Letter: What Makes us Different ? (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Makes us Different ?

I would like you to consider the difference between the SPGB and other organizations that call themselves Socialist. What is it that makes up the difference? I suggest that it is theoretical knowledge. This has been developed by facing up to hypothetical problems that may have to be faced on the way to, and also within, the new society. It seems to me that this task is not even half-done, hence I called Socialism a half-baked idea. The vast majority of SPGBers seem to think that this task is over, but in fact there is no Socialist politics nor any Socialist economics. In fact the SPGB is not so very far ahead of the mindless SWP in being able to explain what Socialism is. I think we would agree on their theoretical merits.

Anyway, the problems of Socialism will certainly not be solved by wishing them away as Engels did. It is not a fact that all conflict is due to private property. People are likely to clash over other things like temperament, sex and even philosophy and taste. But even if Engels was right, we would still need Socialist law and order until the “new man” emerged. As it is I would drop Engels’ brand of Owenism and attempt to work a theoretical system of politics that will enable you to explain what Socialism is today, and will, perhaps, develop into a body of theory that will give the revolutionaries some idea of how to go about things in the new society.

Of course the majority of revolutionaries will cooperate, but then the vast majority of people always do; in any society. Law and order is a minority problem but this minority is unlikely to be uniform or static. It is likely to be continually changing as people go through phases of development.

A general framework of Socialist economics needs to be added to the politics mentioned above. No matter how much technology improves our standard of living, it will never do so at a uniform rate. Economic choices will have to be made as to what to produce, and of how much as well as the allocation of scarce consumer goods and the effective use of producer goods. As those problems of investment and consumption will remain in the new society, a Socialist solution to them is required. The price system gives us the sort of information we need in capitalism. What is going to replace it in Socialism?

David McDonagh, 

Birmingham

Reply:

Unfortunately we can’t deal with all the points you raise in a short reply. Some of the questions you mention will have to be left to an article.

However, the main point you raise relates to “socialist economics”. In our view “economics” would be a very much simpler question in socialism than it is under capitalism. You require some “socialist economics” to explain socialism in the same way that modern economics explains capitalism. First, modern economics does not explain capitalism, far from it. Second, socialism will not have the need to “justify” itself in the same way that capitalism uses “economics” to justify itself. The theoretical exposition of socialism is the description of the way socialist society will be organised; i.e. common ownership and free access to wealth based on the technological possibilities that capitalism has created. This needs explaining; it does not (cannot) involve the equivalent presentation that those who (attempt) to explain modern capitalism indulge in.

How will socialist society know what to produce when money no longer acts as a guide? The answer may be this: in socialist society people will take freely from what is produced. But when goods are taken there is no reason for them not to be numbered and checked. So for example, the local store supplying product x to the locality could keep a record of the number of “takes” (there would of course be no sales) of product x. It would know how much of product x had to be kept in stock to cover the time between the requisitioning of x and its arrival at the store. Computers could be used to monitor the “take up” of all products as part of the world system, and this information would be relayed to the producers. This system would of course be far more efficient than the present system.

The above outline does of course depend on society being able to produce sufficient of the things people require for no one to go without. But it is possible that society as a whole will decide that one particular product (an example given in the September ss was a Rolls Royce) will not be produced. How society would decide which products to do without would of course in part depend on the product in question. At this stage, all we can indicate is that no human being would be without any “need” and anything over and above that which might be required but not be socially possible will be decided on by society, democratically.

So far as your question on Law and order is concerned, there is no space to go into that here. We would refer you in particular to The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Engels, which shows that law is a product (and therefore a problem) of property society, and will be of no relevance to propertyless society.

Editors.

Letter: Taxes and Labour (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxes and Labour

Thank you very much for your stimulating reply to my letter which was published in your January, 1978 issue. In order to clarify my ideas, I should like the opportunity to answer the criticisms made of my theories.

Firstly, you asserted that, where my hypothesis assumes a retrenchment in the rate of direct taxation (and, ergo, a fall in government revenue from paye), unless the total cost of administration also decreases, then the government has to make an equal increase in the amount of tax collected directly from the capitalists (I presume that here you allude to Corporation Tax). However, if we assume that the cost of administration has remained the same, are there not other sources of government revenue which would obviate the need for more tax to be collected directly from the capitalists. For example, indirect taxation and loans which are not collected from the capitalists.

Secondly, you maintain that it cannot be assumed that a reduction of PAYE can enable the workers to improve their bargaining power increasing their net pay. But if you accept the above explanation of alternative sources of government revenue, which enable the total outlay of the capitalist to remain the same, then perhaps you will also agree that the capitalist will not be concerned about the in creased net pay of his workers since his aggregate outlay on tax and wages has not increased. In fact, he may be pleased if the fall in the rate of tax, by increasing the net pay of his workers, forestalls pressure for higher gross wages, which, if successful, would increase his total disbursements on wages and tax.

P. S. Maloney, 

Palmers Green

 

Reply:

In your earlier letter (SS January 1978) you accepted the proposition "that taxes are paid by the employing class", but argued that a reduction of PAYE would benefit the workers without costing the employers anything. You forgot that if government total expenditure remained the same (which was assumed in your letter) they would have to raise additional tax revenue to meet it. Our reply took the simplest case, that of additional taxes on profits.

You now accept that you had overlooked that if government expenditure remained the same they would need to raise additional revenue following the reduction of PAYE, but you say the government could increase indirect taxation or raise revenue by loans.

Without wishing to go into the complex question of the effect that indirect taxes have on the price level, we can take both cases, i.e. that prices remain the same, or that they rise.

If the capitalists' selling prices remain the same but indirect taxes go up his profits are reduced. If prices go up then the workers have an additional inducement to press for higher wages—and again his profits are affected.

About loans you also overlook the fact that government borrowing via the banks goes along with the persistent increase of the note issue with its effect in raising the price level.

The more important issue is whether the struggle that workers have to engage in to maintain or increase real wages can somehow be avoided by a reduction of PAYE; the implication being that if workers' wages did not come into the scope of Income Tax at all they would be better off. In the 19th century hardly any workers came into the Income Tax range. Are we to suppose that this made it easier for them to maintain or increase real wages?

The fact is that any concession received by the workers lessens the urgency with which they will press for more, as is shown in every strike settlement. Mr. Healey's strategy clearly lecognises this. He has told the Unions that if he succeeds in limiting the increase of money wages to 10 per cent he will make tax concessions, but will not give both a higher increase of money wages and a reduction of PAYE.

