Special Supplement on Marx (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

One hundred years ago this month, Karl Marx died. In a speech at his graveside, Engels said that “the greatest living thinker” had “ceased to think”. Since 1904, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has kept alive the socialist analysis of Marx’s thought, and exposed its distortions by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. We are marking the centenary of Marx’s death with the publication of this 24-page special supplement in the Socialist Standard.

• Marx the Revolutionary: 100 Years of Development and Distortion
• "Interview With Marx"
• Historical materialism
• [Invitation to “public figures” to give their views on Marx] 
• Tony Benn on Marx, with reply
• Marx: a critical view by Brian Crozier, with reply
• Applying Marx: economics
• Lenin's Legacy
• Marx the journalist
• Marx's partner: Engels
• Marx and Darwin
• Engels' review of Capital 

Applying Marx (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are now in the heaviest trade depression since World War II, with little expectation that recovery will take place in the near future. This has caused dismay and confusion among the economists, dividing them into half a dozen groups each with its own remedy and denouncing their rivals. Not only did they not foresee the depression but nearly all of them denied that it could happen. They had accepted the belief that it is possible for a government to prevent unemployment if it wishes to do so.

First in the field was the Labour Party. In its Election Programme. 1918. Labour and the New Social Order, it stated: "It is now known that the Government . . . can arrange the public works and the orders of National Departments and Local Authorities in such a way as to maintain the aggregate demand for labour in the whole kingdom”. (While they were the Government, 1929-1931, unemployment rose by 1½ million.)

By 1944. under the influence of J.M. Keynes, the three parties. Tory, Labour and Liberal (and the TUC), had all accepted the commitment to maintain "full employment”. It was set out in a document Employment Policy issued by the three parties represented in the war-time national government. Confidence in the policy was confirmed by the Committee on the Working of the Monetary System in a Report in 1958. In Paragraph 484 they said: "When discussing with witnesses the impact of restrictive monetary measures we have been constantly reminded that, as compared with earlier decades, restrictive developments have a much less frightening aspect now that Governments are always committed to full employment policies”.

Commenting on this. Professor F.W. Paish wrote: “This belief springs directly from the expectation that no government will in future allow any really substantial amount of unemployment to appear, even temporarily”. (The Banker, October 1959.) Actually, at the time the Committee published their report, unemployment was already on an upward trend after the very low levels of the ten years after the war. Unemployment rose again while the Labour Party was in office from 1964-1970, though they declared they would not let this happen, and it more than doubled under the Labour government of 1974-1979.

Towards the end of that government's office Prime Minister Callaghan and Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey began to question the validity of the Keynesian “full employment” doctrine. Later, for the first time since the war. a government — under Thatcher — formally repudiated it. But they still claimed to be able to deal with unemployment, firstly by curbing inflation and secondly by reducing taxation: “The State takes too much of the nation's income; its share will be steadily reduced. When it spends and borrows too much, taxes, interest rates, prices and unemployment rise”. (The Conservative Manifesto — 1979.) After four years of office unemployment has risen from 1,300,000 to over 3 million.

The one economist who comes well out of this confusion is Marx. He showed that, in competition with each other to gain a larger market share, capitalists are always seeking to reduce prices by means of labour-displacing machinery and that inevitably depressions occur from time to time: "Capitalist production moves through certain periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis and stagnation". He never accepted that unemployment and depression could be avoided by some change of government monetary, taxation or investment policy. Nor did he accept the validity of the argument that unemployment would fall and depression be avoided by putting up wages. (The policy which the Independent Labour Party sought to popularise in the 1920s.) Marx showed that not only do wages rise in every boom, but at that time the working class “actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption”. (Capital Vol. Ill. Kerr Edition, p. 474.) Far from remedying the situation this is, said Marx, "always . . . a harbinger of the social crisis".

Marx showed the limitations of the trade union struggle for higher wages. The aim of the capitalist in carrying on business is "the augmentation of his capital”. Wages can therefore go on rising only as long as the rise “does not interfere with the progress of accumulation". (Capital Vol. 1, p. 678 in the Kerr edition). Beyond this, accumulation slackens, "because the stimulus of gain is blunted", in other words, the employer does not for long employ workers out of whom he cannot make profit. Marx saw as inevitable a fall of the workers’ standard of living in depressions when, owing to heavy unemployment, the supply of workers overshoots the demand. Though he did suggest that “it might in such circumstances be necessary to test the real state of demand and supply by a strike, for example, or other method". (Value Price and Profit).

After Marx's death, Frederick Engels put forward the idea that Marx's cycle no longer applied, and had given way to "permanent and chronic depression”, but events soon showed that he was wrong and he returned to Marx's “cycle” theory. In the depressions of the 1880s and between the wars, a considerable number of workers and even some economists became convinced that Marx was right about unemployment and depressions. Then Marxist theory was pushed into the background by Keynes. John Strachey, who had claimed to be a Marxist, told how reading Keynes’ book General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money made him change his views. (He became a Minister in the Attlee Labour government). Richard Crossman. Minister of Housing in the 1964 Labour government, said that Keynes demonstrated that capitalism is not "an inherently unworkable system” and, by so doing, undermined “the old economic case for socialism". (The Times, 24 February 1956)

Even before Keynes dominated the scene most economists rejected Marx's labour theory of value, including the few who looked favourably on other parts of Marx's writings. It is interesting to notice the irrelevance of some of the more common objections to the labour theory, clearly the result of not troubling to understand it.

Marx explained carefully that he was dealing with commodities, articles regularly produced for sale and capable of reproduction. Because Marx showed that commodities have a value and a price the critics assumed, without any justification, that Marx must also be saying that everything which has a price had to be a commodity and have value. They have instanced the enormous prices paid for old master paintings, forgetting that these are incapable of reproduction and are therefore not commodities.

Marx answered the critics:

Objects that in themselves are not commodities. such as conscience, honour etc. are capable of being offered for sale by their holders and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence the object may have a price without having value. (Capital Vol. I p. 115. Kerr edition).

The late Harold Laski. who wrote quite sympathetically about Marx, gave an astonishing interpretation to the labour theory, in his book Communism (Home University Library 1927, p.95):

Thus we can measure the amount of labour-power in each man's effort, and so determine scientifically how he ought to be paid.

Laski borrowed this from A.D. Lindsay's book Karl Marx’s Capital (page 61). Lindsay wrote “The Labour Theory of Value is misleading. It is primarily interested in what a man ought to get in reward for his labour”. Both Lindsay and Laski were quite wrong. No such idea entered Marx's head and it is impossible even to guess what can have given Laski and Lindsay this strange notion.

Much has been made by critics of the allegation that in Volume I of Capital Marx put forward the theory that commodities exchange at value and then changed his mind and concluded in Volume III that some commodities permanently sell above their value and others below their value. The critics failed to notice Marx’s explanation in Volume I that he was first dealing with value and would later deal with its price form and that they were not identical. There was, for example, the footnote on page 244 of Volume I (Kerr edition):

The calculations in the text are intended merely as illustrations, and in them, therefore. it is assumed that prices are equal to value. In Book Three we shall learn that even in the case of average prices no such simple assumption can be made.

As for the critics' assumption that the alleged change of mind took place later, Louis Boudin pointed out that "most of the third volume, and particularly those portions of it which are supposed to modify the first Volume, were actually written down by Marx in its present form before the publication of the first Volume". (Theoretical System of Karl Marx, page 133.)

