News in Review: The Polls (1964)

The News in Review column from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Polls

Over the past few months, watching the so-called public opinion polls has almost become an obsessive national activity. Glassy, fascinated eyes have watched the graph lines of support for the two big political parties snaking up and down.

Even the Stock Exchange has reacted, becoming more optimistic as the forecast support for the Conservatives has increased.

The two big polls National Opinion Polls in the Daily Mail and Gallup in the Daily Telegraph have differed in their assessments. NOP turning up figures more favourable to the government than Gallup. Both have agreed that the Tories have steadily gained ground.

Who Knows what the polls are worth? Naturally, they protest their own accuracy; they are now big business employed by famous companies and advertising agencies to estimate what razor blades we use, what size washing machine fits into our kitchens.

In the political field, the polls have never really lived down their massive boob in the American Presidential Election of 1948, when Truman won against all their forecasts. They blamed that on to an unsuspected flaw in their method, which they now claim to have eliminated.

But none of them, of course, can interview an entire electorate and inevitably their sampling methods come in for some criticism. When the election is over, the polls do some furious figure juggling and, not surprisingly, claim that their forecasts were accurate.

The political parties welcome or deride the polls, according to whether they are currently favourable or not. Some time back a constituency Conservative Party which was fighting a by-election suggested that the polls were undemocratic, because they actually influenced people to vote for the party which they tipped to win.

In that by-election, need we add, the Tories were doing badly when the opposite is true they do not complain about the polls.

The whole thing is, in fact, a rather amusing game. And. like a game, it has no real effect. We can make one forecast now, without the aid of the polls.

Whichever of the parties wins the election, and whatever the composition of Parliament when the votes have been counted, capitalism will remain. It will be business as usual for everyone, including the pollsters.

Restrictive practices

Sam Goldwyn has long been famous for his super-colossal films and for his snappy wisecracks. He has always been the newspapers' caricature of a Hollywood tycoon expansive, ebullient. But now he is under something of a cloud.

The great Sam recently sold fifty of  his films for showing on television. Now everybody knows that the one word which is likely to make the cinema owners see red, in the most glorious, panoramic technicolor, is television.

So Mr. Goldwyn’s sale is regarded by the cinema interests as a stab in the back or, as Mr. Ellis Pinkney, secretary of the Cinema Exhibitioners' Association, put it. biting the hand that fed him. Goldwyn was not around when this remark was made: had he been, he would doubtless have made another funny crack in reply.

But the CEA are not joking. They are pressing all cinema owners in Britain not to show any more Goldwyn films. As they claim a membership of over ninety per cent of cinema owners, including Rank and Granada, their ban may well be effective.

Now the film industry was once famous for the demarcation rules which its workers' trade unions applied in the studios. These rules were strict; no carpenter would stick up so much as a square inch of plaster, no plasterer would knock in the smallest nail.

The employers complained bitterly about what they called these restrictive practices. They implied that the workers were childish, that the rules would ruin the industry and would deprive the public of their films.

In fact, the unions were using an old established weapon to try to defend some hard won improvements in working conditions. This may mean some tough fights, but that is the way it is jungle of capitalism’s class struggle.

And toughness, and restrictive practices, are not confined to one side. What the cinema owners are now going to do in their fight against Goldwyn can only be described as a tough restrictive practice.

Naturally, they try to justify it by using the same tones of moral indignation as they use when they attack the film workers' demarcation rules. But morality docs not come into it.

Both sides arc only trying to protect their interests and that is something that goes on all over the capitalist world. Even that part which is the preserve of the tinsel unrealities of the film men.

Johnson's fortune

Nobody expects elections to be other than dirty businesses but sometimes, in their anxiety to throw mud the parties of capitalism achieve some strange results.

Consider the case of Johnson's fortune. The exact amount of the American President's wealth has become something of an issue in the election over there, so much so that Johnson has engaged a firm of accountants to report on the matter.

The conclusion of this investigation was that the Johnson family is worth about three and a half million dollars. This estimate has been questioned, because it is based on the original cost of the Johnsons’ interests, whereas their present market value would be somewhere nearer $14 million.

For some strange reason, this dollop of wealth is regarded as a possible electoral liability to the President. The delusion about the barefoot boy who rose from log cabin to the White House apparently persists in the United States, even after all that the Kennedy family did to destroy it. 

Yet why should his wealth lose Johnson votes? A rich man, after all, is capitalism’s highest form of life—he is successful. Does not Johnson, therefore, fit in with the prejudices and presumptions which dominate elections? Is he not the sort of man the American workers would want as their national boss?

Perhaps there are doubts about the methods which were used to amass the Johnson fortune. And these, too, are humbug.

Even the most illegal ways of building up wealth—and there is no proof that the President has ever done anything outside the law—are no worse than the simple, legal method of the exploitation of the working class.

No method is more degrading, more repressive. No method leads to more violence and unhappiness. Property, Proudhon said, is theft and that is it up.

From this we can see that Lyndon Johnson is eminently suitable to administer American capitalism, with all the ruthlessness that it may require. He has also shown that he can accept, and turn to his advantage, any of the system's anomalies.

At the same time as his fortune was being counted, Johnson was pushing through Congress his so-called Anti Poverty Bill, which is supposed to rescue millions of Americans from the depths of destitution.

Perhaps some of them will get the point, and remember it when the time comes in November.

Matter of importance

From the London Gazette of 1st September, 1964:

In future, on occasions when it is desired that decorations be worn invitations should state either “evening dress decoration" (signifying white tie with full orders decorations and miniatures) or “dinner jacket, decorations” (signifying black tie with orders decorations and miniatures as described above).

When “evening dress decorations" is prescribed those not in possession of full evening dress may wear orders decorations and miniature badges and medals as described above with a dinner jacket.

How comforting to know that, in this world of hydrogen bombs and hire purchase, of malnutrition and mental illness, there is still a spark of dignity.

How nice to know that the Queen, ever alert to the onward march of democracy, has graciously consented to unbend the once inflexible regulations on the wearing of decorations with evening dress.

What ease of mind it brings to us all, to know that “. . . orders, decorations and medals may be worn with dinner jackets . . . with shirts having a stiff collar or soft collar.”

What an uplift for the soft collar, to be put at last on a par with the stiff! How satisfying a fruition of human struggle and endeavour.

And how sick it makes you feel.

Letter: Full employment, slumps and other questions (1964)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Full employment, slumps and other questions

Dear Sir.

An article published in the Socialist Standard in January of this year posed a question with its title, namely "Are you better off?" Unfortunately, however, the article does not provide any definite conclusion.

The article does however concede that the average increase of the purchasing power of take-home pay is probably about 10 per cent.

