Gunter gives his Orders (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scratch beneath the skin of any complacently Right Wing Labour Minister and in nine cases out of ten you will find he has a history of Left Wing militancy. Minister of Labour Ray Gunter is the tenth case—the man who has always defended the official party line, who has always infuriated the firebrands by his unrepentant stance way out on the right.

Stumpy, thick-necked, with a coarsely drawn face, Gunter can look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. At times he sounds like one, frothing out cliches and platitudes like an unconscious satire on a trade union official eager to let the world know he has recently mastered the use of words like “auspices”, “context”, “relevant.”

Perhaps Gunter is living out of his time; many of his public outbursts sound as if the ventriloquist had cast him in the role of a Dickensian workhouse master, dishing out strong doses of brimstone and treacle to the boys and fiercely crushing any tendency to ask for more:

“The economy of this nation has to be put right.. . with a measure of harsh government”. (Scottish TUC, Glasgow, 12/2/67.)

“We as a nation are living beyond our means.. . too many people drifting and dreaming that all is well” (Ilford, 8/1/66.)

Gunter may infuriate those who think that Labour lost its soul somewhere on the road from Scarborough 1964, but apart from that he cannot be described as an exciting man. His background is undeviating to the point of tedium; trade union branch officer, Divisional Labour Party secretary and agent, joined the Army in the war, rose from private to captain, Labour M.P. after the war, President of his union, member of the Labour Party National Executive and finally Minister of Labour in 1964. Now, he is said to have reached the peak of his ambitions; according to one political correspondent Gunter has no desire to move on to greater things and does not think of himself as a future Prime Minister.

Of course they said the same thing, long ago, when the colourless Major Attlee became Postmaster General in the 1929/31 Labour government— and they kept saying it about him, almost to the day when he took over at Number Ten. Has there ever been a politician who has not seen himself as a future Premier? It is hardly in Gunter’s make-up to be that unique.

Indeed, there is some evidence that his rise in the Labour hierarchy was anything but unconsidered. Gunter first won fame by his spirited defence of the platform at Labour Conferences during the early Sixties, when the long period in opposition had them frustratedly and constantly chewing their own tails. It was temptingly easy, then, for a rising star to rise still further by making attacks on the leadership and by speaking in the wild, airy manner so beloved by the Left Wing. Not a few of the present government did just that— but not Gunter. His stand at the Conferences was enough for the newspapers to decide that here was a man of the future, who could be relied on to do capitalism’s dirty work with never a qualm.

Very soon, Gunter was building up his reputation for preaching what he calls hard facts:

“He said there was nothing sacred in the present methods of collective bargaining, and he could not accept that the rewards must inevitably go to those who could, because of the nature of their work and the power of their organisation, command the greatest economic power.” (The Guardian, 17/9/62.)

I am persuaded that unless the unions face the facts of life as they are in the late 1960s, then in seven to 10 years’ time the State will have to intervene.” (Socialist Commentary, April 1964.)

Gunter was not alone in this; other Labour leaders, among them Callaghan and Wilson, had said roughly the same. Those were the days when the Incomes Policy was being drawn up, for action when Wilson’s honeyed words on the scientific revolution won power for Labour. The unions were being given due warning—and a lot of voters were being convinced that a Labour government would be anything but a tool in the unions’ hands. Prominent among the graspers of this particular nettle, one of the readiest to throw a gauntlet before the unions, was Ray Gunter.

Of course this went down very well with the newspapers, who always seem tremendously impressed by any evidence that a politician may be honest. Gunter, they decided, was a candid man of the people, who could always be relied on to speak his mind. Perhaps that was why, when Labour’s day of victory dawned at last, the television interviewers made a point of asking him what he thought of Gordon Walker’s notorious defeat at Smethwick. Gunter was obligingly blunt; this, he said, was a victory of which the Conservative Party should be thoroughly ashamed.

A lot of people looking in that night must have decided, approvingly or not, that this reply meant Gunter was opposed to the electoral exploitation of racism. But Smethwick, and the later result at Leyton, left their scars; when the Labour government outdid the Tories in their restrictions on coloured immigration, one of the two Ministers to submit memoranda pressing for drastic cuts was Gunter. (The Guardian, 31/5/65.)

