Masterman's Muddle. (1920)

From the April 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Globe" on February 6th, 18th, and 23rd published a series of articles by Mr. C. F. G. Masterman entitled ''The Failure of Class War," a premature verdict delivered while the manifestations of class antagonism become more apparent daily.

"Marx," says Mr. Masterman, "prophesied that all the means of production would pass into the hands of a small company of rich men. They would squeeze down the wages of the poor to the limits of subsistence. The poor, fighting against each other for the bare means of living, would possess nothing and become the mere wage-slaves of the rich. After a time of unspeakable misery these many poor would rise against the few rich in a 'class war,' destroy them, take over their property, and establish a communist state."

Much that Mr. Masterman afterwards writes goes far to prove that this "prophesy" of Marx is well on its way toward fulfillment. When he says later on "The power of capital concentrated in the hands of a few is far too tremendous," and when we find throughout his articles that he does not attempt to deny that the bulk of society—the working class—are wage-slaves, and that the majority of them live in "unspeakable misery," we can only conclude that he accepts these things as part and parcel of the system—necessary evils that may vary in magnitude but must always be.

Our author does not deny that the workers—as in the time of Marx—compete with each other on the labour market for the sale of their labour-power, the result being that their wages are "squeezed down" to the level that just enables them to go on producing for their masters. What he really does is to assert that to-day there are more people living in comfort than ever before. Professor Marshall in his "Economics of Industry," tries, through long, dreary pages of platitudes and repetitions, to defend the capitalist system on the same grounds. But what consolation is it to the dispossessed working-class to know that the number of parasites living by their exploitation has increased? Does the fact that 340,000 men made over four thousand million pounds during the war, bring any satisfaction to the thirty-odd millions of the population who belong to the working class and have to keep up a constant struggle against the masters in order to obtain a "minimum wage."

Mr. Masterman says that "Marx was utterly wrong in his prophesy. He did not foresee the coming power of the trade unions. . . or the interference of the government to raise wages to a minimum." Marx understood the power of trade unions—and the limits of their power—only too well. And Mr. Masterman pays him a well-deserved tribute when he points out the fact that trade unions have failed to raise wages to "a minimum "—-whatever that mean—without assistance from the government.

It is perfectly true that Parliament—although merely an executive of the capitalist class— spends much of its time framing laws to protect the workers from the ever-increasing rapacity of capitalists. This policy has been followed, more or less consistently, ever since the first Factory Act was passed, not from any goodwill toward the workers, but solely because the preservation of some sort of order is an imperative of any social order. Without restraint, exercised by the executive government, capitalism would quickly become a wild orgy of ruthless exploitation.

In pursuance of the same idea Mr. Masterman says that "In America most of the very rich men started from the bottom." But even if this is true it does not palliate the conditions of the bulk of American society, who still remain at the bottom.

In Britain, we are told, "The small farmers classes are disappearing through the losses and taxes of the war. The small farmers and small holders are buying their farms and holdings. They are becoming well off. They are becoming capitalists. They cannot understand the 'class war' theory. It does not apply to them." But Mr. Masterman has told them now: they are becoming capitalists ; that is why it does not apply to them. It is between the working class and the capitalist class that the class war must be waged, not between capitalists and capitalists. This should be obvious to the dullest of Mr. Masterman's readers.

Moreover, what if America's richest men did start from the bottom ? Their rise has been effected by the robbery of the working class, who are still at the bottom. It matters nothing to the working class how the personnel of the ruling class changes. Our author's point is pointless, because the Socialist declares that there exists antagonism of interests between exploiters and exploited, while he replies that there is no antagonism, therefore no class war, between capitalists and capitalists. We already knew that: the capitalists are fully occupied fighting the working class.

There is nothing new about Mr: Masterman's criticisms ; he has merely adopted the freak  arguments that were exploded by Marx himself, and which are easily dealt with by Socialists today. For instance, he contends that the ownership of capital is the result of work and saving; but it is the working class that do all the work, and by virtue of the fact that they only consume such wealth as is necessary to maintain their continued efficiency, are the only class that save. From the total wealth produced by the workers wages are paid. The remainder constitutes the fund from which new capital is saved. The whole of this fund is owned by capitalists, who use it either to satisfy their needs and fancies, or as fresh capital—in other words, for the further exploitation of the workers. Thus the working class only get what slave classes have always had—all the work and just sufficient of the necessaries of life to enable them to go on working.

Again, Mr. Masterman tries to show that the workers themselves are capitalists because of their funds in savings banks, trade unions, etc. He does not compare the few millions owned in this way with the thousands of millions owned by capitalists, nor does he acknowledge that these funds are practically the total savings of thirty-eight millions of the population to provide against unemployment and capitalist oppression generally. Instead, he quotes the railwaymen at investing their funds in railway stock, thus handing over to their enemies the funds they had built up to fight them with.

But Mr. Masterman has no delusions about co-operative stores. He says: "Co-operatives cannot attack capitalism. 'Divi' is the interest of capital." The strange thing is that our author cannot see, or pretends not to see, that "divi" is the capitalist's only object, and, therefore, that wealth can only be called capital when it obtains "divi," or profits, for its owner. He sees it quickly enough, however, in the worker who takes up a few shares in a co-operative store for the sake of a few paltry shillings a quarter.

"Capital," says Mr. Masterman, "is the houses we live in, the factories in which we make clothes, and ship, and machines ; the food we store up from one harvest to another; the ploughs and harrows and spades that enable us to produce a harvest at all." Some of these things, it is true, are capital; but not because of any quality they possess in themselves as means for producing further wealth, but because they are owned by the master class exclusively, and can only be used by the working class on the condition that all the wealth they produce belongs to the capitalist class.

Mr. Masterman's remedy is, in his own words, "to make all men capitalists" : a remedy that is just about as idiotic as that which used to be imputed to the Socialist—dividing up all the wealth. It would not then be a question of "who would do the dirty work," but who would do any work at all, because capitalists do not work, they live on "divi"—the surplus-value produced by the workers divided amongst them in the form of rent, interest, and profit.

Mr. Masterman's attack on Socialism is largely made up of apologies for the most pronounced evils of capitalism. He says : "The money spent or wasted on luxury by the rich, if saved, would make very little difference to the total income to be divided." Of course not: it is "spent or wasted " after it has been divided, after the workers have received their share— wages—which can never rise much above the cost of living. The irony of the worker's position is that the more wealth that is wasted by the capitalists the more work there is for him, the less competition there is for jobs, and the greater is the possibility of higher wages. But our author, failing to perceive the merchandise character of human labour-power, fails to see the natural results of that status. But that is not the only instance of his blindness. He says: "most of the money going now to men of great fortune is not spent but saved." Seeing that they already have great fortunes very little credit is due to them for their abstention. Oh, but, interjects our friend, "at death the State gets a big slice of it, and the rest is generally distributed among many others." The point Mr. Masterman does not (want to) see is that it never goes back to the working class, who produce it.

Mr. Masterman introduces his subject with the declaration: "it is no good going out fighting against empty abstractions ; battle with words. You can't destroy giant evils with words." From the capitalist standpoint Socialism is a "giant evil," that is why he sets out to destroy it—with words. Like so many others who have tried, he fails because he represents neither capitalism nor Socialism faithfully. He never examines the basis of capitalism because, for him, it is the best possible system. It divides society into a privileged and a slave class, and his lot is cast among the privileged. Socialism is repugnant to him because it would abolish slavery and privilege and establish society on a basis where the means of wealth-production, instead of being owned by a small capitalist class, would be the common property of society, to be used for the needs of a community making arrangements for production and distribution according to a settled plan agreed upon by all, a system based upon common ownership and democratic control of all the means of life.