"In the meantime, owing to more than proportionate increases of pay deductions from pay (national insurance and income tax), the average increase of the purchasing power of take-home pay is not the 18 per cent of the two indexes would show (wage rate index and retail price index) but something less, probably about 10 per cent Socialist Standard, page 9, January 1964.”

It might also be pointed out that.the present alleged standard of affluence that many of the working class are at present living at is dependent on their wives going to work in order to augment the family budget. But, notwithstanding, this and other factors such as the tremendous growth in hire purchase commitments, it is difficult to deny that the worker of today is better off if fully employed, as the vast majority are at present, than his counterpart was when unemployed in large numbers before the Second World War, particularly in the slump of 1929. In case it should be asked why one should compare the lot of a fully employed worker to that of an unemployed one in the pre-war period the answer is that millions were unemployed then, and relatively few are unemployed now. The article in question gave four columns of figures, one of which gave the number of unemployed of 1938 when it stood at 1,927,000. The column next to this gives unemployment as a percentage of 1938. this year being taken as 100 per cent. If these figures are accurate, then we may conclude that unemployment has not reached 50 per cent of this level since 1938.

On this aspect of the problem the article in your journal is significantly silent. In fact I think it would be true to say that the Socialist Standard has failed to account for this continuing full employment since the end of the war and does not even find the subject worthy of discussion in its columns.

May 1 therefore ask the following questions?

(a) Why in your opinion has the slump which you maintain is an essential feature of capitalism failed to appear in England?

(b) Why has there been no slump of the magnitude of 1929 since the war.

(c) Are the present conditions of full employment, increasing the membership of your organisation and the sales of the Socialist Standard.

(d) Do you think the orthodox economists using ideas of the late Maynard Keynes have found a way of preventing widespread and profound slumps of the pre 1938 variety and if not how do you account for this rather prolonged period of full employment?

I am, yours etc.

T. Lawlor

Reply:

Our correspondent comments on the fact that, compared with pre-war years, the position of the workers has been affected by the decline of unemployment and the increased number of married women who go out to work, as well as by the rise of average wages in relation to prices. This was referred to in the article, where it was pointed out that total wages are about five times what they were in 1938, “mainly because of the decline of unemployment and the fact that far more married women are now out at work".

Whether this last factor can be regarded simply as a gain is another matter. In the nineteenth century the need of married women to work was commonly regarded as a disadvantage by those who studied its consequences.

If however it is a fact that most workers now are rather better off than before the war, this kind of development is not a new thing. Frederick Engels noted in 1885 that since 1844, when he wrote his The Condition of the Working Class in England, the factory workers had become “undoubtedly better off”, and the condition of engineers, carpenters, joiners and bricklayers, organised in the trade unions, “had remarkably improved". (See Preface to 1892 Edition).

In the same Preface and in the 1886 Preface to Capital Engels then went on to state a position which events proved to be wrong. He had concluded, because of the length and severity of the depression, that British Capitalism would never resume its expansion and that “either the country must go to pieces or capitalist production must ”. He thought unemployment was bound to increase year by year and that shortly, “ the unemployed . . . will take their fate into their own hands ”,

Profiting by Engels' mistakes the SPGB reached the conclusion (one indeed that Marx and Engels had themselves seen) that the achievement of Socialism calls for understanding on the part of the workers and cannot be the outcome of discontent and despair without understanding.

Our correspondent accepts rather too easily the claim that there has been “continuing full employment since the end of the war". In the column of figures to which he refers in the January Socialist Standard it is shown that since the war unemployment has ranged from 302,000 in January 1956 to 861,000 in January 1963. This latter figure may not be high by pre-war standards but it certainly cannot be described as “full employment”. Allowance ought also to be made for the fact that unemployment will have been increased in the nineteen thirties by the big flow of migration into this country. In post-war years up to about 1960 the net flow was outwards.

Against that background we can answer the specific questions.

(a) For this question it is necessary to take care about the use of words. If by “slump” our correspondent means only a “heavy slump” like that of the thirties, the answer is that such heavy slumps are not an essential feature following each capitalist crisis.

What we had as an essential feature o! capitalism is, to quote the words used by Marx in Capital, Volume I, Chapter XV, Section 8: —

The life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, overproduction, crisis and stagnation.

The crises, that is the sharp interruptions of booms, have continued to happen in the post-war years. For example, the index of production in January 1963 was down to 108, after having reached 120 in January 1961. If in post-war years, the ensuing “stagnations" have not been heavy and prolonged this is in line with the experience of crises in the nineteenth century. Most of these crises were not followed by heavy prolonged slumps. The outstanding big ones were in the eighteen forties, the eighteen eighties (the one that threw Engels off-balance) and the nineteen thirties, and in between there were depressions that were not heavy or prolonged.

(b) Among the reasons why heavy depression existed in the nineteen thirties and not in post-war years in this country (experience of some other countries has been markedly different) is the absence of a very important factor which existed then. This is the pre-war feature of crisis-dislocation superimposed on the long-term decline of some very big industries, agriculture, coal and cotton without the counter effect of strongly expanding new industries. In post-war years, along with a much larger Civil Service, large armed forces and armaments industry, there has been expansion of building (helped by war-time destruction and stoppage of building), man-made fibres, electricity and electrical engineering, motor car and aircraft manufacture, television, chemicals and oil, electronics and nuclear power.

(c) If this question means has low unemployment since the end of the war been accompanied by a continuous increase of membership, etc., the answer is no; but we would not expect increase of membership to be determined by low unemployment any more than the heavy unemployment of the thirties had that effect. Other factors also come into it.

(d) This question relates to the supposed ability of governments to prevent widespread and profound slumps by means of the techniques associated with the late Lord Keynes. It will put the matter into perspective to point out that also before 1935 (the year Keyne's major work appeared) there were, between the heavy slump, long periods without heavy slumps.

If it is claimed that Keynesian techniques give Governments effective control over capitalism why did unemployment rise to 861,000 in 1963? As all governments have at their disposal these same techniques, and numerous economists who approve of them, why have many countries had heavy unemployment for prolonged periods since the war. among them U.S.A.. Canada. Germany, Italy, Belgium and Denmark? In Italy unemployment ranged between 1½ and 2 million for 10 years after the war. During this year unemployment has been at the 6 per cent level in Canada and U.S.A.

How have the techniques supposed to have worked? The Keynesians claim that the Government can, when it likes, stimulate capital investment and consumption and at other times damp down over-expansion. When the present motor car boom slackens off as it certainly will, what can the government do, if the world market for cars is temporality saturated, except wait for demand to recover? Theoretically the government could have prevented the industry from expanding so rapidly—and left the market to be filled with the cars of other producers—but the car manufacturers, the trade unions and the Tory and Opposition M.P.'s would all have protested.