But this change of policy did not dent the new Minister of Labour’s reputation for common sense. Nothing, it seems, can do that; even when he is so rash as to say, as he did at Blackburn on 5 January 1966, that there were signs the coming year would be industrially more peaceful than 1965. That risky prediction turned out to be right. In 1966 the number of stoppages of work through disputes, the numbers of workers involved, and the number of working days lost, were all lower than in 1965. But that can hardly be called an achievement of Gunter’s; by recent standards 1965 was a bad year—many more working days lost than in 1964, nearly twice as many as in 1963 although much lower than any year between 1958 and 1962. And 1966 was the year when the railwaymen came within an ace of striking and when the seamen had their first official stoppage for over fifty years—incited, said Wilson, not by any desire to improve conditions but by “politically motivated men”.

But right or wrong, Ray Gunter has kept stolidly on, preaching, bullying (“. . . the conference this week has been … roughly handled by Mr. Gunter.” The Guardian report on the Labour Party conference, 30/9/65) sometimes giving way to self-pity (“Sometimes I felt a bit grim under the skin. Some of you seem to think that blokes like myself, when we have arrived at positions of authority, somehow have deserted all the things we stood for. I resent that.” Scottish TUC, 12/2/67.)

Last summer he won new fame by wishing aloud that not so many Labour Party members would equate the Means Test and profit with original sin (who said they did?). Then a rash of publicity on unofficial strikes—the Cameron Report on the Barbican dispute, the stoppage at the London and Liverpool docks—had Gunter at it again.

First he returned to an old theme of his: discipline. (“Mr. Gunter, the Minister of Labour, said yesterday that the prevalence of unofficial strikes was indicative of a state of indiscipline in industry which we should have to tackle. The Times, 17/10/67.) He has plugged this one before: “There is far too much indiscipline in every part of this nation” (Co-operative Congress, Edinburgh, 7/6/65.) “If, perchance, inner disciplines and voluntary contributions are not forthcoming in a short time, this nation must look to other means to prevent the ultimate disaster” (TUC, Brighton, 6/9/65.)

Then from the very bottom of the rag bag of excuses which all politicians keep handy, Gunter produced the tatty old Red Bogy:

“There is now little doubt that the Communist Party are plotting to make this a winter of disruption. They now, unhappily for the well-being of the nation, have entered into an unholy alliance with elements of the Trotskyist Party. Their aim is to destroy our hopes of economic recovery and thereby they hope to bring ruin to the social democratic movement.” (Gillingham, 18/10/67.)

If it was clear from this that the government were getting desperate, it also seemed that Gunter was living in a nightmare world peopled with wildly undisciplined workers—overpaid, underworked, striking at the first word from Communist Party headquarters.

Now one of the Oxford Dictionary’s definitions of discipline is “. . . order maintained among schoolboys, soldiers, prisoners etc.” Perhaps this is what Gunter thinks is lacking among workers—perhaps he, the ex-officer, would like to have us all recruited into some sort of school, or army, or prison, where there would never be any nonsense about struggling to improve our conditions; disciplined, we would take what was coming to us and be thankful.

In any case, workers are subject to all sorts of discipline, whether they recognise it or not. There is the discipline of relying on a job for a living, and of this job existing only so long as it is profitable. There is the discipline—or perhaps degradation is a better word—of producing goods for sale, which usually means a debasement of skill and knowledge in making a shoddy imitation of the real thing. There is the discipline of living two lives—the workaday life of tongue in the cheek, judging everything in terms of our employer’s profits, the job, the wishes of the boss; and the other life at home, when a worker can judge things, as far as possible, in terms of human comfort and welfare.

This is not all that employment means. Because a worker sells his working ability to an employer, employment means that the interests of both are opposed. This opposition is bound to break out into disputes—over wages, conditions of work, security of employment and so on. Gunter prides himself on being a realist but it is highly unrealistic to expect these disputes to be gentle, disciplined affairs confined to the agreed lines of official action. When it suits the employers’ interests they close down a factory or a mine or a railway line and dismiss their workers and Gunter sees no sinister plot behind it. But when workers decided that their economic interests demand something more militant than lining up like soldiers, or schoolboys, or prisoners, for what their employer likes to give them, Gunter sees red.

It is true that at times (the present, for example) it is Communist Party policy to involve themselves in industrial disputes. Gunter takes this as proof that the disputes are caused by the Communists, which is something like the Communist claim that troubles in Russia and eastern Europe are the work of the CIA. In any case, what about the time, during the war, when the Communist Party were opposed to strikes? Who caused the disputes then? The fact is that industrial trouble is bound to happen and workers become involved in it because they work for wages and not because of any political affiliation.