The one weapon the workers have on the industrial field is the strike. It is a dangerous illusion that the class struggle can somehow be side-stepped by campaigning for tax reductions.

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: Too Young (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too Young

I am writing to you because I would like your views on these points:

I am sixteen years old, have left school and now go to work. I do not pay tax, but will be doing so next year!

What I would like to know is, if at 16/17, 1 can get married and have children, pay tax, and N.I. I can own a car and pay the insurance, tax etc., have a home, or business, and own a passport, also possibly, smoke, just like may I add an adult.

Then why is it that 1 cannot vote, buy alcohol in a public house, gamble, i.e. horseracing, bingo, etc., see ‘X’ films, and even enter certain clubs, discos?

I think this ’law’ is pathetic. Why should a person between the age of 16-18 have the burdens of an adult and not have the ‘pleasures’? They are still legally children or is the word youths??

I, and many people of my age will never agree to this ridiculous law!!

I have written to various political parties, and 1 cannot wait to read the various reasons for this ‘mockery’ of a law.

I would appreciate a reply.

Stephen Johnson

London, E.2

Reply

It looks as if you are unfamiliar with the case put forward by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, so we recommend that you read the Object and Declaration of Principles printed on the inside cover of this journal.

The discrepancies which make you angry are, in general, between laws which governments have passed on different accounts at different times, all in the interests of capitalism. Those which aim to make adolescents “independent” for purposes of government finance come in conflict with others concerned with “public morality”. It is quite likely, particularly if pressure groups arise, that a revision of legislation will eventually be attempted to remove some of the anomalies.

If that happens, don’t imagine that you (or those who are your present age at that time) will be emancipated. Legislation is not carried out for “fairness” or on ethical grounds; the enticing promise is to get you on a more appropriate kind of chain. To give an example, the demand for the voting age to be reduced from 21 to 18 arose largely from military service and the 1950 Korean war in which Britain was involved. The anomaly pointed out was that young men could kill (or be killed) but not vote at 18. Well, then . . .

Why not raise your sights? In the world of capitalism the great majority of people between 18 and the grave would tell you they do indeed have the burdens of adults but haven’t had much chance of the “pleasures”. Socialism offers a world of equal access to everything society can provide, without any section excluded or dependent on permission by authorities.

Editors.

Letter: How Much Has Production Increased? (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Much Has 
Production Increased?

Can you say what the output or production of goods and consumption of same are in England today? Are they ten times what they were in 1925? Money is now ten times that of 1925 and prices are up ten times. After all it is the products we get for money.

W. Popplewell

Cheshire.

Reply

Prices were falling from 1925 to 1938 and have been rising continuously since then. The current retail price level is about ten times the level of 1925. (About eleven times the level of 1938).

Official estimates of the “gross national product” give a figure for 1976 about twenty-five times what it was in 1925; but most of this is merely a reflection of higher prices, not a real increase. In real terms GNP may be about three times what it was in 1925. Against this has to be set the fact that the population of the United Kingdom has increased from 45 million in 1925 to 56 million.

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: Taxes and Labour (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxes and Labour

Firstly, i refer to your correspondence columns in the Oct. 1976 and Dec. 1976 issues of the Socialist Standard. It was said in one of your replies that wages are what workers actually receive (net pay) and that taxes are paid by the employing class.

Notwithstanding the incontrovertibility of this assertion, I suggest that the rate of the impost on income is, caeteris paribus, of more interest to the worker than to the capitalist in the short term. If, for example, gross wages remain the same, while the rate of tax falls, then the total outlay of the capitalist remains the same (net pay plus taxation equalling the same gross pay as before the alteration of the impost rate) whilst the net pay of the workers increases at the expense of the tax paid; the reverse being the case if the rate of tax rises.

In the long term, however, an accretion to or a deduction from net wages as a result of a variation in the tax levels has repercussions on the employer. For instance, should net wages diminish as a result of an increase in the rate of tax, workers may then press, successfully, for higher gross pay which would entail an additional payment by the capitalist. Conversely, if net wages rise as a result of a fall in the tax on income, workers would be less likely to seek wage increases and so the capitalist avoids having to make additional payments to workers.

Secondly, the Spring-Summer 1977 Western Socialist contained a reply to a letter. The reply stated that the division of labour will be the basis of world Socialism. However, in The German Ideology Marx wrote ". . . while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow.”

Do you agree with the Western Socialist or with Marx?

P. S. Maloney

London N13

Reply:

Your proposition about tax is fallacious because, while you say that you are accepting that “other things are equal”, in fact ycur proposition is based on the assumption that two other vital factors have also been varied.

Our case is that in reality the burden of taxation (cost of the administrative machine of capitalism) falls on the capitalist class and comes out of surplus-value. Nominally, however, the cost is met partly out of PAYE, deducted from workers’ wages.

Your proposition assumes that the government revenue from PAYE is reduced, but unless you also assume (while giving no reason) that the total cost of administration has been correspondingly reduced, the government has to make an equal increase in the amount of tax collected directly from the capitalists. Your assumption that the total outlay of the capitalist remains the same is therefore untrue.

Your argument further requires (though without saying so) that simultaneously with the reduction of PAYE, the bargaining position of the workers against the capitalists has improved. (What Marx called "the respective powers of the combatants”.) If, before the reduction of PAYE, the bargaining power of the workers enables them to maintain net pay of £x, it cannot be assumed that when PAYE is reduced by £y the workers’ bargaining power is so increased that they can now achieve net pay of £x + £y.

In view of these errors in your proposition, it is not necessary to go into any difference there may be between short- and long-term.

The statement in the Western Socialist is in reply to a critic who argues that "division of labour and private property are equally” the cause of the evils of capitalism. The reply says that in Socialism there will be free access, and "without division of labour this would hardly be possible”.

Marx distinguished between social division of labour, i.e. the existence of separate industries, and the workshop division of labour, i.e. workers being forced to get their living by doing detailed processes. (See Capital Vol. 1, “Division of Labour and Manufacture”, particularly the last paragraph in Section 4.) The latter, but not the former, is peculiar to capitalism.

The Western Socialist’s critic does not make clear whether he is referring to the latter, or both. We do not imagine that the reply meant anything other than the social division of labour. Various industries under capitalism (particularly the motor industry) have already abandoned detail work and gone over to teams producing a whole car, because it gives greater output and better quality.

