So They Say: Menu: Air Pie — (1974)

The So They Say Column from the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Menu: Air Pie —

Popular romantic writers have a stock of words and phrases for instant effect on their suggestible readers: tender, moonlight, yearning, heavenly vision, and so on. Similarly, Labour politicians rely on a small vocabulary designed to make their followers salivate like Pavlov’s dogs — “fair shares”, "equal opportunity”, “make the rich pay”, etc.

On 8th August Denis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the Labour Government’s plans for wealth and gift taxes. The proposed starting level for the wealth tax is £100,000. To the press, Healey “admitted . . . that the main reason for the taxes was to create a greater atmosphere of social justice in Britain” (Guardian). On television, asked specifically what benefit the working class would get, he said poorer-paid workers would feel better if they knew money was being taken from the rich.

Pavlov’s dogs, dribbling in response to stimuli, failed to notice that the bell ringing was not preliminary to but instead of dinner.

— and an Empty Cup

The real response should have come from the rich, if Healey was attacking them so violently. Hear how they complained:

No one in the City jumped from 20th storey windows, fled the country or even squealed very loudly yesterday on publication of the Government’s Green Paper thinking on a wealth tax. It has singularly little effect on share dealings on the Stock Exchange . . . About the harshest comments on the paper were that it was 'a time-consuming irrelevance’, by the Association of Chambers of Commerce.

But not only do they not mind. The view expressed to The Guardian's business editor was that

the City would not mind a wealth tax if it enabled the Labour or any other Government ‘to institute a meaningful wages policy’.

It is accepted both in the City and by many business men that the wealth tax proposal could be a psychological advantage to the Government in persuading trade unions to accept a nil growth, or even a cut, in living standards over the next year or so.

What Can't Happen Here ?

The history of the “Watergate scandal” and its consequences leading to Nixon’s downfall from the US presidency was a showpiece of hypocrisy — Nixon’s, his accusers’, and the righteous commentators’. Could such a thing happen in Britain? The New Law Journal on 2nd August had some interesting comments.

Watergate ought to provide the necessary impetus to the Government to get on with the task of rewriting

the Official Secrets legislation as recommended by the Franks Commission without further prevarication.

While retaining the strictest security over those matters which are matters of national security, there is an urgent need to remove ‘confidential’ and ‘secret’ classifications from all material which allows officialdom to maintain a cosy secrecy over matters which may merely embarrass, or be inconvenient to, slipshod or inefficient officials.

Which is saying, delicately, that the difference between America and Britain is not over what is likely to happen but over what is likely to be found out. Incidentally, there is a curious word misuse in the extract quoted. “Prevaricate” means go astray, transgress, be equivocal, deceive. The word for putting things off, which is what they mean, is “procrastinate”. A Freudian error?

Pass, Friend

Nixon’s successor, President Ford, is reported to be looked-on favourably by the Chinese government. They are pleased that he insists on military spending as a top priority, because of “their desire to see the strategic balance between the super Powers maintained in America’s favour to inhibit Soviet expansionism” (Guardian, 10th August).

The Chinese view is the one all capitalist statesmen must take — looking for advantage for their own trade and strategy, and never mind from whom. The report says:

Peking . . . will probably only devote a few delayed lines to Nixon’s departure. But the late President was, in any case, much less the architect of the new China policy than was Dr. Kissinger, and the latter’s presence on Mr. Ford’s Administration will certainly be welcome in Peking.

Blowing the Gaff

Fascists in Italy have been in the news with acts of terrorism. One would assume the Communists to be up in arms to extinguish fascism; and one would be wrong.

A State subsidy for all Italian political parties began operating in July; the Communists’ share is £7 millions. A veteran leader described the subsidizing of the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano as “horrendous and ignoble, so bestial as to fill one with horror”. He was attacked by the party newspaper and his fellow leaders. Only the fascist movement was “horrendous” — but not the subsidy. The Guardian, 13th July, said :

Signor. Pajetta, and the Communists in general, also are opposed to Senator Terracini’s proposal that Parliament should vote for the disbanding of the MSI. The Communist line is that it can be defeated through the ballot box. Privately, they may also realize that a Fascist enemy is politically good to have around.

Plenty Amidst Poverty

There is a physical training game called "O’Grady’', in which the trainees have to do the opposite of what they hear. It must be like that in Communist countries, where equality and the expropriation of the expropriators are articles of faith — while inequality grows and the expropriators’ cigars get bigger.

The Observer had an item on 14th July headed HUNGARY'S PROPERTY BOOM. It was about the rise in house prices in Hungary following legislation to regularize the private ownership of property:

There has recently been a widespread move to acquire houses in the country, not only by the Communist élite, but also on a wide scale by the new managerial class.

Everything above the upper limit is classified as ‘luxury’. But such properties will not be confiscated, as they were when the Communists first took over.

Instead, the owners of ‘luxury’ residences will have to pay a special tax. This is levied on houses and apartments worth more than £20,000 at between ½ per cent and 1 per cent, depending on the number of rooms, and on holiday villas of the same value at between 1 per cent and 1½ per cent.