Let us be blunt with Gunter. He is a member of a government which came into power on a wave of optimism and warm promises. So far their most spectacular achievement is their failure to deliver the goods, and the ebb wave of disillusion which is losing them one by-election after another. The reaction of Gunter, and others, has been to blame outside influences—the gnomes of Zurich, the storm which blew them off course, the alleged laziness and indiscipline of the workers.

This is typical of all governments and typical, too, of Dickens’ workhouse masters, who always said the boys’ hunger was really their undisciplined greed, and had nothing to do with the thin and meagre gruel.

Ivan

Letter: The Committee of 100 and Politics (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a letter from Mr. L. Otter, of Witney, listing and enclosing various anti-Labour and anti-political leaflets handed out by the Oxon Committee of 100 during the 1964 and 1966 elections. He makes the following criticism of the article “Is Politics Corrupt?” in the July Socialist Standard:

“Your attack on the Committee of 100 implies that the Committee were in 64 and 66 campaigning for one of “Conservative, Labour, Liberal or Communist”. The 100 did not exist in the 59 election so we must start with 64. As you reviewed at the time of the 59 election the Voters’ Veto leaflet, and as you are aware that the groups that came together on this were later active in building the Committee, you would hardly have had a case even if you were going back before the formation of the Committee.

“The black on red sticker—”Conservative . .. they are all alike, Vote for humanity” was in fact printed for the 1964 election by the National Committee. Various local committees had their own stickers and posters as well as publishing their own leaflets.

“It is true that some people left the Committee in 1964 disagreeing with its quasi-anarchist position, the majority of these however were not Labour Party supporters but supporters of INDEC (which became the Radical Alliance).

“Since you have not the honesty or the intelligence to know that this position of the Committee’s dates back to the 1964 election it is hardly surprising that you also do not know that both before and after the 1964 election the Committee published leaflets giving social analysis.

“The Harlow CND-Committee of 100 which publishes its own paper Candis, whose editors were in 62 flirting with Anarchism, became so struck by the fact that Stan Newens (Labour MP for Epping since 1964), an ex-trotskyist, became their candidate that though they did not themselves adopt entrism, they did take the same position that the ILP rightwing and the Socialist Leader took at that stage. But the committee as such was very firm on the matter, insisting that all committees should oppose the major parties of the “left” since all supported one or other of the nuclear powers and the social system that makes powers become nuclear.

“This meant that it was regarded as consistent with the Committee position, to support independent unilateralist candidates or to take an uncompromisingly anarchist position. The committee journal contained at least one letter advocating ND support for your own party. It is notable that not merely did the few remaining Labour Party and Communist Party members who had for a time supported the Committee drop out in 1964, but also the Trots, the ILP right-wingers, groups such as Candis and

“In 66 there was no debate in any committee circles, as far as I know, on the matter.”

We thank Mr. Otter for pointing out that the Committee of 100 did not support Labour, Tory, Liberal or so-called Communist in the last two elections. We admit we may perhaps have been a little vague and thus may have caused some misunderstanding. But we did not in fact say that the Committee supported Labour in 1964; nor did we mean to. What we said was that “the Nuclear Disarmers were among the supporters which the Labour Party had when it took office for the first time in some thirteen years” and then went on to quote from a leaflet issued, we assume, by Edgware Peace Action Group, advertising the 1967 Aldermaston March. Our point was this: In 1964 many nuclear disarmers backed Labour and were now becoming disillusioned and rejecting political action altogether. This, we argued, was a mistake. It was not political action as such that was wrong but reformist political action. 

Mr. Otter does not deny that the attitude of the Committee to politics has changed in recent years. He even describes the process in some detail. But, let us go back to the beginning. The Committee came into being in early 1961 as a breakaway from CND over tactics. It backed civil disobedience to get the same aim of unilateral nuclear disarmament by the British government. It was made up of much the same people as CND, viz, pacifists, Christians, supporters of Russia, Labourites, anarchists. The man who was President of the national committee for its first two years. Earl Russell, was throughout this period a member of the Labour Party (he did not tear up his card until October 1965). There was also a curious, and revealing, incident in January 1962. The Spectator of 5 January published part of an abusive letter from the secretary of the Scottish Committee. Bernard Levin took the writer to be a supporter of the Russian government and challenged the national committee on it. Next week two replies were published. One from the Acting Secretary, Tony Southall (now secretary of Glasgow Woodside Labour Party), said:

“The Committee of 100 has never attempted to disguise the fact that our movement contains people of widely differing political persuasion. We have stood for mass non-violent civil disobedience against nuclear weapons. Beyond a belief that this is a viable and necessary programme of action for the people of this country we have never demanded any political qualifications of our members.”