Anyway, how, in Socialist society, could any worker be compelled to do deadly repetitive work against his will? Marx made that point in The German Ideology. He said it is only under capitalism that a worker has to do it "if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood”. In the well-known passage where Marx spoke of man being “a hunter in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening”, etc., he was talking about "whole” jobs not detailed division of labour (though his examples are not much related to modern conditions). Marx also recognized that to do this the individual has to take advantage of the facilities “to become accomplished in any branch he wishes”, i.e. he has to get knowledge and training—no self-appointed surgeons or airline pilots, as anarchists have sometimes claimed there will be.

Editors.

Letter: The State (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State

Replying to my letter, on liberty under Socialism—November issue—you state "there would not, and could not, be coercion against any individual or minority who did not agree with majority decisions”. I am in complete agreement. An unequivocal statement which could not be bettered. Yet Clause 6 urges the working class to organise for the “conquest of the powers of government” with the object of converting these powers "from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation”. But, if we are to use the "powers of government”, this surely will necessitate coercion? Further, if we are to rely on State action, the State will have functions to perform and organisms which have functions to perform do not "wither away”. Assuming the people have accepted Socialism, would not advisory councils be best fitted for any necessary organisation? The State can make changes in one way only—by means of force. We may be sure that people sufficiently intelligent to accept Socialism will be able to arrange affairs without compulsion when called on to do so.

I agree that anarchism is a negative philosophy and that only within the framework of a positive society, based on common ownership of the means of wealth production, will a free society ever be possible. With the end of profits and wages system and consequent conflict of interest which now operates between every individual, class, group and nation, the basic interest of all will be the same.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain (alone) constantly puts over this message. But can we ever accomplish it by political means? Parliament and rulers are synonymous terms to the mass of the people. How can we persuade them that rulers are unnecessary in a civilised world if we identify ourselves with that capitalist institution, Parliament. I greatly fear the corrupting influence of the "struggle to gain the Powers of Government” and, oh!, how I wish the SPGB did not indulge in political activity— a vain hope indeed.

F. Ball 

Woldingham

Reply:

If it is agreed that the ownership basis of society must be changed, there is no alternative to political action to bring about the change. The capitalist class are a minority incapable of safeguarding their ownership on their own account: the function of the state is to legalize class ownership, and back up the legality with force. Attempts to use "industrial action" or "direct action” to bring about a change are quashed by the powers of government. The only way is for delegates of a socialist working class to take control of the state, so that its machinery can no longer be used to maintain and enforce class ownership. This is what Clause 6 of our Principles means.

Beyond this single major act, the state has no other function to perform. Certainly there will be organization in Socialism, but its concern will be “administration of things” and not administration of people. As you yourself say, people who have a clear understanding of Socialism are able to manage the affairs of society without compulsion.

Your last point is that political activity produces an authoritarian mentality. It does—in those who lack the understanding we have been talking about. All kinds of everyday experiences can likewise produce a belief in leadership and acceptance of corruption. Socialist consciousness is the only effective resistance to them; and the political organization for Socialism must be a democratic one, in which all functionaries carry out neither more nor less than the instructions of those who vote for them.

Editors.

Letter: Classes (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classes

What is the extent of working class investment in the UK economy and what proportion is it of total investment at a rough estimate?

I was perplexed when I came across the following extract from Marx’s work Theorien Über den Mehrwert II/2 pg. 368. in Bottomore and Rubel’s book Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy p. 198:

  What [Ricardo] forgets to mention is the continual increase in numbers of the middle classes, . . . situated midway between the workers on one side and the capitalists and landowners on the other. These middle classes rest with all their weight upon the working class and at the same time increase the social security and power of the upper class.

I’m afraid I don’t know what context this was written in (perhaps you can tell me?) but it does appear to me to contradict for example what Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto about the "lower strata of the middle class” sinking into the proletariat and also in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right where he talks of the “disintegration of the middle class” (Bottomore and Rubel, p. 190). I had always imagined that by "middle class” Marx meant basically the small businessman. From his analysis of the economics of capitalism Marx predicted the growing concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands —in the sense in which “middle class” is understood as alluding to the small businessmen Marx’s prediction is undoubtedly spot-on. Could it be that in the above quotation from Theorien Über den Mehrwert Marx used the term "middle class” to mean a social grouping embodying a petty-bourgeois mentality? If so when this appears to utterly refute the sort of smug assertions one finds in sociology textbooks that “Marx failed to foresee the growth of a middle class” (even leaving aside the point that to marxists, because someone works in an office or speaks in a posh accent, this does not make him any the less a member of the working class).

Robin Cox 

Haslemere

Reply:

1. There is no conceivable way of identifying what shares are owned by workers. Company shares are owned by individuals and joint owners, and by trustees, investment and unit trusts, banks, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. No owner explains when buying shares that he is or is not a worker.

For an individual company it is possible to find out what amount each shareholder owns, but this tells you little. X may own 1,000 shares in 10 companies, as also each of those named in the previous paragraph. However, nobody could combine this information for all companies, or identify the ultimate owners via a trust or a pension fund.

The First Report of the Royal Commission on Incomes and Wealth (pages 81-82) gives some information on the percentage of shareholding in groups classified according to the estimated total personal wealth of the persons in each group.

2. The 1969 Moscow edition of Theories of Surplus Value has an addition to the second sentence of the passage you quote and reads: "The middle classes maintain themselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue, they are a burden weighing heavily on the working base and increase the social security and power of the upper ten thousand.”

In this section Marx is discussing the transformation of capital into revenue and vice versa, with references to Ricardo and another writer, John Barton. In another part of it he speaks of "the landlords and capitalists, their retainers and hangers-on”, and later: "A larger section of the workers employed in the production of articles of consumption that are consumed by—are exchanged against the revenue of—capitalists, landlords and their retainers (state, church etc.).” This makes clear that he was not talking about small businessmen.

Theories of Surplus Value was Marx’s manuscript for a projected Fourth Volume of Capital. The manuscript was never worked up by Marx for publication, and some passages are little more than notes for further elaboration; we do not know if he would have used the same phrases in a finished work. The view which Marx stated consistently is found in Capital Volume 3 (page 1025, Kerr edn.): “In view of the foregoing analysis it is not necessary to demonstrate again, that the relation between wage labour and capital determines the entire character of the mode of production. The principal agents of this mode of production itself, the capitalist and the wage worker, are to that extent merely personifications of capital and wage labour. They are definite social characters, assigned to individuals by the process of production. They are products of these definite social conditions of production.”