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

Mention has already been made of the way in which the emergence of Keynes as the leading economist pushed into the background what Marx had written about unemployment and depression. The reason for this was obvious: if, as was almost universally believed, “full employment” was guaranteed for all time, theories about unemployment and depressions ceased to be of interest.

The almost total disregard of what Marx had to say about inflation is less easy to explain. That it should have been disregarded in this country in the period of nearly 100 years before 1914 when the gold standard operated is understandable, because there was no inflation. Why then has there been no interest in Marx’s explanation in the nearly forty years of continuous inflation since World War II? One reason is that, while much has been written about other aspects of Marx's writing, his economics have stayed out of favour even among many people who profess to be Marxists. A second reason is that many of the latter appear to be unaware that Marx had something to say about inflation. A third reason has been that when Keynesian doctrines began to fall into disrepute because of the failure of the “full employment" policy, attention went to the monetarists led by Professor Milton Friedman, who added to the confusion with his absurd remark that Marx, too, was a monetarist.

It is beyond dispute that the policies of Labour and Tory governments have led to the present price level being at least ten times what it was in 1945. (Prices have risen by over 50 per cent under the Thatcher government). It is also beyond dispute that all the governments up to 1979 have claimed to be following Keynesian policies; yet the Keynesian document, the 1944 Employment Policy endorsed by the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties in the national government, proclaimed the intention of seeking to maintain a “more or less stable price level". It is also true that while Keynes himself advocated short term use of inflation to reduce real wages in certain circumstances, his long-term aim was “allowing wages to rise slowly while keeping prices stable" (General Theory page 271). It is at least arguable that if Keynes had lived to see what was being done in his name he would have disowned it.

Why then have prices been rising continuously for over forty years? Marx’s answer would have been that it became a possibility with the abandonment of the gold standard in 1931, and became an actuality through the increase of the currency (notes and coin) in circulation with the public, from under £500 million in 1938 to nearly £11,000 million. The gold standard background is important. While the gold standard operated the pound sterling was. by law, a fixed weight of gold (about a quarter of an ounce). The effect was that the notes could never deviate, except marginally, from the value of the legally fixed equivalent weight of gold. As it was said at that time, "a Bank of England note is as good as gold", and it was everywhere accepted as such. Now the notes are “inconvertible" and their purchasing power steadily declines through excess issue.

Marx defined it as follows:

If the quantity of paper money issued were double what it ought to he, then, as a matter of fact. £1 would be the money-name not of a quarter of an ounce of gold but of one-eighth of an ounce of gold. The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. Those values that were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2. (Capital. Vol. I page 144 in the Kerr edition)

Several points have to be noted. What Marx meant by "what it ought to be" was the total quantity of gold that would circulate with a wholly gold coin currency. It was an application of his labour theory of value, gold having value like all other commodities. He was not saying (as did some quantity theorists) that any increase of inconvertible paper currency causes prices to rise. The rise occurs only to the extent that the quantity of notes is in excess of “what it ought to be". If, for example, production and population increase, the "necessary" amount of gold in circulation would increase. Other factors also affect this, including the tendency for the “necessary" amount of currency to decline with the development of transport and the banking system.

Marx also pointed out that there are other, "non-currency" factors, which affect prices, including changes in the value of commodities and the rise of prices in a boom and fall in a depression. (Also, while the gold standard operated, a fall in the value of gold would raise prices and a rise in the value of gold would reduce prices.) Marx made another valuable contribution to the whole issue of inflation and deflation. In accordance with his labour theory of value wages too are prices, the price of labour-power. So inflation which raises prices also raises wages. And deflation, which lowers prices, also lowers wages. Both situations are however affected by whatever ability the workers have to gain wage increases beyond the rise of other prices, or to prevent wages falling as much as other prices.

Some people have been misled by Milton Friedman's talk of controlling “money supply" into believing that he and Marx were thinking on similar lines. This is not so. Marx was talking about "currency", notes and coins, while Friedman’s doctrine is concerned with bank deposits, based on an old fallacy that the price level is related to the rise and fall of bank deposits. Keynes held the same view. In his Monetary Reform (1923 p. 128) he wrote: "The internal price level is mainly determined by the amount of credit created by the banks, chiefly the Big Five . . . The amount of credit, so created, is in its turn roughly measured by the volume of the banks’ deposits"

One last word about Keynes. Now that the Keynesians are in disarray perhaps some of them will look again at Keynes’ statement that Marx’s Capital was “an obsolete economic textbook which I know to be scientifically erroneous and without interest or application for the modern world".

Do they still find that convincing?

Edgar Hardcastle

Lenin's Legacy (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is irrelevant that in Russia the means of production are (mostly) not privately owned. Capital can be owned collectively: "the capitalists as a whole take direct part in the exploitation of the total working class by the totality of capital". [1] Bukharin emphasised the "class monopoly in the means of production", when "vulgar economists” had eyes only for private capitalists. [2] Engels wrote:

State ownership of the productive forces is not the answer . . . neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital . . . The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians”. [3]

Russian economic and political conditions differ from the West in that the means of production and distribution are formally owned by the state, and that there is a monopoly of political power by one party which consequently exercises monopolistic control over the means of production and distribution. Inequalities arising from the Party’s dictatorship have created a new exploiting class, powerful and privileged. "The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians."

Lenin preached and practised what Marx condemned. Lenin, a product of the Russian "intelligentsia", was caught up in the struggle against feudalism when the Russian proletariat was still only a fraction of the workforce. His policy was to control workers’ organisations by setting up secret cells. “The Party must be the vanguard, the leader of the broad mass of the working class”, he wrote. [4] Marx however declared: “The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves". [5]

Engels considered that in Russia "both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie exist only in sporadic form and have not passed beyond the inferior stage of development" Against Tkachev's view that Russians were "the chosen people" who could bypass capitalism altogether, he argued: "the existence of the bourgeoisie is . . . as necessary a condition for the socialist revolution as the proletariat. A person who maintains that this revolution could be carried out more easily in his country because it has neither proletariat nor bourgeoisie proves by his statement that he has understood nothing of socialism”. [6]

Marx held that Russia was not yet capitalist: “if Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation . . . she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians’’. [7] Fifty years later, Stalin presided over the ruthless process of primitive accumulation when

great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians on the labour-market . . . And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. [8]

In 1918, the Socialist Party of Great Britain declared: "there is no ground whatever for supposing that (the peasants) are ready or willing to accept social ownership of the land". Could Russia be ready for socialism? “Unless a mental revolution such as the world has never seen before has taken place, or an economic change has occurred more rapidly than history has ever recorded, the answer is ‘No'.” [9]

Since the essential preconditions for a socialist revolution did not exist, the irony of history changed Lenin and his successors into midwives of capitalism, not socialism. The “vanguard party” with its "advanced theory” had to follow the bloody path of primitive accumulation, to clear the way for the capitalism they had willed to destroy.

Lenin gained power in a backward country whose economy had collapsed. The European revolutions he confidently expected failed to occur, and no class in Russia supported socialism. “The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme Party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe", wrote Engels.[10] Since neither the economic nor the political conditions for socialism existed, any attempt to introduce socialism by abandoning the market economy and commodity production was utopian and doomed to disaster.