Now that the Southern Rhodesian tobacco industry has been hit by falling prices following a bumper crop, how can Keynes help them? The producers are in fact turning to another and older technique, that of restricting production.

Of course it long ago ceased to he true that Keynesian doctrines were held only by the unorthodox minority. They had become the orthodoxy of large numbers of economists and members of governments. Now fashion is changing again and Keynes comes under increasing criticism. It would seem that his theories have not proved, even to his admirers, to be the panacea they were claimed to be.

Editorial Committee.

Election Special: Introducing the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904. Our object is the establishment of Socialism; a world-wide social system in which the means of wealth production and distribution (factories, mines, the land, railways, steamships, etc.) will be owned by the entire population of the world.

We are associated with our Companion Socialist parties in the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. We have no connection whatever with any other political party or organisation.

WE OPPOSE every organisation which stands for capitalism, which includes the Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist, Independent Labour parties and many others. We oppose the wars which capitalism persistently throws up. We oppose political campaigns which appeal for votes on programmes of reforms (better housing, higher wages, etc.), which in fact do little or nothing to alleviate working class problems. We oppose Nationalisation, which is just another way of organising capitalism.

WE SUPPORT Socialism. Nothing less will do.

WE WORK for Socialism. We spread among the working class the knowledge without which Socialism cannot be established. Our leader does not exist. Leaders are for the politically ignorant. The worker who has Socialist knowledge does not need a leader to interpret political affairs for him and to tell him what to do. There are, therefore, no leaders in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we do not set out to become leaders of the working class.

WE RECRUIT Socialists and nobody else. We examine all applicants for membership to ensure that they understand what is entailed by being a Socialist.

WE APPEAL to the working class to examine the case for Socialism and to vote for our candidate only if they understand, and want, Socialism.

Why we are contesting

Whenever there is an election the ordinary person, the man in the street—the working class voter—becomes suddenly very popular. Any number of political parties are anxious to please him and to make him all manner of tempting promises, if he in his turn will agree to vote for their candidate. Election time, in other words, is the time when there is an enormous hunt for votes—for your vote.

The bait which is used in this hunt is largely made up by promises. All the other parties offer this bait, and the generosity of their promises is usually in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their getting power. The Labour and Conservative Parties cannot be too extravagant; the Liberals can be a little more wild; the Communists can promise almost anything. And so on.

Most of the promises in this election are about things like modernisation, housing, education, pensions, wages and prices, war and peace. To read the literature of the other parties, it seems that all that has to be done to solve overnight all the problems connected with these issues is to vote for their candidate. They will all, it seems, bring British industry up to date, replace all the slums with new houses, give everyone a fair chance of the best education, increase pensions, keep prices stable while wages increase, banish war from the earth.

These promises sound very fine and in one election after another millions of working people vote for them. And presumably, when they do so, they think that they are contributing to the solution of our problems.

But let us stop and think about it.

Firstly, it is obvious that election promises are not a new thing. Political parties have been making them for as long as anyone can remember—and always about the same sort of problems.

Now what has been the result of all this?

The housing problem remains with us; despite repeated promises to deal with it, slums are developing faster than new houses are being built For the workers, who depend on their wage to live, housing is still an aspect of their general poverty.

The sort of education we get is governed by the financial standing of our parents. Even if a working class lad wins his way to university he is only studying to become a different type of worker—one with a degree behind him.

Millions of old age pensioners are living on the tightrope of destitution—and it only needs something like a severe winter for many of them to loosen their precarious hold on life.

Prices continue to rise, as they have done steadily since the war. No government has yet given a free rein to the level of wages—they have all tried to restrain them. And whatever the respective level of prices and wages, we always find that our wage packet only just covers our food, clothing, entertainment and whatever else goes to keep us ticking over.

War is just as much a universal problem as ever. At the moment there are only comparatively minor incidents, punctuated by more serious clashes such as Cuba and Berlin. But over it all hangs the threat of another world conflict, this time fought out with nuclear weapons.

It is not accidental that the politicians make so many promises and that they have so little effect upon the ailments they are supposed to cure. The world is full of chronic problems, but this is not because political parties have not thought up reforms which are supposed to deal with them nor because their leaders are not clever or knowledgeable enough.

The fact is that the problems persist whichever party is in power and this suggests that their roots go deep into the very nature of modern society.

We live today in a social system which is called capitalism. 
The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the 
population of the means of producing and distributing wealth—
of factories, mines, steamships, and so on. It follows from 
this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned out 
with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from this basis that the problems of modern society spring.

The class which does not own the means of wealth production—the working class—are condemned to a life of impoverished dependence upon their wages. This poverty expresses itself in inferior housing, clothes, education, and the like. In the end, it expresses itself in the pathetic destitution of the old age pensioner—a fate which no old capitalist ever faces.

The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over wages and working conditions with attendant industrial disputes. It gives rise, with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured man’s recent history.

Every other party in this election stands for capitalism, whatever they may call themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which no human being is secure.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, alone, stands for Socialism. We stand for a world in which everything which goes to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the people of the world. Because Socialism is the direct opposite of capitalism, it follows that when it is established the basic problems of capitalism will disappear. There will be no more war, no more poverty. Man will live a full, abundant life; we shall be free.

But Socialism cannot be brought about by promises. It needs a knowledgeable working class who understand and desire it. They alone can establish the new world order.

We recognise that the road to power lies through Parliament. At the moment, the number of Socialists is small and our resources are therefore limited; unfortunately, we can afford to run only a few candidates. But as the conscious desire for Socialism spreads among the working class we shall contest more and more constituencies, giving more and more workers the chance to vote for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.

What is Socialism?

Socialism will be a social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1904. We have never altered it; not because we are stubborn and blind to changing conditions but because the word Socialism means the same today as it did in 1904—and as it will mean when Socialism becomes a reality.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution means that the things which are needed to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the whole human race. At present these things are the land, factories, mines, railways, steamships, etc. But common ownership does not mean that everybody in the world will own an equal share of every factory, mine, railway train and the rest.

What common ownership does mean, is that there is one way in which all human beings will be equal. Everybody will have an equal right to take however much wealth they need and to consume it as they require. Because the means of production will be commonly owned the things which are produced will go into a common pool from which all human beings will be able to satisfy their needs.

Now if there is unrestricted access to wealth for everybody it must follow that nobody, in the sense of an individual or a class, owns wealth. This means that wealth will not be exchanged under Socialism; it will not be bartered nor will it be bought and sold. As a rough parallel we can consider the air we breathe. Everybody has free access to the air and we can all take in as much of it as we need to live. In other words, nobody owns the air; nobody tries to exchange air for anything else, nobody tries to sell or buy it. Similarly there will be no buying and selling under Socialism; no need for the complicated and widespread organisations which deal in commerce and banking in capitalist society. Socialism will have no merchant houses, no banks, no stock exchanges, no tax inspectors, or any of the paraphernalia of capitalism.

