Cooking the Books: What about producer prices? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech on 27 June, Swati Dhingra, a member of the committee that sets the Bank Rate, described changes in the producer prices index as ‘one of the best leading indicators of the long-run evolution of prices in this country’ (tinyurl.com/ye2yb5ex). But what is this index that we don’t hear much about?

The US Bureau of Labor defines inflation as: ‘The overall general upward price movement of goods and services in an economy’. That’s alright as far as it goes. In the US, as in most countries, this is generally measured by an increase in an index measuring the price of a basket of consumer goods and services. If the index goes up so many points, that increase is expressed as a percentage of what the index was before and is ‘inflation’.

It is hard to see how an ‘overall upward price movement’ could be measured other than by an increase in some index, but is an index of consumer prices the best way to do this? Consumer goods and services are not the only things that are sold. There are also the goods and services that businesses sell to each other from which to make the final product which consumers buy.

Besides a consumer prices index the Office for National Statistics produces indexes of producer prices. There is an index of ‘input prices’, which covers the prices of materials and intermediate or semi-finished goods that businesses buy from each other to process into final products as well as the price of fuels used in the course of doing this. There is another for ‘output prices.’ Also called ‘factory gate prices’, this is defined as:

‘The amount received by UK producers for the goods that they sell to the domestic market. It includes the margin that businesses make on goods, in addition to costs such as labour, raw materials and energy, as well as interest on loans, site or building maintenance, or rent’.

Producer prices inflation (PPI) is an increase in this index calculated as a percentage. This gives different results for the ‘overall general upward price movement’. Dhingra pointed to

‘a sharp drop in the annual rate of producer price inflation, which was 2.9% in May, its lowest in more than two years and down from a peak of 19.6% in July 2022. Consumer price inflation (CPI), which is targeted by the BoE, peaked at 11.1% in October 2022 and has been slower to fall than the central bank expected, holding at 8.7% in May’.

The index of input prices is a measure of business costs. The difference between the changes in it and changes in the output prices index can be an indication of the income of business out of which its profits come and so also of how profits are doing. The corresponding figures to those quoted by Dhingra were up 0.5% in May, down from a peak of 24.4% in June 2022. Comparing the two suggests that the hit profits took from rising oil prices as an immediate result of the war in Ukraine (when input prices rose more than output prices) is now being overcome (as input prices are rising slower than output prices). Profits are being restored.

From the point of view of analysing how the capitalist economic system works, the factory gate price index is arguably more useful than an index of the price of consumer goods. It is measuring price increases from the seller’s point of view rather than the buyer’s, what they get rather than what we pay. After all, capitalism is a system geared to sellers making a profit, not to meeting consumers’ needs as so often portrayed.

50 Years Ago: High Prices, Low Prices (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Labour Office, acting upon the instructions of its governing body, instituted an enquiry as a result of a meeting held at Genoa in June 1920. At this meeting a representative of the employers’ group said: - 

‘The cost of living has increased in every country to an alarming extent; this phenomenon is due to many causes, but under-production is certainly one of these causes.’

* * *

The enquiry was entrusted to Professor Milhaud of the University of Geneva and the first volume of the ‘Enquiry on Production’ is now to hand and forms the basis of the article ‘An Enquiry into the Causes of the Decrease of Production’ from which we quote.

There are two lengthy quotations from well-known capitalist representatives, such as Mons. Millerand and Mr. Herbert Hoover . . . both of whom during 1919 and 1920 delivered speeches in which they called upon the workers for increased efforts towards greater production.

* * *

Then follow several lengthy extracts from the report showing the fluctuations of prices during December 1919 and June 1921 . . . which, reaching the highest price point in May 1920, fell considerably between that date and June 1921.

We insert this point because what follows shows that the writer of the article in question must have favoured the demand for increased production, for in commenting upon the great fall in prices he (or she) asks as follows: 

‘Was not this fall in prices just the very remedy of which the whole world was in need? Was not the general high level of prices the scourge under which the whole world had been groaning? Was not the return to normal prices the factor from which increased production was to be expected?’

* * * 

The main point of the article to which we draw attention is, that with the fall in prices the writer seems very disagreeably surprised to find that something else had happened, and with an air of injured innocence he laments: 

‘The fall in prices gave rise to a crisis in production such as the world had not yet witnessed’.

Strange! For it was then discovered that the crisis brought forth a universal restriction of production, a huge systematic plan for all over the world to hold up the production of wealth and thus maintain high prices.

(From an article ‘Capital’s Stranglehold’ by Bob Reynolds, Socialist Standard March 1922.)

Pathfinders: Is Socialist Theory Scientific? (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Socialist Theory Scientific?

“Nobody has yet proven that this experiment was safe,” says Marina Bay’s lawyer Alexander Molokhov, in the first day’s Moscow hearing of the amateur astrologist’s £170m lawsuit against Nasa, launched hours after the successful collision of the probe Deep Impact into the comet Tempel 1. Bay’s claim that such cosmological ‘vandalism’ has altered the world’s horoscope towards possible disaster can also not be proved false, and such lack of proof is clearly enough in the eyes of some lawyers to start proceedings these days, notwithstanding Nasa mission engineer Shadan Ardalan’s curt dismissal: “The analogy is a mosquito hitting the front of an airliner in flight. The effect is negligible.” (BBC News Online, 4 July).

The Moscow court is unlikely to be bamboozled by such chancers, but the attack on science is common enough: don’t do it unless you can prove it is safe.The problem is that science, with the usual exception of mathematics, can never actually prove anything, an apparent loophole exploited by everyone from 9/11 conspiracy theorists to neo-creationist Intelligent Design advocates. Now the law is being asked to test the assertion that astronomers can’t prove while astrologers don’t have to.

Socialists have every sympathy with scientists who find themselves under attack from unscientific prejudice and blatant opportunism, since this is not very dissimilar from our own experience. For a theory to be valid it should accord well with the facts, and offer one a way to disprove it. Thus religion and creationism are not valid scientific theories, whereas evolution and gravity are.

Socialist theory fits the first criterion, but what about the second? Is it possible to disprove it? Perhaps. If capitalism fed, clothed and looked after its people in peace and without coercion, socialism would not be disproved but it would be unnecessary. If genetic research uncovers an irreducible aggression or profit-seeking gene, socialism could be said to have been disproved. But nobody has yet found this gene, or shown any other evidence that would make socialism unviable.

 Meanwhile, like Marina Bay and her enterprising lawyer, our opponents expect us to prove everything we say while they are not obliged to provide any evidence in support of their argument, and indeed airily dismiss the very large volume of evidence against themselves.

The End of Mass Production?

A big question for socialist theorists is the matter of parts and supplies. While much of food production is likely to be localised, some highly specialised parts and accessories are not going to be generally available in the region. Global transportation would be a last and expensive resort, but what if many specialist machine components could simply be … emailed?