The Vanguard Party

Lenin claimed that "by its own forces the working class can only arrive at a trade union consciousness . . . the workers can acquire class political consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers".[11] This view did not come from Marx but from the Narodnik tradition “Neither now nor in the future is the people, left to itself, capable of achieving the social revolution. Only we. the revolutionary minority, can". wrote Tkachev. [12] In 1891 Axelrod argued that the workers' struggle was industrial, not political: “in the struggle for political freedom. the advanced sections of the proletariat follow the revolutionary circles and the fractions of the so-called intelligentsia". [12]

Lenin believed in this leadership role: “the intellectuals are good at solving questions ‘of principle'. They are good at drafting plans and supervising the execution of plans". [12] His view reflected the undeveloped state of the Russian working class. It was not held by Marx who, while recognising the importance of theory, also recognised the workers’ ability to organise themselves without the leadership of a self-appointed élite. The early utopian socialists, he wrote, saw in the proletariat only "the most suffering class . . . incapable of any historical initiative"; to them "the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat" was inconceivable. [13] These comments apply equally to Lenin.

Marx's view of the socialist revolution was that it will be achieved by the working class — "the only really revolutionary class”. They will organise themselves. Vanguardism is a denial of Marx's most basic proposition.

The Dictatorship of the Party

On leaving Switzerland, Lenin wrote: "the Russian proletariat is less organised, prepared and class-conscious than the proletariat of other countries . . . Russia is a peasant country and one of the most backward of European countries”. [14] He seized power knowing this, and knowing the Bolsheviks were a minority. To retain power he established a dictatorship.

Within weeks he created the Cheka, an “absolutely independent organisation . . . with power to carry out searches, arrests and executions". [15] Dzerzhinski. the head of the Cheka, was to become head of the VSNKh, set up to control the economy. The Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and trade unions were under the control of the Party.

Tackling starvation in the cities, Lenin declared the problem “has to be solved by military methods, with absolute ruthlessness". [16] Terror was not ruled out. “The dictatorship is a rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws", he wrote. [17] Forget democracy: "no essential contradiction can exist between the Soviet, that is, the socialist democracy, and the exercise of dictatorial power by a single person”. [18]

Marx wrote of “the dictatorship of the proletariat" meaning the organisation of the proletariat as the ruling class, as exemplified in the democratic Paris Commune. Lenin, latching on to the phrase, interpreted it to mean instead dictatorship by the vanguard with himself at the head. He echoed the Blanquist theory of "a dictatorial power, whose mission it will be to direct the revolutionary movement . . . to be strong, to act quickly, the dictatorial power will have to be concentrated in as small a number of persons as possible". [19]

Rosa Luxemburg protested:

the historical mission of the proletariat . . . is to create, in place of the bourgeois democracy. a Socialist democracy, and not to destroy democracy altogether . . . The dictatorship of the proletariat consists in the manner of application of democracy, not in its abolition . . . this democracy must be the work of the class and not of a small minority in the name of the (working) class.

She was particularly opposed to “the abolition of the most important guarantees for a healthy public life and for the labouring masses — the freedoms of the press, of association and of speech”. [20]

Marx loathed press censorship: "the censored press . . . is a flabby caricature without liberty, a civilised monster, a horror even though sprinkled with rosewater". [21] Lenin’s dictatorship demanded it.

The Missing Link

Lenjn argued that “socialism" was a transition stage to “communism”. During this "rather lengthy process”, when "all citizens would be converted into workers and employees of one huge ‘syndicate' — the whole state”, the state would wither away. [22] This confused theory is contrary to the views of Marx and Engels, who both used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably.

Lenin asserted that "the first fact that has been established with complete exactitude by the whole theory of development, by science as a whole . . . is that, historically. there must be a special stage or a special phase of transition from capitalism to communism”. [22] “Science as a whole" had nothing to do with this “fact”: believing that the workers were not ready for socialism, since their class-consciousness had to be taught them by intellectuals, he did not accept that they could make "complete communism" work. That was "utopian” — so in the meantime, the aim had to be the “transition” stage.

In this "first phase” he decreed: “all citizens (would be) transformed into the salaried employees of the state, which consists of the armed workers . . . the whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory . . . escape from national accounting and control will inevitably become incredibly difficult, a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by swift and severe punishment". [22] Russia did indeed become one vast labour-camp, but it differs from what Lenin claimed for his “socialism". Bureaucracy multiplied instead of disappearing, "equal pay" was soon abandoned, and "strict accounting and control" was replaced by widespread corruption.

The unpleasant reality of the totalitarian state was masked by theories about a "socialist state” — a contradiction in terms. The existence of the state ("the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” [24]) implies and reflects the existence of an exploiting class. The state in Russia has the same function as in any other country: "the main object of the state has always been to secure, by armed force, the economic oppression of the labouring majority by the minority which alone possesses wealth”. [25]

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Marx’s conception of socialism means that, as Engels explained, “with the disappearance of an exclusively wealth-possessing minority there also disappears the necessity for the power of armed suppression. or state power”. [25] Since the state in Russia has not disappeared, after more than sixty years, we must conclude that its existence is proof positive of the existence of “an exclusively wealth-possessing class”, and exploiting class.

Ironically, Lenin in 1917 wrote opposing "the widespread view that . . . state monopoly capitalism is no longer capitalism, but can already be termed "state socialism’.” [26] However regulated and planned, he argued, the system remained capitalism. On this, at least, he was in agreement with Marx and Engels.

Charmian Skelton

References:

1. Capital Vol. Ill, chap. x.

2. The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, 1914.

3. Anti-Dühring

4. Quoted by Rudolf Sprenger. Bolshevism.

5. Inaugural Address to the International Workingmen’s Association.

6. Social Problems in Russia (1874), quoted by Daniel Norman, Marx and Soviet Reality.

7. Letter, 1877.

8. Capital Vol. I. chap. xxvi.

9. Socialist Standard, August. 1918.

10. The Peasant War in Germany.

11. What Is To Be Done? 1902 .'

12. Quoted by Sprenger, Bolshevism.

13. Communist Manifesto.

14. Quoted by R. Payne, Lenin.

15. Decrees of 20 Dec, 1917, and 26 Sept, 1918.

16. Speech of 2 Feb, 1920, quoted by Alec Nove, An Economic History of the Soviet Union.

17. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1919.

18. Speech 28 April 1918. quoted by Kautsky, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

19. Quoted by Martov, The State and Socialist Revolution. 1919.

20. The Russian Revolution, quoted by D. Norman. op. cit.

21. Quoted by D. Norman, op. cit.

22. The State and Revolution, 1917-18.

23. Left-wing Childishness and Petty Bourgeois Mentality, 1920.

24. Communist Manifesto.

25. Engels, letter to van Pappen, 1883.

26. The State and Revolution.

Marx's partner (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists cannot pay tribute to Marx without at the same time noting the role of his comrade and collaborator, Engels. It was Engels’ financial support which enabled the penurious Marx to carry out his researches into political economy.

But this financial support was not the least of Engels’ contributions. It is reckoned that about 1500 letters passed between Marx and Engels. They thought along the same lines, they spoke the same language, yet their life-experience was different. For Engels, there was the practical world of the Manchester cotton trade, he read widely, keeping himself fully informed of the latest developments in physics, chemistry and other sciences, with a special interest in comparative physiology and the controversies surrounding Darwin’s theory of evolution.

To Engels we owe volumes II and III of Marx's unfinished Capital, which he completed with difficulty from quantities of rough drafts and notes. After Marx’s death. Engels continued to publish translations and new editions of Marx’s works, providing prefaces in many languages. Yet it would be wrong to regard Engels only as Marx's editor, publisher and lifelong friend. His contributions to the socialist movement stand in their own right.

Many of the issues he discussed in his early work, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, were taken up again by Marx in volume 1 of Capital. Engels' passionate indictment of slums, and the diseases and deformities of children at sweated labour (as in his analysis of the real cost of lace for fashionable ladies), such themes permeate his book. Yet there is more in it than indignation at the social evils of industrial capitalism.