F. Foan

Thatcher's new clothes (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until very recently phrases like “Thatcherite revolution" and ‘‘economic miracle" were never far from the lips of most political commentators. They insisted that society had changed fundamentally and irreversibly, and that the economy in Britain had undergone a glorious transformation since the dark days of the 1970s.

The events of 1989 have clouded this analysis somewhat and opinion polls are now suggesting that faith in the Tory Party to administer capitalism is on the wane. But in the long run-up to the next General Election the Conservatives will no doubt trot out the old line that things have all been very different under them and that we've "never had it so good". For this reason alone it's worth comparing their claims and promises with reality.

A few years ago Mrs. Thatcher went on record as saying this:

  I came to office with one deliberate intent — to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society, from a "give it to me" to a "do it yourself nation"; a “get up and go" instead of a "sit back and wait for it" Britain.

In making this statement she was developing the ideas of Nineteenth Century self-help and laissez-faire, where the hardworking and thrifty succeed and the lazy and spendthrift are supposed to exist on the merest basic subsistence. A society based on these principles is intended to ensure that individuals work hard instead of expecting other people or the state to give them handouts of some kind. This view extols the virtues of what is now known as “entrepreneurship" while denigrating supposedly lazy workers, those who receive state benefits and others who don't find favour in the columns of the Daily Express.

So using Thatcher's statement of intent as a basis, the question which must be asked is whether, after years of her Conservative Governments, Britain is now a place in which the hard working have the wealth and where the lazy exist at subsistence level. Now if this were the case, there really would have been an economic miracle of sorts. For it is the hard working people, who perform all the useful functions in society, who are being paid at subsistence level (as they have been throughout the history of capitalism) and those who have most of the wealth who can afford to be lazy. Far from this situation being changed in any way, Mrs. Thatcher and her Governments have tried to ensure it continues as it is. Thatcher's pronouncement was intended to justify ideologically the present state of affairs, not encourage a change. In this sense. Thatcherism is fundamentally a defence of the status quo dressed up as social change.

The vast bulk of social wealth in Britain and the rest of the world is produced, distributed and administered by the wage and salary slaves who comprise the working class. But it is one of the great ideological achievements of Thatcherism that the reality of this situation continues to be inverted in a large number of peoples’s minds. Instead of the owning capitalist class being seen as a bunch of socially useless scroungers they are revered as the “real achievers" in society, possessing a mystical quality known as entrepreneurial skill.

Contrary to the Tory ideal, Britain has not been transformed from a "give it to me" society then — although this is not because so-called lazy workers still exist. It is because we, the working class, hand over the products of our labour to the capitalists who then sell them on the market with a view to making profit. We are living in a “give it to me" society but it is the working class that does the giving and the capitalist class that does the taking!

When Thatcher talks of "getting up and going for it” she is of course referring to budding members of the owning class, who do not need to get up at seven o'clock in the morning and go to work! The capitalists are really the “sit back and wait for it" class, as having invested their capital all they need do is sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. All governments, whether of the left or the right, have perpetuated the myth of capitalists as the achievers of society, and none has done so with more vigour than the three Thatcher administrations. The reality is that the capitalist class are not the achievers and creators of society but. to use Marx's term, the “functionaries of capital”. Achieving and creating is the lot of the workers.

Just in case the working class doesn't fall for the Government's nonsense about who creates the wealth in society, the Conservatives have one more trump card to play. This is the idea that there has been some sort of miracle in the performance of the British economy which has benefitted virtually everyone, irrespective of class. As you might expect, the entrepreneurs have been in the forefront of this "miracle" in their creation of the new “business culture". but they have apparently been ably assisted in the pursuit of their historic task by the far-sighted policies of successive Thatcher governments. Or so they like to tell us.

Indeed, Government Ministers have argued that unlike the bad old days of the 1960s and 70s, inflation has been falling since Thatcher came to office, that unemployment is falling after the deepest depression since the 1930s, that output and productivity have risen faster than in any other Western European country, and — momentary aberrations excepted — strikes are a thing of the past. We're also told that we've all been made richer and freer by the benefits of privatisation and so-called “popular capitalism". Even if these claims were shown to be true, it would be necessary to ascertain what benefit, any, there has been for the working class. However, most of them are patently false.

Inflation, the main policy concern of the Thatcher governments, is a strikingly obvious example of the hollowness of their claims. The Conservative Party election manifesto of 1979 stated that:

  Under Labour prices have risen faster than at any peacetime period in the three centuries in which records have been kept. The pound today is worth less than half of its 1974 value. On present form it would be halved in value yet again within eight years. Inflation on this scale has come near to destroying our political and social stability. To master inflation, proper monetary discipline is essential with publicly stated targets for the rate of growth of the money supply.

The Tory boast that they have been able to deal with inflation is entirely bogus as the value of the pound has been halved yet again since 1979. In fact within a year of the Conservatives gaining office the Retail Price Index was showing average price rises of 21.9 per cent and it has averaged over 7 per cent in the years since. This has been a higher increase in the general price level than occurred under any other post-war government, with the exception of the last Labour one.

All three Thatcher administrations have continued the post-war policy of issuing an excess of inconvertible paper currency. The Retail Price Index has actually seen a dual effect for much of the period since 1979. for while the Treasury has been instructing the Bank of England to issue even more notes and depreciate the value of the currency further, there has been a general downward trend in world commodity prices caused by the depression of the late 1970s and early 1980s. If the Government hadn't been issuing an excess of notes and coins it is likely that, instead of price increases at the 3 or 4 per cent mark they reached a few years ago. prices would actually have been falling — just as they did in capitalism's depressions before the Second World War.

The Conservatives under Thatcher have never stated, despite their anti-inflationary rhetoric, that they are after a situation where the value of the currency is appreciating instead of depreciating — leading to falling prices. This is partly because sections of the capitalist class (particularly borrowers) favour inflation, for although interest rates rise when other prices do they tend to do so to a lesser extent. The biggest borrowers are the industrial and agricultural sections of the capitalist class, who have significant clout both as pressure groups on the government of the day and supporters and financiers of the Conservative Party.

Especially important is the fact that falling prices put the capitalist class as a whole in a difficult position when it comes to wage bargaining. Putting the onus on trade unions to restore real wage levels in a time of inflation is much easier than pleading with them to take pay cuts when prices are falling.

Now that price rises have reached the 8 per cent mark again (the level they were at when Thatcher attained office) the Chancellor argues not that this is a blight on society which threatens social stability, but that it is a product of success. Using pre-1979 accounting methods, the total number of unemployed in Britain is still around the two and a half million mark, yet we are told the economy is 'overheating' and that this has had an adverse effect on the RPI. This is only true, of course, to the extent that commodity prices are rising again now that the economy is slowly coming out of the slump — and this has had nothing to do with government policy here or anywhere else.

