50 Years Ago: Shorter Hours No Cure for Unemployment (1982)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Various Labour leaders, having therefore rejected the idea of shorter hours with reduced wages, have stood firmly by the notion that the problem can be solved if hours are reduced and wages left unchanged. The Transport and General Workers’ Union have made much of an agreement fixed up with Mander Brothers, paint manufacturers, of Wolverhampton, under which hours are reduced from 47 to 40 without reduction of the minimum rates of pay. The agreement may or may not be a satisfactory one in other respects, but it certainly does not show a way of remedying unemployment, for the change is accompanied by a reorganisation of the works and the introduction of a new system of piece-rates winch will increase the output per head of the workers and will result in eventual dismissal of redundant staff. The only guarantee is that no dismissals shall take place for six months and that the dismissed men will then receive some “compensation.” In the meantime, the increased output at smaller costs will enable Manders to undersell their competitors and throw their workers into the ranks of the unemployed.

[From an editorial in the Socialist Standard December 1932]

Minimum wages for us – and maximum profits for them (2002)

From the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the minimum wage of £3.60 (adult) became law in 1998 many of capitalism’s apologists predicted widespread unemployment and bankruptcies galore. No such disasters occurred. On 10 October the rate was increased to £4.10 and the prophets of doom were once more out in force.

Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. However even by comparison with previous capitalist reforms this piece of legislation has proved woefully unsuccessful.

In the two years since it was first introduced the Inland Revenue has had to talk to 16,000 companies about non-compliance with the Act. Peter Grattidge, head of national minimum wage operation at the Revenue, reckons that staff have been paid under the minimum wage level in about 40 per cent of cases. The catering trade is notorious for sharp practices, such as counting tips in calculating minimum wage levels.

A recent example of how this reform works in practice is the swank London hotel The Sanderson. The rates for staying at this hotel vary from £210 per night for a double room to £2,000 a night to stay in the penthouse suite, a sharp contrast to the conditions of the cleaners and porters in the hotel. “From next month the hotel is proposing to switch from a shift system to a rate that will be fixed at £2.15 an hour. And rather than giving a guarantee of 38 hours a week the staff will see the minimum cut to 32 hours. A cut in hours might benefit some staff, but their contract commits them to work 48 hours a week if they are needed.” (Guardian, 24 November)

Richard Donnelly

Editorial: Shorter Hours No Cure for Unemployment (1932)

Editorial from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Large numbers of people have been impressed with the suggestion that unemployment can be abolished or much reduced by shortening the hours of work while retaining capitalism. The argument takes the form that the overproduction of goods in relation to the demands of the market (with consequent falling prices and profits, and growing unemployment) can be met by reducing the hours of work. Now it is obvious that if wages were reduced along with hours (and assuming no intensification of work) the total volume of goods being produced would be smaller, but so would the total amount of wages. The problem would remain essentially the same as before, because the workers would have less money to spend, and this would off-set the smaller output.

Alternatively, the employers might pay the reduced wages to a larger number of workers, giving work to some unemployed. But in that case the total amount of wages would be the same as before (but spread over more workers) and the total output of goods would be the same as before (i.e., the shortening of hours would be off-set by the larger number of workers).

So that if wages are reduced along with hours the problem, of “overproduction” is not solved and unemployment is only reduced by reducing the wages of the workers generally.

Various labour leaders, having therefore rejected the idea of shorter hours with reduced wages, have stood firmly by the notion that the problem can be solved if hours are reduced and wages left unchanged. The Transport and General Workers’ Union have made much of an agreement fixed up with Mander Brothers, paint manufacturers, of Wolverhampton, under which hours are reduced from 47 to 40 without reduction of the minimum rates of pay. The agreement may or may not be a satisfactory one in other respects, but it certainly does not show a way of remedying unemployment, for the change is accompanied by a reorganisation of the works and the introduction of a new system of piece-rates winch will increase the output per head of the workers and will result in eventual dismissal of redundant staff. The only guarantee is that no dismissals shall take place for six months and that the dismissed men will then receive some “compensation.” (See Record, published by Transport Workers’ Union, October.)

In the meantime, the increased output at smaller costs will enable Manders to undersell their competitors and throw their workers into the ranks of the unemployed.

While the means of production and distribution remain in the ownership and control of a class instead of being the property of society, there is no solution of the poverty problem.

By The Way: Concern for Workers (1944)

The By The Way Column from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Concern for Workers

As everyone knows, there is a most terrible housing crisis in London now. The newspapers are full of appeals to the authorities to get something done about it. The Government has brought thousands of building workers from the provinces and arranged for them to work a 65-hour week, Mr. J. J. Mallon, the Warden of Toynbee Hall, has written to the Times pointing out that long hours under modern conditions do not make for greater production.

Let Mr. Mallon speak for himself: —

HOURS OF WORK. 