Editors.

Letter: Voting Shut-Down? (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voting Shut-Down?

I am studying the Principles (I am in 100 per cent agreement with the Object) and contacting my nearest branch of the Party, and do believe from what I’ve heard so far that the SPGB is closer to what I believe than any party or group I’ve yet come in contact with. Reformism is indeed a dead end!

One question: The achievement of Socialism by gaining a democratic majority of socialists is one I agree with and I reject violence, terrorism and guerrilla-type tactics. But what if the capitalist parties refuse to call an election? We have no written Constitution in the UK and the fact we have General Elections every three years at least is a convention—also the monarch "upon advice” can summon anyone to form a government—a minority one in theory.

If it looks as if socialists are becoming a majority of the working class I cannot envisage the capitalists maintaining democracy for the convenience of those who are about to bring in Socialism! Related to this point is the fact that many lands do not have a system of democratic elections. I would be grateful for your comments on this. I’m not trying to split hairs but this seems a very obvious objection to the Party’s Principle.

Robert J. Taylor

Holmfirth

Reply:

Capitalism rests upon the support of the working class, and elections are a way of renewing and measuring that support. Though, as you say, many countries "do not have democratic elections”, they do have parliamentary systems; what is missing is a choice of opposition candidates with facilities to put their points of view.

There was no general election in Britain from 1936 to 1945, the three major parties agreeing on a wartime "truce”. This was achieved solely because there was no doubt that the great majority of the working class supported the government’s main policy, i.e. the war against Germany. At other times the capitalist class of a country has had to withdraw from a war because of lack of support from the workers.

If elections were suspended because it was likely that a socialist majority would be elected, the existing pro-capitalist government would be unable to carry out its policies for any length of time. It would not have the cooperation of the trade unions, nor would it be able to prepare for war; and in all departments it would be without the necessary assent of "public opinion”.

As regards other countries, at that stage of development they too would have strong socialist movements. At present the call for “democratic elections” in those countries comes from factions who themselves want the opportunity to run capitalism and would seek working-class support on that basis. Socialists need democracy for the establishment of common ownership, and at the stage when the majority of workers have that conscious objective it will be impossible for the capitalist class to withhold it by political manoeuvres or any other means.

Editors.

Money — not workers — will be redundant (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

At first sight it may seem inconceivable that any advanced economic system could function efficiently without the use of money. Money has existed as far back as the history books go and the economists endorse the supposed advantages of a money system. Indeed, some economists go even further than this, as R. G. Lipsey does in a widely used introductory textbook on economics where he says,

It is not without justification that money has been called one of the great inventions contributing to human freedom. (An Introduction to Positive Economics).

Lipsey here overlooks the fact that money is ‘liberating’ only for those who have money. For those who have no money, or insufficient of it, money is the form of bondage and oppression, not liberation. Thus, in praising a system that is ‘liberating’ for only a few, Lipsey is here, quite accidentally, revealing the class nature of economics as it is generally taught, and is showing that it constitutes mere apologetics for the capitalist system.

On the question of the functions of money in an economic system, the one generally regarded as the most important is that of a medium of exchange. In discussing the function of money as a medium of exchange Lipsey says,

Without money, our complicated economic system, which is based on specialisation and the division of labour, would be impossible, and we would have to return to a very primitive form of production and exchange.

Lipsey is right in saying that without money “our complicated economic system,” i.e. capitalism, would not be possible, but he is wrong to say that only a primitive form of production would be possible in the absence of money. Lipsey’s mistake lies in his thinking that exchange is a necessary characteristic of all societies, and that therefore in a moneyless world exchange would have to be carried out by the cumbersome method of individual barter. This fault is common to all bourgeois economists, notably to Adam Smith with his idea of man’s innate “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another”. (The Wealth of Nations). This notion is typical of the way the bourgeois economists take the specific features of a particular society either as given eternal truths that must exist at all times or as emanations of an unchanging human nature (or both).

Exchange is possible only where the product of labour is privately owned. For example, in petty commodity production the product is directly owned by the individual who makes it and it is sold to acquire goods for his immediate use, while in capitalism the product is owned by the capitalist who then sells it in order to realise a profit. We can see from these examples nor only that exchange of products derives from property in these products, but also that the form of exchange is determined by the general nature of production in society. Contemporary capitalist exchange processes are characterised by the presence of large stores with an international range of commodities for sale, credit facilities of various sorts and extensive advertising, in order to increase the volume of sales and reduce the period of turnover of the commodities. These forms of exchange would have been quite inappropriate, say, in a feudal economy where output was on a smaller scale and intended primarily either for immediate use or for the local market.

But in a socialist society there will be no property in the means of production — the land, machinery, raw materials and power sources. The concept of property will have become redundant. Hence the product of society will be available for everyone to take from it freely what they require. Thus as property relations become redundant, so will the accompanying exchange relations and so too will money. In capitalist society we exchange the one commodity that we possess, our labour-power, for a wage or salary (if we’re lucky enough not to be unemployed), and then exchange this money for commodities. In socialist society we will participate directly in the process of production and then will take what we require from the common store of goods.

Thus to some extent Lipsey is correct in seeing a link between production and exchange. With the primitive form of exchange, i.e. barter, that he envisages in a moneyless world, the only form of production that would be possible would be a very unspecialised one where each domestic unit would try to produce for as many of their needs as possible in order to minimise their dependence on barter. In this situation overall production would be low and Lipsey is right to regard this as a retrogressive step. But what Lipsey doesn’t see is that in a world which has freed itself from property and exchange relations, production will also be free to develop without the fetters imposed on it by property society. It will be free to expand production without the fear of insufficient money demand, it will be free to develop the best possible products rather than having to minimise costs as is the case under capitalism, and it will be freed from having to produce the waste of capitalism such as armaments.

Redundant

Clearly then, money will be redundant in Socialism. But perhaps there are other functions that money performs apart from that of exchange that will still be required in socialism and will therefore necessitate the use of money in socialist society? Lipsey basically lists three functions of money. In addition to that of a medium of exchange, he also lists the functions of a store of wealth and a unit of account. By a store of wealth he is basically referring to a future claim on someone else’s goods, in other words, a medium of exchange with a time dimension attached to it. An exchange will have no meaning in Socialism, similarly future exchanges will have no meaning either. Just as we won’t need money to get the goods we need in the present, so we won’t need to save money to get goods for the future. (Which of course is not to say that society as a whole will not have to “save” for its future requirements.)