In a Socialist society wealth will be produced solely to satisfy people’s needs and not for sale as it is today. Because of this there will be no deliberate variations in quality of wealth. Socialism will have only one quality. Whatever is produced will be the best that human beings are capable of. Homes, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they are made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the best homes that society knows how to build.

Nobody will be employed by another person—nobody will sell his labour-power or work for wages. Everybody, in fact, will work for the whole of society. Work will be a co-operative effort, freely given because men will realise that wealth can only be produced by working—unless wealth is produced society will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that will keep us working under Socialism. Men will be free—free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment, free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody will be found doing a job which he hates but tolerates because it pays him well. Healthy young men will not grow pigeon-chested over fusty ledgers. Nobody will waste his time learning how to kill scientifically. We shall be free to do useful work, making things which will add to society’s welfare, things which will make human life a little better, a little happier.

There will be no war—the cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that the people who are in the armed forces, together with the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.

When production is only for human use we shall see a great development of society’s productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Socialism will have no use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale. There will probably be statisticians to collect information about society’s productive resources and to relate this to our needs. A lot of people will work at transporting wealth all over the world. These are useful occupations, just as all work will be.

Capitalism has veined the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take pride in something over which they had no control. Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings working together for their mutual benefit.

Socialism will end the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today. It will remove poverty and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring us a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and brotherhood.

Election Special: Where our opponents stand (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conservatives

Since they came back to power twelve years ago, the Conservative Party have managed to popularise the idea that they are the party of prosperity. They also claim, like the other parties, to stand for the interest of the nation as a whole.

But can we sensibly talk of “The nation as a whole”? The economic editor of one well known Sunday newspaper recently wrote about “ the fantastically unequal distribution of wealth” and estimated that nearly one half of the total personal wealth in this country is owned by two per cent. of the adult population. This inequality is at the heart of the capitalist system—the system which the Conservative Party openly supports.

The Conservatives also claim to be the party of the small man, they talk of property owning and share owning democracies. In fact, however, their policy has been well described by Enoch Powell, one time Tory Minister of Health:

Does it pay? is the question which, quite unashamedly, we have to ask today of all our economic and commercial doings. Does this railway line pay—that coal mine, this shipping route? Does that industry in that place pay? (The Observer, 13/5/62).

This ruthless standard also applies to the small man; if his business does not pay, the Conservatives are prepared to see him go under.

It is difficult to understand how so many of those who suffer most from capitalism can find reasons to support the Conservative Party, which openly proclaims the basic capitalist doctrine that profit must come before human welfare.

Production for profit, which Mr. Powell and all Conservatives think is the most efficient and praiseworthy method, does not lead to one prosperous nation but rather to one prosperous capitalist class and to degradation and insecurity for the working class.

The workers have nothing more to expect from the Tories than what they get; unemployment, bad housing, pay restraint, insecurity. Tory ministers may describe these problems as personal, family difficulties, but in fact they are the inevitable results.of the class divided, privilege ridden social system which Conservatives so proudly support.

Labour Party

Both the Labour and Conservative Parties tell you, in this election and at other times, that the Labour Party stands for Socialism. Both parties have different reasons for saying this but these need not concern us. What we are concerned about is to ask whether it is true that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party.

Socialism means a new social system, based upon the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. All wealth under Socialism will be produced to satisfy human needs and not to make a profit. There will, in other words, be no such thing as investment under Socialism. Yet the 1953 Labour manifesto Challenge to Britain states clearly that:

The crucial problem facing the next Labour Government will be to stimulate a big increase in investment.

Socialism will have no national barriers, no separate countries each with their own mistakenly patriotic workers. Compare this with what Mr. Harold Wilson said recently:

Desire to restore Britain’s standing in the world is a noble one, and one which we have been pressing for years. We have been saying that Britain must lead (The Guardian, 2/12/63).

There will be no international trading rivalries under Socialism. These rivalries, which often lead directly to war, spring from the basis of capitalist society. But Mr. Wilson wants:

. . .  a specific preference in awarding (Commonwealth) contracts to Britain. . . In return, Britain should undertake to provide guaranteed markets for Commonwealth primary produce (Daily Telegraph, 5/5/63.)

These statements are taken at random from a mass of evidence which proves that the Labour Party stands for capitalism and, as a British political party, represents the interests of the British capitalist class.

That is why, when they were last in power, they used troops to break strikes, developed the British H. Bomb, continued conscription into peace-time, put this country into the Korean war, and so on.

There is no point in pretending that millions of workers will not once more vote Labour in this election. But they should be aware that in doing so they are voting for capitalism—for war, for poverty, for unrest and insecurity.

The Liberals

Struggling to increase its political fortunes at this election will be the Liberal Party. Out in the wilderness for well over forty years, they have previous little chance still of forming a government. But this is not for want of trying; in recent years, their language has been that much more flowery than their Labour and Tory opponents, their promises that much wilder. For they are trying hard to raise an image of the “new” Liberalism from the ashes of the old, and to convince workers that theirs is the best way of running British capitalism.

“Cut the past. Assess the present and prepare for the future," was the cry of Liberal leader Jo Grimond only about two years ago, and bearing in mind the Liberal record, this was certainly not surprising to hear. Here we have the party of peace lovers who supported both world wars; defenders of individual liberties who agreed with conscription; friends of the workers who smashed their strikes with troops; protectors of the little man, who built up their party funds by selling peerages to their big business backers. All this and more can be laid at the door of the Liberal Party of yesterday, when it was well and truly a powerful force.

Election Special: Where We Stand (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wages and Prices

Our capitalist world is topsy-turvy and generally unpredictable. Bold indeed is the man who dares to say what things will be like in twelve months, or even twelve days time. Nevertheless, there are some things on which we can speak with some certainty. We do not know which party is going to win this election, but whichever it is will have the question of wages and prices as one of its major preoccupations.

Wages are always a headache to employers and governments, and we do not have to look far to find the reason. If the manufacturer is to sell the goods which his workers have produced, he has to offer them at competitive prices, as high as the market will bear, but not so high as to leave the market to cheaper competitors. If wages increase too much his profit suffers, so he needs something to act as a brake on wage claims. Before the war the brake was there in the form of large unemployment, but this generally has been missing in the post-war years. As the purpose of capitalism is profit making, our rulers find themselves in a quandary.