To the Editor of the Times, 

Sir,—It is disquieting to learn that building operatives are to work 65 hours a week on first-aid repairs to houses in the London area. Even though the arrangement is to apply only for three weeks, it is deplorable and against the teaching of all industrial experience. The Regional Joint Committee for London express the view that the Government is “ill advised to propose such hours,” and suggest “that the maximum hours of work should not exceed 60.” Sixty hours are also too many. If 55 or even fewer hours are worked more will be done.

For nearly 40 years as a member of innumerable trade boards and other industrial bodies I have had to do with hours of employment. When these hours are excessive they tend to lessen rather than increase production, to add to illness, accidents, and absenteeism, and so to fatigue the worker as to do him cumulative injury. The reduction of excessive hours always leads to greater production. Surely the example of America, where miracles of war production have been achieved, should not be disregarded. Early in their associated war efforts the relevant American Government departments decided in favour of an eight-hour day and a 18-hour week “as the best working schedule for sustained efficiency in most industrial operations.” The results of their decision fully justify it. The Government should reconsider the 65 hours proposal.

Yours sincerely, J. J. Mallon, 

Toynbee Hall, 

28, Commercial Street, E.I. July 26.”

—(Times, July 28, 1944.)

Mr. H. C. Harland, the President of the Master Builders’ Association, has written to the Times to confirm Mr. Mallon’s verdict. The point that Socialists are concerned with is that Mr. Mallon and his apparently kindly well-meaning fellow Lib.-Labourals are not really worried about the worker, as such, at all. They reduce hours and give medical treatment, holidays, music while you work, etc., in the same way as one puts expensive oil into a motor engine—to make it run better.

They are not the first or the only ones to realise that the old big stick methods of treating the workers are out of date.

Even King Farouk of Egypt is busily running round telling the tale to the workers—a very good reference for Egyptian workers, incidentally. The Times for July 31st records his “visit to the M.I.S.R. Co.’s spinning and weaving (cotton) works, where he had an enthusiastic reception from 26,000 employees.” “In an address to the board of directors he emphasised the importance of the Egyptian worker, and impressed upon them the necessity of providing better living and working conditions. He invited representatives of the workers to the royal table and made a gift of £1,000 to their benevolent society.” “King Farouk is missing no opportunity of establishing closer and more personal relations with the humbler classes of his subjects.” (Times, July 31st.)

Naturally, British capitalists don’t call representatives of their workers to their table to present them with £1,000. They get Sir William Beveridge to do it. The idea is always the same—to get the workers to work better. “All that glitters is not gold.” Working men who allow this talk about concern for them, by capitalist Lib.-Lab. politicians, to delude them into supporting reforms of capitalism will get improved capitalism, not Socialism—that is, increased exploitation and relative poverty.

* * *

“How U.S. Airmen are Taught New Technique"

Under this heading a London evening paper reports that mobile training units, miniature technical schools on wheels, are now following U.S. airmen as bases move deeply into France. “Though airmen are fully trained before coming to Europe, continual aircraft modifications due to experience in battle make it necessary for mechanics to study constantly.” The training has speeded up aircraft repair so much that the director of the training units has sent mobile units to every war theatre in which U.S. aircraft are fighting.

What is happening to-day on the battlefields happens yesterday and to-morrow in industry. The complex nature of the productive methods developed by capitalism force mechanics to “study constantly.”

When mechanics are studying constantly nothing on earth can prevent them eventually contacting and completely grasping the Socialist idea—which is the application of study to problems of society. The reply to those who claim that “the workers will never learn,” is “look around you”—the workers are learning at aeronautical speed, every day, at their work.

* * *

Last Days of the Barricades

A great deal has been written and said about the insurrection in Warsaw. That the plight of the insurgents is rather pitiable can hardly be disputed.

Most ironical of all, the high-priests of insurrection, at all times, in any places, during the past twenty-five years, the Moscow politicians, are supporting their own special Committee of Liberation as against the British sponsored Council of National Unity of the Polish Government in London. Incidentally, the London Council of National Unity is more “radical” than the Committee of Liberation, making play with the phrase “socialisation of industry.”

For this reason, Pravda says that “the Red Army has always warned people against such risings. Handfuls of men armed only with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.” (Our emphasis.) (The Observer, August 20th.)

To this the Poles reply that the Soviet radio had, in fact, on several occasions shortly before the rising, called on the Polish people, and especially the people of Warsaw, to rise against the Germans.

Apart from this, such statements from the Bolshevik leaders of to-day are the clearest confirmation of the Socialist Party’s repeatedly expressed view on insurrection. Years were spent proving how the Russian Communists were distorting the writings of Engels—for example, in his well-known preface to “The Class Struggles in France”—to try and justify their unprincipled attempts to embarrass foreign governments by riots and street fights.

As if the Soviet’s statement on the futility of insurrection in Warsaw were not enough, further confirmation is to hand from Paris : —

“The Patriots had a very had time, but they recovered and managed to form a defence line in the streets near the building with the aid of barricades built of anything they could lay their hands on.