In the depth of the last recession the Government argued (correctly for once) that high unemployment and slow rates of growth had little to do with them as capitalism was in the slump phase of its trade cycle. All they could do was let it take its course. But now that the unemployment total is gradually on its way down (aided and abetted by over twenty changes in the way the figures have been calculated) the Government claims that this has been a product of their economic policies. Indeed. Conservative politicians such as Lord Young and Norman Tebbit have often argued that the greatest success of the Thatcher governments has been the increases in output and productivity that have occurred in recent years. It is true that Britain, according to the Government's figures, has seen output rise at a higher rate during the last 3 or 4 years than other European countries, and this has led Tory spokesmen to hail their promotion of ‘entrepreneurial spirit' and their attacks on the trade unions as a great success. The actual situation, as you might imagine, is rather more modest; averaging increases of output in Britain over the last 10 years, the rise is really no greater than other ten-year periods from recent economic history (for example 1969-79).

What is more important from the working class point of view is that, even in phases of the capitalist trade cycle when output and productivity have been rising, all sectors of society do not automatically benefit. The working class is responsible for increased production of goods but has to struggle to obtain any benefit from this changing situation — and the owning class, needless to say, try to stop this from happening. For instance, most of the industrial and employment legislation of the Thatcher Government was designed to reduce the effectiveness of trade unions and therefore restrict workers' abilities to offset both the depreciation of real wages due to inflation, and attempts to obtain benefits from increased productivity. Thankfully, this industrial legislation hasn't been nearly as effective as the Tories hoped, and most members of the working class who have managed to hang on to their jobs have seen their real wages increase.

Indeed, ever aware of the potential power of an organised working class, the Conservatives have attempted to use aspects of their economic policy to diffuse the class struggle. The most notable of these has been the privatisation of state-owned sectors of the economy along with the promotion of “popular capitalism". The 1987 Conservative General Election Manifesto stated:

  Britain is now in the forefront of a world wide revolution in extending ownership. One in five British adults now own shares compared to one in ten Frenchmen and one in twenty Japanese. Owning a direct stake in industry not only enhances personal independence, it also gives a heightened sense of involvement and pride in British business. More realistic attitudes to profit and investment take root and the foundations of British economic achievement are further strengthened.

The hope is that workers swallow the crazy idea that anyone with a few hundred shares in British Telecom or the TSB is a member of the privileged owning class and therefore has profits as their main priority. Although it is often claimed that people have fallen for this propaganda of “popular capitalism", every time workers fight for improved pay and conditions they are still, of necessity, proving that their real interests are those of wage labour rather than capital. People with a few hundred shares are no more members of the capitalist class than those people who have interest bearing accounts with banks or building societies. They cannot live off the tiny amount of capital that accrues to them and are still forced to sell their abilities to an employer in order to live.

At the moment, "popular capitalism" and the "economic miracle" are both in trouble. In a recent letter to ex-Chancellor Lawson, the Chairman of the International Stock Exchange, Andrew Hugh Smith, stated:

  Even though the level of share ownership has grown enormously, the percentage of shares held by private investors continues to fall and is now around 20 per cent . . . this trend damages the Government policy on share ownership. (Guardian, 23 October).

What is more, in the light of the share price crashes of October 1987 and 1989, the notion of “popular capitalism” as one long gravy-train has been dented further. And with millions on or below the Government's official poverty line, with unemployment still really at slump levels and with house repossessions on the horizon for thousands struggling with their mortgage repayments, the working class has been confronted with an "economic miracle" that is a complete mirage.

Dave Perrin

The Magic of the Mad-House (1992)

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

From the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Thatcher years it was "the magic of the market” which served as the Tory mantra. Buy your own home—start your own business—purchase shares—the market rules, OK. But for millions who listened to the bogus magicians it was not to be OK. It was to be less like magic and more like a trick. Homes repossessed: businesses bankrupt; shares having to be sold to pay the debts. The magic of the market was transformed into the misery of uncontrollable, vicious economic forces which are eating away human lives and ridiculing past aspirations.

The lie about the market was not hard to see—if you were not blinded by the prophets of profit. The market was mythologised, turned into a cosy image of friendly producers happily exchanging their wares in the town square. The propaganda of the Eighties tried to make buying sound like some sort of passport to security. They spoke of a "property-owning democracy” and wage slaves were fooled into buying their wafer-thin slice of it. So-called yuppies took huge mortgages, now costing them more than the petty packages of luxury living areas which they had imagined meant success. Unemployed workers were encouraged to borrow in order to set up businesses, the debts of which now mean that for many of them suicide and the receipt of their life insurance pay-outs is the most rational economic option.

In 1992 few speak of the magic of the market. There are the rightwing nutters from the Adam Smith asylum and the Libertarian Alliance—“we demand a free market in drug pushing and a privatised police force”—but these days they have one foot in the Tory research departments and the other in a psychiatrists waiting room.

These days—the days of hopeless disillusion—a new deity has arrived on the scene: The Markets. Switch on the radio and the newsreader will foretell its next divine act. “The Markets are feeling uncertain this morning—The Markets want a cut in interest rates—The Markets are not very pleased with the result of the French referendum—The Markets want more cuts in welfare spending”. It is like a return to Greek drama where huge, invisible entities govern destiny. The day after Major devalued the pound, or, to use the current newspeak, Major allowed the pound to free fall on the Markets, a man on the BBC said that he was uncertain about the future of the British economy, but "it's all in the lap of the gods now—or rather the Markets” (verbatim quote).

So now we have it: who needs Archbishops and Popes when we have thirty year-old stock market analysts with degrees in economic gobbledegook to tell us our fortunes? The same night as the above comment the BBC TV newsreader declared, in exactly these words, that "Industry would like an interest rate cut of at least another one per cent”. Who is Industry? Is it a man. a beast, a gang, a private club? Who are the Markets when they’re at home?

Of one thing we can be sure: the Markets are not the boys and girls in white shirts and braces who run round the Stock Exchange screaming like they’re on drugs. And Industry is not the men and women who are actually involved in industrial production. The workings of capitalism are not about them. These are the makers and counters of profits.

The truth is that nobody controls the Markets. Nobody can. It is beyond the control even of the few who benefit from production for profit. But those for whose advantage all of this market madness is going on are not the wealth-producing majority. The function of the capitalist market is to sell commodities in order to provide rent, interest and profit for the small minority who monopolise the productive resources of society. It is in their interest that the majority must suffer.

Whingeing marketeers
The spectacle of Tory ministers whingeing in parliament about profit-seeking speculators disrupting the economy is truly funny. Capitalism is all about the freedom to seek profits at anybody’s expense. What do the Tories want the capitalists to do? Lose the chance of making a fast buck so that the government will look good? Just as absurd is the Labour Party's claim that given power they could tame the market. Why then have they never left office since 1924 without unemployment being higher than when they were elected? A Smith-Brown government would be just as much at the mercy of the market requirement to produce profits as all earlier ones.

Any government which finds itself in power when capitalism is going through one of its endemic crises, with the need to destroy productive forces in order to restore profits, will have no option but to ride the storm. What is particularly just about the cries of seasickness from the present victims of an exceptionally rough storm is that they were the people whose whole appeal rested upon the endless prosperity and stability which they claimed market forces generate. For many workers “market forces” are a code word for misery. The best response to the sadistic whims of the Market-gods is to send packing the market-loving messiahs and abolish the market by bringing the resources of society into common ownership and democratic control.

A marketless society is the only sane alternative to the mad-house which they call The Economy. Tinkering with it will be of no practical use; it would be like buying a new suit for Frankenstein’s monster and hoping that newly-clothed a monster he will no longer be. The urgent task before us is to unite to take society away from those whose sole intent is to sacrifice needs for profits. Then, once society is in the hands of all of us, we can begin having free and equal access to the available wealth of this abundant planet.