A new generation of 3D printers is making it possible to recreate perfect three dimensional objects from a software template which can be posted through an ordinary email server. At present the ‘ink’ is confined to wax and plaster powder so the finished models have limited durability, but work is already proceeding with fine grain steel using micro-heat welding instead of glue to hold the finished article together, and laser and water-jet cutters using emailed plans can work on heavy durable materials to make components as good as traditionally machined parts.In fact, with the rise of fabrication laboratories, or ‘fab labs’, individuals can have their own designs and specifications custommade on the spot (Scientific American, June 2005).

Once the labs have shrunk from roomsize to suitcases, we may be looking at the democratization – for a price – of the production process, or in fact, the reclaiming – within limits -of the means of production. The idea that mass production may be on its way out is not new:

“Mass production, the defining characteristic of the Second Wave economy, becomes increasingly obsolete, as firms install information intensive, often robotised manufacturing systems capable of endless, cheap variation, even customisation. The revolutionary result is, in effect, the de-massification of mass production.”  War and Anti-War – Alvin & Heidi Toffler (1993, Little, Brown and Co).

Being toffs who hang around with generals, politicians, think-tank drivers and other assorted toffs, the Tofflers are never overly concerned with how their capitalist utopia will impact on the lower orders, so they describe in perfect equanimity a Third Wave capitalism which even by today’s standards would be a catastrophe for workers, with widespread ‘oceans of poverty’ around ‘hi-tech  archipelagos’ such as California, Hong Kong or the Rhineland.

Capitalism’s development of customised production could hardly be expected to benefit the toiling masses for whom mass-production is both a treadmill and a treat factory. They would never be able to afford the luxury of individual consumer targetting. Nonetheless, the ability to micro-produce with minimal waste and distribution costs remains one of the most exciting innovations socialist society could possibly inherit, and one which it could put to very good use.

Paddy Shannon

Capital's Strangle-Hold. (1922)

From the March 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article published in the review of the International Federation of Trade Unions a flood of light is thrown upon the question of the capitalists holding up production. It appears that the International Labour Office, acting upon the instructions of its governing body, instituted an enquiry as a result of a meeting held at Genoa in June, 1920. At this meeting a representative of the employers' group said:

"The cost of living has increased in every country to an alarming extent; this phenomenon is due to many causes, but under-production is certainly one of these causes. Under-production is in its turn a result of several causes, some of which (scarcity of raw material, lack of shipping, disorganisation of land transport, etc.), are not within the scope of this body; but it would be interesting to consider whether and to what extent conditions of labour (such as the adoption of the 8-hour day, the frequency of strikes and lock-outs too, if you like, opposition to methods of remuneration proportionate to individual or collective production, etc.) have influenced production."

After some discussion on this point, it was finally agreed to, that the enquiry should be of a general character and not exclusively confined to the conditions of labour.

The enquiry was entrusted to Professor Milhaud, of the University of Geneva, and the first volume of the "Enquiry on Production—General Report" is now to hand, and forms the basis of the article, "An Enquiry into the Causes of the Decrease in Production," from which we quote.

There are two lengthy quotations from well-known capitalist representatives, such as M. Millerand and Mr. Herbert Hoover, the American organiser, both of whom during 1919 and 1920 delivered speeches in which they called upon the workers for increased efforts towards greater production. Of course, neither of these gentlemen called upon the capitalist class to produce more, they apparently being well aware of the fact that it was useless, since the capitalists not only do not work, but have no intention of so doing.

Then follows several lengthy extracts from the report, showing the fluctuation of prices during December, 1919, and June, 1921, concerning such "products of primary importance" as silk, cotton, cast iron, wool, etc., which, reaching their highest price point in May, 1920, fell considerably between that date and June, 1921.

We insert this point because what follows shows that the writer of the article in question must have favoured the demand for increased production, for in commenting upon the great fall in prices, he (or she) asks as follows :

  "Was not this fall in prices just the very remedy of which the whole world was in need ? Was not the general high level of prices the scourge under which the world had been groaning ? Was not the return to normal prices the factor from which increased production was to be expected ?"

How the workers were to benefit by the great fall in prices, he does not show; in fact, although the attempt might have been made, it must have proved a failure.

When the markets of the world are glutted with the wealth produced by the working class, and a fall in prices takes place, it follows that the labour market is subject to the operation of the same factors as operate in the other markets, for besides producing a larger army of unemployed and thus increasing the competition for jobs, a decline in the cost of living cheapens the cost of producing the commodity labour-power, and consequently its price (wages) tends to fall.

The main point of the article to which we draw attention is, that with the fall in prices the writer seems very disagreeably surprised to find that something else had happened, and with an air of injured innocence he laments :

"The fall in prices gave rise to a crisis in production such us the world had not yet witnessed."

Strange ! For it was then discovered that this crisis brought forth a universal restriction of production, a huge systematic plan all over the world to hold up the production of wealth and thus maintain high prices. This was not the policy of the wicked workers in the Trade Unions, who, we are very often told, are guilty of slowing down and "Ca' Canny." On the contrary, it was the capitalists who, when faced with falling markets, decided upon restricting output.

Under the heading o£ systematic restriction the article gives several examples taken from Professor Milhaud's report, as follows :

  "In the first place there is the restriction of the production of Rubber, in which movement the Rubber Growers Association took the initiative in its circular issued on September 24th 1920, the result of which was a reduction in production amounting to 30 per cent.
"The situation with regard to cotton has been exactly the same. In December, 1920, the production of Japan was already reduced by 40 per cent., and further reductions were contemplated. In Egypt it was the public authorities themselves who took the initiative. The provincial councils unanimously decided to restrict the cultivation of cotton for 1921. In accordance with this decision the Sultan signed a decree on December 7th ordering that the area under cotton should be reduced by two-thirds and prohibiting the cultivation of cotton in upper Egypt except in the parts irrigated by the Nile."
"The American Cotton Growers Association succeeded in bringing about the largest percentage of reduction on record in the production of cotton. This Association boasted of the firm and vigorous attitude of the bankers of the whole of the cotton-growing districts, who refused to grant the necessary advances and credits to enable the cultivation of enough cotton to ensure a normal crop.'' 

The "Cotton News" of June 1st, 1921, refers, furthermore, to the radical restriction of the use of artificial manures in the old cotton-growing States along the east bank of the Mississippi,

  "which means to say that the growth and ripening of the new crop will be impeded and. furthermore, that the crop, already greatly restricted as regards the area under cultivation, will be seriously handicapped during the growing season. That applies even in those cases where the climatic conditions would be otherwise favourable."
"A similar policy has been applied by the International federation of Linen Manufacturers, comprising the linen manufacturers of France, England, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, and Denmark, who declared at their meeting held at Brussels on November 18th, 1920, that the most important consideration was to restrict production and stabilise the market."

Many more examples of this kind are given, showing to what an extent the capitalists have their grip on the world's resources. Figures are also given concerning the amount of unemployment in various countries.

Robert Reynolds

Socialism and scientific advance (1979)

From the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has been called “the problem of production”— how to produce enough to satisfy the needs of every man, woman and child—was solved by about the turn of the century. From then on scientific knowledge and technological ability could have banished for ever all human misery resulting from a lack of material resources: starvation and malnutrition, unhealthy living conditions, disease and ill-health, ignorance and superstition.