The barricades were not strong enough, backed by our small arms, to hold the tanks. The German armour smashed them down, then went through the Patriots, firing right and left and affecting shocking slaughter. We had not the weapons to prevent them. . . . All Paris is waiting for the Allies to enter the city and clear out the German tyrants.” (Star, August 25th, 1944; our italics.)

It may be added that in Paris, as in Warsaw, practically the entire population was in support of the revolt; arms had been freely distributed by parachute by the Allied Air Forces. Yet both failed completely, though the circumstances could not have been more favourable.

The Editors of Pravda are quite right. “Handfuls of men with fiery sentiments and cold steel have no chance against modern weapons in battles for large cities.”

In other words, without the all-powerful State machine, with its complex armed forces, revolts are doomed to disaster. And yet there are still “direct action” maniacs in public places urging the workers to commit suicide in barricade revolts.

The statement of Pravda will be chalked up for those post-war C.P. and “Unemployed” fire-brands who will once again urge workers to bash their heads against the State machine.

The Socialist Party urges the workers to think before they act, and then vote intelligently for Socialism, thus giving incidentally an infallible indication of the progress of the Socialist idea and the intellectual development of the working class.

With a Parliamentary majority it is the capitalists who will be faced with the prospect of illegal barricades, which the Socialist controlled army and air force will go through like cardboard, if they ever get put up.

To those who claim that the capitalists will close down Parliament before the Socialists can attain the majority, the reply is that’s their funeral—if they are ever stupid enough to do so.

* * *

Easier for Lord Latham

The evening papers (The Star, September 7th, 1944) inform us that one man whose task has been easier by the relaxation of the black-out is Lord Latham, who since 1940 has been mainly responsible for Civil Defence in the L.C.C. area. He is Chairman of the L.C.C.

By the queerest coincidence, in addition to being Chairman of the L.C.C. and in charge of Civil Defence in London, Lord Latham happens to be Chairman of the London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves, Ltd. Lord Latham, as Chairman of the L.C.C., is very concerned in the re-planning of London. According to the Evening Standard (August 29th), Lord Latham is also very interested in the port of Havre. The Company of which he is Chairman owns about (about) £1,000,000 of property there. “It is the largest shareholder in an oil installation, a hotel, and wharves. Now the shares, like those of other concerns with interests in Occupied Europe, are on the rise.”

Following is the City Editor’s report on the Company (Evening Standard, August 28, 1944) : —

London and Thames Haven 

Feature in the market recently has been the further rise in the shares of London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves. These 4s. shares are now up to 15s. 6d., which compares with a low of 1s. 1d. in 1941. This price gives the Ordinary shares a market valuation of around £3,100,000, which compares with a market valuation of around £5,700,000 in the years when the company was paying tax-free dividend of 10 per cent, plus a less tax bonus of four. Since then the capital has been written down to provide for losses.

The company has paid no dividends for six years, but secured earnings last year of 3.8 per cent. tax free. The prospect is that the company will shortly recover the property which it owns at Le Havre. It has been improving its position steadily and has reduced its bank overdraft to £331,000. The directors are considering issuing more capital to pay off the bank overdraft, and no doubt, once the French position is more clearly seen, some action may be taken along these lines.

Mr. Churchill has a word for this. He said the war “as it progresses becomes less ideological.” In this case about £1,000,000 less.

* * *

Lend to the End (of What?)

Peace Savings Soon.—Sir Harold Mackintosh, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, said last night at the jubilee dinner of Birmingham Municipal Bank that the time would soon come when the war-savings campaign would become a peace-savings campaign.”— (Manchester Guardian, September 2nd, 1944.)

* * *

“Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings”

The New York Times Magazine, April 30th, carried an article by a young British evacuee, Anselm Acker, describing his impressions of American life, in the course of which this schoolboy says of New York: “The sight in the subways, when the people are returning from work, sitting and standing like sodden bales of hay with their mentality apparently all drained from them,” displeased him. Good for you, young Anselm, you are a perspicacious youth, whose keen eye will assist him much in penetrating the surface to see the real nature of the things beneath.

No wonder American magazines carry ads. for “No-Dozies,” guaranteed to keep you awake. And the comic strip of the Philadelphia Tribune shows a small child asking its mother : “Mom, what do these candies do to me ? Nothing, Son. What, don’t make me regular? No, Son. Don’t make my complexion clear? No, Son. Don’t make my breath sweet? No, Son. What! you mean I can eat ’em because I like ’em? ”

All the most simple elementary things of life are utterly commercialised and distorted. Everything is “packed,” “processed.” American troops are issued “Energy” crackers. Ham becomes Spam. Life is in a packet or carton.

If you would like to turn up the writings of a man who never went to New York, Anselm, by the name of Karl Marx, who wrote over sixty years ago, you will find that he said :—.

"Within the capitalist system all methods of raising the social productiveness of labour are bought at the cost of the individual labourer . . . they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process, in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power : they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital: as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his pay high or low, must grow worse."—(“Capital,” Vol. I., chapter 23.)