The other, from Nicolas Walter, said:

“The central Committee has no official policy beyond unilateral nuclear disarmament.

No doubt there are Communists who belong to or support the Committee of 100.

The Committee exists solely to organise its demonstrations.”

So, at that time, the Committee was an amorphous body, a kind of ad hoc committee for organising civil disobedience against nuclear weapons (by Britain). Beyond this it had no policy. It was not opposed as such to the Labour, or even the so-called Communist, or any other party. How could it be if it allowed its members to belong to these parties also? But times change. Now, the Committee has a much wider programme, including such reform measures as:

“USE the taxpayers money to build more houses, schools, hospitals and colleges. (One Polaris submarine costs £70m—enough to build and service two new towns).

LAUNCH a ‘crash’ programme for the training of teachers.

CUT rates by reducing the interest rate on loans to Local Authorities to what it was in 1946—1½ per cent.”

(“Our Candidate—Humanity”, 1966 election manifesto).

Editorial Committee.

Letter: China’s Communist Party (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Friends,

Frank Offord states that the early Chinese Communist Party consisted entirely of an affluent and educated elite—”the ordinary worker being conspicuous by his absence”. I wonder where he gets his information from, he should read Red Star over China by Edgar Snow, an unbiased account of the early days of the revolution written inside the Communist areas of North West China in 1937.

Mao tse-Tung’s father was in fact a poor peasant who had managed to increase his property and income until he acquired the status of rich peasant, employing only one labourer—his family doing most of the work. Mao himself started working in the fields at the age of six, later became an apprentice in a rice shop. He finally went to a proper school at the age of sixteen, and then against his father’s wishes and with a minute allowance. Lin Piao’s father had once owned a small factory, but had been forced out of business by extortionate taxes. Only Chou en-Lai is a member of a traditional mandarin family. It is true that the Communist Party was founded by intellectuals—so are most organisations—but this is hardly surprising considering that the peasants and workers, oppressed as they were with fiercely reactionary landlords and their attendant thugs, and by immense taxes, had no chance to come into contact with Marxist thought. Once the party had been founded the proletariat joined in large numbers.

One thing is certain, the Chinese revolution was achieved not by power-seeking members of the bourgeoisie, but by men who suffered over twenty years of continual fighting and hardship simply because they believed firmly in their convictions. Maybe these same men betrayed their convictions when they gained power, nevertheless the Chinese worker is now a responsible citizen, not a slave. Of course there will always be people seeking wealth as long as money continues to exist, and these people are worthy of our hate. The SPGB attacks everybody and everything—sometimes justifiably and sometimes not—but exaggeration will do nothing to help the cause. By taking it too far you are liable to isolate yourselves and become entirely impotent. You’ll be saying that ‘Che’ Guevara was in it only for the money next.

Tim Deane,

Wimborne, Dorset.

Reply

Edgar Snow got his information through being in China at the time, but we can refer our correspondent to what is in our opinion the best work on the subject written so far—Revolution in China by Fitzgerald, from which we quote from page 193:

“At present the Chinese Communist Party is recruited in very large measure from the educated class, the university students … It is thus not really at all a party made up of members of the toiling masses. It could not be, because the peasants are still mainly illiterate, the workmen very little educated, and too few to supply the dominant clement. The university students come from the classes which Mao Tse-tung has stigmatized as only in part reliable, and lacking in vision and courage, the former country squires or landlords, the city bourgeois and the old official families . . . The present generation of recruits, taken into the party in very large numbers after ‘liberation’ are mainly university students, still very young. They will form the bulk of the Communist Party for another forty years

. . . . . 