This knowledge and this ability has not however been applied to benefit Mankind in this way. Instead, production has remained geared to profit-making and the accumulation of profits as capital. The result has been not only continuing material poverty and misery but two world wars— and many lesser ones—during which millions of human beings have been massacred and mutilated. As the problem of production had already been solved all this human suffering was unnecessary and could have been avoided. It is the price Mankind has paid for the maintenance of capitalism into the Twentieth Century.

Scientific advance did not, of course, stop in 1900 but has continued ever since, making the production of enough wealth to adequately feed, clothe and shelter the whole of the world’s people ever less of a problem. In 1900 electricity was only beginning to be applied to production and the internal combustion engine and aeroplanes were just about to be developed. Since then we have seen the coming of (and we make no apologies for this list, as we hope it will help to ram home the extent to which the problem of production has been solved): radio, plastics, TV, jets, radar, rockets, electronics computers. nuclear power, transistors, artificial satellites, men on the Moon.

Every scientific advance makes capitalism even more obsolete and socialism even more practicable. But there are more advances to come in the near future. The popular science and science fiction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, in his book Profiles of the Future (reprinted by Pan books last year), mentions as the next two major technological advances: the application of nuclear fusion to produce electricity and the invention of an efficient system of electrical storage.

At the moment there are a number of ways of generating electricity but not of storing it efficiently. Today's batteries are clumsy and so prevent the development of clean, electrically-powered vehicles. Existing petrol- and diesel-burning internal combustion engines continually pollute the atmosphere and would be phased out as rapidly as possible in a rationally-organised society. This lack of an efficient way of storing electricity is also holding back the development of solar and other clean sources of energy like wind-power, although the latter have the disadvantage of dependence on natural conditions. But this would not matter so much if an efficient system of storing electricity existed since the electricity generated on sunny, or windy, days could be stored for later use; the electricity generated in summer could be stored for use in winter.

Clarke gives the 1980s as the date for the invention of an efficient system of electrical storage. Fusion power he puts in the 1990s. Existing nuclear power stations are based on nuclear fission. On splitting atoms of heavy elements like uranium. In this process a radioactive “waste” is produced. Society may well eventually find a way of using the energy this radio-activity represents; it will then cease to be waste and become a “by-product”. At the moment, however, it is dangerous waste which no one knows what to do with. People are right to be concerned about this; the priority capitalism gives to making profits leads to the adoption of inadequate safety measures.

Nuclear power is an obvious future source of energy, helping replace the relatively wasteful burning of non-renewable fossil fuels. Arthur C. Clarke puts this well:

  Today, there can be little doubt that the long-term (and perhaps the short-term) answer to the fuel problem is nuclear energy. The weapons already now stockpiled by the major powers could run all the machines on earth for several years, if their energies could be used constructively. The warheads in the American arsenals alone are equivalent to thousands of millions of tons of oil or coal.
   It is not likely that fission reactions (those involving such heavy elements as thorium, uranium and plutonium) will play more than a temporary role in terrestrial affairs: one hopes not, for fission is the dirtiest and most unpleasant method of releasing energy that man has ever discovered. Some of the radio-isotopes from today's reactors will still be causing trouble and perhaps injuring unwary archaelogists, a thousand years from now.
   But beyond fission lies fusion—the welding together of light atoms such as hydrogen and lithium. This is the reaction that drives the stars themselves; we have reproduced it on earth, but have not yet tamed it. When we have done so, our power problems will have been solved for ever—and there will be no poisonous by-products, but only the clean ash of helium. Controlled fusion is the supreme challenge of applied nuclear physics: some scientists believe it will be achieved in ten years, some in fifty. But almost all of them are sure that we will have some fusion power long before our oil and coal run out, and will be able to draw fuel in virtually unlimited quantities from the sea.

Deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen which is a raw material for the fusion reaction, exists in the sea in the proportion of 1gm per 30 litres. So much, then, for the dire predictions of the scaremongers about running out of resources and the sick justification of poverty as the result of inevitable scarcity.

Society has not yet mastered the technology of nuclear fusion but is on the way to doing so. Its coming won’t lead to the breakdown of capitalism as the wages-prices-profits system becomes clogged up by an abundance of very cheap goods, as is sometimes suggested. But it might lead to people realising that capitalism is an utterly irrational way of organising the production and distribution of the world’s wealth. For, once nuclear fusion has been shown to be a practical and efficient way of generating electricity—once society has acquired the practical ability to apply it to the production of wealth—it will be more than ever obvious that poverty, misery and deprivation are quite unnecessary. We must move on to socialism.

With the means of production the common heritage of all the people of the world, the scientific knowledge and technological skill which society now possesses can be used for the one purpose of satisfying human needs in accordance with the long-standing socialist principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

Adam Buick

“The Triumph of Nationalization”. (1921)

Book Review from the May 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Triumph of Nationalization”  By Sir Leo Chiozza Money. London : Cassell & Co. 75. 6d.

The author of this book contends that but for Government activity the necessary supply of munitions and ordinary commodities could not have been maintained during the war, and to prove this he produces a vast mass of facts and figures, which he had excellent opportunities for collecting, showing how Government organisation succeeded where private enterprise failed.

It is with his conclusions rather than his figures that we are concerned. We agree with all he says about the increased productivity consequent on the swift development of machine production, and his admission that there has been no appreciable improvement in the lot of the worker in spite of it.

Already in Poverty and Riches our author has shown the existence of great wealth and great poverty side by side, yet he still does not, or will not, see that this is inherent in capitalism. He thinks, or at least he says, that mismanagement is at the root of the trouble, and that with better organisation, and without serious interference with the basis of society, the problem of poverty can be solved.

Sir Leo, although he has changed his political party, is still a politician with a “career” and a “reputation” to consider, and this prevents his demanding, with us, a fundamental reconstruction of society. Capitalism is based upon the robbery of the employed by the employing class; from that the poverty and degradation of the working class springs, and this it is which renders futile the suggested renovation of the old structure.

Compare our explanation of the existence of poverty with the eight reasons put forward by Sir Leo, who does not see that they are all traceable to one cause. His points are as follows :

1. The divorce from production of an increasing proportion of workers.
2. The poor technical equipment of many producers.
3. The defective organisation of producers.
4. The waste of work in competition.
5. The production of rubbish.
6. The production of luxuries.
7. Physical deterioration.
8. The lack of scientific education.

Owing to improved methods and the fact, that goods are produced for sale only to those who can pay for them, and not for use by all who need them, a decrease in the number of workers actually producing necessaries is inevitable.

Poor equipment there certainly is, but that is a question for the producer, who introduces up-to-date machinery and methods only if, and to the extent that, the immediate object of producing profit is concerned, and not for the worker, whose wages are not affected. Again, the anomalies produced by competition, which the growth of the combine will remove, should not be any concern of the workers. Will the removal of the absurdity of a thousand different types of plough by standardisation get better pay for the ploughman? As many workers live by the wastefulness of capitalism and can have no interest in economy, is it for them to assist the master class to exploit them more efficiently ? The production of rubbish and luxuries just as much as the production of necessaries allows the employer to make profit and the worker to earn wages, and, this being all they are interested in, they are equally indifferent to the eventual use of the product.