The notion of a unit of account is more complicated. Fundamentally it is related to the need of the capitalist to be able to quantify the production process in such a way that he can calculate the profits from any given investment. Secondarily it is related to the need for governments to have some overall idea of the movement of the economy in that it allows the government statisticians to aggregate over a range of commodities and compare different sectors of the economy. But in order for people to have some way of measuring productive activities, it is not necessary to have an actual system of money prices. Statisticians can invent any method they like of measuring or evaluating goods, e.g. in terms of labour input, energy used up, social usefulness, and these values can then be imputed to the goods in question for purely accounting purposes without using these imputed values as actual prices or exchange-ratios. Thus the need for a unit of account does not necessitate the use of money. In addition, the type of accounting done in a socialist society will be quite different from that in a capitalist society, and it may even be found that it is not necessary to have a universal unit of account of this sort.

Price System

Apart from listing the various functions of money in a capitalist society, the bourgeois economists advance another defence for a money system. They argue that a price system serves to allocate goods in a decentralized system to the areas where they are most required. This allocation takes the form of a production decision, viz what, how much and how to produce, and a distribution decision, viz for whom should these goods be produced. The price system solves these problems by ensuring that only the most profitable goods are produced in the most profitable manner, and that only those people who can afford to buy these goods should have the use of them. Some economists are less enthusiastic about the virtues of such a system than they used to be, but most endorse this form of organisation to a greater or lesser extent. Socialists, however, criticise an economic system organised on these lines and argue that a socialist society would in fact be far more efficient. In Socialism production would be regulated by people’s needs and distribution secured by free access. The necessary information for this could be secured from surveys, and the ‘take-up rate’ for the various items, to mention only the most obvious. This information could be processed on computers and passed on to those responsible for production. This system of communicating information could in fact be far more efficient than the price system which even the bourgeois economists have to admit is far from perfect in achieving the objective they ascribe to it.

The one function that the price mechanism does fulfil and which the economists do not understand properly, is that of a rationing device. Apart from the other problems that capitalism produces, it also produces scarcity, in spite of its tremendous potential for abundance. In a situation of scarcity, the price system serves as a rationing device where a £1 note serves the same function as a ration coupon with only the difference that a person can choose his rations (but not whether he/she is rationed). This rationing device allows the working class to receive only a fraction of what it has produced. This situation will not exist in socialist society. Without the fetters of capitalist profit-making and the concomitant wastefulness of capitalist production, there is no reason to suppose that social production will be inadequate to the task of satisfying people's needs. Hence there will be no rationing of the world’s wealth. And there will be no need for money.

B.

An Open Question (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February, 21.000 new adult undergraduates began their studies with The Open University. This is the eighth year of its teaching operation, and there are still twice as many applicants as places very year. It uses over a thousand hours of broadcasting each year and despatches more than 30,000 packages of correspondence teaching material every week. Whether people like it or not—and there are some who do not —the OU has radically altered the pattern of adult education in this country.

There are some who see it as a powerful agent for more fundamental social change, and so, ever since it was granted its charter in 1969, it has had its critics. Those on the ‘left’ have hammered it for not catering for ‘the working class’. Those on the ‘right’ have spread alarms about ‘marxist bias’ in its courses. Those who went to ‘real’ universities have asserted that, whatever else it might be, it could never be a university. And those whose experience at school taught them to be suspicious of ail education have ignored it. Harold Wilson, who claims the idea for its establishment as his own, has stated that the formation of The Open University is the achievement for which he would most like to be remembered.

So how should socialists evaluate it? Like every other capitalist institution, the OU embodies a number of contradictions and tensions, and it is worth looking into some of these.

Unlike other universities in Britain, the OU is financed directly by the Treasury on the decisions of the Department of Education and Science, and this puts it into a direct relationship with the government of the day. All its printed courses are available for sale to the public, and all its broadcasts are on open channels so that, quite unlike other universities, anyone can know what is being taught at any time. These are two strong influences towards conservatism. The third main conservative force is exerted by its students who, in the large majority, are looking not for social change at all but social mobility. They want a ‘respectable’ degree which will be accepted by employers, professional institutes and other educational institutions.

Pioneering Venture

In spite of these quite powerful forces, there is, in fact, a tendency for OU courses to be socially critical. The teachers who were attracted to the University when it seemed to be a pioneering venture tended to be those with a desire to change education. There were those who called themselves marxists, some who called themselves christians, and a much larger body who felt only that education should be much more relevant to daily life. What has happened it that the peculiar Open University process has taken them over and produced an amalgam of all their efforts that has been described as ‘pale pink’. It is this “pale pink’’ course material that has been supplied, not only to OU undergraduates and associate students, but also through Open University Educational Enterprises Ltd. to bookshops all over this country and is being marketed in many other countries in the world, especially the USA.

In this and a number of other ways, the OU is a blend of the commercial and the educational — very different from either the commercial correspondence college on the one hand or, say, a polytechnic on the other. In the matter of fees, for example, the OU student is much worse off than the person who can secure a full-time place at an ordinary university. He cannot get the same sort of grant. He pays his own course fees. This year these are £52 for a full credit course. On top of this he may need set books worth about £20, and if there is a summer school in the course this will cost £50 plus travelling expenses. Most Local Education Authorities have been awarding grants for all or part of the summer school fee and expenses, but OU students have been among the first to suffer in the last two years as local council spending has been cut.

Commercial Approach

Although the OU began by setting up as full a programme as it could afford of undergraduate studies, an important part of the original idea was the provision of post experience courses for people who simply wished to up-date their knowledge in a particular field. The number of people taking single courses in this way as associate students has been steadily growing over the last two or three years in spite of the fact that they pay considerably more, often for the same course, than they would if they were undergraduates. There is no government subsidy of associate students, and there has in the past been considerable acrimony within the University about the rather ruthless commercial approach that was adopted towards these students. This argument was typical of hundreds that have gone on in countless committee meetings throughout the last eight years. The same academics who were pledged to delivering “meaningful” higher education to everyone who wanted it, and to using all the aids of modern technology to this end, also found themselves committed, by the structure and financing of the University, to the minimisation of the cost of higher education to the state. Every innovation therefore, like the marking of assignments by computer, teaching by telephone, or the provision of home experiment kits, has to be justified on economic as well as educational grounds.