Getting Dark, Down Under

Our July issue had an article on conditions in Australia, where workers from Britain often go in the mistaken hope of shedding their problems. The unemployment figures released there on 12th August show 93,585 out of work, i.e. 1.90 per cent. of the estimated labour force. Vacancies fell by 21.3 per cent., from July, against the normal trend at this time of the year. The Parliamentary Opposition has predicted 100,000 unemployed by December, with inflation at 20 per cent.

The Guardian correspondent in Canberra wrote on 12th August that

the estimate could prove conservative. The Cabinet seems to have swung solidly against the Treasury argument for further deflationary action in the September 17 budget, for fear of union reaction against unemployment and the need to get voluntary wage and price restraints working.

United Fans Queue Here

The football season has begun; and its weekly accompaniment of numerous arrests and convictions as rabbles of "supporters” smash up everything and everybody they meet in the towns they are visiting.

When the epidemic was starting in 1969 the Notting Hill Anarchist Group issued a leaflet which really should not be left unnoticed. Extracts (our italics) as follows:

Football crowds have always been rough and managed to enjoy themselves. It’s part of the game. Things only turn really unpleasant when a large number of blue uniforms appear on the scene.

After alleging that the directors of football clubs pay the police to arrest “standing” spectators so that expensive seats can be put in the space they now occupy, the leaflet ends:

It’s good to know this anyway, and to get things straight in your own mind about what’s happening, but it’s not worth fighting it on your own . . But if you do get arrested, or anybody you know does, try and send somebody along to see us and we’ll see what we can do to help. The people who are giving out these leaflets will be standing in the same places after the game is over.

This inane truckling to (and half-incitement of) hooligans is supposed to represent a serious outlook on society. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Robert Barltrop

Law and society (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism will be a system of society where the mass of formal rules and regulations which now govern human conduct will disappear. There will also be none of the trappings which inevitably accompany any advanced legal system.

The crushing environment of capitalist society helps to instil in people the idea that the law is some sort of external norm governing human behaviour and that those individuals administering it are a breed of superior beings. The foolish notion that judges and lawyers are somehow of a better moral or intellectual fibre than the rest of us, should not need debunking in the 1970s. Shakespeare did it over 350 years ago. King Lear says, “. . see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief . . . change places and handy dandy which is the justice which is the thief.”

More recently Belfort Bax in The Religion of Socialism said:

. . . it is an undoubted truth that no judge can be an honest man . . . and why? Because the aspiring member of the bar when he accepts a judgeship knows that in doing so he deliberately pledges himself to functions which at any moment compel him to act against his conscience and wrong another man . . . He lays himself under the obligation of administering a law which he may know to be bad on any occasion when called upon merely because it is the law. He makes this surrender of humanity and honour for what? For filthy lucre and tawdry notoriety. Now I ask can we conceive a more abjectly contemptible character than that which acts thus?

But the Socialist’s attitude to the role of law in society is not based on exposing the fallacy that those who administer the law are a nobler breed of men. It is reasoned on the basis of the law’s function in present day society. Although academic lawyers divide the realm of law into hundreds of different branches, when looked at from the point of view of society as a whole, there are really four main areas of law. These are state, criminal, contract and what is sometimes known as welfare law but is usually more accurately described as poverty law. An examination of these four branches of law shows their bases in capitalist society and how they will be totally irrelevant and unnecessary in Socialist society.

State law is the area of the legal machinery which deals with the individual’s right in society as against the machinery of government and its armed forces. States only exist in capitalist society as arbitrary boundaries, defining areas of competing capitalist interests. Internal state law is the legal machinery used as the front to back up the armed control of the capitalist over wealth produced by the workers. A world community where everything is owned in common will have neither place nor need for laws to keep one section of society in subjection.

Now let’s take criminal law. The vast bulk of this area is concerned with offences against recognised property relationships. All wealth in capitalist society is owned by definite individuals or bodies (e.g. companies or governments). The law takes no notice of how it came about that X owns vast estates and Y owns nothing. Criminal law is there to preserve those relationships that currently exist. The shareholder’s title to his shares is protected by the law (backed up by the armed force of the state); the landlord’s title to his land is likewise defended by the law. The criminal law takes no notice of the social robbery that is a fact of everyday life, i.e. that the land, factories, mines etc. are owned by a small minority. Clearly in a society where all wealth is owned by the whole of mankind, i.e. Socialism, there will be no part to be played by a system or rules to enable robbers to hold on to their booty.

The rest of the criminal law, which is not directly related to the defence of private property is largely concerned with state control of production and distribution. Factory legislation and road traffic legislation set a standard (usually the absolute minimum) for controls in the interest of the whole of the capitalist class. Lorries going at 80 m.p.h. are a danger to other products on the road; men working more than a certain number of hours at a stretch driving these lorries are also a danger to other commodities on the roads. They also risk damaging the goods of their own employer.

It is fairly well known that legislation protecting workers from dangerous machinery and processes is ineffective. Firstly the number of factory inspectors is totally inadequate. Secondly the penalties that are imposed for the breaches that are discovered and brought before the courts are derisive. Many employers find it cheaper to pay the penalty fines that are imposed for hazarding workers’ lives by, for example, unfenced machinery, than foot the bill for complying with safety regulations. In a Socialist society the needs of those involved in the productive processes will not be swept aside by the insane drive for profit.