Steve Coleman

Housing division (1988)

Book Review from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Property Owning Democracy? Housing in Britain. M.J. Daunton (Faber and Faber. London 1987)

In the hierarchy of needs that confronts humanity, housing or shelter is a fundamental requirement. It has been at the forefront of Conservative Party thinking since 1979 as being the so-called right of people to own their own property. This has been a very fashionable concept but it ought not to be forgotten that the pattern of house ownership has undergone many changes, as Daunton points out in his conclusion:

  There is nothing sacrosanct or immutable about the pattern of provision and ownership of housing . . . The last 70 years have seen the fall of the private landlord, the emergence of the owner-occupier to dominance, the rise and fall of the council house.

Owner occupation is not the dream that it might appear to be. We are confronted with soaring house prices, easy credit and high levels of foreclosures. It is no easy matter to enter the house buying market for the first time, particularly when your over-extended commitment may be gazumped by someone more fortunate or more foolhardy. We live in a period in which we are told that "popular capitalism" means access to share ownership allied to home ownership. More importantly it may simply represent an attempt to "break down the antithesis of profits and wages and to create an identity of interest between entrepreneurial success and social benefit".

Public housing has suffered as a consequence of the image of the grotesque and repulsive high rise developments which have been seen as an economic and social nightmare. The changes arising out of the new pattern of home ownership have had their costs with private housing expenditure, in conjunction with fuel and power, accounting for 21.7 per cent of household budgets in 1981 compared to 15.8 per cent in 1964. The comparable figures for Germany and France for 1981 stood at 17.9 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. A consequence is that employers are pressurised to provide increased wages which conflict with the need to produce maximum profit. Nor should it be forgotten that, as employees, home ownership may represent a fetter to social mobility at a time when employment and home location are at variance. It should also be remembered that, according to the Nationwide Building Society, 30 per cent of the population cannot afford to move into owner occupation.

An attempt to manipulate the population through housing into the processes of the system may be the aim of current legislation. This is no new concern. The production of housing by industrialists in the nineteenth century can be seen as an attempt to instil control and discipline in employees. A national commitment to housing provision and standards can be interpreted as the state s concern with the social efficiency of the nation in contributing a healthy workforce to ensure the productivity of the firm. The debate in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between those arguing that wages should rise in order to pay the rents as against those advocating lower rents consistent with wages is typical of the reformist arguments which obscure the actual needs of those who simply continue to suffer. The reality was and still is that many workers cannot afford access to adequate housing.

The current Conservative hostility to council housing is a new perspective in the party. The Labour Party continues its commitment towards council housing although they have not rejected the apparent political popularity of private home ownership. What the Conservative Party has achieved is a reduction in council housing by limiting its commitment to construction and by selling existing stocks. Daunton argues that since 1980:

  reductions in the contribution of central government to local authority housing, and changes in accounting procedures have led to an increase in the basic rent. This provides an added incentive to better-off tenants to buy, the increase being offset for the poorer tenants by means-tested rent rebates.

Owner occupation seems to be considered morally superior and to engender the correct social attitudes. This is not seen as being granted a stake in the system but of engendering social acquiescence as a result of mortgage commitments. One myth that Daunton does destroy is the notion that owner occupation is a "natural right”. The study shows clearly that the desire for property "can only be understood in the context of a housing market which was biased in certain ways by government policy" and that this has been an ongoing debate. The reality of home ownership has not drastically altered. Wealth and security of income represent the only guarantees of safeguards in this society. The promise of home ownership is only another burden to bear. As said above it may even be a guarantee of continued disadvantage in reducing mobility or by over-extending limited income in offsetting repairs, deterioration and debt repayments. We might even question the whole notion of owner occupation and its function within society. In 1980 Switzerland had 30 per cent owner occupation whereas the Philippines had achieved 89 per cent by 1970. West Germany had 37 per cent owner occupation in 1978 whereas Bangladesh had 90 per cent in 1981 Daunton argues that there is little similarity between owner occupation of a terraced house in Liverpool and a detached property in Surrey:

  the experience of the tenure does not emerge from the tenure itself so much as from the tenants’ income level and social status which define the way in which the tenure is experienced.

Yet even this is only partially correct. Those who are marginalised by the system may suffer disproportionately yet the relationship between individuals and access to property is the same regardless of the level of provision. A consequence is to create another divisive way in which competition is enforced between sections of workers. The struggle for access to property and participation in the process of maintaining property values diverts attention from the profit system. Any notion of an allegiance arising out of methods of housing provision or levels of that provision are as arbitrary and as contrary to working-class interests as allegiances based on race or sex. Houses are a commodity. As a commodity housing has been manipulated by the demands of different political persuasions. One irony of the present administration is that although advocating a free-market economy it has engendered "a financial system which distorts in favour of one type of asset". The reality of housing as a commodity for the present administration in its notion of "popular capitalism" has been a reduction of commitment of central government to provide housing for those unable to buy. "Between 1979/80 and 1983/4 expenditure on housing was cut by 39 per cent in money or 89 per cent in real terms." There has been a price to pay for the dream of owner occupation — a partial abandonment of those least able to survive in the housing market. For those participating in the struggle for owner occupation there is the increased burden of financing the venture and the likelihood of suffering the consequences of social acquiescence to a system whose existence is contrary to their real interests.

Philip Bentley

Editorial: In Place of Wishes (1988)

Editorial from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year at this time an arbitrary line is drawn across our lives. It has as much mysticism about it as any religion. On one side of the line lies the Old Year with its mistakes, its problems, its inadequacies. On the other the New Year beckons us, with its pristine sanity, enlightenment, happiness. It is a time to make resolutions that the next twelve months will be innocent of the disfigurements of the past twelve. Some people mark the occasion by getting drunk, to lubricate the process of acting towards others with warmth and respect. Others may rely on the collective hysteria of the occasion to intoxicate them. Happy New Year, they wish each other. It’s probably not all insincere, either.

But powerful as alcoholic poisoning and popular delusions can be there is an amnesiac scale about the event which is positively staggering. For does life really get better from year to year for the millions of people who wish to each other that it should? The millions who snatch the short holiday to pretend that they are something other than the social class which, although productive and useful, is exploited, repressed and deceived?

That question was what actually dominated the election last June. Thatcher and her crew energetically told us that things were not only getting better but would carry on like that, as if the Tories will never rest until they have drenched us all in prosperity. Enough workers were impressed by this campaign, shrewdly aimed as it was, to send the Iron Lady back to Number Ten.

It is likely that the Tories won a lot of votes through their schemes to enable workers to buy shares in the privatised industries. This whole idea, with its elaborately buoyant publicity, rested on the assumption that the Stock Market is a casino where share prices always go up, so that workers who borrowed a little money to buy a few shares could then sell them quickly and so make a small profit. This illusion — that the class structure of capitalism had been radically changed by Norman Tebbit was badly damaged by the stock market crash, which catapulted distraught yuppies into a position of media-dominance. In fact, a falling stock market also offers the possibility of making money — but in a way not usually open to penurious workers.

It is worth mentioning this if only because a popular response to any criticism of Thatcherite Britain is that the critics are motivated by a septic envy. There is, apparently, an opulent gravy train on the move for those who are economically nimble enough to climb aboard. The economically disabled have only themselves to blame. But is this society, which we labour under, really so carefree an arrangement? Are its critics really so devoid of material to support their arguments?

Well what, apart from the events on the Stock Exchange, happened last year? What effect did all those salutations, last January, have for us?