The new members from these mandarin families are, of course, ardent Communists, sincere believers in the New Democracy, servants of the people. They are also precisely the same group of people who have governed China for the last two thousand years. It is in their blood. They are born to rule, and whether by virtue of Confucius and the Emperor, or Marx and Mao Tse-tung, makes very little real difference. Deep rooted, not in any way destroyed by the Revolution, is the old Chinese conviction that government is an affair for the elite, for those who sit in the seats of authority, and that the qualification for such a seat is knowledge of the orthodox doctrine, not blood, nor wealth, but ‘book perfume’ is the real test.”

Regarding Mao Tse-tung’s background we can give a tip—’straight from the horse’s mouth’ by quoting the statement made by Mao himself taken down by Edgar Snow and published in Red Star Over China which, as our correspondent says, is an unbiased account. On page 121 he says that it took the five members of the family plus a hired hand to run their farm while his father devoted his time to his prosperous grain business and other activities. “The old man continued to amass wealth or what was considered to be a great fortune in that little village. He did not buy more land himself, but he bought many mortgages on other people’s land”.

It should be remembered that due to lack of development in China at that time it was not necessary for a prosperous business man to own a firm the size of say Marks & Spencer in order to be “one of the nobs”.

Mao had the equivalent of a provincial University education and graduated at the age of 25 (Mao Tse-tung by Stewart Schram—Pelican Books), and so became one of the educated elite and typical of the recruits to the Mandarin class that has traditionally ruled China right up to and including the present period of Capitalism there.

We do not hate, as individuals, either the capitalists or the wage slaves who work for them; it is the capitalist system of society which we seek to abolish and replace with Socialism.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: Distorting Marxism (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

While not in any way wanting to associate the beliefs of our group with those of the SPGB, we are deeply amused at your efforts to emasculate Marxism. Your hatred of Lenin and Bolshevism rather stands in contradistinction to your espousal of Marxism. Most of all, quoting from the works of Kautsky and Bukharin in your literature, as if to prove your Marxism by the choice of books you quote from, is also most humorous. Take any Marxist conception and there the SPGB will be found revising and distorting it. It is perhaps paradoxical that the two works of Marx you base your policies on, Value, Price and Profit and the Critique of the Gotha Programme, are the very works in which Marx exposes and smashes present SPGB policy, in his attack on Lassalleanism. Nevertheless, we are not as sectarian as your Party, and are prepared to listen to any quasi-Marxist group.

M. E. Therrien,

Secretary, Exeter China Policy Study Group.

Reply

The theory and practice of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain is based on Marxism; that is, we accept as valid the main theories put forward by Marx about history, political economy and politics. We accept that the materialist conception of history is a very useful method for examining and understanding social and historical events and changes. We accept that Capital is a brilliant analysis of the workings and historical tendency of capitalism and exposition of how the working class are exploited. We accept too that the working class can be freed from wage-slavery only by its own efforts, by taking class-conscious democratic political action to get Socialism. We were unaware that in so doing we were “emasculating” Marxism and we are not prepared to consider the allegation that we have distorted Marx’s views until and unless Mr. Therrien, or anyone else, produces some evidence.

As a matter of fact it was Lenin and the Bolsheviks who twisted Marx’s theories. For Marx the emancipation of the working class had to be the work of the working class itself. Lenin rejected this. In What Is To be Done? he says, contemptuously, of the working class that “exclusively by its own effort” it can only reach a trade union consciousness. Socialist understanding, Lenin argued, must be brought to them from outside—in Russia by a band of professional revolutionaries organised as a vanguard party. In other words, Lenin and the Bolsheviks held that a vanguard party could free the working class rather than the working class, through it own class-conscious democratic political action, free itself.

Before trying to pin labels on us Mr. Therrien really must make up his mind which one he is going to use. Kautsky (foremost thinker of European Social Democracy) and Bukharin (Bolshevik thinker and leader, later murdered by Stalin) were both opposed to Lassalle (a nineteenth century playboy who did some pioneer work in organising workers, of Iron Law of Wages fame). And of course Kautsky and Bukharin were opposed to each other. We, in the Socialist Party, have serious criticisms to make of all three. In fact, we would say that Lassalle had nothing to contribute to Socialist theory and Bukharin next to nothing.