Physical deterioration, undoubtedly very alarming, is not the cause of poverty, as Sir Chiozza Money would have us believe, but is caused by it. Like the lack of scientific education, it results from the condition of present-day society itself, and the following statement by Prof. D. J. Cunningham serves to show that it could easily and rapidly be remedied :

  In spite of the marked variations which are seen in the physique of the different classes of people in Great Britain, . . . those inferior bodily characteristics which are the result of poverty (not of vice such as syphilis and alcoholism). . . are not transmissable from one generation to another.

The capitalist controls the means of health and education and will not give them to the workers unless it is necessary to do so for their continued exploitation.

The War

When the war broke out the capitalists were interested, as they always are, in making profits ; and “patriotism” was not enough to prevent their exporting oil seeds, nuts, fats, tea, etc. to the “enemy ” and producing poor quality munitions at fabulous prices. The Government, discovering that wars are not won in this way, competed in their own factories with private producers, Thus, on such things as T.N.T., 18-pounder shells, and machine guns, anything from 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the prices quoted by these patriots was saved. The Government’s system of costing alone saved £440,000,000, When we consider how many contractors have made fortunes out of this we can understand the bitter hostility of them and the newspapers which serve them to any kind of State production.

Compare the patriotism of the employing class, whose interests were bound up in victory, with that of the workers who had nothing to gain. When the latter asked for increases commensurate with the rise in the cost of living, they were threatened with coercion, backed of course by friend Henderson of the Labour Party. Within ten days of the staying of the German advance in the spring of 1918 the National Union of Manufacturers had a deputation waiting upon Lloyd George asking for the removal of restrictions on their profit-making.

It is impossible even to catalogue here all the Government’s activities in different branches of production, one can only say that they are faithfully recorded in Sir Leo’s book. He gives a conception of the potentialities of properly coordinated production, carried on by trained men, backed by the resources of the State, able to engage in scientific research under ideal conditions, and offers the immediate possibility of a five hour working day under the proper organisation of even existing forces.

Although proving the efficiency of State owned concerns so conclusively, our author does not show how nationalisation is of any benefit to the workers. State organisation may eliminate waste, but will it put an end to the robbery of the workers, the root of present evils ?

In Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels long ago sketched the inevitable tendency towards State ownership and trustification, of which two remarkable instances are given in this book—the merging of the 700 banks of a century ago into the present 29, of whose deposits fire hold two-thirds; and the fact that in 1914-1915 £400,000,000 out of the £613,000,000 total profits of business went to public companies as distinct from private firms. But Engels wrote thus of the point on which our author is silent:

  In any case . . . the official representative of Capitalist Society—the State, will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. But the transition either into Joint Stock Companies and Trusts, or into State ownership, does not do away with the Capitalist nature of the productive forces. The workers must remain wage workers, proletarians. The Capitalist relation is not done away with yet. It is rather brought to a head.

There comes a time in the growth of trustification where control can no longer be left in the hands of private persons, and the State is compelled, often in the interests of other capitalists, to step in and take control. The National Liberal Federation is recognising this. Exploitation continues, however, and becomes, owing to centralisation and improved administration, more intense than before.

Production being now carried on from top to bottom by paid servants, the capitalist is left without the pretence of useful service. The way is then clear for the workers to gain political power and organise production for use, for selves, the producers’

In short, our criticism of Sir Leo’s book is this: He proclaims the intention of demonstrating the superiority of Nationalisation over private enterprise. He succeeds, but omits to point out that Nationalisation is private ownership in another form. He proves that the State can produce with extraordinary efficiency and economy as compared with the present idiotic competitive method, but does not trouble to enlighten us as to the inevitable effect of this on the workers.

The benefit of reduction of waste will be reaped by those who own the machinery of production and consequently the products. Whether these owners be private employers or the capitalist class owning collectively through the State does not materially alter the position. The workers are still wage earners ; they are still robbed. While the wage relation remains—and Sir Leo does not even consider the possibility of removing it—the workers can have no vital interest in promoting technical and administrative improvements. The task before them is that of obtaining for their own use the means of production. When that has been done will be time enough for them to consider how best to use them.

Sir Leo, however, evades the question of ownership and deliberately confuses the issue bv such nonsensical phrases as “Socialism in Wool” the “Socialist Police Force,” and “Socialist currency,” and by the note appearing in the index to “see under Nationalisation” for information about Socialism. He endeavours to convey to the reader the impression that “Nationalisation”—that is, the centralisation of ownership by the capitalist class through the State—and Socialism—the expropriation of that class—are one and the same thing.

With a wealth of material at his command, Sir Leo fails to prove his case to the workers. The material can be used by us, but the book should be called “The Triumph of Organisation,”—it means nothing more.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Masters' New Offensive. (1921)

Editorial from the January 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is symptomatic of the pressure which the gradual awakening of the workers is putting on the master class that the latter is adopting a policy of systematic anti-Socialist propaganda and education in political economy among the workers. For generations the capitalists have been content to leave the doping of their slaves to the parson, the novelist, and the prostitute of the Press, all of whom worked by the general distortion of the vision, and generally left economics alone. But to-day we find all and sundry among capitalist agents developing into professors of social science for the benefit of the working class, and, more significant than all the rest put together, the great capitalists are making it a personal matter, and, probably counting upon the glamour of their names to cover the weakness of their arguments, have essayed to teach the workers the kind of economics they would like them to know.

The late Andrew Carnegie was a notable case in point; later Lord Leverhulme addresses working class audiences all over the country, and tries to tell the proletarians "What is Capital" in a ludicrous pamphlet of that title, and so we could go on.

Well, we welcome these pamphleteers and platform pounders with open arms. If you pitch a roped ring and put one human fighting cock in it no one takes much notice; but directly you put a second man in the ring the town flocks to see. We have been the lonely figure in the ring years enough—is it possible that at last our enemy is coming out to fight ?

A few days ago the editorial in the "Daily Chronicle" tried to show the workers that low production means high prices, high prices mean smaller purchasing power, smaller purchasing power means lessened demand, which completes the circle with increased unemployment—a plausible enough tale if one forgets that, in spite of all arguments, and regardless of high prices or low, it is the surplus-value, the difference between what the workers are paid (and therefore are able to consume) and what they produce, that causes unemployment, a fundamental fact that the capitalist sophists have never been able to dispose of and never will.

In "Lloyd's Sunday News" of Jan. 9,1921, the Right Hon. C. A. McCurdy, K.C., M.P., Food Controller, tries to do his little bit toward the general bamboozling of the workers in an article entitled: "Your Food Prices in 1921." He strikes the right note at the commencement when he says "The people of Great Britain, I think, deserve some word of recognition, if not of thanks, for the progress which has been made in this country towards restoration of commercial prosperity . . ."