It was, in fact, a year of disasters in a very material sense. The crazy massacre of Hungerford cannot be explained away as an isolated mental breakdown. Michael Ryan was a man who could not answer, to his own satisfaction, the sexual, social and familial expectations of capitalism. So instead he loved his guns, his cars and his terrible fantasies. The capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise was not an accident for the ship was being sailed just as the company's balance sheet thought appropriate. At the time of writing the immediate cause of the King's Cross fire has not been made public, but emerging facts have shown up the reductions in vital staff and the tardiness in replacing dangerously outdated equipment, in the cause of reducing costs and so maximising profit.

Although as a disaster it is rather less dramatic, the problem of the homeless grew worse, with the numbers of families with nowhere to live increasing as their chances of finding anywhere within a reasonable time decreased. Young workers have been coerced into accepting government approved work or courses under pain of being cut off from state benefit. The government's discovery that state benefits can be cut by changing their name and the conditions under which they can be claimed brings memories of the special indignities heaped on the unemployed during the 1930s. Finally, in face of the official statistics which tell us that it is not happening, the waiting lists of workers who need treatment in hospital grew longer so that some die while they are waiting and babies are prevented from having desperately needed operations through a lack of specialised nurses who have been driven out of the work through their paltry wages. Even the consultants, contemplating the beds kept empty by the priority of conforming to a budget, have been moved to make their unequivocal protests.

There was no happier prospect abroad. At the end of the year Bob Geldof was flying back to Ethiopia to ask why, after all that effort and expenditure, millions have to suffer an agonising, degrading death by starvation. Those sickening pictures of dying babies, too sick even to take their mother's milk, are condemnation enough of capitalism in themselves. The Gulf War continued to consume its fearsome human diet, there is slaughter in Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan and the brutality of South Africa's racist regime does not lessen. The cold cynicism of capitalist politics has been exposed by the Irangate affair, which cannot be hushed over by even Reagan's consummate acting skills. He may yet be saved by the diversion of a treaty to abolish medium-range nuclear missiles which, even if it should ever be fully implemented, would still leave us living in a world with more than enough destructive power to kill us all several times over.

No, it was not a Happy New Year. Neither was 1986, 1985, 1984 . . . We shall need to do more than wish that things will get better. We have the power to change the world and the ability to run it in the interests of the human race. And the reasons for that are all too obvious.

The Big Bang (1986)

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

So that was the Big Bang was it? What revolutionised the Stock Exchange and shook the City actually made no difference to most. Workers woke up one morning to a deregulated Stock Exchange, but would not have had much time to ponder the significance of such a revolution on their lifestyle before they had to get to their work or their place in the DHSS queue.

But of course, such matters must be important mustn't they? After all, it's on the news every evening, after the royal item and before the Granny-parachuting-for-charity, we get the summary of the share price fluctuations, and hear how the Pound struggled, rallied, finished weakly. As one who after a usual day's work (struggled, rallied, finished weakly) cannot see the significance of it all. I sent off for the Stock Exchange's glossy pamphlet An Introduction to the Stock Market. Thinking that "bull" was what economists talked about (rather than a type of market). I needed to see what all the fuss was about.

The cover had lots of photographs of the type of people who, presumably, own shares: all ages from smiling babies to smiling OAPs; all occupations from cooks to builders. welders to fishermen. They even managed to get half-a-dozen different ethnic groups represented on the pamphlet cover, which is about five more than are effectively allowed on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange, to go by recent reports.

Of course it's the same sort of rubbish that we get on TV with every advert for the TSB flotation, the idea that becoming a capitalist is as easy as wearing a bowler hat, everyone can do it. It's a popular notion — borne out by the oversubscription for TSB — that we can drag ourselves free from the varying degrees of poverty and pressures of working-class life. There is nothing wrong with wanting to escape that, but there is everything wrong in believing that a handful of shares in the TSB will free you of anything but a few hundred quid.

It is a popular notion because people want it to be true but it has no basis in fact. Research by London Weekend Television shows that the City is not full of self-made men (or women). Those who reach the top in the City still come, predominantly, from a privileged background. Indeed the class division between rich and poor, owners and non-owners did not end years ago with the nineteenth century, nor the nationalisation of the 1945 Labour government, nor the privatisation of the present government and certainly it will not end with the next stock market flotation (there should be one soon), nor with the next boom period (there should be one sometime), nor with a next Labour government.
The situation today has changed little:

• the top one per cent own some twenty per cent of the total wealth in Britain, which is as much as the bottom seventy-five per cent;
• the 20.000 millionaires in Britain own more wealth than half the population put together;
• the top six per cent enjoy forty-four per cent of unearned income, while two-thirds have none.

(They didn't tell me that in the glossy brochure. I had to look elsewhere.)

The fact that some of those who work in the factories now have a couple of shares in British Gas tucked under their pillows, and a fifty pence reduction in their gas bill, will not upset the factory owners.

But isn't the Big Bang going to change all that? Isn't it going to sweep away the inherited privilege of a lucky few, in favour of real rewards for those with courage, enterprise and a will to work hard? You know the sort of person, a cliche that only exists in the head of a Tory Party speech writer he (not she) is pulling himself up by the bootstraps and pulling in his belt, he's got his nose to the grindstone, one foot on the ladder and is on his bike . . . Well, "yes" is the answer if you have eyes to read the brochure with; no is the answer if you also have a brain to think with. Far from opening up the City to the individual and the entrepreneur, the Big Bang means the deregulation of exchanges and emphasis on high technology, allowing very complex and very fast transactions of commodities all over the world. In the USA, this "programme trading" has produced much larger and more frequent swings in the markets. Judgements are decided by short-term market fluctuations. not on longer term evaluations like the state of the economy in general. Consequently, small investors cannot weather the large swings in the market without large financial backing. It's the big fish that remain.

But regardless of the fluctuations of share prices, the legal business of exploitation is not just a matter of gambling on the Stock Exchange — buying and selling at the right times and the right prices —where you are rewarded for your "courage". All you need to do is sit on your shares and spend the money as it comes in. You don't need talent or guts, just a lot of money. Indeed, a BBC Nationwide news programme a few years ago had an item about a dog (presumably they could not find a parachuting grandmother that day), who placed his paw on the Financial Times and chose the shares for his master. The dog was a millionaire. And his owner looked about as happy as a dog with two million pounds. You can do it too. Try it at home - all you need is a dog and somewhere in the region of £100,000. A trained monkey could do it. Even Gerald Grosvenor (the Duke of Westminster — two billion pounds and two O' levels to his name) can do it.

Most capitalists are the same, they get someone else to do the little bit of work of buying and selling shares. Most hardly even see the Stock Exchange, let alone the factories. land or offices they profit from.

Quite simply, the City cannot be opened up to everyone. As my brochure says (stuck away in the last paragraph on the bottom of page nine), your broker will "tell you honestly if your personal circumstances are such that you would be ill-advised to become an investor". Capitalists need workers but we don't need them. They couldn't tolerate a builder or a manager or a secretary retiring at the age of thirty to live off the proceeds of their work. They need to squeeze as much as possible out of you, from when you are strong enough to work until you are old enough to drop. The rest of your life is your own.

Unfortunately for this scheme of things, capitalism never runs smoothly for very long. The deregulation which has already started has produced some blatant examples of inflated salaries in the City. At a time when wage councils are being abolished and while one quarter of full-time workers in London are below the poverty line, the news that a few miles away in the City salaries can touch £lm cannot help the government's pleas to workers for wage restraint. At least the Queen has set the right example to Britain's greedy workers by accepting a pay rise below the rate of inflation, in the process boosting her earnings last year from £3,850.000 to over £4million.