The final part of the criminal law deals with ‘‘offences against the person’’. In terms of the legal machinery of capitalism it occupies a small part in the whole process. The majority of crimes in this category (often inter family disputes) are traceable to frustrations and problems caused by private property in society. When father comes home having worked a ten-hour day, doing a simple, boring, degrading, mind destroying process, to a wife cooped up in two rooms with three children, it is hardly surprising that domestic violence sometimes results. Other crimes of violence are generally linked with theft in some way or other though a recent ugly development has been political violence. The hooliganism of the football match and the thuggery of the tubes and street corners are only a reaction to the horrific conditions the majority of people face in private property society. In a society where material deprivations have been left behind the need for legal restraint will be found to be obsolete.

The third main area, contract law, covers an enormous field, from buying a joint at the local supermarket to property “developers” buying slag heaps. Quite obviously the majority of workers have little contact with this area of the law or the courts that administer it. Disputes over the amount to pay for a loaf of bread seldom reach the somber pomposity of High Court Judges. On the other hand a dispute over the correct price of a shipment of copper from South America could involve millions of pounds. The capitalist class needs the Civil Courts to sort out their property disputes. The only times the average worker has any real contact with this area of the law is when he is buying a house) of course on mortgage so it is really the building society or the local authority that is buying it); or if he fails to meet his instalments on the h.p. or the fridge. But it is a brief look, and many workers do not even have this glimpse into the mysteries of the workings of the law. Need it be added that when all wealth is owned in common, laws of contract will be as relevant as a horse and cart at the motor show.

Which leaves poverty law. The area embraces the law dealing with state benefits of whatever sort, local authority benefits (e.g. subsidized housing) and certain areas which are known as social law. It is an area where most lawyers know little and care less. After all there is no money to be made for the lawyer in explaining to the pensioner how he can obtain an allowance of 2p off the cost of his butter. It is, however, the area of the law with which most workers make some contact. In 1972 over 10 million received some sort of regular state “benefits", out of a total population of 56 million. (Social Trends 1973 published by the Central Statistical Office). That is a high proportion of the adult population. The distribution of the pittances that are given to the members of the working class, unable to keep even their abysmal standard of living afloat (£16 per week for a married couple not a pittance?) is surely evidence of the appalling failure of capitalist society to produce an answer to poverty. This despite the Lloyd Georges, the Beveridges and the mile upon mile of statutes dealing with poverty.

The vast complicated structure for measuring the subsistence allowances that are doled out to workers only has a place in a world that allows a small minority to live in luxury and forces the vast majority to live in poverty.

Finally, under this general heading of poverty law might be included “family law". The Law Society is responsible for administering the civil Legal Aid system in this country. That is the fund to enable people who cannot afford legal advice or assistance to have it paid by the state in certain circumstances. (This fund is different from the one relating to Legal Aid in criminal cases.) The Law Society calculates that the majority of its funds are used in proceedings relating to divorce, maintenance or custody of children. With the greater pressures that capitalist society bring on personal relationships the divorce courts (which have the task of rearranging the poverty of the working class when family situations get out of hand) are the courts that workers increasingly enter.

In Socialist society where there will be no buying and selling and therefore no money, there will be no financial pressures on human beings, adults or children. The relationships between the sexes will not be complicated by the irrelevant considerations which are of such importance to-day. If people who were formerly living together wish to separate there will be no financial or “moral” pressures to prevent them doing so, and no humiliating proceedings to be endured as a result.

When Socialism is introduced amongst many of the vast changes in human existence will be the following:

1. Wealth will be produced in the abundance necessary to satisfy man’s physical wants. This is technically possible now, but production is limited to what can be sold at a profit on the market.
2. There will be free access for all in society to the goods produced. In these circumstances laws defining people’s property relationships will be as unnecessary as they are useless. When poverty is abolished, who needs poverty laws? When private property is abolished, who will want contract and criminal laws defending it?

Ronnie Warrington

September 1904. (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard first appeared in September 1904. It has been produced monthly since that date. To mark these 70 years of publication, the following extract has been taken from the first Socialist Standard, instead of the regular 50 Years Ago column.

"In dealing with all questions affecting the welfare of the working-class our standpoint will be frankly revolutionary. We shall show that the misery, the poverty, and the degradation caused by capitalism grows far more rapidly than does the enacting of palliative legislation for its removal. The adequate alleviation of these ills can be brought about only by a political party having Socialism as its object. So long as the powers of administration are controlled by the capitalist class so long can they render nugatory any legislation they consider to unduly favour the workers."

The Editorial Committee.

September 1904.

The freedom of the shops (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter was sent to the Hampstead and Highgate Express, London, commenting on a statement by the Tory MP for Hampstead — where the Socialist Party is contesting the next General Election.

Dear Sir,

Despite Mr. Finsberg’s statement that only a Conservative government could guarantee the “freedom to shop at the shop of our choice, and not at second-rate co-operatives”, it is only too apparent that after 70 years of Labour, Liberal and Conservative governments the “shop of our choice” is the one that suits our wage-packet.