"Commercial prosperity," mark you, in the face of a million hungry unemployed! One would have thought this touched the limit, but the [editor] of the same paper, in the same issue, goes one better. "Our money is going to be worth more this year than last, and it is going to be easier to make ends meet," he says. It is pretty evident that the writer of that optimistic passage is not unduly oppressed by the flood of unemployment which, even his own leaders recognise, is about to sweep down upon the working class of this country.

Mr. McCurdy, of course, takes up the old cry beloved of capitalist papers, capitalist statesmen, and those capitalist henchmen, the labour leaders (who are strangely quiet upon the point now that the inevitable result we prophesied has been arrived at). He declares, "The price the British housewife will be called upon to pay in 1921 for many commodities will depend in part, of course, upon the continued progress of our own people in increasing production . . ." A little later he says: "Europe wants the goods, we want the wages; why is it, then, that an exchange cannot be made which would be so profitable to both ? The answer is that the war . . . has also dislocated and choked the rivers and channels through which international trade flowed freely in time of peace."

With channels and rivers dislocated and choked the way to avoid floods is not to clear the channels, but to pray Gord to increase the output of rain !

We hope to have an article shortly dealing at length with this subject.

The Social Problem and Its Solution by Jules Guesde (1905)

Jules Guesde

From the January 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

I—Problem

The problem that Socialism sets itself to solve is to be found in a fact, of which it can be said as of the sun: he is blind who does not see it. It is the divorce between the means of production and the producers.

Neither are the mines in the hands of the workers underground who give them value at the daily peril of their lives; nor do the railroads belong to those who have been called the slaves of the iron-way; nor do the weavers who work the looms, the spinners who toil at the spinning machine, the smiths of the blast furnaces, etc, possess the smallest title to call their own that which they create and which occupies the greater and best portion of their lives—lives spent in barriers and useless sacrifice; and, the economic development of Society tends to generalise this state of things by destroying naturally and necessarily the small industries, founded on the ownership of the means of production by the producer.

Next to industry, properly so-called, we find commerce and agriculture, on the expropriation of the little tradesman and peasant proprietor, organised on a large scale and monopolised by the non-producers.

Labour is, on the one hand, more and more furnished by a class; Property or Capital, on the other, held and controlled by another class. Here you have workers without property—the proletariat. There you have property without work—or capital.

It is this separation between the two factors of production which produces all the evils, all the disorders which afflict not only wage-workers but Society as a whole.

The workers without property are excluded from their products, from the riches they create—which accumulate in the hands of the property holders, capitalists and large land-owners.

Labour, which is inseparable from the workman, is in effect nothing more than a commodity—like old bags, bicycles, bones or biscuits—submitted to the laws which rule the prices of commodities and drag it down through the ups and downs of supply and demand to the mere expenses of living and reproduction of the species—food and maintenance; and, these expenses tend constantly to further reduction, because, to derive an advantage from the markets, capitalists, whatever their personal sentiment—had they the heart of a Saint Vincent de Paul or a Louise Michel—are obliged to reduce to a minimum their net cost which includes all labour, material and mental.

There is then a universal and forced tendency to reduce to the lowest the workers’ wages, and this law is sufficient to crush all the best intentions of employers, prisoners of the social order, by which, however, they benefit.

Another cause by virtue of which wages cannot rise—whatever may be the productivity of human labour—above the immediate wants of the working class is that the supply of labourers tends ever more and more to outrun the demand.

The increase of supply results from the forcing into the ranks of the proletariat of the expropriated small industries, little tradesmen, shopkeepers, all reduced, in their turn, to selling their power of doing work—their labour-power—in order to eat.

The decrease in the demand for labour results from the introduction of machinery and its extension. The non-human labour power (steam, electricity, etc) replaces and renders more and more useless human labour power. Here is what we call progress in the economic system: the never ceasing reduction of the sum of labour necessary to a given production.

The economists pretend, it is true, that this reduction in the field of human labour-power (the only means of existence of a class) is but temporary. Following a better market, the produce, more in demand, would bring in its train an increasing flow of production and a new demand for labour-power. But the economists might just as well say that the mechanical manufacture of coffins would multiply the need for coffins. Is not the mechanical production of bottles and casks dependent on the production of wine, beer, etc., and is not the output of rails or boilers limited by the number of factories and the development of the means of communication? On the other hand, neither the agricultural machinery (steam ploughs, sowers, mowers, binders and thrashers) nor the cranes on the quays multiply the products; they simply displace manual labour. But even in the industries where the machine has resulted in an extraordinary increase of manufactured articles, the demand for labour has diminished. Example: The cotton industry in England, in which the productivity has increased 1231 per cent from 1819-22 to 1880-82, while for the same period the number of those employed fell from 1/37th of the population (445,000 out of a population of 16,500,000) to 1/50th (686,000 out of a population of 34,000,000). Another example: The boot and shoe trade of the United States carried from 70 million pairs in 1845 to 448 millions in 1875, while the workers employed have fallen from 1/414 (45,900 out of 19 millions population) to 1/1145th (48,000 out of 55 millions).

Under the system of non-possession of the working class of the instruments with which they work, all progress, no matter what its nature, is turned against them, making greater their misery, their slavery; accentuating the insecurity of their existence; in a word: making unavoidable their exploitation – their robbery.

I spoke just now of the machine. Can it be possible that it could not have released suffering humanity from over-toil, troubles; could not have given us liberty? On the contrary, it has aggravated man’s hard labour by setting up in competition with him women, transformed into toilers, and children. From the very moment that it permitted the employment of feminine and infantile arms, it was necessary that the woman should enter the factory, leaving behind her health, her dignity; compromising even the very race itself, attacked by the foul virus of capitalism while yet a foetus in its mother’s womb. The effect of this competition let loose between the different members of the worker’s family has been still a further lowering of labour. Thus the legend of the well-being of the family enforced by more bread-winners does not hold good even before a Jules Simon. When the woman and the child were not industrialised, the wages of the husband had to suffice for the maintenance of all. To-day, for the same price which the single labour-power of the man was bought, the employer buys the threefold labour-power of the man, the woman, and the child.

The discovery of gas, this creation of human industry, of a midnight sun to prolong and complete that of day, has not been less fatal than the machine for the working-class. It has given place to night work; the slaughter-house of the night.

And the instruction that is being extended – and which we are the first to applaud as a new element for the destruction of existing Society – what consequences do you think it is going to introduce for the proletariat as long as this Society exists? In perfecting the human tool, which produces more and better, it will create new stoppages, longer slack seasons. One instructed workman will be sufficient where formerly two ignorant workmen were necessary — and occupied.

We hear “profit sharing” much spoken of as a remedy to heal all social sores, to reconcile labour and capital. If the cure were applicable, profit sharing would only remove the field of battle to a conflict over the profits to be shared. But without insisting on this point, in urging the worker to produce the most possible, it would only oblige him to do in two days the work of three, concluding consequently in the multiplication of the already too numerous days of no pay or stoppages. From the hell in which the dispossessed productive class struggles and writhes there is no redemption – “abandon all hope ye who enter here!”

The social consequences of the rupture, ever more complete, between labour and capital are no less terrible. First, we have the struggle of all against all.