Engels described how new technology and the division of labour were accompanied by the emergence of a new class, the urban proletariat. He posed the fundamental question: "What is to become of these propertyless millions who own nothing and consume today what they earned yesterday?’’ Industry, he wrote. ". . . regards its workers not as human beings but simply as so much capital for the use of which the industrialist has to pay interest under the name of wages”. Describing how competition affected the level of wages, he also emphasised the "cycles of boom and slump”; the Malthusian "surplus population” was the reserve army of the unemployed, available for industry's booms, and condemned to destitution and the Poor Law workhouses between-times.

Discussing both the value and the limitations of trade unionism (a theme to which he returned in some later writings [1]), and the main working class movements of the time. Engels criticised the English socialists for being metaphysical, lacking awareness of the significance of historical development. It seemed to him that they preached "philanthropy and universal love . . . the improvement of humanity in the abstract". He reiterated this criticism in his preface to the 1892 edition:

And today, the very people who. from the ’impartiality' of their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes — these people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or they are the worst enemies of the workers — wolves in sheep’s clothing.

This first socialist examination of the effects of industrial capitalism, written from the standpoint of historical materialism, touched on many issues later developed in other works by Marx and Engels. Written in Germany on Engels’ return from two years in Manchester, The Condition of the Working Class has some faults. He was not able to check all of his quotations, and some are inaccurate; later, he acknowledged that his prediction that with the next crisis would come the revolution was “youthful ardour”.

Although the Communist Manifesto was published as their joint work, Engels himself expressly stated:

The basic thought running through the Manifesto — that economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the dissolution of the primeval communal ownership of land) all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the w'hole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle — this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx. [2]

One persistent criticism of Marx is that human behaviour is said to be influenced exclusively by class interests and material factors and nothing else. This is a gross distortion and Engels explicitly argued against such nonsense:

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I has ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic role is the only determining one he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. [3]

In much of Engels' writing, we find the dialectical method explained. He considered phenomena as evolving through often complex interactions. His conception of history was not a simplistic model of a superstructure of laws, religions, ideologies and dogmas perched on top of a separate economic base, with something like a damp course separating one from another. On the contrary, the various elements of the superstructure "also exercise their influence upon the course of historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form"'. [3]

Criticisms of Marx as an "economic determinist” arise from "the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentlemen often almost deliberately forget that once a historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes it reacts, can react upon its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it" [4]. In Anti-Dühring Engels showed that science had revealed just such a dialectical process in nature. There are no absolute truths, everything is changing: "motion is the mode of existence of matter".

Anti-Dühring supplies a thorough grounding in dialectical materialism, applied not only to science and philosophy (attacking with gusto the nonsense about "eternal truths" propounded by metaphysical thinkers), but also to the development of socialist theory from "Utopian" socialism to "scientific” socialism. Some chapters from Anti-Dühring were soon republished as a pamphlet, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, and the central section of the book ("Political Economy”) serves as a helpful introduction to Marx’s Capital. Both the book and the pamphlet had an immediate and lasting influence in many countries.

In his next book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884). based on Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society, Engels analysed the way civilised, class-divided society had evolved from barbaric and savage societies, and how property relationships changed family relationships. Engels also showed how the changing division of labour, with the introduction of herding, "forced women into second place": mother-right gave place to father-right. He showed how the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, so that the state "is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class". It follows that the socialist has no choice but to emphasise that every class struggle is a political one.

The superficial objection to socialism — that it is against "human nature” — is based on ignorance of the fact that civilised society, with its class divisions and state coercive institutions, "has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it (the state), that had no conception of the state and state power". Engels described primitive societies which managed their affairs democratically and without the coercion that is considered right and natural today. Such societies demonstrate that it is not "human nature" which requires humanity to be divided into nation-states and opposing classes, or which would make socialism impossible.

This article has only discussed Engels's main works. There were others which are both readable and helpful. How far was the theory of "Marxism” his work? His own view was emphatic and consistent:

What I contributed — at any rate with the exception of a few special studies — Marx could very well have done without me. What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved . . . Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name. [5]

Charmian Skelton

References:

1. Cf. The Wages System (Progress Publishers)

2. Preface to the German edition. 1883

3. Letter to Bloch, 1890 (Marx and Engels — basic writings ed. Feuer, Fontana)

4. Letter to Mehring, 1893 (Feuer)

5. Ludwig Feuerbach, 1886 (Chap. IV. footnote)

"We're All Marxists Now" (1983)

Advert from the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Invitation to “public figures” to give their views on Marx] (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The centenary of Marx's death is a time for his opponents to speak up. in line with the SPGB policy of constantly encouraging the anti-socialists to debate with us, the Socialist Standard wrote to a number of what are called public figures, inviting them to contribute their views on Marx for publication in this issue, with our reply. 

 

Most of them simply ignored us: Denis Healey (who once called himself a Marxist), Gerald Priestland, Lord Chalfont, Robert Conquest (who presumably prefers to put his views to the less rigorous readership of the Daily Telegraph), Piero Sraffa (who might have been expected to take this chance to display his alleged torpedoing of Marx's theory), Robert Miller, Francis Pym (too busy worrying about the Falklands?), Lord Carrington (too busy not worrying any more about the Falklands?), Peter Shore.

 

A few replied with a refusal to take up our offer:

Winston Churchill (". . . he does not wish to contribute. . .")

Norman St. John Stevas (". . . I am not able to make a contribution.")

The Archbishop of Canterbury (''. . . he simply does not have the time available . . .'')

Milton Friedman (". . . I am so heavily committed that there is no way I can contribute.")

Only two agreed to put their opinion: Tony Benn and Brian Crozier. We publish their contributions with our comments and leave our readers to draw their own conclusions about the reluctance of the anti- Marxists to slate their case when they have the chance.

Editors.

Democracy and Marxism by Tony Benn (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In response to our request for a contribution to this issue, Tony Benn invited us to use all or part of his "Democracy and Marxism” which was published in the May 1982 issue of the Communist Party monthly, Marxism Today. Below we print extracts from Benn’s essay, with our own response.

The term Marxist is used by the establishment to prevent it being understood. Even serious writers and broadcasters in the British media use the word Marxist as if it were synonymous with terrorism, violence, espionage, thought control, Russian imperialism and every act of bureaucracy attributable to the state machine in any country, including Britain, which has adopted even the mildest left of centre political or social reforms. The effect of this is to isolate Britain from having an understanding of. or a real influence in. the rest of the world, where Marxism is seriously discussed and not drowned by propaganda, as it is in our so-called free press. This ideological insularity harms us all . . .

Even the Labour Party, in which Marxist ideas have had a minority influence, is now described as a Marxist party, as if such a statement of itself put the party beyond the pale of civilised conduct, its arguments required no further answer, and its policies are entitled to no proper presentation to the public on the media. One aspect of this propaganda assault which merits notice is that it is mainly waged by those who have never studied Marx, and do not understand what he was saying, or why, yet still regard themselves as highly educated because they have passed all the stages necessary to acquire a university degree. For virtually the whole British establishment has been, at least until recently, educated without any real knowledge of Marxism, and is determined to see that these ideas do not reach the public. This constitutes a major weakness for the British people as a whole. 

Six Reasons why Marxism is feared 

Why then is Marxism so widely abused? In seeking the answer to that question we shall find the nature of the Marxist challenge in the capitalist democracies. The danger of Marxism is seen by the establishment to lie in the following characteristics.