Failure Rate

One of the confident predictions of the early critics was that the failure rate among students would be enormous, and that this would offset any apparent financial saving. When one looks at the educational background of OU students and the circumstances under which they study, the prediction seems realistic. Anyone over 21 resident in the UK can apply for a place, regardless of previous education, and places are offered on a first-come-first-served basis. For undergraduates there is even a limited amount of financial assistance for those unable to pay the fees. They study at home from correspondence material which arrives by post. They listen to radio and watch TV broadcasts associated with their course, and they can attend a local study centre for help and advice from their tutors and counsellors. If they study at the rate of one full credit a year, which is normal, they will need to spend about fifteen hours a week aside from their job and their home and family for about forty weeks in the year. During this time they will submit about ten written assignments by post to their tutor and about the same number of pencil-marked forms to be assessed by the computer at Milton Keynes. In early November they will sit a three-hour examination, and the marks from this and their assignments are put together to produce a grade for the course. They need six of these credits for an ordinary degree and eight for an honours degree.

It is a hard way to get a degree, and some students are still working their way slowly through the system. Nevertheless, by 1977, 27,102 had graduated, and it is becoming evident that the rate of failure is not nearly as high as was expected. To begin with, there was a very high percentage of teachers taking degrees, and these might be expected to succeed. As the educational preparedness of applicants falls we can expect to see a fall in the success rate. But it is still astonishing to teachers brought up on a selective system of education to see how well ordinary people manage to cope with quite rigorous degree studies.

One of the recurrent criticisms from the ‘left’ is that OU learning, because of the mass production methods, is rigid and prevents questioning. The people who make this sort of criticism have usually got research degrees themselves. They forget how little opportunity there is for undergraduates at any university to question what they are taught. In the OU it is, if anything, the students themselves who avoid questioning. For too many of them the degree is simply a means to an end, and they simply want to know which are the ‘right’ answers so that they can get the degree as quickly as possible. It is the writers of the courses and the tutors in the study centres who try to persuade them to look all round a question. Over a period of six years or more, this is bound to have some effect, but it is a bit like working against the pull of gravity.

Illusion

When they apply to the OU many people have the illusion that a degree is a passport to higher pay, a better job, and increased social prestige, and the University spends a considerable amount of time and money in trying to convince them that this is not necessarily so, especially if, like the majority, they are already over thirty.

The fact is that having a degree of any kind, is no guarantee of a better job—or even of any job at all. It does not change the graduate’s status as one compelled to sell his labour power to earn a living.

The Open University has the following aim written into its charter ". . . to advance the educational well-being of the community generally”. Education — the spread of knowledge and understanding — can only be beneficial to the spread of socialist ideas.

Ron Cook

Blogger's Note:

This article was written under Ron Cook sometime pen-name of 'S. Stafford'. I think in this case that name was used because Ron himself was an Open University tutor.

What the papers say — and what they don’t (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many readers will be aware of a regular B.B.C. radio feature called What The Papers Say. It is a digest of the most important articles in the day’s press. For those of us who can’t afford/can’t stomach to read every daily newspaper it provides a useful summary of what they are saying. It has often seemed that a rather more enlightening feature would be What the Papers Don’t Say or, even better, Why the Papers Said What They Did. The idea implied by calling a newspaper The Daily Mirror is that the press works on a reflective basis, i.e. the publication in written form of the facts as they really happened. This is far from the case. In fact, the press works on the principle of selecting what events are suitable for public consumption, deciding how the ‘story’ is to be told in accordance with ‘editorial policy’ (which is a journalistic term for political bias) and making sure that the ‘facts’ are not likely to contradict illusions created by the advertisements. The role of the press is more to do with implanting views than spreading news. Indeed, when a news event interferes with the image that the editor wants perpetuated, then it must either be not referred to or else distorted, in such a way so as to back up rather than contradict the political line of the newspaper.

Editorial Selectivity

Workers in Britain are brought up to believe that we live in a free country. We are told that Britain is democratic because there is a ‘free press’. It is an illusion to believe that the press in a capitalist society can be anything but the propaganda tool of the minority class whose social survival depends on the political ignorance of the masses. That is not to say that newspapers are part of some kind of capitalist conspiracy to brainwash the working class. An important distinction must be made between conscious political indoctrination and more subtle editorial selectivity. Indoctrination requires a captive audience, i.e. one which has only one source of news which is controlled totally by the State. The press in countries where capitalism takes a more liberal form of work on the basis of giving support to the status quo, but criticising the leaders of capitalism on matters not likely to lead to fundamental social change. A clear comparison between the two methods of capitalist propaganda can be seen by looking at the press in Russia and in this country.

Undemocratic

Russia, despite its claim to be socialist, is one of the most brutal and undemocratic capitalist regimes in existence. The press has been developed by the ruling Communist Party as an elaborate and complex apparatus designed to shape the thinking of the Soviet working class. Krushchev, in 1956, said to a gathering of writers and artists

The press is our chief ideological weapon. It is called upon to rout the enemies of the working class, the enemies of the toilers (sic). Just as an army cannot fight without weapons, so the Party cannot successfully carry on its ideological work without such a sharp and militant weapon as the press. (Printed in Kommunist, no. 12, August 1957)

To ensure that the Soviet media carry out their task of indoctrination there exists a Department of Propaganda and Agitation, a Ministry of Culture, a Ministry of the Radio-Technical industry as well as a Press Commission. There are over 7,000 Soviet newspapers reaching over 100 million readers. All newspapers are controlled centrally—editorials are written by Communist Party officials and circulated for publication. All newspaper editors are appointed by the State and are subject to strict contiol from Moscow: each Soviet periodical must have the mark of authorisation from Glavslit, the government censorship agency.