Then we have the interesting sight of Thatcher criticising the excessive salaries. The champion of the market-place, outflanked by the uncontrollable nature of the system she supports. For capitalism, which periodically bares its "unacceptable face" that no cosmetic can hide, is the best ever advert for socialism.

We could have a society where personal consumption of wealth will not be restricted by your personal circumstances and where production of wealth will not be restricted by the requirement of a surplus called profit.

Socialism will take the information and communications technology that today enables vast amounts of useless information — like market fluctuations and share prices — to circulate the world in seconds, every second, and will liberate its potential for a society based on production for use, as we liberate ourselves in a movement for World Socialism which makes the Big Bang look a damp squib.

Brian Gardner

Observations: Capitalism for sale (1988)

The Observations Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to the privatisation of British Steel, the Shares Information Office sent me a letter inviting me to participate in the return of BSC to the private sector. I had been targeted as a likely share buyer because I had previously, in my pre-socialist days, been seduced into laying out money for British Telecom shares. I had subsequently become one of the 900,000 who, between November 1984 and March 1987, disposed of their BT shares. Like many others I discovered that the benefits of popular capitalism applied only to those who already owned the means of production and distribution. To discover whether you belong to the working class or the capitalist class, give up your job and see how long you can afford to live on the dividends from a few shares in British Gas, British Telecom and British Airways.

Founded in 1860 in the heart of the Black Country to manufacture wrought-iron tubes and fittings, the steel works expanded and amalgamated until, in the mid 1960s. it employed over two thousand people and covered an area of forty-nine acres. We lived in a row of terraced houses belonging to the steel company. The amenities were rather basic. Across the yard we had a brewhouse-cum-coalhouse. and an outside lav. Our house was directly opposite the main gates. Close enough to tumble out of bed and be at work when the bull hooted the starting time. My dad spent all his working life in the steel industry. They gave him a gold watch. It was, I supposed, inevitable that I would follow in my dad's footsteps. I well remember that callow but cocky youth who, in the mid sixties, became a wage slave for the first time.

One thing my dad couldn't stand was a bragger. The glossy sales brochure produced by BSC to market its sale gloatingly describes its success as a capitalist enterprise. Potential share buyers are regaled with smug facts and figures relating how within eight years the workforce has been reduced by two-thirds. Great joy surrounds the announcements of improved employee production and reduced employee costs. "Our priority is to develop an informed, motivated and skilled workforce." we are told; By which they mean that they are fully committed to ensure that their employees continue to produce for profit, not for need.

Nationalised or privatised, it makes no difference to workers blue collar, white collar, shop floor or management. Their position remains that of wage/salary slaves forced to sell their labour power in order to live. Despite the glossy brochures and the promise that a few shares give workers some sort of control over their livelihood, the basic wage labour/capital relationship remains unaltered.

Which would you prefer — a gold watch as a "thank you" for a lifetime spent creating wealth for the minority property-owning class, or a classless, moneyless, wageless society where goods are produced for need, not profit. Don't buy capitalism. Take up your option on socialism.

Dave Coggan

Everyman a Capitalist (1959)

Editorial from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classifying objects by their essential similarities and differences is a necessary step to thought and action.. Every trade unionist does this when he organises with others who live by receiving wages, against employers who live on profits. The Socialist does it when he differentiates the system of society known as Capitalism from a basically different system of society he calls Socialism.

But the words that enable us to think clearly can also be used to cause confusion by linking up unlike objects which happen to have unessential similarities. Outside of politics the absurdity of this is easily recognised. Nobody thinks himself justified in describing an ice-cream as a small iceberg, a stickleback in a mill pond as a small whale, or a pigmy as a tiny giant. But in politics this kind of thing is going on all the time and most people do not readily see that it is fallacious.

We are led to consider this by the current campaign of the Tory and Labour parties “to make everyone a Capitalist."

A Board instead of a Boss 

Not that the two are agreed on how they propose to do this. The Labour Party came to it through a series of debasements of the ideas some of its founders had half a century ago. Appalled by the spectacle of arrogant wealth and abject poverty existing side by side, they thought that if the government appropriated the land, factories, railways, etc., we could have a nation of people all employed by the State and living in comfort and on a more or less equal standard of living. Apart from that drastic act they proposed that the other features of life in Britain would go on as before: buying and selling, importing and exporting, holding colonies, taxation, saving and spending, etc. They soon decided on grounds of practical politics that confiscation was impossible, but they continued for a long time to proclaim their intention of nationalising the land and the major industries. Six years of Nationalisation by the post-war Labour Government practically killed it. The voters clearly did not much like what they saw. It was all very well a dozen years ago to tell unions and railwaymen that they, along with the rest of the workers, had joined the Capitalists by becoming, through the government, the owners of the mines and railways, but talk of this kind would get a cool reception today from the miners and railwaymen who are being sacked because of redundancy. They do not feel that they are any better placed than the redundant cotton workers; being sacked by a Board instead of by a boss is no less painful.

So the old sweeping Nationalisation is off, and when the Tories accused the Labour Party of intending to nationalise 600 big firms, instead of saying “Yes, of course,” as they would have done in their early days, Mr. Morgan Phillips, Secretary of the Party, issued an angry denial. “We do not intend—and we have never stated in any official document—that it was our intention to nationalise the large firms.” (Daily Herald, April 30th, 1959.)

The new Labour Party plan is for the government to buy shares in large companies and in general not to take them over.

The Labour Party still maintains that it is Socialism they aim at. They called the original scheme Socialism, and they call the new scheme Socialism. They were wrong then and wrong now. Government control or ownership of whole industries or of shares in companies is Capitalism not Socialism. The Observer, (May 3rd, 1959) is quite right when it says of the Tory plan and the Labour plan: “What is significant is that both parties nowadays rely equally on the process of Capitalist growth.”

All to be Capitalists!

The Tory plan, sponsored by a Conservative Party Committee in a booklet “Everyman a Capitalist," is similar in that it proposes the buying of company ordinary shares, but it differs in that the shares are to be bought by individual workers. They will, however, not buy them direct but through investment trusts, which will buy shares in a number of companies and then sell industrial investment certificates to individuals.

The ideas behind both plans are much the same. They are put in the form that it is a good thing to have more people “owning a stake in industry,” and that these new small owners will share in the growth of capital and profits of the companies.

There are several things wrong with the reasoning. Ten years of low unemployment on the one hand and rising prices and profits on the other, have not altered the fact that depression with its heavy unemployment and falling profits and bankruptcies are just as “normal” to Capitalism as are its booms. Workers who buy shares expecting only rises may find themselves owning depressed or worthless shares. It is always the big speculators, “the men in the know,” who have the best chance of selling in time. 

Secondly, the relatively small sums owned by individual workers do not cease to be only trifling amounts in comparison with the wealth of the Capitalist class by being put into company shares instead of being deposited in a Savings Bank. Even if the prices of shares and profits of companies went on rising the relative position would be the same, because the wealth of the rich would be growing at the same time. All the changes of the past 50 years have not altered the basic relationship that about a tenth of the population own about nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth.