First, Marxism is feared because it contains an analysis of an inherent, ineradicable conflict between capital and labour — the theory of class struggle. Until this theory was first propounded the idea of social class was widely understood and openly discussed by the upper and middle classes, as in England until Victorian times and later. . .

Second, Marxism is feared because Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to a study of the role of state power as offering a supporting structure of administration, justice and law enforcement which, far from being objective and impartial in its dealings with the people, was, he argued, in fact an expression of the interests of the established order and the means by which it sustains itself. . .

Third, Marxism is feared because it provides the trade union and labour movement with an analysis of society that inevitably arouses political consciousness, taking it beyond wage militancy within capitalism. The impotence of much American trade unionism and the weakness of past non-political trade unionism in Britain have borne witness to the strength of the argument for a labour movement with a conscious political perspective that campaigns for the reshaping of society, and does not just compete with its own people for a larger part of a fixed share of money allocated as wages by those who own capital, and who continue to decide what that share will be.

Fourth, Marxism is feared because it is international in outlook, appeals widely to working people everywhere, and contains within its internationalism a potential that is strong enough to defeat imperialism, neo-colonialism and multi-national business and finance, which have always organised internationally. But international capital has fended off the power of international labour by resorting to cynical appeals to nationalism by stirring up suspicion and hatred against outside enemies . . .

Fifth, Marxism is feared because it is seen as a threat to the older organised religions. as expressed through their hierarchies and temporal power structures, and their close alliance with other manifestations of state and economic power. The political establishments of the West, which for centuries have openly worshipped money and profit and ignored the fundamental teachings of Jesus do, in fact, sense in Marxism a moral challenge to their shallow and corrupted values and it makes them very uncomfortable. Ritualised and mystical religious teachings, which offer advice to the rich to be good, and the poor to be patient, each seeking personal salvation in this world and eternal life in the next, are also liable to be unsuccessful in the face of such a strong moral challenge as socialism makes . . .

Sixth, Marxism is feared in Britain precisely because it is believed by many in the establishment to be capable of winning consent for radical change through its influence in the trade union movement, and then in the election of socialist candidates through the ballot box. It is indeed therefore because the establishment believes in the real possibility of an advance of Marxist ideas by fully democratic means that they have had to devote so much time and effort to the misrepresentation of Marxism as a philosophy of violence and destruction, to scare people away from listening to what Marxists have to say.

These six fears, which are both expressed and fanned by those who defend a particular social order, actually pinpoint the wide appeal of Marxism, its durability and its strength more accurately than many advocates of Marxism may appreciate. 

*****

Marx seemed to identify all social and personal morality as being a product of economic forces, thus denying to that morality any objective existence over and above the inter-relationship of social and economic forces at that moment in history. I cannot accept that analysis.

Of course the laws, customs, administration. armed forces and received wisdom in any society will tend to reflect the interests and values of the dominant class, and if class relationships change by technology, evolution or revolution, this will be reflected in a change of the social and cultural super-structure. But to go beyond that and deny the inherent rights of men and women to live, to think, to act, to argue or to obey or resist in pursuit of some inner call of conscience — as pacifists do — or to codify their relationships with each other in terms of moral responsibility, seems to me to be throwing away the child of moral teaching with the dirty bath water of feudalism, capitalism or clericalism.

In saying this I am consciously seeking to re-establish the relevance and legitimacy of the moral teachings of Jesus, whilst accepting that many manifestations of episcopal authority and ritualistic escapism have blanked out that essential message of human brotherhood and sisterhood. I say this for many reasons.

First, because without some concept of inherent human rights and moral values and obligations, derived by custom and practice out of the accumulated experience of our societies, I cannot see any valid reason why socialism should have any moral force behind it. or how socialism can relate directly to the human condition outside economic relationships; for example, as between women and men. black and white, or in the relationships within the home and in personal life.

Second, because I regard the moral pressures released by radical Christian teaching, and its humanistic offshoots, as having played a major role in developing the ideas of solidarity, democracy, equality and peace, which have contributed to the development of socialist motivation.

Third, because without the acceptance of a strong moral code the ends always can be argued to justify the means, and this lies at the root of some of the oppression which has been practised in actually existing socialist societies.

Fourth, because the teachings of Marx, like the teachings of Jesus, can also become obscured, lost, and even reversed by civil power systems established in states that proclaim themselves to be Marxist, just as many Christian kings and governors destroyed, by their actions, the faith they asserted they were sworn to defend. And if Jesus is to acquitted of any responsibility for the tortures and murders conducted by the Inquisition, so must Marx be exonerated from any charges arising from the imprisonment and executions that occurred in Stalin’s Russia.

Fifth, because without a real moral impulse and a warm human compassion. I cannot find any valid reason why Marx himself should have devoted so much of his time to works of scholarship and endless political activities, all of which were designed to achieve better conditions for his fellow creatures. That no doubt is why Marx is sometimes regarded as the last of the Old Testament prophets . . .

But having recognised that priceless analytic legacy that we owe to Marx, in one sense Marx himself was a utopian in that he appeared to believe that when capitalism had been replaced by socialism, and socialism by communism, a classless society, liberated by the final withering away of the state, would establish some sort of heaven on earth. Human experience does not. unfortunately, give us many grounds for sharing that optimism. For humanity cannot organise itself without some power structure of the state, and Marx seems to have underestimated the importance of Lord Acton’s warning that power ‘tends to corrupt’ mistakenly believing this danger would disappear under communism . . .

The constraints on capital and the gains achieved by the trade union and labour movement over the years have been formidable. It is, I believe, a major error to argue that the advocacy of reforms rather than of revolution, is synonymous with betrayal and capitulation, for it undermines the very working class confidence which is central to the success of the movement, spreading pessimism about the prospects of victory — which is what the establishment has been trying to do for centuries. Some followers of Trotsky appear to substitute a ritualistic and dogmatic recitation of slogans which cannot connect with the life experience of those they are hoping to reach, thus minimising their public influence. Moreover, by suggesting that parliamentary democracy has only a limited role to play, and by speaking vaguely of direct action to by-pass it. they seem to imply that socialism can be introduced by some industrial coup. They arc also unacceptably vague about what would follow' such an event if it ever occurred. . .

But above all, in the USSR itself, 65 years after the revolution, the maintenance of a government by state power — even when three generations have been born under communism, and only the very oldest people remember pre-revolutionary days — suggests, to outsiders, that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union does not itself believe that its leadership would receive popular endorsement. Yet the very refreshment of socialism must require at least a genuine public choice between alternative views as to how it should develop.

Socialism as a system is greatly weakened, world-wide, if it is seen to rest anywhere upon state enforcement. The forces of capital in the West have concentrated their attack upon democratic socialism — to good effect — by suggesting, quite falsely, that what is being advocated in the West involves the imposition of a Soviet-style regime upon our society and that the first election won by socialists would also be the last. They know it is not true, and it is a sign of the strength of socialist ideas that they have to pretend that they believe it.

The British labour movement not only accepts the democratic process but claims, correctly, to have created it. We will never accept a socialism that is imposed . . .

If the peoples of the world are to end exploitation, reduce the levels of violence, avoid nuclear war, and enter into their rightful inheritance at last, we must achieve a synthesis of socialism and freedom and work for it here and now.