It is the fashion amongst the adversaries of Socialism—through ignorance or enmity—to charge us with fomenting the class war. Just as though we had invented it! We do nothing but state it and make it serve, which is better, to its own ends. We know that the first condition which imposes itself on a doctor who is called to combat a disease is to examine it in order to understand it. It is not by shutting our eyes to the war which divides and exhausts humanity that we shall arrive at the desired peace. The war of every moment is threefold:

War between the proletariat and the capitalist for their respective shares in the produce; on one side, wages, on the other, profits; each side exerting itself to carry off a maximum. Man becomes a wolf for his fellow-man. It is a question of eating one’s brother or being eaten by him.

War between workers and workers for the sharing of wages.

War between capitalists and capitalists for the sharing of profits.

On the other hand, all the marvels of human genius, all the conquests over nature, of which I have pointed out already the homicidal results to the working-class, do not strike less mortally at the other classes of Society. The colours of aniline, coal extracts, so extensively used in the dyeing industry, have ruined whole districts which lived on the cultivation of the madder root formerly employed in this industry before the discovery of chemical dyes. Tomorrow, as has been recently foreshadowed, means may be discovered for the direct manufacture by electricity of metal-castings, and then the blast-furnaces, their fires extinguished, will leave to the millionaire of yesterday nothing but eyes to weep. All discoveries are condemned to operate only through revolutions, leaving behind them victims by the million, at the top as well as at the bottom of the social ladder.

It is, according to the admirable expression found in the programme of the German Social-Democracy: General insecurity becomes the normal condition of society.

What shall we say, in conclusion, of the overproduction which goes on increasing and multiplying and which nothing can stop? When industry was yet confined to one or two countries, in order to reduce the frequency of these crises born of the ever growing division between the unbounded productivity of human labour and the limit put to the reward of the workers, outlets were furnished by exportation to those parts of Europe remaining agricultural (Italy, Germany, etc.). To-day, having become in their turn industrial, these same nations are confronted with over-production, and Africa and Asia are “opened up”– civilized – to supply markets for this too great store of commodities. Here you have an explanation also of the crimes of Colonial policy, Colonial wars, etc. which are the order of the day with Capitalist Governments. But after? They will only have stepped back in order to jump the better.

Thus more and more has Capitalist Society proved its horrible failure to produce anything from a superabundance of riches; of means of consumption and happiness, but misery, suffering, ruin and death!

Translated from the French of  Jules Guesde by P. J. Tobin

Link To Part 2

Coping with the car (1964)

From the January 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of these days, we have been told by Mr. Marples, we’re going to wake up wondering what's hit us. In rather more elegant language, and at much greater length, the Buchanan report has warned us of the same thing. What is going to hit us, both literally and metaphorically, is the motor car.

Only recently the inhabitants of Kingston on Thames were given a foretaste of what Mr. Marples meant when one Saturday afternoon the whole of the town came to a complete standstill. For a couple of hours no vehicle could get into the town and nothing could get out. The panicky thought even occurred to some of those marooned, apparently, that they never were going to get out.

Is this really what is in store for us? Is the motor vehicle really going to end by overwhelming our cities, wiping out community life, completely dominating our existence? Or will capitalism, which has generated the monster, be finally forced to come to terms with it? And is it really capable of doing this? Are we to be impressed by Buchanan, or is he going to go the way of all the other Utopians up against the harsh realities of private interests and individual ownership? Let us consider a few facts first.

At the beginning of 1963, there were about eight million four-wheeled motor vehicles on this country’s roads; by the end of if, they will have been joined by another million. Estimates are for 13 million in 1970, and for 20 million by 1980, an average of one for every three people or one for every 20 yards of road (actually less since the population is concentrated into certain areas and not evenly spread). All this is prophecy, of course, and one hefty slump in a year or two's time could knock all these figures for six. But the essential problem has already posed itself and will only get worse unless it is dealt with one way or another.

This headlong development is not peculiar to this country. France already has nine million vehicles and will have increased on this number by a further half million by the end of the year; , with a much larger area the problem is not so far quite so acute, but Paris has even worse traffic jams than London, and the other big towns will soon be as bad. Germany will probably have 8½ million vehicles soon and Italy 4 million; many of the smaller European countries have traffic densities at least the equal of, and sometimes greater than, their bigger neighbours.

Far in excess of all of them, of course, is the United States, with the fantastic total of 80 million vehicles. The effects of this are, however, localised and in many areas one measures the number of square miles to the car and not the other way round. But the problem is no easier in the built-up areas where most of the population is concentrated, in fact, it is often much worse. Los Angeles, and similar towns, stand as terrible warnings of what the unrestrained advance of the motor car can do to man and his way of life.

At the same time, the car manufacturers of the world are busily expanding output, installing new plant, going in for more and more automation, opening up new factories. Spurred on by state financial aid and other encouragement, Ford go to Liverpool, Rootes to Linwood, Citroen to Rennes, Renault to Caen and Le Havre, Volkswagen to Emden; so linked has the motor industry become to the general health of modern capitalism that governments hardly dare interfere to control its booms and fall over themselves to stimulate it out of its slumps.

Whole industries have become its subsidiaries. Sheet steel and rubber are its hangers-on, petroleum pays it homage. It feeds upon vast quantities of glass, paint, plastics, chrome, and electrical equipment; it requires huge investment in heavy plant and machine tools. When the internal combustion engine misfires, the whole of capitalism begins to cough; when it is turning over well, the economy feels buoyant.

So far the motor vehicle has carried all before it. But the problem now threatening capitalism and its governments is how to reconcile this ever-increasing production with the need to keep the products on the move. Even its die-hard supporters can see the absurdity of turning loose hundreds of thousands of additional cars on to roads where the traffic already can hardly turn. Yet capitalism is on the horns of a real dilemma—how to impose restrictions on the car (which to be effective will need to be drastic) without disastrous repercussions on the industry itself.

Capitalism's Sacred Cow

In spite of all the evils and inconveniences it has brought in the way of noise, noxious fumes, dirt, nervous frustration, congestion, economic waste, death and injury from accidents, the car has so far had things pretty much its own way. It has become capitalism’s sacred cow, which nobody has been allowed to hinder or harm. Over the years it has steadily been allowed to reduce the public transport services to a joke and a travesty, and nobody has dared raise a hand to stop it.

The United States has always believed itself to be a step ahead of the motor vehicle (in contrast to this country which has always been a step behind it), but the net result, in the towns, at any rate, has not been very different. Driving magnificent motorways into the towns seemed a wonderful idea at the time, but all they did was to attract even more traffic and congest the centres still further. In the interests of the car, the Americans have assassinated their towns as decent, pleasant places to live in. Los Angeles has spread itself into a vast, inhuman sprawl over thousands of square miles; only now, after spending thousands of millions of dollars on super highways is it belatedly trying to put right its mistake with a new public transport system.

In this country and most of Western Europe the crunch has still to come, but it is not very far away. After the meters come the devices for charging for using road space—all very ingenious but a wonderful example of the fundamental idiocy of capitalism. The Buchanan report puts forward all sorts of inspiring ideas but one of the first very mundane things Mr. Marples is going to use it for is to provide independent weighty backing to his plans for restriction.

