would Socialism effect this very vital part of human life? Work would certainly not be looked up as a necessary evil. It was William Morris who wrote: “If pleasure in labour be generally possible, what a strange folly it must be for men to consent to labour without pleasure”.

This is not the attitude of trying to reduce working time to a minimum by more use of machinery in order to allow more leisure time for more fulfilling activities. The fullest use of machinery would be made where it could alleviate unpleasant work, or to cope with vast quantities when required. This is not to say that there would be no unpleasant work under Socialism. But what constitutes unpleasant work? What may be unpleasant to one, may to another mean the height of pleasure. Again, to have to perform the same task for the best part of one’s life presents a thoroughly depressing prospect. But to take part in an activity for a period of time, then to do something else depending on one’s interests and abilities would make tasks interesting which would otherwise be tedious. Socialism would allow a new awakening of interests and abilities that lie slumbering to develop, thus enlarging the scope and fulfillment of human life.

The Socialist answer to the question, “Must the products of the labour of men always take the form of commodities?” is no. Let us be done with commodities and their value. Let there be only useful production, which means let us have Socialism.

P. Young