Should they fight the unions over every wage claim? But that would mean bringing factories and transport to a standstill, at enormous cost in lost production and profits. So they have to try other methods, such as “wage freezing” under Labour and “wage restraint” under the Tories, both meaning the same thing. They will try to persuade the workers to forgo, or at least reduce, wage increases "in the national interest.” All sorts of arguments will be used in support of this line, all boiling down to the same theme. The less we have, the better off we shall be, even at a time when generally prices are rising.

But didn’t they all say how much they deplored the rise in prices and promise to put a stop to it? Yet the Labour Government went out on a tide of rising prices, for all its controls. Who will forget the garish Tory posters up and down the country, telling us that they would succeed where their opponents had failed? We can see how little their promises were really worth. In fact, just like the Labour Party before them, they have given the nod to price rises by currency inflation, in attempts to offset wage increases.

As far as workers are concerned, the struggle for improved wages and conditions must be pressed at all times, regardless of price movements and government propaganda. The alternative under capitalism is a worsening of conditions—there is no such thing as “stability.” But the only real solution is to replace capitalism with Socialism, which will mean the ending of both wages and prices and instead the production of goods solely for the use and enjoyment of all.

Housing

Our politicians are constantly talking about it. The newspapers print loads of articles on it. The telly shows us heartrending pictures of it. All as though it is something new, something that will soon be over and dealt with, given the right political party—Tory, Labour, Liberal.

They call it the housing problem.

But a hundred years ago and more they were talking about a housing problem. Far from being new, it's as old as capitalism, as old as the working class itself.

Let us go back a hundred years—to 1864. Hardly believable though it is, many of the houses that had already been standing for twenty or thirty years then are still with us now. Everybody has heard of Coronation Street—after whose coronation was it named? Not after George VI in 1937, nor after George V in 1910, nor even after Edward VII in 1901, but after Queen Victoria’s in 1837. And in Salford they have only just got round to pulling down Waterloo Place, built in 1815 and named after the victory over Napoleon!

Today in this country there are more than one million houses—many probably worse than those in Coronation Streets—reckoned to be unfit for human habitation. So low are the standards, anyway, that one million is certainly an underestimate.

In Glasgow, tens of thousands of people live three to a room.

In Liverpool there are 88,000 houses beyond any prospect of repair; in Birmingham 50,000 families are on the waiting list; whilst in Oldham it is estimated that no less than one house in four is unfit to live in. And in London, perhaps the worst area of all, many families of the homeless are reduced to walking the streets.

Our capitalist politicians all tell us, of course, how upset they are over the problem. The same as they were telling us years and years ago. Now the Labour Party reproaches the Tories for building only 300,000 houses a year: the Tories answer back and remind the Labourites that they have nothing to shout about because when they were in office they only once managed to get above 200,000!

But this does not stop them telling us what fine things they’re going to do if they are elected. What truly wonderful promises they have given us over the years! And still they have not even got to the stage of building enough houses to keep pace with those rotting away into slums, let alone starting to fulfil those high ideals they treat us to every time an election comes around.

Yes, there’s a housing problem alright, the same one that has been with us for the past hundred and fifty years. And the capitalist political parties are just as far from getting rid of it today as they were then. Promises, we shall get promises galore. If words were bricks we’d all be living in palaces by now!

But they’re not, and we shall still be hearing about the housing problems—the overcrowding, the million slums, the long waiting lists, the wandering homeless—when the next General Election comes round!

Education

In this election all other parties are making grandiose promises to improve education.

But anybody who wants the best education, for themselves or for their children, can get it now. There is, of course, a snag. It will cost about £370 a year, which is the price of sending a pupil to a typical public school.

The public schools give youngsters the sort of education which develops their abilities to the full. Only a minority, however, can afford to go to them. What about the rest?

For them, a state school where, as both the Newsome and the Robbins Reports have shown, the educational environment is unfavourable.

Why are there so many promises to improve education?

The Times Educational Supplement, commenting on the Newsom Report, said:

The need is not only for more skilled workers to fit existing jobs, but also for a generally better and intelligently adaptable labour force to meet new demands.

What these “new demands” are was indicated by the same periodical in their discussion of the Robbins Report:

The committee was impressed by the fact that plans for expansion (in Europe and America) often far surpassed present British plans.

In other words, education is being improved and expanded to provide workers with different skills from those of their fathers, so that British capitalism can compete more successfully with its foreign rivals. On this the Labour, Conservative, Liberal and other capitalist parties are agreed.

Workers are misled into believing that a better education will basically improve their condition. In fact, it will leave them relying upon their wage for their living, even if their job is a “technical” one for which they need a university degree.

The restrictions and insecurity of working class life will continue to afflict them. Just like their fathers before, they will have been educated for a job.

Education under Socialism will be free of the shackles which capitalism’s profit motive imposes upon it. We shall all learn about the world we live in, our abilities will be developed to the full. Then we shall be able to offer the best to, and receive the best from, life.

Technology

A great driving force in capitalism is competition. This often leads to the growing productivity that is a feature of the system. The fiercer competition becomes, the quicker is the pace of technological innovation and the more acute the need for scientific research. This is precisely the position today.

The growing competition which British firms are meeting in the world market has highlighted the need for various reforms if they are to remain competitive. These reforms are needed primarily in education and scientific research. The era of automation demands a higher level of skill and education among the population than at present. Thus education and technical training must be improved and expanded.

But this is not enough. To be efficient and remain competitive a firm must invest in research. At present, however, few firms can afford the large outlay that this demands. In other spheres overlapping of research takes place. Here the capitalists’ need is for some national organization to finance and co-ordinate research. This is why the “scientific revolution” has become an election issue. This is why both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are emphasising the need for more universities, more science students, for better technical education in secondary schools, more research and other similar reforms. These reforms will come whichever party wins, for modernization is the order of the day.

But what will this modernization mean for the majority of workers? Technical progress under capitalism always presents a threat to some jobs. The measure of a firm’s efficiency at such times is the number of workers it can lay off. For the wages bill is a cost and costs must be reduced to a minimum if a firm is to remain competitive.

Many of the inventions which will result from this scientific revolution will be labour-saving, that is, job-killing. This means an increase, even temporarily, in redundancy. Old skills will be useless. The faster pace of machines will mean an increase in shift-working. It should not be thought that this threat is confined to factory workers. Computers and automation represent a threat to the jobs of thousands of managers, bank clerks and other white collar workers. All in all the total result will be the same old insecurity for all sections of the working class. This is the experience of American workers. It represents our future during the much-vaunted scientific revolution.

A trade union struggle against this threat will not be enough. Such a struggle, though necessary, can only be a rearguard action as everything favours capitalism. Something more than trade union struggle is required, namely, a political struggle to end capitalism. The Socialist Party offers a constructive alternative in Socialism. Only then will the fruits of scientific progress be used to satisfy the needs of humanity instead of, as at present, the greed of capital.