Nowhere is this clearer in the world to-day than New York.

Horatio.

Roads to Ruin (1951)

Book Review from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Roads to Ruin: The Shocking History of Social Progress," by E. S. Turner.  (Published by Michael Joseph, Ltd., 256 pages indexed with 11 illustrations. Price 12s. 6d.)

Nowhere in the book does the author claim to be a Socialist. Written entertainingly, without indignation, but sympathetically for the exploited, he deals with some of the lesser known social legislation which caused much controversy—and is now almost forgotten. Forgotten because we accept and can hardly conceive of modern society without such legislation.

Among others he writes of the Bills for the abolition of spring guns (1825-1827); the struggle to stop the employment of climbing boy chimney sweeps (1780 approx-1875);: the acts to legalise the Saturday half holiday (1825-1911) and the agitation for the Plimsoll Line (1850-1906). These are the chapters that will have most interest for Socialists, although the accounts of other minor political disturbances are not without their value in exposing the depths of hypocrisy, cant, humbug and self interest to which the defenders of the existing social system descended in order to safeguard their position, profits and pleasure.

A justifiable criticism against the work is that it tends to foster the discredited idea that the main participants in these movements were the original innovators of the reform. The fact is that the general rising discontent of the working class against their oppressive conditions, both rural and urban, first posed the question. Only then did certain individuals or groups see the need and voice the demand for the particular reform. A modern parallel could be drawn if one overemphasized the importance of A. P. Herbert and his small group of supporters, who so successfully steered marriage and divorce reforms through the House of Commons in the nineteen-thirties, and underemphasized the hardships that impelled him to do so. Mainly they were the changing relationships between the sexes, consequent upon more and more women becoming wage earners and participating in activities outside the home. Since the Married Women’s Property Bill (1856-1882), described in this book, women have striven for more equal status and more control over their own property and earnings. It was some of these difficulties showing themselves in the marriage relationship that A. P. Herbert tried to resolve with his Bill.

It is not difficult for Socialists to believe that squires and owners of game preserves claimed the right to kill by hidden guns attached to trip wires any poacher of their fattened birds or indeed any unsuspecting stranger accidentally trespassing. Not difficult, that is, after the experience of two world wars which were the defence of private property raised to national level.

An established phenomenon in 1776 and not abolished until 1827 their retention was upheld by some of the most inhumane arguments. On page 17.

  "If the market gardener can use spring guns to protect his cabbages why not squires to protect their game?"

Guns were cheaper than keepers and on page 26 we read that the Duke of Wellington supported this view point. Further on page 29.

  “The object of setting spring guns was not personal injury to anyone but to deter from the commission of theft and that object was as completely attained by hitting an innocent man as a guilty man.”

Throughout the shocking history of the exploitation of children, in mines, factories, mills and workshops, in the early nineteenth century, there also runs the brutal story of the climbing boy chimney sweep. The detailed description of the horrifying experiences of these boys (and not only boys, for the author states on page 51 that the flues of Windsor Castle were at one time swept by two girls) form a chapter which will not be lightly forgotten. The gruesome accounts of tragedies, wherein children died of asphyxiation or brutal treatment from vicious master sweeps, stirred the country from time to time reviving the agitation, which lasted for 100 years, for the abolition of the practice. Death was not the only horror. Quoted on page 38:

  ". . . they suffered from inflamed eyes and throats and all manner of skin irritation, the worst of which took the form of a scrotal infection known as chimney boys cancer. .. . There was no cure but the knife and the less fortunate chimney boy might find himself in his teens, not only a bandy-legged hunch back, but a eunuch."

Self-interest defended this employment and the Church was no better. On page 46:

  “. . . this witness had twice been stuck in chimneys in his youth—once at the Bishop of Lincoln’s and once at Lord Melbourne’s . . .”

The Religious Tract Society published a booklet entitled “The Young Chimney Sweepers" (C.1830) in which the following paragraph is deservedly quoted on page 51.

  "This little book will show you that little boys like you have gone to Sunday School and have learned to read and become good. Mind that you go also. Get yourself well washed on Saturday and mind that you are in time on Sunday morning. Your teachers will be glad to see you with a smiling face.. . . learn your lessons and try to read the blessed Bible and to think about the gracious Saviour of whom it tells you.. . . Thus you will be happy little sweeps and you will learn to praise the gracious God, who can make our situation in life comfortable whatever be the circumstances in which Providence has placed us.”

In these days when the claims are all for a five day week, the arguments for a Saturday half-holiday may seem outmoded but when it is realised that shop assistants worked a fourteen and sometimes a sixteen hour day it is easy to understand the growth of the Early Closing Association formed in 1842. Not wishing to be associated with the radical movements of that day the Association attempted to effect a limitation of hours by voluntary negotiation and met with the failure one would expect. Eventually after a welter of moralizing on both sides the struggle entered the political field and an effective Shops Act reached the Statute Book—but not until 1911.