Why is it that many old people in Hampstead go to buy small quantities of perishable foods from a stall in Haverstock Hill? (H & H p. 6). Is this their freedom of choice or is it perhaps that they cannot afford to buy their necessaries in larger quantities?

No doubt many of the people in Mr. Finsberg’s constituency would dearly love to be able to shop at Harrods or Fortnum & Mason’s or at the better class of shop in Hampstead, but find that like other workers they must cut the corners and shop at “second-rate Co-operatives” to make ends meet.

Working-class people have always had to endure shoddy or second-class goods and this will always be the case as long as capitalism lasts. Mr. Finsberg’s words are belied by the facts.

In a Socialist society there would be no second rate goods — only the best would be produced and this would be for human need, not profit. Goods would be freely available in much the same way as the atmosphere is today.

Letters: Insularly aloof? (1974)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Insularly aloof?

It appears that in this society you are either meek and humble, or aggressive. There is no other, no middle road under capitalism, in the world at large.

Which of the above categories do socialists come? What do socialists do outside the political arena? Do they stand insularly aloof within?

(Unsigned.)

Reply:

Socialists oppose the capitalist system uncompromisingly. Many have undergone hardships through doing so, particularly in wartime but also through adherence to their convictions at any time. We leave to our correspondent to decide whether that makes us “meek and humble” or “aggressive”.

We oppose reformist and direct-action activities which mean the banging of heads against brick walls. Addicts of those policies have accused us of “standing aloof”: we say anyone can get a sore head.

“Outside the political arena” Socialists go to work, are trade-unionists, read, watch tv, and do other common-place things.

Editors.

Lenin and lies

We have had enquiries about the source from which an article in February Socialist Standard stated that Lenin advocated “lies, trickery and deceit” as methods for Communists to use in the trade unions.

The version of Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism published by the American Communists (“Workers’ Party of America”) in the early nineteen-twenties with the title Should Communists Participate in Reactionary Trade Unions? contains the following passage:

Communist must be tactful 

There is no doubt but that the opportunist leaders of the unions will resort to all the dirty tricks of bourgeois diplomacy, invoking the help of the capitalist governments, priests, police, judges, etc., in order to prevent the Communists from penetrating into the trade unions, to force them out of the unions, to make their work within the unions as dangerous as possible, aiding the police to persecute and run them down. But we must be able to withstand all that, to be ready for any and every sacrifice, and even if necessary, to practice trickery, to employ cunning, and to resort to illegal methods, to sometimes even overlook or conceal the truth—all for the sake of penetrating into the trade unions, to stay there and by every and all means carry on the work of Communism.

This publication led to strong condemnation of Communists in America, and they found it difficult to defend these intentions laid down for them by Lenin. Consequently the Communist Party of Great Britain’s edition of Left-Wing Communism had a watered-down version of the passage, as follows:

It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to go the whole length of any sacrifice, if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on Communist work inside them, at any cost.

Editorial Committee

"Isolated itself from the real world"

Once again the Socialist Standard has aligned itself with the most reactionary elements in society. The article “Fascism, Violence and the Left” in the July edition was not only factually incorrect but also dangerously wrong in its analysis.

Firstly, the various left-wing groups involved in the Red Lion Square demonstration were not attacking the National Front. The left-wing groups were marching to a meeting to protest against the neo-Nazi N.F.’s march. You ignore the fact that the police only took action against the left wing demonstration. This ignoral of the police’s tacit support for the right wing and repression of the left is sadly not an isolated incident but in complete accordance with the S.P.G.B.’s record of no comment on the increasing state repression of socialists and trade unionists.

Secondly, the article gives the impression that the death of Kevin Gately was the result of the “violence of the Left”. In fact it was the police attack on the march which caused Kevin’s death. .This attack began before the N.F. had entered the square, the police were not protecting the N.F. against left-wing violence but engaging in a senseless action that even the liberal capitalist papers such as the Guardian were forced by the facts to admit was unnecessary.

The unwillingness of the S.P.G.B. to face the reality of the state’s repressive role is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather than become involved in class struggle the S.P.G.B. has remained on the outside producing a series of dogmatic dismissals of partial economic struggles, women’s lib, gay lib, fights against racism and fascism, student politics, etc.

In its rejection of any partial demand the S.P.G.B. has isolated itself from the real world and developed an internal conservative inertia. It has failed to answer the question of what should revolutionaries do in a non-revolutionary period by completely failing to intervene in such a way as to develop revolutionary consciousness and to strengthen the organisation and self-confidence of the working class. As such the S.P.G.B. has not developed in the last seventy years, degenerating into a group of philosophical utopian socialists incapable of bringing their ideas into relevance to non-socialists, only by achieving this by relating the struggle for socialism to the day to day struggles of the working class can socialist conscious develop.

G. Wright,

Wirral.

Reply:

Thank you for so ably confirming everything in our article “Fascism, Violence and the Left”.

Your rebuttal of allegedly “factually incorrect” statements consists of not facts but inferences — “tacit support”, “gives the impression”, and that we "ignore” this and that version. As a fact, we did not attribute Gately’s death to anyone. The article said: “and a young student was killed”.