The policy of the Socialist Party is not based on two works of Marx. It is based on the interests of the working class in the modern world. Value, Price and Profit is a basic work of Marxian economics always worth reading. The Critique of the Gotha Programme, some marginal notes written by Marx on the programme adopted by German Social Democrats at a unity congress held in Gotha in 1875, has certain defects precisely because it was not written for publication. It is odd that we should be accused of basing our policy on these since the Stalinists use them to try to justify their theory that Socialism and Communism are two separate societies. The notes don’t bear this interpretation anyway and Marx used the two terms interchangeably to refer to the classless society of the future, based on the social or common ownership of the means of life.

Finally, may we express the hope that Mr. Therrien’s group’s study of the policies of state capitalist China is conducted on somewhat more scientific lines than their study of Socialist Party policy appears to have been.

Editorial Committee.

The Problem of Transport (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A constant and pressing problem today, especially in a greater conurbation like London, is the problem of transport. Crowded trains, buses late or cut out, the constant whine of jet planes, dirt, noise and fumes — the list is endless.

At the heart of to-day’s transport problems is the motor-car, loved and hated to an immoderate degree, transforming the very face of the country, as a century ago the steam locomotive was transforming it. Any tenth-rate comedian can get a laugh by just saying ‘Barbara Castle’, as if a change of personality at the head of the Ministry of Transport would make an atom of difference to the problem.

In an effort to ease the jammed-up roads, pleasant gardens and tree-lined avenues are cut up for wider roads, while parks and squares are ruined to make car parks, and even the humble pub garden becomes a little asphalt desert. Motorways run like a scar across the countryside, and winding lanes are ‘improved’ out of recognition. Worst of all is the ever mounting toll of accidents.

None of this is particularly new; it is merely a change of form. That profit is the only serious consideration, with human comfort and happiness coming a very poor second, is true to-day and has been true for as long as capitalism has existed. London, and all big cities, have for centuries been very noisy places. Iron clad wheels and horses’ hooves, clattering over cobbles, made a terrible din and congestion in London was notorious.

Rowlandson, in a typically unflattering series of etchings, drew a picture of traffic chaos in the early 19th century. In the late 1850’s the London General Omnibus Company alone had about six hundred horse-buses, and horse trams appeared on the scene in the 1860’s. Congestion in the City gave rise to plans for a pedestrian bridge over Ludgate Circus, and the first underground railway (imagine the “Met” with steam engines) was put through to relieve congestion.

By the 1890’s there were over 1,700 buses and about 900 trams in central London. Over it all rode the locomotive, a smoky monster that blackened the working class districts through which it cut into London. The childish squabbles indulged in by rival railway companies, as in 1884 when the District Line chained a locomotive in a disputed siding at South Kensington Station and three Metropolitan Line engines tried to pull it out, make the snarling of motorists at traffic light to-day seem very tame.

The protests at Motorways ruining the countryside echo the protests of a century ago when the railways were doing the same thing. No, the problem hasn’t changed, but the vast increase in population, and the much greater powers of production, have made it more acute.

Now, the canals that once drove men and horses hard for greater speed and profit are pleasant, green oases in endless suburbs, and the once hated steam engine a romantic memory. It is the internal combustion engine that dominates the 20th Century.

No other modern industry has had such a profound influence on the social and economic life to-day as the motor industry. Its development has resulted in the decline of once important industries, and has given an impetus to a mass of others that were unimportant at the turn of the century. It was one of the main factors in the migration of industries, from the North of England to the South and to the Midlands, that took place between the wars.

Like the steam engine that preceded it, the internal combustion engine began its existence as a static form of power, and was later adapted for locomotion. Steam cars had been in existence since the early years of the 19th century, but they were heavy and fuel was a problem. The internal combustion engine made possible a much lighter vehicle. More important, it could be run over existing public roads, unlike the railways which had to stick to a set route; this made for greater mobility. By the beginning of the present century the motor vehicle was with us.

Its application followed existing patterns, in the various forms of road transport in existence at the time—the private carriage, the bus and the wagon. In its early days the motor-car was still a luxury reserved for the type of people who could afford a carriage. The bulk of the population travelled by public transport.

The first motor buses appeared in Britain about 1898, and by the early 1920’s they had been joined by the long distance coach.

One of the selling points used by the promoters of coach travel before the war was that coaches took you through the heart of towns and villages, and gave you a better view of the country. Today more and more coaches trail along dreary motorways and by-pass towns and villages.

Slowly the motor buses pushed the railways into the background, and drove the tramcars off the road. The swing was first from the railways to public road transport; the golden age of the bus was the 1930’s.