Reply: beyond morality

The irony of Tony Benn’s position is that by dismissing as impossible Marx’s conception of a society without state or government he ends up in the same contradictory tangles as the “establishment” he seeks to criticise. This is all the more unfortunate since his only grounds for dismissing Marx’s particular contribution to the working-class movement is a warning, attributable to Lord Acton, about the effect of power on those who exercise it. Lord Acton, and even Benn himself, may be able to vouch for the dangerous effects of possessing power, but for the working class as a whole it is not a pressing problem. The democratic seizure of social power by the whole community will not be prevented by members of the privileged class who currently hold it warning us of such dangers.

The first stage of Benn’s argument is clear and correct. Defenders of capitalism distort marxism because they fear it. He lists six aspects of marxism on which such fears are based: the understanding of the class struggle, the nature of the state, social consciousness, opposition to nationalism, opposition to religion and the use of democratic channels for a revolutionary transformation of society. Defenders of capitalism, he argues, fear these strengths held by Marxism as a way of looking at society, and therefore label it as violent and anti-democratic in order to discredit it.

Taking these points in order, consider first Marx’s class analysis of society. In the world today, as in Marx's day, there are broadly speaking two social classes with conflicting interests facing one another: the buyers and the sellers of labour power. In other words, the employers and employees. Workers in Britain share a common interest with their fellow workers in other countries, and not with British bosses. Yet all of the policies ever advocated by Benn and the party of which he is a leading member are based on a denial of this first, fundamental principle of marxism. When the Labour Party speaks about "us” coming out of the EEC or having import controls or tax re-adjustments, they are talking about British employers, with their workers faithfully in tow. Such an unequal alliance is based on the nine-tenths of the population who have to work for a living (or sign for the dole) continuing to work not for each other, not for the community as a whole, but for the companies and nationalised industries which steadily accumulate the proceeds of our labour.

Next Tony Benn points to Marx’s theory of the state. You do not need to read three volumes of Capital to understand Marx's key point, that the police, army, courts and prisons do not and cannot run in the interests of all. They are the means of coercion, the violence which lies at the roots of a society in which a minority monopolises social power. Here again, we find a sad rift between marxist principles and capitalist compromise. Benn and the Labour Party offer us a “People’s state” in which we will still be beaten up, locked up and kept down, only this time it will really be in our own interest at last, because we will have voted Thatcher out and Foot in.

Thirdly, Marxism "arouses political consciousness". Marx argued that while it is highly necessary for workers to organise in democratic trade unions in order to prevent the downward pressure on wages and the worsening of work conditions, it would also be necessary to organise a political movement to abolish the wages system itself. (See his Value, Price and Profit, 1865.) Yet over the last few years, together with the politicians of all of the other parties of capitalism, Benn has been promising to increase the level of employment. He has not devoted a single line in any of his speeches to Marx’s idea that the struggle over wages and jobs should be extended into a struggle to end the very system of employment itself.

The revolutionary potential of marxist thought is indeed based on its global appeal. As the expression of the universal interest of the working class of the world, the abolition of capitalism means the end of all national boundaries. How does this relate to the cause championed by Benn. that "we British” should "get out of Europe”? His is merely a reactionary plea on behalf of British industrial interests who may profit more outside, rather than inside, the European Common Market. Getting workers to line up and take sides on such issues is in principle no different from King Edward and the Kaiser lining up "their” workers to fight their First World War.

Fifth, marxism is feared because it is anti-religious. Perhaps Marx’s main contribution to philosophical thought was to advance beyond earlier forms of atheism, to develop a coherent theory which could in itself explain the historical rise and decline of religion. It is well known that Marx described religion as the opium of the people, but what he said merits quoting more fully:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion, as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions . . .

Marx made his criticism of all religion and idealism clear enough, one might have thought, to avoid being redrawn as the "last of the Old Testament prophets”. Benn's main concern in relation to Marx is to rehabilitate the reputation of religious morality, which he feels is missing from Marx’s materialism. He is right — it is missing, but not for the reason he thinks. Far from describing the universe as being composed solely of economic forces, Marx acknowledged the enormous forces of human consciousness in the shaping of human history. But rather than bow blind to the dictates of "reason" and “morality” and “conscience”, he sought to transcend these categories and understand how they arose.

The sixth and final feature of Marxism to which Benn refers is the possible transformation of the ballot box from an "instrument of trickery" (as Marx called it) into an "agent of emancipation”. Marx repeatedly referred to the self-emancipation of the working class, without leaders, as the necessary precondition for a socialist (that is. communist) society. Again, in this regard, the party Benn urges us to vote for was set up as a trade union pressure group in parliament and to this day continues to base its support on workers acting as followers, voting for leaders to solve the problems of capitalism without genuine, majority, democratic action.

Having warned us of those who present a distorted picture of what they oppose even though they "have never studied Marx”, Benn proceeds to caricature marxism as a mechanical economic determinism. In one sense, we are told Marx was a “utopian” because he envisaged the end of the oppressive state machine. A familiar but thread-bare dichotomy is set up between democratic, parliamentary, reformist action and violent, anti-democratic. revolutionary action. So the “establishment" distortion of marxism as terrorism is ultimately endorsed here too. The third choice, of politically conscious workers using democratic channels to institute revolutionary change, is overlooked, even though it had been referred to as one of the six strengths of marxism. Instead of opposing the religious ideology exposed by Marx. Benn writes of "inherent rights" and "moral values and obligations" as the basis of socialism, and of the need to reform the “actually existing socialist societies”.

The Russian government may call itself socialist. The Nazis also used the term. Does this mean that the description has to be accepted? There are no “actually existing socialist societies”, and the suggestion serves to fuel the pens of “the establishment" already referred to. By stating that we must always retain the state, earlier defined as "an expression of the interests of the established order". Benn gets into considerable confusion. The Russian government depends on “state enforcement” and yet it is referred to as "socialist". Morality is introduced as a comfortable compromise, for innocuous moderation to be dressed up as radical change. And yet morality has traditionally been what the ruling class call on when they want the majority who produce but do not possess wealth to pull our weight even harder. It is the denial of our self-interest as a class. The attempt to define what is "good” and what is "bad", what wc "should” or “should not" do has baffled philosophers for centuries, precisely because there are no such moral absolutes. Decisions about what is desirable and what is not are arrived at subjectively by different individuals and classes, through the constantly changing development of human history.

Religion tries to solve the problem by inventing an all-powerful force which lays down for us what we should and should not do, with the most terrible tortures threatened for those who disobey this crude, primitive, moral law. In the case of Christianity, which Benn holds up as the model morality to be adopted by socialists, those whose scientific perception made it hard for them to have blind faith and worship one of their fellows were threatened with nothing less than everlasting hell-fire. The morality Benn supports has been upholding property society for thousands of years, by consoling the poor with the virtues of thrift and hard work and the hope of receiving some charitable crumbs from the rich. Christian morality does not involve the ending of the class division between rich and poor. As long as there is a need for wealth to be "redistributed" from rich to poor, it follows that these two classes of people still exist. The Bible, which is the only source-book for the “moral teachings of Jesus", does not stop at openly defending slavery, property, profit and war. To add insult to injury, it offers the following advice to the millions who arc starving: 

Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a coin.

(Matthew, 17.27)

Small wonder that Bakunin felt moved to write, “If God existed, it would be necessary to abolish him”.