Small Millionaires

Thirdly, and more important still, the relationship between the Capitalist, who lives by the wealth produced for him by the working class, and the working class who produce that wealth, but receive only a part of it in the form of wages, is not altered at all. The worker who has a few hundred pounds saved does not cease to be dependent on wages because he receives interest or dividend of a few shillings a week from his investment. And, to come back to where we started, the possession of a few hundred pounds does not change a worker into a Capitalist. A Capitalist is a man whose wealth is large enough to enable him to live on the “property income” he receives from it, an income derived from the exploitation of the working class. The worker with £300 is no more a "small Capitalist ” than he is a "small millionaire."

Why are the Tories fostering this idea? Clearly it is with the purpose, not of making us all into Capitalists— which is as impossible as having a social system in which all the population, including the slaves, are slave-owners —but with the intention of deceiving the workers into believing that they have an interest in preserving Capitalism.

The Institute of Directors have issued a booklet called "Mind Your Own Business" warning companies against the dangers of Nationalisation. It is a very good description of what workers ought to be doing, provided that they recognise that their employers’ business belongs to them, not to the workers they employ, and that the two schemes, Tory and Labour, for promoting what a city editor calls "popular Capitalism” (Manchester Guardian, 4th May. 1959) are both of them useless and dangerous to the working class.

Editorial: People's Capitalism (1956)

Editorial from the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had to come and here it is—"People’s Capitalism,” the description given to the U.S.A. in an advertisement of General Electric (New Yorker, June 16, 1956). We have had "peoples' democracies,” the name given by Communists to Russia and her East European Satellites—now admitted to be thug-ridden police-states. We have had "people’s courts” in the same countries, where framed-up victims of political and personal vendettas "confess” to non-existent crimes. We have been told that this is the century of "the common man,” in which the common man is not only exploited, conscripted, intimidated and humiliated—just as he was in the century before—but in which, in addition, he is now expected to take pride in being master of his fate. Oscar Wilde’s definition of democracy seems to be particularly appropriate, "bludgeoning of the people by the people, for the people.”

The General Electric claims that American Capitalism is quite different from Capitalism anywhere else:—

   “Around the world me term 'capitalism' has been applied to economic systems which bear little resemblance to each other. Our American brand of capitalism is distinctive and unusually successful because it is a 'people's capitalism.’ All the people share in its responsibilities and benefits.”

The advertisement goes on to list the ways in which the American brand is supposed to differ from the others—and in almost every particular the list shows the falsity of the claim. Those who run Capitalism in London, Delhi, Moscow, Warsaw, governments in all the continents, all the Powers, big, medium and small, make almost identical claims. Here are the eight principles in which Americans are said to believe:—"We believe in providing opportunities for the individual to develop himself to his maximum potential mass production and low prices; high wages, high productivity and high purchasing power; "we in America believe in innovation and in scrapping the obsolete”; instalment buying; shorter hours and more leisure; "broad share ownership of American business . . . and almost everyone indirectly owns shares through insurance policies, savings banks, pension plans, mutual funds, bank accounts and other investments ”; "and finally, we in America believe deeply in competition versus the cartel.”

So little does Capitalism in the different countries differ from the above eight-point declaration that an all-in conference of Governments in United Nations would probably vote unanimously for a resolution embodying them—and then each Minister would go home to preserve the realities of Capitalism, poverty for the mass, and wealth and privilege for the few. Capitalism takes on many masks and disguises, and ingenious party vote-catchers have invented innumerable names and slogans to make capitalism acceptable to its victims, but everywhere its economic features (production, for sale and profit, the system of wage-labour, and capital investment in company shares and government bonds) sufficiently conform to a common pattern amply to justify the common destination capitalism.

Running Commentary: Forgotten heroes (1984)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forgotten heroes

The propaganda advantage which the Tories undoubtedly gained from the Falklands war was partly derived from the notion that war can be a glorious, cleansing experience and that British workers are better at going through it than the Argentinians. Naturally this has to be put across with some subtlety and care; for example photographs of British troops had always to show them as tough, confident and, whatever the difficulties, in control. Pictures of Argentinian troops had to show them as ragged, starving and demoralised.

Even the wounds suffered by British soldiers were used in this exercise, as they have been in previous wars. Some can be made to appear positively romantic — a bandaged head, a crutched foot — and always there is the reassurance that soon it will all be better. So we were treated to lots of photographs of men in that condition, bravely smiling their way back to the strains of Rule Britannia.

But behind the propaganda the reality was a lot less attractive, for there were some fearsome incidents, like the bombing of the landing crafts, in which men sustained terrible burns and other injuries. These were not so enthusiastically publicised as the dashingly bandaged heroes from less frightening occasions.

One example of this was recently given some belated publicity in the Guardian. Lieutenant Robert Lawrence was shot in the back of the head by a sniper on Tumbledown Mountain. The bullet tore through his brain, leaving him paralysed down one side, sometimes incontinent and subject to bouts of intense pain. He has lost nearly half of his brain and has a skull made partly of plastic.

When Robert Lawrence came back to Britain he was not. unlike those other wounded men, treated like a hero but more like an embarrassment. The aircraft he travelled in was full of similarly damaged people; the press were kept away from it at the airport and when it landed it was hidden by a large tent. The men were driven away from this by ambulances which were loaded with their pathetic cargoes inside the tent. Later, they were kept out of the remembrance service at St. Pauls and, of course, the victory parade. In that welter of patriotic hysteria, the sight of what war really means would not have been welcome. It might also have caused some onlookers to question whether it had been worthwhile.

War is not glorious nor is it productive except of human misery. It is useful only to the ruling classes of the world, in whose interests wars are fought. The interests of the working class — who do all the fighting — are in refusing to take part in their masters’ wars and it is precisely to discourage such social insight that people like Robert Lawrence are treated in so ruthless and cynical a manner.

Faulty line

Ordinary working class folk are not accustomed to getting messages from a plush merchant bank like Kleinwort Benson, so their recent campaign of full page ads in the dailies has been a bit of a shocker to us. What’s this, we asked:

  Soon you will have the chance to be an owner of a company that plays a large part in our everyday lives.
  An Act of Parliament has made it possible for each one of us to buy British Telecom shares.
 For everyone it is an historic opportunity to share in the fortunes of one of Britain's leading companies . . .
  You may invest thousands, or even millions. The minimum, however, is about £250. . .

Naturally enough this got a lot of people very excited, at any rate they seemed to be in the ads because they were all smiling broadly, well satisfied with their investment. But quite a few must have been puzzled as well.

It is not so long ago that what is now called British Telecom was part of the Post Office and that, as we all know, was one of the first nationalised industries with a minister called the Postmaster General responsible for it in the government. Now we are always being told by all sorts of politicians that a nationalised industry is owned by the people — the sort who have been grinning out at us from those ads. So how can we buy something which we already own? What’s this about this Act of Parliament? Did someone take the company away from us without our knowing about it?

It is possible, but not helpful, to evade the answers to these questions by putting the Labour Party case, that the Thatcher government has filched British Telecom from the people of this country who once owned it in common. That argument should not appeal to anyone who has had their telephone cut off because they have not paid their bill — which would hardly happen if they owned the telephone company.

The straightforward way out of this seemingly complicated matter is in the realisation that we do not, and never did, own the Post Office or any part of it like that which is now British Telecom. Nationalisation is not ownership of an industry by the people but ownership on behalf of the capitalist class as a whole, in their overall interests. That is why the state usually takes over only vital industries like coal and steed or those which interlink industry such as communication concerns — the airlines, railways, the Post Office.

Nationalisation does not change the basic relationships between employee and employer nor does it change the essential nature of wealth under capitalism, that it is produced as commodities for profitable sale. As the steelworkers, the railwaymen and the miners know, if production cannot be carried on with the prospect of a profit. it will cease.