It is strange you should say the SPGB does not “face the reality of the state’s repressive role” and, earlier, “increasing state repression” of socialists (so-called) and trade unionists. These events took place under a Labour government for whose return the left-wing groups in the demonstration had all worked at the last election. Who does not face reality?

The same can be said of your reiteration that through not supporting “partial economic struggle” and reformist movements the SPGB “has not developed in the last seventy years”. If — as you say — the working class now lacks revolutionary consciousness, organization and self-confidence, and — as you say — reformists and trade unionists are being repressed under the Labour government they elected, that is the outcome of seventy years of the struggles and activities you nevertheless still advocate. If it were not pernicious it would be laughable.

Editors.

Other letters and replies held over to next month through pressure on space.

Correction (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are grateful to a correspondent for pointing out the following corrections to an article in the June Socialist Standard.

On page 98 we stated that when the SPGB was formed in 1904 it had to contend with, among others “. . . the Democratic Labour League (William Morris and Belford Bax) . . .” This should have been the Socialist League and Bax’s first name was Belfort. Further Morris had died in 1896 and the Socialist League had for some years ceased to be the organisation he and Bax had championed.

Greener Grass (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a very popular and common saying. I do not know its origin. What I do know is that it can only apply to yester-year, today and as long as you will let it. The saying is: “The grass always SEEMS greener on the other side.”

It implies that we must always be thankful for what we have. New ideas must be rejected, they may lead to worse troubles. Rubbish! The grass IS greener on the other side.

Applying the saying to today’s social system, capitalism, does not mean a thing because there is no such place as the other side. The vast majority of the population of the world are born wage-workers. Whichever way they turn it is the same old pastures — struggle and insecurity.

But taking it from the Socialist angle, of course there is another side. The other side is the abolition of capitalism and the founding of Socialist society — where the grass will be as green as the effort you put into its cultivation.

Freedom and abundance are not unobtainable. The fruits of life can be ours if we work for Socialism.

David Wright

Inflation: the Theories and the Facts (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Along with explaining what inflation is and why it happens, another question presents itself today. Why is it that a problem fairly widely understood half a century ago now completely baffles the majority of politicians and economists? Some of them admit that as far as they are concerned it is inexplicable and incurable; others offer explanations which a look at past inflations would show to be quite untenable. And now we have psychologists telling us it is not just an economic problem but is to be explained as indicative of a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with life.

A few facts show the irrelevance of most of the theories of inflation now current. Past inflations have always been halted when governments decided to halt them, and British capitalism operated continuously for a century before 1914 without any inflation at all. Are we to seriously believe that it was a century of “satisfaction with life” on the part of the workers? And what of the ten years 1921-31 when prices were not rising but falling, and the workers showed their “satisfaction” by the General Strike?

Push, Pull and Prattle

Understanding inflation may not be particularly easy, but most of the difficulty is the confusion introduced into it by economists. An economics handbook published in 1909 defined inflation in terms of its cause, depreciation of the currency: “high prices caused by an over-issue of inconvertible paper money”. That is how Marx and many other economists correctly explained inflation, but nowadays most economists attempt to explain it in terms of its symptoms not its cause.

They talk about two kinds of inflation, “cost-push or wage-push” and “demand-pull”, the one pushing prices up and the other pulling them up. That is about as useful a concept as Dr. Doolittle’s famous circus animal the Pushmi-Pullyu which had a head at both ends. (It would appear that the economists’ monster has both heads at the same end but, like Dr. Doolittle’s, they mostly take control alternately and not both at the same time.)

If a general price rise had not been caused by currency depreciation its “cost” and “demand” symptoms would also not be there; which is not to say that individual and general price rises cannot happen for causes other than inflation. In the period 1820-1914 in this country, when there was no currency depreciation and therefore no inflation, there were alternate comparatively small falls and rises of the price level in depressions and booms. But it never once rose above the level of 1820 whereas, with inflation, the present price level is about six times what it was in 1938.

General price rises due to currency depreciation were known in previous centuries, but it was a mark of 19th-century British capitalism that, by deliberate government policy, prices were kept comparatively stable by the avoidance of inflation. It did not stop the growth of production and wages.

Marx and Keynes

Marx dealt with one aspect of price changes in his lecture published in the pamphlet Value, Price and Profit, where he examined the erroneous proposition that wage increases cause a general price rise; but he did not there deal with currency depreciation or inflation. On the contrary, as he pointed out, he was dealing with the situation as it existed in Britain when there was no inflation. He was therefore assuming for his purpose no change whatever “in the value of the money wherein the values of products are estimated”.

His examination of inflation is in Capital, Volume I, in the chapter “Money, or the Circulation of Commodities” where he put forward the proposition, based on his labour theory of value, that the excess issue of an inconvertible paper currency puts up prices.

J. M. Keynes in his Tract on Monetary Reform (1923, pages 42-3) gives a similar explanation. Marx pointed out that beyond a certain point an excess issue of notes will result in money “falling into general disrepute”. Keynes, in the work referred to, dealt with the way this condition of general disrepute developed in Germany in the great inflation of the nineteen-twenties. Professor Edwin Cannan, without using the labour theory of value, reached much the same conclusion from observation of what actually happens (Modern Currency and the Regulation of its Value, 1931).      