What, then, is the Marxist theory of morality and religion? “For too long” Marx wrote “has religion explained history; let us with history explain religion." Like so many others, Benn tries to excuse his idealism according to which history is made by free-floating moral absolutes, by first painting Marx as being a crudely mechanical materialist who “seemed to identify all social and personal morality as being a product of economic forces". But this was not the case. It was Marx who found the dialectical balance to solve these contradictions. He referred to “the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another" (The German Ideology). Of course, marxism recognises that the conditions of life in society determine the modes of thought rather than the other way round, otherwise the hungry could simply think themselves full overnight and be satisfied. But it is the developing class consciousness among workers which itself becomes the material force for creating a new society:

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. . . “liberation" is an historical and not a moral act, and it is brought about by historical conditions.

The German Ideology

Having effectively dismissed Marx in both the genuine and the distorted forms, Benn finally advocates the reform of the Eastern bloc so that it appears a little more like the West, and the reform of the Western bloc so that it appears a little more like the East. What we are left with is layer after layer of compromise, with materialism softened by morality, capitalism cushioned by a paternalistic state sector, and socialism turned into the distant millenarian hope of nationalising the heartless sentiments of the world’s religions.

Clifford Slapper

Engels' review of Capital (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Universal suffrage has added to the already existing parliamentary parties a new one, the Social-Democratic Party. In the last elections to the North-German Reichstag it nominated its own candidates in most large towns, in all factory districts, and six or eight of its deputies were returned. In comparison with the last election but one it has developed considerably greater strength and it can therefore be assumed that, for the present at least it is still growing. It would be folly to wish to continue to pass over in splendid silence the existence, activity and doctrines of such a party in a country in which universal suffrage has laid the final decision in the hands of the most numerous and poorest class.

However divided and unsettled the few Social-Democratic deputies may be among themselves, it can be assumed with assurance that all groups of that party will welcome the present book as their theoretical bible, the arsenal from which they will draw their most substantial arguments. On these grounds alone the book already deserves particular attention. Rut its contents too are such as will arouse interest. Whereas Lassalle's main argumentation — and in political economy Lasalle was but a disciple of Marx — is confined to continual repetition of Ricardo's so-called wages law, we have before us a work which treats the whole relation of capital and labour in its connection with the whole of economic science with indisputably rare erudition and which sets as its ultimate aim "to lay hare the economic law of motion of modern society”, and thereby, after obviously sincere investigations carried out with unmistakable knowledge of the subject, comes to the conclusion that the whole “capitalist mode of production” must be abolished. We should, however, like further to draw attention to the fact that, apart from the conclusions, the author in the course of his work presents quite a number of the major points of economics in a completely new light and in purely scientific questions arrives at results which are greatly at variance with current economics and wInch orthodox economists must seriously criticise and scientifically refute if they do not wish to see the doctrine they have so far professed founder. In the interest of science it is desirable that a polemic should develop very soon in specialised journals precisely on these points.

Marx begins by expounding the relation between commodity and money, the most essential of which was already published some time ago in a special work. Then he goes on to capital and here we have the cardinal point of the whole work. What is capital? Money which is changed into a commodity in order to be changed back from a commodity into more money than the original sum. When I buy cotton for 100 talers and sell it for 110 talers I preserve my 100 talers as capital, value which expands itself. Now the question arises: where do the 10 talers which I gain in this process come from? How does it happen that as a result of two simple exchanges 100 talers becomes 110. For economics presupposes that in all exchanges equal values are exchanged. Marx then considers all possible cases (fluctuation in prices of commodities, etc.) in order to prove that in the conditions assumed by economics the creation of 10 talers surplus-value out of the original 100 talers is impossible. Yet this process takes place daily and the economists have not yet given us an explanation for it. Marx provides the following explanation: the puzzle can be solved only if we find on the market a commodity of a quite peculiar kind, a commodity whose use-value consists in producing exchange-value. This commodity exists — it is labour-power. The capitalist buys labour-power on the market and makes it work for him in order in turn to sell its product. So we must first of all investigate labour-power.

What is the value of labour-power? According to the generally known law, it is the value of the means of subsistence necessary to maintain and procreate the labourer in the way established in a given country and a given historical epoch. We assume that the labourer is paid the entire value of his labour-power. Further we assume that this value is represented by six hours’ work daily, or half a working-day. But the capitalist asserts that he has bought labour-power for a whole working-day and he makes the labourer work twelve hours or more. With a twelve-hour working-day he therefore acquires the product of six hours' work without paying for it. From this Marx concludes: all surplus-value, no matter how it is divided, as profit of the capitalist, ground-rent, taxes, etc. is unpaid labour.

From the manufacturer's interest to extract as much unpaid labour as possible every day and the contrary interest of the labourer arises the struggle over the length of the working-day. In an illustration which is very much worth reading and which takes up about a hundred pages, Marx describes the origin of this struggle in English modern industry which, in spite of the protests of the free-trade manufacturers, ended last spring in not only factory industry but all small establishments and even ail domestic industry being subjected to the restrictions of the Factory Act, according to which the maximum working-day for women and children under eighteen — and thereby indirectly for men too in the most important branches of industry — was fixed at 10½ hours. At the same time he explains why English industry did not suffer, but on the contrary gained thereby, as the work of each individual won more in intensity than it lost in duration.

But there is another way of increasing surplus-value besides lengthening the working-day beyond the time required for the production of the necessary means of subsistence or their value. A given working-day. let us say of twelve hours, includes, according to our previous assumption, six hours of necessary work and six hours used for the production of surplus-value. If a means is found to cut the necessary working-time down to five hours, seven hours remain during which surplus-value will be produced. This can be achieved by a reduction in the working-time required to produce the necessary means of subsistence, in other words by cheapening the means of subsistence, and this in turn only by improving production. On this point Marx again gives a detailed illustration by investigating or describing the three main levers by which these improvements are brought about: 1) co-operation, or multiplication of power, which results from the simultaneous and systematic joint work of a number of workers; 2) division of labour, as it took shape in the period of manufacture proper (i.e. up to about 1770); finally. 3) machinery by the help of which modern industry has since developed. These descriptions are also of great interest and show astonishing knowledge of the subject even down to technological details.

We cannot enter into further details of the investigation on surplus-value and wages: we merely note, in order to avoid misunderstandings, that, as Marx proves by a number of quotations, orthodox economics is not unaware of the fact that wages are less than the whole product of work. It is to be hoped that this book will provide Messrs, the orthodox economists with the opportunity of giving us closer explanations on this really surprising point. It will be appreciated that all the factual proofs that Marx gives are taken from the best sources, mostly official parliamentary reports. We take this opportunity of supporting the suggestion, made indirectly by the author in the Preface, that in Germany too a thorough inquiry into the condition of the workers in the various industries be made by government officials — who, however, must not be prejudiced bureaucrats — and that the reports be submitted to the Reichstag and the public.

The first volume ends with a study of the accumulation of capital. This point has often been written about, although we must admit that here too much of what is given is new and that light is shed on the old from new sides. The most original is the attempted proof that side by side with the concentration and accumulation of capital. and in step with it, the accumulation of a surplus working population is going on, and that both together will in the end make a social upheaval necessary, on the one hand, and possible on the other.

Whatever opinion the reader may have of the author's socialist views, we think that we have shown him that he is here in presence of a work which stands well above the usual Social-Democratic publications. To that we add that with the exception of the strongly dialectical things on the first 40 pages, the book, in spite of all its scientific rigour, is very easy to understand and because of the author's sarcastic manner, which spares no one, is even interestingly written.

Editorial: Nineteen eighty-two . . . (1983)

Editorial from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

However 1982 is remembered, it will not be as a time when the human race progressed towards a resolution of any of its problems. It opened, as does every year, to a fanfare of wishes and prayers that it might be a period of prosperity, peace and happiness. It closed, as does every year, leaving memories of only poverty, fear and misery.