Despite such attempts by the Soviet dictatorship to control the media, they have learnt that running a system of indoctrination presents problems:

there are serious chinks in the Soviet propaganda armour. The agitators, for example, are caught between the direct pressures and hostilities of the population from below, and the constant pressure of the Party from above demanding that they exhort and goad on the population to still greater efforts and sacrifice. As a result thousands each year abandon their work as agitators. Editors must constantly be reprimanded for ideological ‘deviations’ in their newspapers . . . And the regime is in many respects a prisoner of its own system. For, insofar as it wishes to judge the state of popular thinking, it must rely either on the secret police or on the reports of the agitators and the newspaper editors. (Developments in Soviet Mass Communications in Social Change in Soviet Russia, A. Inkeles, 1968)

The evolution of the British press has been along different lines because of the historical circumstances in which it emerged. It was created by the rising British capitalist class in the Eighteenth Century as a weapon in their struggle against the feudal State. The battle to publish parliamentary debates, to criticise the government and even to criticise the King, in the case of John Wilkes, was won by the capitalist class. Freedom to criticise is a tradition of the press which grew out of the division within the ruling class. Until the last two decades of the Nineteenth Century the press in Britain was independently owned, often by family concerns relying primarily on classified advertisements and regular sales. It was not possible for any one section of the ruling class to control the press as no one section owned it. It was the so-called Northcliffe revolution of the 1880’s which transformed the role of the press, for it was then that the previously independently owned newspapers were taken over by corporate press houses which were dependent on expensive, block display advertising. From then on newspapers became the province of large, capital intensive corporations, such as Beaverbrook, which endeavoured to direct editorial policy towards winning support for their class interest. The press in Britain is, therefore, free in that peculiar sense that freedom exists under capitalism: they are free to lie, distort, slander, publish trivia and exclude serious issues. Nevertheless, there does exist the freedom to publish alternative ideas, which is vital to the growth of the Socialist Party.

But the press under capitalism is not free in the Socialist sense, for to be so anyone would have access to the control of newspapers instead of a small group of businessmen or bureaucrats more committed to self-preservation than to providing useful information. How, then, can the aim of a free press be realised? One argument is that those who produce newspapers — editors, journalists, office staff, printers — should democratically participate in running them. The attempted ‘workers control’ of the Scottish Daily Express showed the unpractically of such reform within a society which places advertising revenue above democratic principles. Another argument, often advocated by the “Left”, is for the nationalisation of the print industry. As can be seen from the Russian example, State control of the means of communication, while politically benefiting those parties which are politically in agreement with the government of the day, can lead to discrimination against those seeking changes which are unwelcome to the State.

In fact, there is no way within capitalist society that the press can be made fully democratic. Capitalists will always provide newspapers with money for two reasons: to buy space to advertise their commodities to the workers who read the newspapers and to ensure the perpetration of capitalist ideology in a popular form — just as their great grandfathers supported the pulpit; they rely on huge sales to members of the working class. It is in the interest of all members of that class, whether they read The Times or The Sun to reject the lies and illusions of the capitalist press and support a journal which stands for their emancipation from the unfree society.

Steve Coleman

An Appeal For Funds (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been appealing in the Socialist Standard for funds to help us meet the printer’s bill for the new edition of ‘Questions of the Day’.

We find that in addition we need at least £500 per month just to “keep the Wolf from the door’ and we are calling on all concerned to send the very largest donations possible direct to the Treasurer at 52, Clapham High Street. London SW4.

Readers are also urged to favourably consider arranging through their own banks to pay a regular monthly amount into the SPGB Special account No. 02823446 at the National Westminster Bank, Clapham North Branch (50 21 00) and advise the Party Funds Organisers. This can easily be arranged by your local Bank, or we will send you a Banker’s Order form upon request.

(Attention Len Murray) (1978)

From the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

"If it were in the power of the capitalist producers to raise prices of their commodities at will; they could (and would) do so, without waiting for a rise in wages. 

The capitalist class would never resist the Trade Unions, since the capitalists could always avail themselves of every rise in wages to raise their prices, and thus pocket greater profit."

Capital, Vol. II, p. 392

SPGB Meetings (1978)

Party News from the March 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: A world fit for humans (1978)

Editorial from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The great mistake of the so-called Environmentalist Movement is that it treats the thing it seeks to protect as if it existed separately from the very conditions which put it under attack.

It is almost impossible now to read a newspaper which is bare of some sort of reference to pollution of the air or the sea or the rivers; in some cases, such as the Mediterranean of the Canadian Lakes, to a frightening extent. And we have recently been made starkly aware of the fact that there is a time bomb being rapidly built up beneath us — atomic power stations, oil refineries, chemical plants and the like.

Every so often something happens which confirms some of our worst fears — like the leak at Windscale or the explosion at Flixborough or the poison cloud at Seveso. These events are called accidents, which is a rather loose way of using that word.

And what about the places which actually sit on the time bomb? There is no lack of verbose planning experts (simple minded people may be surprised, or shocked, to learn that such places are actually planned) who contribute their worries about the pressures of urban decay (a nice name for slums) or development blight (a way of describing homes made uninhabitable by the motorway outside the bedroom window) or locational stress (which can mean the big jets screaming in just above the chimney).

So we might expect that there would spring up organisations, armed with facts and statistics and a measure of sincerity (as well, sometimes, with an injection of commercially inspired financial support) to oppose the chemical plant or the motorway or the airport runway.

Such organisations have an instant appeal. Who would not demonstrate against a great slash of concrete destroying a green and peaceful valley, where workers might expect to find some rest after the rush and tear of the week? Who is not outraged by the cloud of poison which is ceaselessly pumped into the atmosphere?

The question, then, is why these organisations, with their facts and their sincerity and their resources, fail. Why, after all their efforts to stem the polluting tide, does the environment steadily deteriorate and become even more threatening to the people who exist in it?

We live today under social system known as capitalism — an accurate name, since its driving force is the accumulation of wealth as capital. This gives that wealth a particular social characteristic; it is commodity wealth, produced for sale rather that for use.

For example, food is produced under capitalism not because people need to eat, but in order that it be sold; and literally millions of people starve simply because they cannot buy the food they need to live. Homes are built under capitalism, not because people need shelter and comfort, but to sell or rent; and literally millions of people are homeless or live in slums, because they cannot afford a decent home. The list of the ways in which capitalism fails to provide for the needs of its people is almost without end.

Capitalism has organised its communities — its towns and its cities — as basically economic units, to feed more easily its massive appetite for human exploitation in the productive process. This concentration makes for its own tensions; apart from those more obvious ones of the slums there are the subtle neuroses of the trim estates of semi-detached poverty, where every worker’s dream of his own mortgage millstone comes horrendously true. Or the outworn terraces, as close as the bugs which infest them. Or the high rise flats, once the final solution of the planners who never seem actually to live in them.