Election Special: The Socialist Party and War (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody in his right mind wants war. Yet so far this century, there have been two world wars and countless smaller ones — and the threat of another catastrophe hangs over us all the time. Such is the contradictory nature of our capitalist world that the very thing—peace—which everyone wants seems impossible to obtain.

But “peace” will be a promise you will find in every capitalist party election programme. All of them will undertake to have this as one of their chief goals and will assure you that only a vote for them will ensure real progress towards it. Never mind that they have supported previous bloodbaths and helped to send millions of workers to their deaths. Never mind, either, that to a man they insist on the need to retain armaments—in fact to refine and develop them to a terrifying degree. They say that these arms are for “defensive” purposes, of course (no weapons are ever for “offensive” purposes). Yes, they will tell you of their desire for peace just as surely as they are getting ready for the next war.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has consistently opposed all war and has never ceased to point out its futility. Despite the claims of the politicians, war has solved no working class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of them at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalist class. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the methods of warfare impressed upon them so that they are impregnated with the idea that force, and not reason, is the way to solve all problems.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained, against such reformist organisations as the C.N.D., that war has its origin in the capitalist system of society. Under capitalism the profit motive dominates production, causing competition for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, etc. War is in fact an expression of this competition in armed terms.

Socialism—the common ownership of the means of life—is completely opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions which breed war, because it is a society in which the people of the world will work together for their mutual benefit.

Election Special: Leaders and Led (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the issues in this election will concern the personalities of the various political leaders. Many people will vote for the Labour Party because they like Mr. Wilson, or for the Tories, because they admire Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The assumption behind these votes is that, whoever the leader happens to be, it is necessary that somebody holds the job.

But is this true? There are innumerable leaders in the world today—political, religious, trade union, and so on—yet none of them is capable of doing anything about the world’s problems. And this applies equally to the leaders of the past, who spent a lifetime assuring people that they could do something about capitalism's ailments but died with the world in just as big a mess as ever.

In spite of this, the working class continue to put their faith in leaders. As one set fall from grace, the search is started for a new set and each time the searchers convince themselves that they have at last found the honest, consistent and capable men they would like to have at the top. They never, apparently, consider the proposition that all leaders are futile.

Leaders, in fact, exist by virtue of the ignorance of the people they lead. And the more emphasis is put upon the leader, the more gullible and unthinking are the followers. Yet what point is there in a leader who has to listen to the rank and file? The ultimate logic of leadership is the dictator.

With political understanding, leaders are unnecessary. When the working class have grasped the nature of capitalist society, when they understand how it inevitably produces war and poverty and insecurity, they will be immune to the blandishments of aspiring leaders.

With knowledge the people of the world will understand the cause of capitalism’s problems, and realise that they will only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. That will need, not leader,, but a consciously Socialist working class.

Until that happens we face the chaos and brutality of capitalism. When it does happen, there will be a world of happiness, freedom and plenty.

Election Special: World of Waste (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live today in a world of waste—a ludicrous waste of buying and selling; a criminal waste of war and preparations for war; a useless waste of ticket clipping, accounting, form-filling.

Only now and then does the utter stupidity of the whole futile business pull us up short and make us see things as if for the first time. We stand amazed at the way human beings can go on putting up with such a crazy world, so out of keeping with its real needs and interests.

When more than half the population of the world are going hungry and destitute, the British government will spend something like £2,000 million this year on what it likes to call “defence.” The United States will spend more than ten times as much to the same end and no doubt the Russians will be doing the same.

Every country in the world reserves up to one-tenth of its total national wealth in preparing for war. Some of the weapons they make are obsolete before they actually begin to leave the factories, others even before they are off the drawing board. Many more are scrapped after they have seen only a few months service.

Probably no one will ever know the full amount that has been spent by this country on its atomic programme, and the expenditure by other countries is equally shrouded in secrecy. That the sums are vast is certain.

When the Americans launched Colonel Glenn into space, it cost the staggering sum of £150 million. Britain has spent the better half of £1,000 million so far on rocket missiles. Even greater sums have probably been spent by the Russians, yet Kruschev told the Russian workers only a little while ago that he hoped that by 1980 every Russian would be able to eat an egg a day !

We are so bemused by governments talking in these astronomical figures that they lose all significance. It takes a conscious effort to turn these vast numbers of pounds into such basic things as houses, oil refineries, washing machines, boots and shoes, bread and butter.

In these days when families roam the streets looking for somewhere to live, the productive resources represented by the £150 million spent on the Glenn circus could have built 30,000 houses (and we mean houses, not the glorified chicken coops which currently pass for them). For the same sum five times as many homes could have been provided with good furniture to make them a pleasure to live in. Or perhaps a quarter of a million cars could have been built, or three million refrigerators, or ten million vacuum cleaners, or just a decent pair of shoes for every adult in the country.

Capitalism measures everything in terms of money.

These are the millions, the hundreds of millions, the thousands of millions of pounds, dollars, roubles, francs, marks, yen, and all the other currencies one can think of, that capitalism wastes each year. And this only in misdirected production —we leave out all the other ways in which human labour and resources are uselessly frittered away.

Translate all this vast accumulation of wasted wealth and labour into the worthwhile things of life and into the things that produce them—into houses and brick factories, into electricity and power stations, into food and agricultural machines, into clothes and spinning mills, into coal, oil, roads, railways, and ships.

Stop and think of all this when next you hear some glib politician talking at election time of the millions that are going to be spent on a new rocket, a bigger tank, a faster aeroplane, another atomic test.

They shall not want (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

We watched the crippled war veteran, a pathetic parody of a human being, struggle up the narrow Cornish street. A worn-out accordion, strapped to his chest, lurched dangerously as he limped along, and a battered trumpet gleamed in his hand. Although the ragged old coat barely covered him, he proudly wore his medal-ribbons on the front of it. This, then, was what he had to show for his war service: a mutilated body and a few worthless ribbons.

In contrast to the warm summer day, I considered what the gloomy history of this individual must be. Having gone off enthusiastically to light the “enemy”, he had discovered that on his return home he was not given the hero’s welcome reserved for the generals. As a cripple his wealth-creating capacity was destroyed, and, being no more use to his masters, he had been thrown aside like a broken lamp-bulb.

The tragedy is that this must have happened all over the world. In Germany and Italy, as much as Britain, men went home disabled after fighting for the interests of their capitalist masters. And instead of gratitude for their suffering they found only indifference and rejection.