It was the year when unemployment in Great Britain topped the three million mark. There are very few politicians now who are eager to offer the Norman Tebbit explanation for unemployment — that it is nourished by the workers’ lack of will to find an employer. In that total of three million are young people fresh out of school or college, trained and conditioned to take their place in the galleys of wage slavery. To them, viewing their prospects, life on the dole is now as natural as life in employment is to their parents. Unless, that is, their parents are also out of work. The three million include a significant and growing number who have abandoned all expectation of ever again finding a job. Many have accumulated an impressive library of letters of rejection. The conclusion they draw, along with those economists who, mistakenly, argue that high unemployment is structural to capitalism, is that they will spend the rest of their life scrimping a miserable existence on the dole.

It is however important not to lose sight of the reality of this sorry situation. Unemployment is not the scandal which so many ambitious politicians, for example in the Labour Party, would have us believe. It is not some unnatural curse, to be exorcised by the high priests in a future Labour government. It is in fact quite natural to capitalism, a part of the system’s anarchic-cycle of boom and slump. Labour’s record in this is no better than that of the Tories; they have been no more successful in ordering the chaos of capitalist society.

The Labour Party’s present campaign on the issue seeks to gain from the popular belief that plentiful employment means security and prosperity. This belief is a long way wide of reality. Workers suffer poverty of varying intensity throughout their lives; it is an inescapable feature of their social status as members of the class which needs to sell labour power in order to live. There are times when this is easier than at others — in the heyday of a boom, for example, workers can exert more effective pressure in wage negotiations. At other times wages may be forced down, as is happening in many cases now, under the pressure of unemployment in a recession. But all such variations, up or down, do not affect the basic standing of the working class.

1982 was the year of the Falklands war— the year when anyone who thought that the bigotries, the bombast and the phraseology of Victorian imperialism were dead, fit subjects only for the satirist, had to readjust their ideas. The mindless jingoism which the government, supported by the official spokespeople of the Labour Party in parliament, was able to stimulate was soberly instructive to anyone who looks for signs of a developing enlightenment among the working class. The Falklands war showed that the crasser notions which prop capitalism up are alive and well and at their noxious business.

And by crass we do not just refer to the jingoism of Thatcher and her crew. The bombers were at work in Great Britain again in 1982, provoking a response as nasty and illogical as the theories which energise the bombers. The Irish nationalists, in their outdated bigotry and historical redundancy, are a prime example of those who, ignoring all reality and reason, insist that capitalist society would be more tolerable if some slight adjustments were made to it. In their case, Irish workers are recruited to kill and terrorise other members of their class in order to persuade the British government to withdraw their troops and to help organise Ireland into a single capitalist state. No working class interests are involved in such conflicts, although it is workers who pay for them with their blood.

There was, lest we forget, one event in 1982 which, we were informed by the media, was positively joyous. While millions throughout the world starved, two famous members of the parasite class, having first got married, together produced yet another parasite. Expensive doctors were there to ease the parasite into life and the great organs of public opinion (for such they like to regard themselves) rolled out their carpets of words in frantic celebration of the event. Socialists stand aside from all this; the birth of this new prince emphasised the class divisions of capitalism, the superiority in riches of the one class and the humiliation in poverty of the other.

And how, in 1982, did those humiliated workers react to the poverty, the fear and the degradations of capitalism? When they gave their verdict, it was depressingly hopeless. At each by-election there was solid support for the system to continue. The votes may have been redistributed a little from one capitalist party to another — from Conservative to Labour or Scottish Nationalist with the SDP picking up a few thousand from people under the delusion that they were voting for a fresh, original approach to politics. But the votes never threatened the theory that the society of class ownership of the means of life is logical, essential, efficient and therefore eternal. The security of the ruling class remained untouched.

Disappointing though this is, it does not weaken the socialists’ resolve to struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a social system based on the communal ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. We work for this not because we are blind optimists nor because we are inspired with a religious faith in an Armageddon of the intellect. The case for socialism rests on the evidence of history, that people bring social systems to an end as they outlive their historical purpose. Typically, the events of 1982 gave much support to the socialist case that capitalism is no longer of use in the process of social evolution and is now a bar to human progress. It is time for the revolution to establish socialism and the need grows more urgent with each passing day.

and three . . . (1983)

From the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Year. Recover from the hang-over in time to confront the lingering stench of capitalist reality. Another twelve months of 1982, but in a different wrapper.

What will dominate the news in 1983? Hollywood romances; Chelsea fashions; Labour does the splits; wars in unpronounceable cities; SDP debates its fisheries policy; cabinet reshuffle; Miss World contest; Mary Whitehouse complains about too much reality on TV; someone who is someone dies; Princess drops a baby parasite; more Hollywood romances. 1983 will be one of those years that could have been a month if it was made by a skilled worker.

What will not dominate the news in 1983? Grown men crying because they’ve lost their jobs and rents/mortgages need to be paid; the last shiver of a dying pensioner who is too old and too poor to keep warm; children looking in shop windows and knowing what they cannot have; thirty million deaths by starvation, with corpses rotting in the shadow of potential plenty; frightened kids dressed up as uniformed men fighting senseless battles for complacent parasites; the silent suffering of the lonely and alienated; the slam of thousands of prison cell doors; the endless grinding of poverty — the left-overs of 1982's poverty being made to last for 1983.

The year ahead will see success for some. New jobs; scouting badges; holidays in Benidorm; new hats; promotion; marriage; cats having kittens. It will also see success for others. Increased profits; evictions of “unreliable" tenants; new weapons of murder; six month holidays, anywhere but Benidorm; multi-million pound inheritances.

January is a deceptive month. It is like the first day of school or the first night of the proms. Everyone anticipates; everyone knows what it will be like. They know what to expect, but go through the ritual of hoping for something different: "Well, that’s bloody 1982 over . . . now let’s . . . er . . . do it all over again”. The ongoing march of pathetic history.

Resolutions made — and broken. "In 1983 I will not . . . drop crumbs on the carpet, watch Blankety Blank, steal staples from the office, disobey the Ten Commandments". For most wage slaves the resolution is unstated: "I resolve to be a good worker, not think too much about the society I live in, and produce the profits which keep my exploiters in idle comfort". Then there are the fraudulent and the naive: Margaret Thatcher — "I resolve to make all Britons free, happy and prosperous like they used to be in the good old Nineteenth century”. Ken Livingstone — “I resolve to turn London into a nuclear-free, fully-employed, semi-demi-socialist zone”. Arthur Scargill — “I resolve to run the system of exploitation to the benefit of the exploited".

1983 need not be this way. Just as the horrors of the past were not inevitable, so the horrors yet to come need never trouble us beyond our imaginations. To stop them, though, we need more than resolution; to stop them requires revolution. Beyond wishful thinking there is a need for practical political action. The revolution must be a conscious one, carried out by men and women who oppose the system of capitalism, where needs come second to profits, and understand and want socialism. We need a revolution

BECAUSE the present world social system, capitalism, is based on the ownership of the means of living (land, factories, offices, mines, farms) by a minority elite and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

BECAUSE there is an antagonism of interests within capitalism, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess.

BECAUSE the class struggle can only come to an end when the working class is emancipated from the domination of the capitalist class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.

BECAUSE, if you are a worker the present system can never run in your interests. You are just one member of a class whose energies and talents are sacrificed to the needs of the profit system.

Reality is for people to make, turning dreams into weapons. Let’s create a good reason to be happy: not the new year, but a new stage in human history — world socialism.

Steve Coleman