We referred to the idiocy of capitalism and it is true. Hundreds of thousands of cars, each taking up about 70 square feet of road space to carry seldom more than one passenger, crawl into our cities between certain fixed times in the morning, and crawl out again at another fixed period in the evening. It is only matched in idiocy by the way in which the urban public transport systems are geared to millions of commuters doing the same thing by bus, train, and tube. Many of these same commuters have themselves left a car in the garage taking up useful space at home or littering the streets, a car which they probably never take out on a journey worthy of the name more than once a week, plus the fine week-ends in the summer when they sally forth en masse to join the traffic jams, and the annual holiday when they often meet the same thing. The situation certainly has its ironies, as well. It is hardly more than ten to fifteen years ago that no Socialist meeting could go its allotted span without some questioner asking “And what are you going to do if everybody wants a motor-car under Socialism?," the implication being that there would never be enough to go round and matters would end in a mad free-for-all. How far away those days seem now! Today we are hardly asked the question—nobody questions that production will be a problem.

Capitalism itself has in fact already solved the problem of the production of the motor-car. Its real problem today is how to cope with what it has produced; how to reconcile social production with individual ownership. Its politicians, its experts, its planners, all accept without question that whatever else may happen the cars must still come rolling off the assembly lines in their millions. The Buchanan report puts forward the most grandiose schemes, all to deal with 13 million cars by 1970 and even 20 million by 1980; a BBC discussion on the report mentioned a figure of £9,000 million for town rebuilding alone and everybody seemed to think that that was quite normal to allow half a nation of car-drivers to go from one side of a town to the other or to stop half way through to do the shopping. And as for the really revolutionary suggestion—the one that would operate under Socialism—that perhaps we already had enough cars and that all that was necessary was for them to be utilised sensibly as a supplementary to a comfortable, convenient and generally well-run public transport service, this side of the equation was obviously not thought of, let alone considered.

The fact is that the cars will continue to roll from the assembly lines but that capitalism’s governments will do only so much to accommodate them as the necessities of private property will allow. Most of the Buchanan proposals, for example, will probably be quietly shelved; the government has already turned a cold eye on the suggestion that land for road schemes should be compulsorily acquired at a “reasonable price,” and hardly anybody believes that much of the drastic re-planning mentioned in the report will ever be realised.

What we shall probably get, as is usually the case, is a hotchpotch of a compromise that will ease the system where it is being pinched hardest with the rest left to look after itself as best it can. There will be restrictions in one form or another to keep the city centres reasonably free for commercial traffic and give essential services, such as getting the workers to work, more scope to operate. No doubt, also as usual, the wealthy will find ways round the permits and licences, and the charges will be chalked up with all their other odd financial items on the side against business expenses. Priority will also certainly be given to such things as motorways to carry capitalism's merchandise more quickly and thus more cheaply. But anything to do primarily with making our cities convenient and safe places to move about in, beautiful places to look at, and enjoyable places generally in which to live, will be well down the list of priorities. In other words, little is going to be done to rid us of the noise, the noxious fumes, the congestion, the waste of resources, the deaths and injuries, we mentioned earlier; indeed, they will probably become worse.

In short, we see little prospect of capitalism coping with the car, save perhaps in the sense that it will have to intervene to some extent to save itself from being strangled economically. And, to judge by the way it has been setting about the job so far, it looks as though it will not do even this too successfully either.

Where are you going? We may well ask. But wherever it is, or wherever you think it is, you're not going to find the car much of an asset.

Stan Hampson

The Social Nature of Modern Production (1970)

From the August 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is torn by one major contradiction: that the socialisation of wealth-production has developed to an extent undreamt of in former epochs, whilst ownership of the means of production is concentrated in the hands of a minority. World-wide interdependence in production has made a material abundance possible for all mankind, yet the fetters of private property keep the overwhelming majority in poverty. The socialist answer to the poverty problem is to remove the contradiction by making the means of production the common property of society as a whole.

Most workers who support the social system that keeps them poor think in terms of greater productivity, more technology or other nostrums of capitalism. They fail to grasp that the problem of production has been solved. Nor do they realise that the abolition of private property will end all forms of exchange including barter and will result in free access according to need. Consequently such questions are asked as “say I made bicycles and wanted other things made by other people who don’t want bicycles, how do I get them without money?” These questions show a lack of knowledge of how production is carried out under any form of society. It suggests that individuals carry out the production of objects from start to finish and by virtue of this have rights of ownership. This has never been so and under capitalism, the producers do not even own the places they work in, nor the tools, materials and finished product. These belong to the non-producing capitalist class.

No single person could produce a bicycle right through. Nor in fact does any single industrial combine, huge and diversified as some are. The ores for the metals and their alloys have to be found, mined and processed. The metals have to be shaped and treated to make the tubes for the frame, sprockets, chains, ball bearings, wheels and other component parts. These processes need machinery of many specialised kinds. Transport of all types to move the materials through the various stages and processes, sometimes over great distances; electricity to power the machines, and the fuels to supply the power to generators are also essential. Then there is the paint and chrome-plating to be seen to. No bike can do without tyres, needing rubber from the plantations of South East Asia, cotton for the carcass and steel wire for the beading. The bicycle like other articles is not only the product of co-operative labour, but of a certain form of society. The techniques involved are of a highly sophisticated kind. They are not made in ones and two’s but in millions. The world is involved in producing them and they are available for the markets of the world.

Joe Carter

Capitalism’s Contradiction (1970)

From the September 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

We see the major problems of today stemming primarily from the basic contradictions of capitalism. By this we mean that the social relationships of production conflict with the technical relationships.

In modern society where wealth takes the form of “a vast accumulation of commodities”, production is “socialised”. This means that no commodity is the result of one person’s work, but that it takes the productive apparatus of the world to produce the commodity.

For example, take the simple match. Someone has to know which trees to cut, how to cut them, how to make the saws to saw them, how to make the right steel to make the saws, how to make the lorries that convey the logs, how to obtain and process the rubber to make the tyres for the lorries, how to extract and process the petroleum to provide the power for them, to indicate only some of the basic processes involved. And of course all these materials and people have to be transported from place to place by air, land and sea with the assistance and support of administrative and agricultural workers. Modern capitalism (including Russia, China, etc.), which is the dominant economic mode, has brought into being a world based on the socialised production of wealth. But (and this is the biggest “but” in history) the wealth when produced is not the property of the producers, i.e. the working population of the world. It is appropriated by a relatively tiny section of society which monopolises the means of production, for reasons of history either in private or in state forms of possession. Furthermore this minority section or class is divided up, generally on a national basis, into particular ruling classes. These can only maintain them­selves as the ruling classes in their own sector (given the acquiescence of the working population) and realise the wealth which the commodities represent by selling them, profitably, on the world market.

The ensuing conflict entails bitter struggles over markets, energy-yielding products, sources of cheap materials and labour, and the strategically important areas, bases and trade routes associated with them. The minor and major wars, together with the criminal stupidities, social and environmental, with which we are confronted are primarily caused by or are traceable to this contradiction.