And what of those more fortunate than this old cripple, the soldiers who escaped injury. Were they any better off on their return home? Sadly, no. “Their” country, they found, still belonged to the privileged ten per cent who did not have to work to live. The armed war had only been replaced by the economic war. Members of the working class of all countries had found that after five long years of fighting for something belter, there was still the same struggle to get a job, to keep it, and to make a week's wages last a week.

But have we learnt anything, since the last war, about the needless suffering of people like this disabled old man? Has the working class recognised that it has no interest in wars which are caused by conflicts between different groups of capitalists? Has it realised that the only answer to the problems of poverty and insecurity is a Socialist world in which wealth would flow abundantly?

Asking myself these questions, I noticed the old cripple had stopped at a suitable spot and begun to play his accordion. The notes came out, irregular and uncertain “The Lord's my shepherd,” he gasped, “ 1 shall not want.”

Keith Graham

SPGB Meetings (1964)

Party News from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bromley and Woodside Election Campaigns (1964)

Party News from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

50 Years Ago: Atrocities in war (1964)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most laughable spectacles of the day is the universal outcry about what our innocent masters and their saintly hirelings of the Press and pulpit are pleased to call the “atrocities of the Huns.” Mark ! it is not here denied that there have been appalling outrages committed by the Kaiser’s hosts. That is not the question with which we are at the moment concerned. It is the capitalist hands upheld in horror, and the round-eyed astonishment of our good, kind masters, that engage our amused attention.

. . .

On the West Coast of Africa is a large tract of country called the Congo Free State. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of that country it was found that in the great forests of the region there grew abundantly the trees from which rubber is obtained. As usually happens when white men discover defenceless natives in a country whose virgin forests are rich in rubber trees, the aborigines were enslaved and compelled to gather the rubber for their white masters.

The particular case of the Congo Free State formed the subject of a British enquiry by Commissioner Casement, whose report disclosed atrocities more villainous, if that were possible, than anything which has yet been charged against the Germans in Belgium.

The sickening details it is not necessary to more than touch upon. Terrorism was the foundation of the Congo system of exploitation. How the feet of natives were cut off because the amount of rubber they collected did not (as indeed, it never could) satisfy the greed of their masters; how the unfortunate blacks were suspended over slow fires and roasted to death; how a country was devastated in order to pile up wealth for foreign invaders: all this can be read elsewhere by those whose memories need refreshing.

To pile up wealth for whom? For Germans? Oh no! for Belgians. If the German “culture” found its expression in the stark outrages of the smiling plains of Belgium, Belgian “culture” asserted itself in the blood-reeking shambles of the Congo rubber fields. 

. . .

It is not only the Belgians, however, who have proved themselves to be quite the equals of the Germans in the matter of perpetrating outrages that “stagger humanity.” In this respect Russia is so notorious that it is hardly necessary to do more than whisper the name. How the Press of the world rang, a decade or so ago, with the infamies that made the names of the Tzar and his Cossacks stink in the nostrils of men!

. . .

France, also—democratic, chivalric France—has her gobbeted pages of history. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew is a classic example of foul treachery and degraded brutality that will stand so long as dastardly human deeds find a recorder at all. The history of Paris, however, bristles with shameful atrocities, among which it is sufficient to instance—not the suppression, don't think it was that — but the bloody vengeance wreaked upon the workers of Paris for the Commune of 1871. After the fighting ceased 30,000 working men, women, and children of Paris were butchered in cold blood, while the conditions under which those were interned who were to be transported to New Caledonia are too revolting to be printed here.

. . .

Nor is Britain herself above the perpetration of atrocious outrage, both at home and abroad. The Boer War furnished examples enough, in spite of official whitewash. The Boer general, Beyers, has just stated that every Boer farmer’s house was a Louvain, and Smuts, with all his fervent turn-coat patriotism, could not deny the statement he could only endeavour to draw the curtain over it

The history of the British rule in India, where famine has succeeded famine, and multitudes have sunk down in their wretched hovels and die of starvation whilst their white masters were exporting the grain Indian people had grown, puts Britain on a level with any Huns, ancient or modern.

[From the article, The Socialist View of the German Atrocities, by A. E. Jacomb, published in the Socialist Standard, October 1914.]

News in Review: Faversham (1964)

The News in Review column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

POLITICS

Faversham

In one by election after another the Labour Party continues to notch up successes.

As each result is declared, both sides set their statisticians to work to show the voting figures in the most favourable light for them.

A Devizes sends the Tories into raptures—the dark night, they croon, is passing and brighter days are ahead. A Faversham puts the Labour Party back onto its hopeful feet, sets its mouth watering again at the prospect of power which, they think, is almost theirs.

A lot of this enthusiasm is inspired by the theory that nothing succeeds like success, that a big vote in one election begets an even bigger one at a later poll. That is why a party only rarely admits to having taken a beating in a fair and square fight. There is always some aspect of the poll which, selected and perhaps exaggerated, can take the edge off a defeat, and they play this up for all they are worth.

At Faversham the Tories showed their disappointment by dropping their beaten candidate, Mrs. Olsen. From the reports which came from the constituency, Mrs. Olsen did not seem to offer a very effective counter to the Labour candidate’s earnestly sympathetic appearance, which apparently impressed a lot of voters as sincere.

Mrs. Olsen tried to blow up Nationalisation as an issue, while Labour’s Mr. Boston was playing upon the elector’s preoccupation with food prices, rates and unemployment. In a constituency where the workless are something of a problem, the Labour line proved the better vote catcher.

In one of her statements, Mrs. Olsen revealed one of the prejudices (although perhaps she does not hold it herself) which affects a lot of the capitalist parties’ propaganda. Talking about Nationalisation, she said: “ It is worrying people . . . even housewives who are not supposed to be interested.”

Nobody has yet adequately explained why housewives—or any other women— should not be interested in political matters. This is one of the comfortable delusions which, as part of a wider ignorance and prejudice, helps to keep private property in existence. It is unfortunate that the delusion is as firmly held by many women as it is by most men.

And just like any other social prejudice, it has to go. The ending of the social distinction between the sexes will be one of the aspects of the humane world system in which the political parties which prey upon ignorance will be defunct.

ABROAD

Nehru

The death of Pandit Nehru provoked the customary valedictions from the world’s top statesmen, who are of course no more sincere in their expressed opinions about a man after he is dead than they are when he is alive.

At the Albert Hall meeting where tribute was paid to the dead leader, Sir Alex Douglas-Home said that Nehru was a man of contrasts. Indeed he was—in some ways which Sir Alec could not have had in mind.

Nehru was a professed man of peace who saw nothing wrong in the war over Kashmir, nor in the forcible occupation of Portuguese Goa; He was the accepted leader of what are called the non- committed nations, although he was committed up to his neck in the frontier dispute with China. He was the man who foreswore the production of nuclear weapons—as long as his country had no use for them.