Early Closing Bills had been rejected as “un-English" and “grandmotherly” and Charles Bradlaugh supported these views in 1888. He further argued that a Bill to reduce hours to twelve on five days and to fourteen on Saturdays was “opening the door to legislation which might be of the most terrible character.” He regarded the Bill as “immoral” because it struck a blow at the self-reliance of the individual. Evidently the advocacy of atheism did not extend to the granting of leisure to workers to further study and propagate its cause.

Finally to the fight to save the lives of seamen sent afloat in “coffin ships” from which unscrupulous owners gained greater financial advantage if the vessel foundered and the insurance company paid without demur, than if the rotten hulk reached port safely. It had been shown (page 179) that “. . . I seaman in 60 met a violent death as against 1 in 315 in the mines.” On page 143 a ship owner, Sir Walter Runciman is quoted when he describes those times as:

  ’’days of aboriginal stupidity and sordid bloodsucking” when ships were . . . “scandalously unseaworthy, rotten, leaky, badly found, badly manned, abominably fed and always overloaded.”

It was against those prevailing conditions that seamen organised themselves. They were aided in no small measure by the vociferous agitation of Samuel Plimsoll and his supporters, for a load line on all seagoing vessels. On Samuel Plimsoll there is quoted (but not supported by the author) on page 144 the following:

  ”. . . But he (Plimsoll) was not a reformer, he was a propagandist and the famous 'Plimsoll Mark' indicating the maximum safe draught of a ship remained a valueless safeguard for no less than sixteen years after he secured it, for the simple reason that the selection of its position on the ships side was left to the ’murderers’ (i.e. the shipowners) themselves.”

As confirmation of this there was one “ whimsical Cardiff captain who inscribed the device on his funnel ” (page 170).

The scandal of coffin ships had exercised the deliberations of a committee of fifteen set up as far back as the eighteen thirties—over thirty years before Plimsoll was elected Liberal member for Derby in 1868. Nevertheless it was not until 1890 that the owners load line gave way to the Government load line, based upon scientific tables issued by Lloyds. Chambers of Commerce, Lloyds, shipowners, miners and engineers’ unions and not least of them, the Seamen’s Unions all played their part in the establishment of this and other regulations for sea-going vessels. The tragedy of it all is shown when we are informed that a thousand years before, Venetian and Sardinian sailors had a load mark, a disk similar to the Plimsoll Line. The Hanseatic League also used a mark, and, a glaring mockery to British sailors, so did the British Navy, based on fighting efficiency.

Who can doubt the accuracy of the Socialist case, with regard to reforms, in view of the length of time and enormous efforts which went into the establishment of even these minor reforms? Stated simply it is that whilst we accept all and every reform, grudgingly granted or strenuously wrenched from the capitalist class we do not advocate organising nor working for them. Our work is to organise for Socialism, knowing that when large numbers of Socialists exist the capitalists will be most lavish in the distribution of reforms in an attempt to retain their privileged position.

We recommend this book for reading by Socialists, and for all social reformers we suggest it as an “awful warning” to them for their future activities.

B.

The "War" Against Poverty. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who has followed the Press during the last few weeks will have been struck by the reiteration, day after day, of certain articles in bold type, announcing to a more or less interested world, the fact that we are in the midst of a “Great Trade Boom," and that we are also engaged in a great “War Against Poverty."

As is usually the case, the capitalist newspapers have tumbled over each other, as it were, in their efforts to prove to all and sundry what a glorious condition of prosperity the workers are enjoying. They hare also been ably assisted in those efforts by journals professing especial sympathy with labour, which is a gratifying feature—to the capitalists.

Among others, Mr. Chiozza Money and the “Daily News" have been at great pains to show what wonderful records have been created, both in imports and exports, with a consequent increase in wages.

This may appear all right to the "man in the street," who doesn’t trouble to analyse these statements, but simply reads his daily paper and swallows all that it dishes up.

As a matter of fact, however, during the last fifteen years, wages— that is, real wages— have actually decreased seven per cent. The average income of those "who toil not" during the same period has increased by over four times as much!

According to Mr. Money “the worker is getting a share of the increased product of industry.” Maybe! But Mr. Money omits to point out that, relatively to the cost of living, the workers are worse off than they were twenty-five years ago. Instead of the workers being more contented and looking brightly forward to what Mr. Money terms “the good new times,” their outlook is blacker and their condition more, precarious than ever.

The “Daily Mail” (3.12.12) endeavours to explain the cause of this “boom” in trade. “The growing output of gold,” they say, “the increase in credit which has accompanied it, and the advance in production with the help of the modern application of electricity, are probable and practical factors.”

Now, if anyone had asked the writer what, in his opinion, was the cause of the increased misery of the workers, a better explanation could hardly have been furnished than that supplied by the “Daily Mail” to explain quite another point. The only difference is the point of view. Whereas the “Daily Mail” seeks to show that the “boom” benefits everybody, this is not really the case. Only the capitalist class is benefited. Gold production has increased enormously during the last half-century, due to improved methods of production. As a consequence of this the value of gold has fallen. Thus gold being cheaper, more of it is required in order to exchange for any given commodity than formerly—assuming, of course, that the value of other commodities remains the same.