It should be noted that Cannan, like Marx, dealt with “currency” (notes and coin). Some modern “monetarists” have introduced more confusion by trying to base their theories on “money” defined to include bank deposits as well as notes and coin..

What must be emphasised is that inflation is caused by those who control the note issue, which in this country is the Government through the Bank of England. It is often used in wartime because it is a speedy way of increasing government revenue to meet additional war expenditure. In Germany in the nineteen-twenties, in peace-time, it was a deliberate device (backed by big business) to pay off debts in depreciated currency: inflation, at least in the short term, serves the interest of debtors against lenders.

Marx and inflation

Marx’s treatment started with the economic law that the use of a particular commodity to serve as the money commodity, e.g. gold or silver, rests on the fact that that commodity like all other commodities is an embodiment of value, the amount of “socially necessary labour” required to produce it. If for example one ounce of gold and one bicycle each require ten hours’ labour they are equal values, and gold can serve as the “universal equivalent” for the exchange of all other commodities.

The conversion of value into price takes place through the minting of coins of uniform weight and purity. In Britain each £ or sovereign was, by law, fixed at a uniform weight of gold (about a quarter of an ounce). So the bicycle’s price would be about £4 because its value was equal to that of one ounce of gold. If the British government had fixed the £ at one-eighth of an ounce of gold instead of one-quarter, the bicycle’s price would have been £8 not £4 and all prices would similarly have been doubled. If they had fixed it at half an ounce, all prices would have been halved. On both suppositions, while the price of the bicycle (or other commodity) would have been doubled or halved, its relation to an ounce of gold would have remained unaltered.

The next stage in Marxian monetary theory was based on the proposition, confirmed by long experience, that with a given total volume of production and buying-and-selling transactions, and with gold minted into the £ or sovereign at about a quarter-ounce, a certain total amount of currency would be needed. (The fact that the required total varies from time to time with the velocity of circulation need not be gone into.) What Marx put forward was that the total value of needed currency represented a total mass of value, and therefore a total weight, of gold, and that if the total of gold is replaced by inconvertible paper money and the paper money is then issued in excess, prices will go up.

“If the paper money is in excess, if there is more of it than represents the amount of gold coins of like denomination which could actually be current, it will (apart from the danger of falling into general disrepute) represent only that quantity of gold, which, in accordance with the laws of circulation of commodities, is really required and is alone capable of being represented by paper. If the quantity of paper money issued is, for instance, double what it ought to be, then in actual fact one pound has become the money name of about one-eighth of an ounce of gold instead of about one-quarter of an ounce. The effect is the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as a standard of prices. The values previously expressed by the price £1 will now be expressed by the price £2.” (Capital Vol. I, page 108 in Allen & Unwin edn.)

Now Showing

Long experience has shown that Marx was right. Whenever inconvertible paper money has been issued in excess for a considerable period it has raised prices above what they would otherwise be.

In Britain the amount of notes in circulation in 1938 was £554 millions. It is now about £5,330 millions. Since 1938  the needed amount has been affected by certain changes, including greater total production (now more than double the 1938 level), and increased population, which would operate to raise the needed amount of currency. Working in the opposite direction has been the wider use of cheques, etc. and corresponding reduced need for notes and coin.

In the 19th century the issue of notes in excess amount was effectively prevented by law. Beyond a small fixed amount the Bank of England could only expand the note issue by placing an equivalent amount of gold in its reserve, and the paper was tied to gold by the requirement of “convertibility” –that is to say, the Bank of England was compelled by law to give gold in return for notes at the legally fixed rate of about one-quarter ounce for each £1. Except for marginal variations the value represented by Bank of England notes could not be different from the value of gold. Bank of England notes “were as good as gold” and were everywhere accepted as such. Now there is no convertibility, and in effect no restriction on the note issue.

A Two-way Fallacy

The man largely responsible for the adoption of inflation as government policy (they now call it “reflation”) was the economist J.M. Keynes. Yet he did not knowingly and intentionally advocate inflation as a long-term policy. (There were some people who did just that.) What Keynes did was to say that if certain other things were looked after it was no longer necessary formally to restrict the note issue.

“Thus the tendency of today  . . . rightly I think is to watch and to control the creation of credit and to let the creation of currency follow suit, rather than, as formerly, to watch and control the creation of currency and to let the creation of credit follow suit.”

Professor Cannan promptly warned that the doctrine was basically unsound and would open the door to inflation. See Economic Journal, March 1924, and Cannan’s An Economist’s Protest, 1927, pages 370-384. Keynes’s views won the day and came to be accepted by the Tory Party and Labour Party and by the trade unions, not only as monetary theory but because Keynes put them forward as part of his popular “full employment” doctrine.

This doctrine was formally set out by the Tory, Labour and Liberal wartime government in 1944 in the White paper Employment Policy. It was cautiously phrased but was immediately followed by a more crude interpretation drawn up by the Labour Party in Full Employment and Finance Policy. Here it was laid down that if unemployment threatened “we should at once increase expenditure, both on consumption and on development – i.e. both on consumer goods and capital goods. We should give people more money and not less to spend. If need be we should borrow to cover government expenditure. We need not aim at balancing the budget year by year.”