Ownership by the people of one industry can only happen when there is social ownership, world wide, of all the means of production and distribution. When that happens we shall not need any big advertisements to tell us about it.

Long odds

Fleet Street will not be surprised to learn that the Socialist Standard does not intend to intervene in its circulation battle, which has now developed into a search for Britain’s greatest bingo player, or perhaps it should be Britain’s most gullible worker.

These undemanding games, and the huge prizes which are promised to result from them, are designed to boost the sales figures of papers whose interest in the news, let alone putting that news into some sort of perspective, takes second place to their obsession with sensation. This was the explanation for the cheap and exceptionally nasty campaign in the Sun during the Falklands war. It also explains the acres of mush devoted to such inconsequential events as the death, funeral, commemoration and mourning of someone like the ex-Mr. Elizabeth Taylor.

The popular press has long absorbed the lesson that under capitalism it’s what sells that counts, never mind the quality. Anyone who has any doubts on this score need only look around at the mountain of trash which is turned out everywhere, day in, day out. to feed the market rather than to satisfy human needs.

Big, expensive, well publicised games like newspaper bingo thrive on the enticing theory of instant riches, on the miniscule hope that by some simple action — putting crosses on a pools coupon, filling squares on a numbered card — a worker can wash away every aspect of poverty and enter into the graceful state of lifelong abundance. It says a lot about the miseries of working class existence, which is relentlessly praised by those same newspapers, that so many of their readers should be so anxious to escape from it.

For a few, of course, the theory works. Their pools selection luckily comes out right, they complete all the spaces on their bingo card. They can stop being dependent on selling their working abilities to an employer and can instead use what is left of their life in finding out what they can really do, what they really enjoy. They leave behind the rest, a vast mass of human suffering and discontent.

No worker could be criticised for trying to win such a way out of poverty, even though the chances against it happening to any one of them are so cosmically high. The tragedy is that the gamble monopolises the workers’ horizons; they see it as the only way out. So misled are they, that they prefer to take their chance on a game before they will consider, and work for, a real and permanent escape from all the problems of capitalist society — one which is a dead cert and in which everyone is a winner.

Observations: Page 3 (1986)

The Observations Column from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Page Three

Labour MP Clare Short recently attempted to introduce a Bill to ban Page Three nudes from the tabloid press, arguing that they contribute to a climate in which women are held in contempt. The arguments behind the Bill are not clear: is Clare Short suggesting that Page Three nudes cause women's ill-treatment by men, or are they merely a reflection of popularly held, if abhorrent, attitudes? If, as is more probable, it is the latter, then censorship is likely to create a black market for soft porn (in addition to that for the hard stuff) rather than eliminate it altogether.

However, the rights and wrongs of the Bill itself are perhaps less interesting than the way in which it was received by the predominantly male MPs in the House of Commons. There was almost no attempt to offer anything like a cogent argument against the Bill - indeed it would have been difficult to do so above the cacophony of puerile sniggers and titters. The best in the way of argument that was mustered was one Tory MP who opposed the Bill on the grounds that one of his pleasures in life was to sit on the Tube and watch the faces of people "reading" Page Three of the Sun. Well whatever turns you on, I suppose.

Unfortunately the attitudes of such MPs are part of the same problem that Clare Short was attempting to confront through her misguided attempt at censorship - double standards. On the one hand, titillating pictures of women that reinforce distorted ideas about sexuality on Page Three and on the other moral outrage at sexual attacks by "monsters" makes the headlines on the front page. Legislation can't change these kinds of attitudes - especially when they are held by the legislators themselves.

Con trick

In what is transparently a tasteless electioneering stunt the Conservative Party has selected (the initial consonant should be retained) its first black parliamentary candidate (Observer, 6 April 1986). His name is Uncle Tom - oops! sorry! - John David Taylor, a barrister, and he has been told off to get in there and fight Birmingham. Perry Bar. This constituency contains Handsworth, whose mutinous black and coloured inhabitants are presumably what the Tory worthies had in mind when deciding what sort of a victim to sacrifice. For the constituency hardly represents the most fertile soil for conservatism: Jeff Rooker, Labour's housing spokesman, currently holds the seat with a 7.000 majority. Clearly, the Tories don't run all that much risk of seeing their unlikely stalking-horse actually elected.

And what does the candidate think? His first, and most urgent, act is to distance himself from Bernie Grant, down in London and his observations concerning the racist policing of Tottenham's Broadwater Farm. Mind you, Taylor had better watch his back: he has apparently taken on the odd police prosecution brief. This has to qualify him for a Special Branch manila folder at the very least, if not for a yard or two of microfiche and the Police National Computer.

In one major respect, however, there is precious little to choose between the two candidates. They are neither of them even remotely contemplating the only answer to the massive and intractable problems of our class - the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. So. should Bernie end up as Home Secretary and John as Lord Chancellor then no doubt they'll discover they have much in common after all as they collaborate over that vintage champers at the Lord Mayor's Banquet.

No choice

As a result of a ruling at the European Court of Justice in February, women in Britain are to have the legal right to stay at work until they are 65, the same age as men. 300.000 women reach 60 each year; how many will welcome this change? Ian Lang, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment said of the new rule:

This is a step towards the concept of a decade of retirement with greater individual choice, which has long been government policy.

But how many women will see this as a real choice? What is it a choice between? Most women workers, if they opt to retire at 60 despite the new ruling, will face the rest of their lives scratching an existence on a pension. supplementary benefit and whatever they may have managed to save during their years of wage labour. Given that grim prospect they may very well prefer to continue working for a further five years. But it is quite likely that at the age of 60 some at least will be finding work increasingly physically tiring and would prefer to have a rest by giving up altogether or reducing the number of hours they work. So the choice is constrained by economic necessity and a lack of flexibility towards working hours, and hardly represents a choice at all.

In a socialist society, work will be fitted to individual needs: elderly people will, like everyone else in society, be able to decide for themselves when to work and when not to work in accordance with their health, strength, and needs for companionship and fulfilling and creating activity.

Hattersley’s capitalism

"People's Capitalism" is a slogan that seems to be receiving endorsement from the Tories. Labour and Alliance alike. If the "property-owning democracy" was a ruse to persuade workers to "buy" their own houses, then "People's Capitalism" is intended to persuade us to buy shares in the companies that exploit us. The Alliance has consistently advocated workers buying shares but now Roy Hattersley is also jumping on the band-waggon. He said recently-.

The extension of employee share-holding .  .  . is wholly consistent with the aims of socialism . . . It is also in the interests of the economic success and social cohesion of this country.

(Observer, 16 March)

To say that workers buying shares is "wholly consistent with the aims of socialism" is tantamount to saying that capitalism is consistent with the aims of socialism - clearly nonsensical. However workers owning shares is consistent with the Labour Party's aspirations to political power. "Peoples Capitalism" is obviously thought to be a big vote-catcher - hence its endorsement by the three main political parties.

Persuading workers to part with their savings to buy shares in the companies which employ them is yet another capitalist con-trick designed to persuade us that, because we have a couple of hundred pounds' worth of shares, we have a stake in the present system which is worth defending, that it is worth our while to work for lower wages and not take industrial action to improve or maintain our conditions of work.

Owning a few shares in a company over which you have no control and to which you are still forced to sell your labour power does not make workers part of the capitalist class nor does it give us interests in common with the bosses.