This depreciation in the value of gold means high prices, hence a decline in the purchasing power of money. On the other hand, owing to the constant improvement of machinery, with its inevitable resulting army of unemployed, it cannot be said that “booms” in the long run benefit the workers. Cases there are where workers have been put on overtime, and others given jobs, in order to cope with a rush of trade, but trade “booms” are at the best only temporary, and are invariably followed by periods of depression due to over production. Even at the time of writing indications are not wanting that portend an early breakdown. This, of course, will mean a further augmentation of the unemployed army.

The inability of the workers to buy back that which they have produced results in a glut of the market, and we have the spectacle of thousands of men, women, and children going hungry and ill clad, simply through having produced too much! This apparently involves a contradiction, but to the student of social conditions its truth is terribly plain. And this condition, I might point out, is inevitable under a system wherein goods are produced for profit instead of for use.

These are facts that the average social reformer doesn’t trouble to enquire very deeply into. He believes that by pressing for legislation to the capitalist class, who control and administer the political machinery in addition to controlling the machinery of industry, we can gain immunity from the depredations of that class!

All the so-called remedies for the elimination of poverty that are at the present time being shouted all over the country by the "war against poverty” campaigners and others, betray the deplorable fact that even the “leaders" themselves don’t know the commonsense principles upon which a working class movement should be based. This is inexcusable in view of the fact that the real solution of the poverty “problem” is as easy to understand as falling off a log. The solution lies in Socialism. This, as a rule, is outside the vocabulary of the average labour leader, who generally has some axe or other to grind.

Let us take a glance at some of their so called remedies.

There are several reform parties in the field, and prominent among them is the I.L.P., with its cry of “War Against Poverty!” They in turn are assisted by the B.S.P., Co-operative Unions, Women's Guilds, and other freak organisations—in fact, anybody and everybody so long as they keep Socialism obscured.

One of the points aimed at is the establishment of a legal Minimum Wage. Will this alleviate poverty in any degree ? Let us see.

Money, being a commodity, is subject to the same laws as any other commodity. Its exchange-value varies. As its value increases or decreases its purchasing power is higher or lower as the case may be. Given a legal Minimum Wage of a fixed amount of money, and the continued rise in the cost of living, and in a short time the minimum would represent s greater depth of poverty than unrestricted wages give to-day.

It is true that the reformers at their various meetings have added amendments to the resolutions, calling for a rise in the minimum if the cost of living rose, but one can hardly conceive any government establishing a minimum wage that had to be periodically adjusted to rising or falling prices.

But even if they did, the operation of economic law (as has been shown in the columns of this journal) must inevitably defeat the object of the reform. Substantiation of this comes from Australia, where the establishment of a Minimum Wage has led to the wholesale dismissal of men who are no longer young and active, and has intensified the struggle all round.

The Minimum Wage is a snare and a delusion, intended to lure the working class into supporting the Liberals. It is unscientific and calculated to lead the workers into the bog of false economics.

The B.S.P. are in the same boat as the I.L.P., for they claim that “the legal enactment of a Minimum Wage for all adult workers, a maximum working week, and maximum prices of commodities are proposals advocated by the (then) S.D.P., which clearly indicate the revolutionary nature of their policy.” (“Justice,” 22.7.11.)

Just how far such a policy is revolutionary may be judged by the statement of Sir George Askwith (known as “the strike-breaker”) at a meeting held by Mr. Harold Cox only the other day. “In a comparatively short time,” said Sir George, “we might be face to face with the grave consideration of the question of a general minimum wage.” So, whether we “demand ” it or not, it is quite conceivable that we shall be forced to have it—in the interest of the master class.

Another “demand’’ is for an Eight Hour Day. This needs very little examination in order to show the “benefits” accruing from it. The speeding up that has resulted from its introduction in such places as Brunner Mond’s, Nather & Platt’s, and various municipal bodies is well known. Such firms afford fine examples of the hours being reduced without in any way curtailing the output.

Any worker engaged on an eight hours a day job will testify as to who benefits by the restriction of hours. Only recently the hours on the Birmingham Tramway System were reduced from 60 to 54. This has since been nullified to a great extent by “speeding up” the journeys, and the men complain that they are as badly off as before. Cases could be quoted where hours have been reduced from 10 to 7½, and yet the actual output has been the same.

In 1911 151, 056 workers had their working time reduced, yet we find that the total production was greater than in 1910. Clearly an eight hours day will not benefit the mass of the workers.

"Provision for School Children” is another item which provides an example of tinkering with effects without removing the causes. How much better would it not be to eudeavour to understand the cause of child misery, and work for its removal, instead of advocating fatuous reforms that have only the effect of blinding the workers with false hopes! Instead of applying salve to the social boil, why not purify the system, and thus eradicate disease?