It is the Labour Party version that has been followed by Tory and Labour governments, particularly in the past decade. It has included hoping for a much lower level of unemployment than even Keynes thought possible, and part of the belief has been the idea that increased spending increases production –something which events show to be true, if at all, only for a short period.

The fallacy of the theory is well illustrated from the period 1965-72. In that period annual consumer spending jumped from £22,943m. in 1965 to £39,263m. in 1972, an increase of 70 per cent. In the same period registered unemployment jumped from 360,000 to 943,000 and production went up by only 17 ½  per cent. The principal result was that prices rose by 47 per cent.

The policy is still being operated. One of the few forecasts about the present Labour government that has proved correct was that made by the late Richard Crossman, former minister in a Labour government, that the rate of inflation would be increased (Times, 12th Sept., 1973).

There are two ways in which currency depreciation can be operated, the direct way used by the German government in the ‘twenties and the more indirect way used in Britain. Professor F.W. Paish summarised them:

“In some countries it [the Government] might simply print more notes and use them to pay for its expenditure. Nowadays, in such a country as Great Britain, the government would borrow from the banks, printing more notes to enable the banks to maintain their cash reserves.” (Benham’s Economics. 1967, p. 465)

The additional notes and coin get into circulation through the joint-stock banks (Lloyds, NatWest, etc.) which bank with the Bank of England.

These banks withdraw notes and coin from the Bank of England and in turn the additional notes and coin reach the individuals, shopkeepers and employers who make withdrawals in that form from their deposits with the banks. The note issues are set out in the Bank of England’s Weekly Return. In the week ended 24th July 1974 there was an increase in the notes in circulation by £52,193,306 to a total of £5,098.767,831.

Signs of Alarm

Many economists and politicians would be happy to see inflation going on indefinitely in the belief that it keeps unemployment down. But whatever happens with moderate inflation, even they cannot ignore that when inflation gets to the point that money falls into “general disrepute”, unemployment multiplies. In Germany in 1923, unemployment was 4.2 per cent with another 12.6 per cent partially unemployed. Within the year it had jumped to 28.2 per cent and 42 per cent respectively, representing together over 5 million workers in receipt of unemployment pay and an unknown larger number not receiving relief. At this point the German government called a halt by replacing the notes by a new gold-backed currency.

Realisation of this danger here has induced some politicians and economists to call for the limitation of the note issue. In 1968 the Editor of The Times (15th October) described the idea that price rises could be checked “by printing fewer notes” as a “crude error”. Now the Editor, Mr. Rees-Mogg, has been converted and is urging a return to the gold standard (Times, 1st May 1974).

But at the same time they are fearful that the drastic action of entirely stopping the increase of the note issue would, as in 1920, bring prices down but be accompanied by a big increase in unemployment. So the line taken by one group of economists is to call for a gradual reduction in the rate at which inflation is increasing. Professor A.A. Walters of the London School of Economics is urging that such a slackening should be spread over three years (Money and Inflation, Aims of Industry 1974. and Times, 23rd July 1974).

It only remains to point to the difference between Marx and other economists. Marx was simply describing how capitalism operates, with inflation and without it. He was not saying, as did Cannan, that it is better to run capitalism without inflation, or saying like Keynes that a “full employment” policy will improve and save capitalism.

In Marx’s view capitalism inevitably produces unemployment and crises. For him the task of the workers is to abolish capitalism and replace it with Socialism, in which problems of prices, inflation, crises and unemployment will not exist.

Edgar Hardcastle

The War in Cyprus (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Futile bloody slaughter” said a man on a bus in the nineteen-thirties; and the point of the recollection is not the succinctness of his phrase but the fact that one can’t remember, now, which war he meant – Abyssinia, China, Spain, another outbreak in Arabia or India, or what. The capitalist world as it was, is now, and as long as it remains shall be. Eleven months ago, the Middle East; now, Cyprus. It was the scene of violent struggles in the ‘fifties, and last month war broke out again there with the major nations circling round.

Before the 1914-18 war Cyprus was Turkish territory, as it had been for 340 years, but occupied and administered by Britain; and Britain was, by treaty, to support Turkey against Russia. The war made Russia an ally and Turkey an enemy. The British government annexed Cyprus and offered to give it to Greece on condition of the latter’s helping in the war. It was declined and in 1925 Cyprus formally became what it had been in effect since 1878, a British colony.

The Greek nationalist agitation for enosis (i.e. union) broke out in 1931. It was suspended during the war, when Cypriot troops were part of the Allied armies, and resumed not long after it. The Atlantic Charter of 1941, a set of wartime humbug-platitudes, laid down the principle of self-determination for “all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”, but in 1947 the British government ruled out any change of status for Cyprus. In a plebiscite in 1950 the Cypriots – of whom Greeks form four-fifths – voted overwhelmingly for union with Greece.

From 1954, with Archbishop Makarios as leader of the Greek population, the guerrilla organization EOKA waged war on British rule. A military governor was appointed by the British government, and in 1956 Makarios was deported. Besides the EOKA campaign, Turkish Cypriot nationalists pressed claims for a partition of the island and fought the Greeks. The “solution” of 1960 was a constitution in which Greeks and Turks shared in government – no enosis, no partition; Greece and Turkey stationed token forces there; and Britain retained sovereign rights in certain areas for military purposes. Near-war again in 1963, and shells and bloodshed in 1974.