And every so often what small peace there might be found in these concentrations is shattered by a road being ground through, or a new runway laid down or great concrete towers of office blocks being raised alongside. The environmentalists wail and wring their hands over the destruction of something they like to call the Quality of Life — which begs an enormous number of questions.

It is because they ignore the basic facts of capitalism’s motivation that the environmentalists fail and must continue to fail. The alternative may not have their kind of glamour, the appeal of the instant demonstration or sit down before the TV camera, but it does have the more enduring quality of matching effectively with reality.

There is only one way of ending capitalism’s problems and that is to end capitalism itself. That said, there is only one alternative to capitalism and that is socialism. The new society will be one of common ownership of the means of production and distribution, which means that its wealth will be produced for use.

One immediate result of this will be that the priorities of socialism will be those of human interests and not minority profit. The quality of what we produce — whether it is food or clothing or housing — and of how we organise our lives will be, simply, the best we are capable of.

Socialism will be a massive transformation of every aspect of human life — our social and personal relationships, how and where we live and what surrounds our lives. The experiences of capitalism — its slums, its pressures, its assault upon the very air we breathe — will be no more than an evil memory.

Socialist society will give us a sweeter life; it will cleanse the food we eat, the water we drink, the very earth we tread. It will be a world fit for human beings to live in and it is waiting for us to make it reality.

Running Commentary: Hypocrisy at Camp David (1978)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hypocrisy at Camp David

There is no record of anyone who attended the recent Egypt/Israeli talks at Camp David actually being physically sick, but such was the hypocrisy which spewed out there that it might easily have happened.

With the first approaches between the two countries, last year, Begin and Sadat both made unctuous speeches implying that peace could come to the Middle East provided all the leaders there were sincere in their desire for it. It was, they said, a simple matter of good intentions triumphing over bad — a weary but persistent version of history.

These good intentions soon evaporated when the leaders got down to discussing the real business of the economic and military domination of the area.

It was then that the Americans, much in the style developed by Henry Kissinger, forced both sides once more to the conference table. The agreement which followed — which effectively postponed settlement of the more sensitive problems — was publicised in the same nauseating manner as before, with Sadat embracing Begin as a grinning Carter looked on.

Capitalism’s war and peace are not matters of good intentions, or bad; war springs from the economic rivalries inherent in the system. The Middle East, with its oil rich fields and its strategic importance, is especially sensitive and so has been in continual conflict for a very long time.

America’s rivalry with Russia has given given it an interest in keeping the peace — on American terms — in the Middle East, an interest which was demonstrated in, for example, the intervention over Suez in 1956 and the invasion of the Lebanon in 1958.

So Camp David, behind the publicity handouts, was a typically sordid carve up of capitalist interests, backed by some frightening military power. As an agreement it will be worth no more than those others which, when it suited the signatories, were broken.

The true nature of Camp David was illuminated when it became clear that the American arms industry was going to be able to sell a lot more of its products as a result — and to both sides, too.

So everyone was happy, except those who care for the future of human society and who want a safer world for us to live in — or those who may have been sick over it all.

British cars in trouble

British Leyland has been subjected to the attentions of a succession of whizz kids, if that term can be applied to the ageing likes of Lords Stoke and Ryder. These men were said to be possessed of unnatural powers enabling them to tame the wildest ways of capitalism’s anarchy.

Well so far they have all failed, which has not deterred another candidate being pushed into the cage to see what he could do to put down the uncontrollable.

Michael Edwardes came to British Leyland with the reputation of a man who unfailingly organises profitable balance sheets. So when he found that BL is in such deep trouble he must have had problems, after all those nice things said about him in the newspapers, in admitting that it might be anything to do with him or with what he is trying to control.

Nobody could have been surprised when Edwardes decided that the real problem is with the workers at British Leyland who, as everyone knows, are a peculiarly lazy, unreliable and selfish lot. In fact there has been so much propaganda recently on those lines that the BL worker has become part of British capitalism’s folk mythology, a scapegoat for the system’s defects.

It should be noted, that so far Edwardes has confined his criticism of those who don’t work to exclude the most blatant examples of it — the capitalist class. Perhaps he is too well aware of who is employing him — and of what they expect him to say.

Behind the emotional smoke screen, the facts about the car industry are clear. Competition is fierce — and getting fiercer in this country, as more and more foreign vehicles challenge for a slice of the market. Where before there were a few Renaults and Volkswagens there are now many, as well as Japanese, Italian and even Russian cars.

British Leyland invested a lot of money in its Marina model, which competes in the middle range where the pressure is particularly strong Cutting corners to keep costs down has resulted in a shoddy car, even by the standards of the car industry, and this also contributed to BLs sick joke image.

A typical mess of capitalism. But the answer does not lie in inveighing against the workers, who also compete for employment and for survival, but in an examination of the social system itself.

No vacancies

Not only do the workers (skilled tradesmen, foremen, shop-floor workers, managers) operate capitalist society, and produce and distribute its commodities, but they play a large part in enforcing the capitalist ethic. Many members of the working class never see a capitalist (unless perhaps on the telly, or getting into a taxi outside a London luxury hotel). The average youth is drilled into accepting the capitalist ethic (that is, it is right for the owning class to live in wealth without working, but it is wrong for the rest of us to live even in poverty without working) by other members of the working class: parents and relatives, teachers, journalists, policemen, workmates, civil servants, etc.

Almost certainly Stephen Dayus, the sixteen-year-old son of a Birmingham window cleaner, never met or spoke with a capitalist. Yet he was convinced of his own worthlessness when he left school and could not find a job. “He longed to be an electrician and wrote countless letters to employers. But in job-hungry Birmingham — where thousands of youngsters shared his plight — the reply was always the same: no vacancies” (Daily Express, 29.3.78.) Stephen probably did not realise that there are thousands of young people in this country at this moment who are not only not looking for employment, but would regard it as totally irrelevant. They will never have to “get a job”; they may sit on a few boards of directors in due course, but the nearest they will get to work will be to make sure that others are working in the enterprises they will inherit. All Stephen knew was what other members of the working class told him; that the was failing in his line of duty if he could not find an employer to make a profit out of him. “Finally, depressed by rejection and the jibes of luckier friends sixteen-year-old Stephen hanged himself” 

No individual capitalist can be blamed for this tragic suicide. It is the capitalist system, with the loyal support and assistance of many deluded members of the working class, which killed Stephen Dayus.