Children should be well fed, and well clothed too, but is it to be expected that the capitalist class will abolish poverty when such a condition is absolutely inseparable for their position of social dominance.

When the workers can be got to recognise that the cause of all poverty and social misery is the control by one class over the means of life of the other, the end of poverty will be in sight. Poverty has no need to exist, but until the working man ceases to vote his master into political power, so long will it continue.

Any of the reforms enumerated above can be applied without in the least effecting any permanent improvement in the lot of the workers. They are essentially capitalistic, and as such should be emphatically denounced by the Socialist. who sees in Socialism the only remedy.

The opportunities for studying Socialism are open to everybody, and when we find so called labour leaders heading in a different direction, we are forced to the conclusion that it is against their interest to abolish capitalism. Indeed, they aim only at propitiating it, for they claim that they wish to get ‘'the best” out of the system. We have continued to point this out, and experience has verified our judgment. Such a policy has no place in the propaganda of a Socialist party. The issue— freedom or slavery —is too clear for that.

Both the B.S.P. and the I.L.P. believe and teach that capital would exist under Socialism, and also that wages would be paid and that government would continue. No wonder the “rank and file” are politically blind, when they are taught to believe that the conditions essential for the introduction of Socialism are identical with those necessary to capitalism.

The strewing of the path with these red herrings, fouling the trail, as it were, of Socialist propaganda, renders the work of the Socialist more difficult, but whilst it may, in a small sense, retard the ultimate realisation of Socialism, it cannot expunge its principles or prevent its final triumph.

There is only one party that is engaged in a real war against poverty— that party is the Socialist Party. Being a Socialist Party, all our efforts are logically centred upon Socialism. It is to the interest of the workers to rally under its flag, and help to speed the day when we shall have gained the right to live, when those who create the wealth shall enjoy it, when every man, woman, and child shall have the opportunity to develop to the fullest extent their human powers, and thus, for the first time since the dawn of history, realise the true meaning of life.

Tom Sala

Editorial: Shorter Hours For What? (1959)

Editorial from the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some of the longest and hardest struggles of the trade unions have been to secure agreements reducing hours of work. Hours were brought down from 10 a day to 9, and then to 8—each time against the complaint of the employers and their tame economists that this would ruin industry, price British exports out of all markets and produce millions of unemployed.

The last general movement towards shorter hours was after World War II, when the 44-hour week became fairly general for industrial workers. (The first World War had been followed by the movement that brought about the 48 to 47-hour week.)

Now a number of unions, including miners, and engineering and shipbuilding workers, are trying to get a further reduction. They are asking for shorter hours without reduction of weekly pay (that being the way hours were reduced on earlier occasions in the past 40 years). With persistent pressure, they should have some success.

It is, however, impossible to pass over without comment the seeming change of attitude that has taken place in recent years towards shorter hours. In the earlier movements the demand for shorter hours meant what it appeared to mean, but in recent years the nominally shorter hours have been used very often merely as a means of getting additional overtime pay while working the same hours as before. In manufacturing industry average hours of work in 1938 were 46½ a week and in 1946 46⅕. In 1947 the standard working week was generally reduced by agreement from 48 or 47 to 44, but the hours actually worked began to rise again, and in 1955 were only very slightly under 47. In August, 1955, out of about 6,000,000 workers covered by the Ministry of Labour inquiry, over one in four was working overtime, the average overtime of these 1½ millions averaging 8½ hours in the week. In November, 1956, there were 1,600,000 workers doing an average of 8 hours overtime a week, in the manufacturing group of industries employing about 6 million.

Of course, with the rise of unemployment and short-time working the numbers doing overtime have dropped, but at August, 1958, in the same manufacturing group of workers there were still nearly 1,200,000 doing overtime.

We shall therefore again see the trade unions in the somewhat odd position of going to the employers to state a case for a 40-hour week instead of 44, knowing that large numbers of workers are doing upwards of 50 hours.

Of course, it will be said that hundreds of thousands of workers simply cannot make ends meet on their bare pay; for them overtime is a necessity. In a sense this is true, but it is really a dangerous half-truth. If that attitude had been taken up in the 19th century the battles for shorter hours would never have been fought, but workers then did not take up that attitude. They took the more correct line of fighting both to press up the wage for the week and to reduce the weekly hours of work.

But they also set their face against the working of overtime as a normal practice, which is what it now often is. 

The hours of work problem raises other issues besides the number of hours spent in the factory or office. As the years go by it is increasingly bound up with the number of hours spent travelling from home to work and back again. Workers have long been forced to move further out from the centre of the big cities, which has meant giving up more time to travel the greater distance. With modern aggravation of the problem of how to keep the traffic moving, it is now also becoming a question of spending more and more time to travel the same distance.

The Labour Party and the Unemployed. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Statesmanship.