Our social and political systems derive from this basic mode of organisation and it is absolutely impossible to eliminate these problems, which are specific to capitalism, unless the social relationships of production are brought into harmony with the technical ones. That is, as well as having socialised production, the means of production and the wealth produced must be the property of the whole of society and simply used by society in a rational democratic manner in line with the precept: “from each according to his ability. to each according to his need”. This does not require governments, armed forces and so on. It does require knowledge and a common understanding of aim, purpose and method. It does entail organisation and administration but not permanent organisers and administrators (as individuals).

Education for this kind of world is important but it is not simply a matter of formal education (which is socially derivative anyway), but of social education, i.e. experience, as well. Men learn and modify their behaviour. Our environment is dominated by capitalist competition and this forces the ruling groups to revolutionise continually me techniques of production, including those of communication.

This means that whole sections of the community are confronted by changes in their lives and the need to question the existing situation. This does not mean that their tentative attempts to grasp the meaning of events are always constructive but it does open the way for the valid analysis, presented appropriately. The important point, however, is that, time being money for the ruling classes and communications being important militarily, the means of communication are improved so rapidly that it is harder and harder for rising generations to see themselves as other than “Earthmen”, “world citizens” and so on. This is not simply for reasons of political or moral theory but as something related to experience in a world of short-wave radio, international television, satellites and space shots. No doubt governments attempt to use these techniques for pernicious ends but the inherent universality of some of these media subverts their efforts.

Jack Bradley

A Discovery. (1921)

From the September 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the “Daily Chronicle” (30.7.21) the “Labour Joint Committee” have just discovered that the Government figures on the cost of living are inaccurate. To the average worker this has been common knowledge ever since the first figures announcing a reduction in living costs were published. Labour leaders' all over the country have blindly accepted the Government figures, and advised the workers to agree to wage reductions on the ground that it meant cheaper production and lower .prices. They have been utterly discredited in the actual results. Ever since the reductions in wages commenced, prices of the necessaries of life have been steadily rising.

Labour leaders have also repeatedly told the workers that it was their duty to increase production by every means in their power. The Socialist Party, on the contrary, has continuously pointed out that increased production, whether as a result of greater efficiency or labour-saving machinery, can have but one result: an increase of unemployment.

In their report the “Labour Joint Committee” make a tardy and incomplete acknowledgment of this indisputable fact. They say that “until the worker has security of tenure in industry, occasions will arise when 'ca-canny’ will appear to be the leaser of two evils.” The second evil is, of course, unemployment, and with nearly two million registered unemployed, the worker who would race to finish his job to make one more would be a fool. On the other hand, the capitalist pays his overseer to look after his interests, and if he is too slow to catch the worker who shirks unemployment, he too will find himself numbered among the unemployed. The worker has very little choice in the matter. He must either work hard and get the sack himself, or work hard and get his mate the sack.

“Ca canny,’’ where it exists, and unemployment are proofs of the rottenness of the capitalist system. Men and women lack the necessaries of life; they are forced to be idle by the capitalist class; yet, given access to the means of wealth production, they could produce the things they require in abundance. Capitalism compels the workers to produce for profits. The workers can only satisfy all their requirements when they make the means of wealth-production common property and produce for use.

F. Foan

A Mad World (1940)

From the May 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1890, May 1st has been the day chosen by Labour organisations to express by demonstrations their international solidarity. This year, May 1st comes at a time when the war clouds have burst all over Europe and the East, and even America is expecting them to reach her shores.

All the signs suggest that the war that is now upon us may be worse than any yet known to history. What the workers will suffer in the course of it and how they will stand at the end moves many to gloomy foreboding.

It is a sad thought that such a war has only been possible because of the political backwardness of the international working class. Had the professions of solidarity made at the huge May-Day demonstrations of past years been backed by a sound knowledge of the workers’ slave position in capitalist society, and the Socialist solution to it, war at this time would have been impossible. Yet, just as in 1914, among the most war-minded to-day are to be found people who were prominent on May-Day platforms of the past speaking eloquently to resolutions of international solidarity.

The madness of the whole business becomes apparent if one thinks quietly over some of the happenings.

Every now and again a wealthy man dies and we learn that he has left a fortune of some millions of pounds in spite of the fact that he has been living in luxury for years. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of workers are finding it difficult to make ends meet when in work and semi-starvation when out of work. A few years ago there were three million workers unemployed and there were more millions asking for increases in their meagre wages. When our masters’ attention was called to this state of affairs they replied that industry could not afford any improvement in the workers' conditions.

Since then the unemployed figure has been cut by over half and there is a standing war force of several million just eating up production—and yet industry can stand it! Thousands of workers are employed to make guns and shells whose purpose is solely to destroy. Thousands of workers are employed to use their utmost skill in building ocean-going ships that are sent to the bottom of the sea. Over two hundred thousand tons of shipping have already gone down, but we are told that it is not serious, as shipbuilding has been so speeded up that at the present average rate of ship sinking they can all be replaced in the course of a year. Just imagine building ships knowing that a large percentage of them will soon be at the bottom of the ocean. Is it not a mad world? Think how well we could all live if this huge quantity of wasted labour were employed making and supplying the things we really need.

Why does this madness persist? Why do major wars turn up every few years and small wars always go on ? Because of the present private property basis of society with the accompanying necessity of buying and selling. Under capitalism the capitalists must sell or sink, and therefore where diplomacy fails they force their way into markets by means of war or cut out their competitors in that way.

There is only one solution for this recurring disease of war, and that is to convert the means of wealth production from privately owned means into the common property of the whole of society to be used for the equal benefit of all. The workers perform all the functions necessary to produce and distribute wealth, and they do not need the capitalist. He is only where he is because in the course of time he has been allowed to live like a leech on the backs of the workers. While he remains the workers' labour will be used up producing gigantic instruments of war and luxurious trifles to suit the fruitless whims of the wealthy instead of those necessary things which would make the world a pleasant place for workers.

In these days of suspense and foreboding there are, however, not lacking signs of hope. The worker of to-day has made progressive mental strides from his brother of 1914. The Socialist message is slowly finding its way in, as is evidenced by the fact that so many are less easily carried away by the old well-worn shibboleths.

On this war-troubled May-Day, then, when the sap is rising in the trees, the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing, let workers here and elsewhere make up their minds that the problem of happiness is worth a little hard thinking and cool examination; that while they have hands and brains and energy their world need not be forever clouded with war and the uncertainty of finding the means to live in comfort. The key to comfort for the workers is a real understanding of their present subject position. Once they have got that they will realise that through Socialism lies their only path to a care-free existence.

This is true not merely for one nation or another, but for the whole world of workers, who suffer a common bondage and have an identical interest in ending it.

Across the years come the words of one who spent his life easing the workers’ path to understanding, and what he wrote nearly a century ago is as true to-day as then: —

"Proletarians of all lands unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win.”

What a May-Day message for the workers in a war-torn world !

Gilmac.