But now, by changed production methods and a heavy reliance on hire purchase, the private car has become available to the mass of the people. There were four times as many cars on the roads in 1964 as in 1939 and the number is still growing. Furthermore, the number of people travelling to work from a fair distance away has grown steadily over the last 100 years. The resulting chaos has brought home the importance of the railways, with their much greater carrying capacity. Without their rail systems, cities like London woud seize up in the rush hour.

Since the war a favourite pipe-dream has been an ‘integrated public transport system’, with transport used in a balanced way to its best advantage. But capitalism doesn’t work that way. If profit can be made it will be made, however pleasant or unpleasant the result may be. If, on the other hand, something like the railways no longer pays, but is considered necessary to the general interest of capitalism, then it will be subsidised, but as cheaply as possible.

The grim railway arches that overshadowed the mean terraces of south and east London were held up as examples of the inhumanity of the Victorians, but the new fly-overs that overshadow houses to-day show the same contempt for the people who live underneath. Transport has changed. It will change again, we can only guess how; but one thing is certain. If capitalism remains the new transport will be as nasty as the old.

Les Dale

50 Years Ago: The Question of Alsace Lorraine (1967)

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

The question of Alsace Lorraine has received considerable attention from the political and journalistic hirelings of the capitalist class. A vast amount of sloppy sentiment has been thrust upon us with the object of covering up the real facts at issue, a good example of which comes from Mr. Lloyd George. “However long the war may be”, says that worthy, “however great the strain upon our resources, this country intends to stand by her gallant ally, France, until she redeems her oppressed children from the degradation of a foreign yoke”.

Knowing the history of the capitalist class, Socialists reject with scorn their professed sympathy for the workers of any nation. Material interest dominates their every action, as the following demonstrates:

“If Germany could secure a peace based on her present military position”, says a writer in the Daily Chronicle 24.10.17. 

“the whole of this wealth of iron ore, estimated at some 5,000 million tons, would pass under her control . . . Liberate these provinces from her clutch with their 21,000,000 tons of iron ore a year, their 3,800,000 tons of iron smeltings, their 2,300,000 tons of steel smeltings, and useful coalfields of the Somme Valley, and a long step has been taken towards peace”.

“It is clearly an almost vital interest, both for France and Great Britain, that the formation of a huge Franco-German cartel, based on the reciprocal exchange of coal for ore, should be prevented, that we should ourselves supply France with the coke that will enable her to do her own smelting, and that we should take from her in return the iron ore that we now import from Sweden and from Spain”. (“Daily Chronicle”, 24.10.17.)

The evidence given shows the capitalists in their true character, as a cold-blooded, profit-seeking tribe, ready to slaughter millions of workers to gain an advantage over a commercial rival.

From the Socialist Standard, December 1917 Article by E. L. Wake.

SPGB Meetings (1967)

Party News from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Correction (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret that an unintentional mistake rather changed the meaning of a passage in the letter from Mr. Raymond V. McNally in the third column of page 145 of the September Socialist Standard. Mr. McNally wrote “Yet, theoretically, the capitalist appears to be a disembodied spirit…” but this came out as “… appears to be a dismembered spirit…” We apologise to Mr. McNally, and our readers, for any confusion this mistake has caused.

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

Corrected for the blog.

Autumn School (1967)

Party News from the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard 

There was a good response to the school on Saturday November 11th when Comrade McClatchie addressed the session. It is hoped that the next school will be arranged for a Saturday in March 1968.

Austria (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

ALLE MENSCHEN SIND BRUDER—DIE GANZE ERDE IHR VATERLAND is the headline of the latest issue (Oct.-Nov.-Dec. 1967) of the WFW, quarterly journal of our comrades in Austria. The WFW is also serialising our pamphlet Russia 1917-1967 A Socialist Analysis. The first part appears in this issue. Obtainable price 1/- (excluding postage) from our Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

The Review Column: Collapse in South Arabia (1967)

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

Collapse in South Arabia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Half a million unemployed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The TUC, does it matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

British Motor Car Industry (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

“persistent engine oil leaks” (£998) 

“failure of exhaust system” (£1048) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Who creates wealth? (1967)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Buick

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

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

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

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

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

Economic Thought (1967)

Book Review from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adam Buick

Reforming Capitalism (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and Samuel Courtauld’s comment on the Report:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harry Baldwin

Marx’s View of Man (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

J. MCL