The question of unemployment was the first to occupy the preliminary conference of the Labour Party at Hull. “Important” speeches were made by the “statesmen of labour," and a no less “important” resolution was passed.

Mr. Pete Curran said: “Until we are in a position to utilise the legislative machinery of the country for the purpose of curtailing the income of the rich who are in possession, and in adding to the income of the poor, we shall never solve the unemployed problem.”

Mr. J. R. MacDonald, in moving the important resolution said: “Unemployment was now part and parcel of our industrial system; it was produced by the system with the same certainty and accuracy with which the industrial system produced profits.”

Mr. O’Grady in seconding that resolution .said: “The present industrial system was a machine turning out profits on the one hand and unemployed on the other. It was inevitable that it must be so.”

From the foregoing extracts from the most “important” speeches that were uttered on the question, our readers will naturally gather that since unemployment could confessedly only end by the abolition of capitalism, therefore the resolution that was carried by an overwhelming majority urged that steps should immediately be taken to instruct and organise the working class in the work before them, namely, to concentrate upon the capture of the powers of government to the end that the productive powers may be transformed from instruments of oppression and exploitation, into the means of promoting the welfare of those who produce.

But no. That would not have been statesmanlike. It would have been too logical.

This was the resolution actually carried: - 

  That in the opinion of this conference of trade union, Socialist, and co-operative organisations, unemployment is not caused by the free trade policy of the country, and is not averted by periods of good trade, but is a permanent feature of our present industrial organisation. This conference therefore declares that the problem can only be solved by a vigorous use on the part of the Government, and of local authorities, of the legislative and administrative powers, including shortening the hours of labour of public and other employees and protecting the worker from the operation of land and other monopolies, which depopulate the country, overcrowd the towns, lower wages, and increase the share of the national produce which is secured by the idle rich. This conference consequently calls upon the Government to fulfil its promise in the King's Speech of 1906 that it would amend the Unemployed Workmen Act, and it declares that such an amendment to be satisfactory must embody the principles and general policy of the Labour Party's Unemployed Workmen Bill.

And that is so like the Labour Party. The unemployed, you see, can only disappear on the abolition of capitalism, therefore, do not let us take steps to that end, let us ask the capitalists to abolish themselves!

If no unemployed are available, the capitalist loses his great weapon in the cutting down of wages and in the speeding up of the employed, nor is any reserve army available for the expansion of production in busy times, nor are any available to take the place of strikers. Without the deadly competition of the unemployed for jobs, the employed would be enabled to obtain almost the whole available product of their labour. Profits would therefore vanish and capitalism come to an end. Yet the master class are to be asked to themselves abolish the very corner-stone of their dominant existence. This is reasonable, possible, statesman like, reform wisdom.

When we on the other hand insist that since unemployment is inseparable from capitalism, and since from unemployment flow the greatest miseries of the workers, including the wholesale starvation of children, women and men, and since, moreover, the abolition of capitalist exploitation is admittedly the only solution of unemployment, therefore the workers should concentrate upon the capture of political supremacy in order to abolish class exploitation, when we insist upon this, the only logical policy, we are dubbed impossiblists, heresy hunters, or moon-raking rainbow-chasers by those whose hard-headed, practical and "possible” policy consists in requesting of fire that it shall not burn.

A Reform Analysed.

But what is one of the principal factors upon which the Labour Party relies in its solution of the unemployed? It is the reduction of the hours of labour. There is nothing to be said against the reduction of the hours of labour as such, but as a solution of unemployment what could be more fatuous?

From the passing of the Ten Hour Act until the present day nothing is more certain than that the reduction of hours has not in the aggregate of cases decreased, but has caused an increase in productivity. That is to say, instead of more workers being required to produce the same amount as formerly, fewer are actually required. This holds good generally. It is partly due to the fact that the very reduction of hours, by allowing a greater time for the recuperation of the strength to the worker, enables him to put forth a greater effort per hour. He is, indeed, usually compelled to do so, and to produce as much or more in the reduced working day as in the former longer hours.

Further, there are in most departments, mechanical appliances ready for adoption which for the nonce are no cheaper to work than the human machines they would displace. When, however, an increase in the wages bill threatens, these appliances are introduced to save such increased expenditure, and by reason of the continual perfectibility of the machine, particularly due to the experience born of its being put into practical daily working, the appliances improve rapidly and bring about considerable reductions in the number of workers the masters need hire in order to produce the same amount of goods as before.

Therefore the reduction of hours, unless carried to such extreme and wholesale lengths as would require a revolution to accomplish, would not reduce the numbers of the unemployed.

Any reduction of the working day that is introduced by the ruling class will, from the very interests which promote it, be only upon such a scale as is consistent with greater output on the part of the average worker employed and greater profit for the possessing class.

So the reduction of hours, as a "palliative,” instead of requiring more workers to be employed to produce the same amount of wealth as before would, in the long run, actually require less, and would have the tendency to increase rather than diminish the very evil of unemployment against which it was directed. It is, indeed, a typical palliative.

F. C. Watts