When I asked what sort of conclusions his Government had reached when it studied the future of policy in Asia between a nuclear China and non-nuclear India, he replied with remarkable frankness and warmth that he was afraid that as a Government they had not given it much thought. (The Guardian, 23/10/61.)

He was—and this is the clue to an understanding of Nehru's career—the alleged Socialist who was busily building what he hoped would one day be a great capitalist nation.

It is at this point that we realise there was nothing of contrast in Nehru. He was presiding over the transformation from one type of property system to another in India and it is not unusual for this to be passed off as Socialist policy. Nor is there anything exceptional in the double-talk and double-think inseparable from this process.

Nehru's problems were massive. In his efforts to build capitalism in India he was confronted by a vast population seething with every kind of primitive mysticism and religious prejudice. These delusions do not mix with an economic and social structure based upon complex commodity manufacture; Nehru spent a lot of his life trying to break them down.

In the end, as we all know, the prejudices were not ready to admit defeat and Nehru, the great non-believer, was cremated in the same way as a great religious leader..

But he has made his niche as one of capitalism's innovators. His successors will carry on where he left off, trying to persuade the beggar in the dust that he will be better off as a member of an industrial proletariat, with chains of poverty which are thinner and lighter, but just as real and strong as those which bind him down today.

AT HOME

Epidemic

For the most part, modern society has a pretty tight grip on diseases like typhoid. Capitalism judges everything by its balance sheet and in this case it is preferable to make the initial investment in prevention of the disease rather than to be continually fighting epidemics of it. Sometimes the balance sheet comes up with the opposite conclusion and we all know what happens then. . . .

But the odd concern, in the hope of making a bit more quick money, will occasionally take a chance with the rules of public hygiene. This was the reason for the outbreak at Zermatt (which is now gingerly once more advertising its attractions as a holiday resort). It was also the reason for the lack of precautions in the corned beef factories in Argentina which were apparently responsible for Aberdeen's epidemic.

As in the case of Zermatt the facts are only slowly coming out and they are not pleasant. It now seems that the British government were aware of the risk in the corned beef over a year ago but, in the words of Scottish Minister Mr. Peter Noble, they considered it "not wise" to withdraw the stuff on “the scantiest evidence.”

Presumably the typhoid sufferers take a rather different view on the scantiness of the evidence and on the wisdom of clamping down on the suspect meat.

But when all this has been said, the basic fact remains. Typhoid is a disease of social negligence. Despite what the meat companies say, corned beef is not one of the world's prized delicacies; it is a typical working class food—substandard, mass produced, supermarket sold.

And once typhoid gets a grip it flourishes best in the most depressed living conditions—in the overcrowded rooms, in the shared lavatories and in the slum tenements which have no easy means of heating water for washing.

It is ironical that, in conformity with its profit motive, capitalism should spend so much in keeping diseases in check yet should sometimes be defeated by its very own economic conditions. But there is no irony in the fact that, when this happens, it is the same old working class who suffer.

BUSINESS

Rootes & Chrysler

It has been apparent for some time that Rootes were nervous about the magnitude of their gamble, on their baby car, the Imp, which has tied up so much capital in the factory at Linwood.

The link-up with the American owned Chrysler Corporation is probably a result of this, gamble—a method by which Rootes hope to strengthen their financial foundations to withstand any storm which may follow their Linwood investment,

Chrysler, whose fortunes have only recently been revived in the States, were looking around for just such an opportunity. Now some financial seers are predicting that before long Rootes will be entirely under American ownership and control, like Fords and Vauxhalls.

This is the sort of wicket on which the Labour Party thinks they can make a lot of runs. Their leading batsmen were soon hitting out. Mr. Callaghan wanted to know what steps were being taken to ensure that there would be no further dealing in Rootes shares to take control of the company outside the United Kingdom. Mr. Wilson went even further—he wanted guarantees about not only American but also “ German or other foreign ” interests.

This is the most blatant of playing up to nationalist prejudices. The Labour government of 1945 saw nothing wrong in this country accepting the American encroachments which went tinder the name of Marshall Aid.

The present Labour Party, at any rate while they are in opposition, attack foreign investment in this country as the invasions of money-mad international manipulators. But they also think that the opposite process—British investments and subsidiaries abroad—is an excellent idea, the fruits of good old British enterprise.

This doubtless goes down well enough with patriotic voters who once believed the Labour Party when they used to talk about being an internationalist organisation. Now all that nonsense has been dropped, which may mean a few more votes for Labour candidates.

The deal between Rootes and Chryslers was good business from the point of view of their profit accounts—which is the only viewpoint they are interested in. Capitalism is lubricated by such deals, and is powered by the motive for them.

And if the business deals are something to be expected, so is the dishonest reaction of political parties.

ABROAD

Goldwater

Whatever happens at the Republican Convention at San Francisco this month, Senator Goldwater has established himself as a serious force in American politics.

Once he was laughed at, for his quaint notions about Reds under the beds and his itching button-finger. The results of the Presidential primaries have shown that Goldwater’s neuroses are shared by millions of what are usually called normal, decent Americans.

Goldwater stands unashamedly for reaction. He stands for States Rights at a time when American capitalism is trying to resolve many of its problems by increasing pressure, and power, from the Federal centre. He stands against State insurance schemes just as their value to American capitalism is becoming so apparent He stands for an extreme—some would say fatally impetuous—foreign policy towards Russia at the moment when the American ruling class may be on the verge of allying itself with the Soviet Union in face of a possible longer term threat from China.

Goldwater probably appeals to the uninformed and apathetic sentiments of those American workers who are impressed by his rugged frontiersman’s facade. (They presumably ignore the fact that the Senator is descended from a Jewish family, who were not among the now-romanticised pioneers.)

But in his present vein Goldwater does not offer the policies which United States capitalism needs if it is to hold its dominant world position. Said The Economist of June 6th last: “. . . he has not grasped the nature of the power his country wields in the nineteen-sixties.” Yet he could turn out no different from the other demagogues who have climbed to power on extreme propaganda and have then had their wilder notions tamed by the realities of office. Perhaps it is true that, as Governor Scranton—the one time hope of the anti-Goldwater brigade—said, the Senator is “not as conservative as he thinks.”

For the moment Goldwater is "committed to his present line and will, therefore, probably continue to thump it out if he gets the Republican nomination. If— and this is as massive an “if” as ever was postulated—he becomes President he may well alter his line to fit in with the requirements of American capitalism.

We are accustomed now to the policy reversals of so-called Left Wing politicians when they are catapulted into power. A President Goldwater, as a Right Winger doing the same thing, would make an interesting item for the scrap book.