Why is Cyprus important to Britain and other world powers? Its economy, apart from some minerals and a lot of cheap wine, is insignificant. But in the Middle Ages Cyprus was a vital entrepôt for commerce with the east, and every trading state established stations and bought trading rights there. In the 19th and 20th centuries it has remained a vital strategic point. Disraeli in 1878 wanted it as a link in a scheme to defend British interests in India; Eden in 1956 declared that the possession of a British base in Cyprus was necessary to protect British and West European oil supplies.

Changes in sovereignty and political alignment in the Middle East have made the need still more pressing. Part of the Greek argument after Greece joined NATO in 1951 was that if Cyprus were joined to Greece, Britain and her allies could still have bases there. The instability of Greek government has made that an unreliable prospect (indeed, the case for enosis once collapsed in the face of a threatened Communist takeover in Greece). Instead, the British government in the ‘fifties made it a policy to involve Turkey and, according to The Guardian of 15th August, is said by Greece to have assisted the Turks again now.

The policies of the other powers are likewise equivocal. While the usual pious sentiments about morality and peace are uttered, the American representative Dr. Kissinger’s reported line is that “the ‘geo-strategic’ position of Turkey makes it an inevitable political first choice”; the Russian government was said to be tacitly siding with Turkey but likely to transfer support to Greece. Not much about anyone’s “national honour” in that.

Nor can such an absurd consideration figure in the politics of capitalism. All wars are economic ones. Ultimately they are over markets, the life-blood of each nation’s capitalism. They are rarely directly so, today – the last major war fought openly for world markets was the 1914-18 one; their common sources are the trade-routes and strategic points which are keys to the nations’ economic interests. And the treaties and balances are never maintained because the pursuit of those interests must disturb them continually. Capitalism makes war hang over us all, all the time.

While Turkey and Greece fight for advantages and pickings from the others’ need for Cyprus, their peasants and workers remain poverty-stricken. Futile bloody slaughter, indeed: capitalism lives, and the workers die. Stop it. Stop your nationalism, and your support for this wretched system – quickly!

Robert Barltrop

News from Australia (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fake Labour Government has done nothing to ease the problems of Socialists in Australia. A comrade from the Socialist Party of Australia writes:

We battle along doing what we can to wake up the slaves who—under the Labour government—take an even greater interest in their masters’ problems—balance of trade, inflation etc. for which latter they, like their counterparts in the UK, blame the Unions and everyone on high salaries condemns the basic-wage slaves for demanding higher wages and so keeping the prices rising and further inflating inflation!

One would think that after a hundred years of Marxism there would be a greater understanding of these questions, but it seems that the younger generation do not respond any more than their fathers. Capitalism’s power of recovery and expansion seems to stifle the workers’ capacity to grasp the realities of the situation, so quickly does it pass from one crisis to another—bewildering those who don’t understand and hampering the efforts of the few who do.

Nevertheless the position is far from being hopeless and a developing opposition in Russia and China could easily serve to accelerate activity elsewhere. To enlarge on this would take time not available here.

The events in the Middle East, the happenings in Europe (Common Market) the fatuous vapourings of the Heaths and TU officials, and the “State of the Nixon Nation” provides propaganda points for Socialists and even though many workers feign disinterestedness at heart they must realise that what is happening is only what Socialists have been telling them for years is inevitable under capitalism.

W. J. Clarke

New South Wales.

Socialist — Not Labour (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has no connection with the Labour Party, or any other Left-wing group, including Communists, Trotskyists, International Socialists or Anarchists of any description. We are an organization of over seventy years’ standing, completely independent, and in favour, as always, of a fundamental social change from capitalism to Socialism.

Socialism means the introduction of an international socialist system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. None of the political parties referred to above stands for this objective. All are opposed to Socialism and the means of obtaining it, i.e. by a politically enlightened majority using the franchise, fully democratic in its intention.

No Government has ever had a mandate for Socialism, and we include the Russian and Chinese. The pitiful rubbish which emanates from members of the Labour Government about their intention to introduce “Socialist” policies is an act either of duplicity or ignorance. Socialist policies cannot be introduced without a working class which understands Socialism. The Labour Party is the “break-down gang” of the capitalist system, who will encourage the workers to hope that something better will turn up. These hopes are fostered and encouraged, not only by the capitalists’ propaganda machine, but by the alleged friends of the working class — the trade-union leaders. Mr. Scanlon, Mr. Jones, Mr. Murray (all members of the Labour Party): In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Their influence is based on the support they receive from the majority of politically uninformed workers whose lack of knowledge of Socialism is equal to theirs.

History repeats itself — the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Another minority Labour government prepared, as always, to delude the workers in the interest of capitalism. Capitalism cannot be controlled by Acts of Parliament — it runs according to its own anarchistic economic laws, and it controls the policies of the politicians. As for the others, the Liberals, the Scots, the Welsh and the cavemen from Ulster, it would be hard to find such a talentless mass of narrow mediocrities and bigots under one roof at one time.

There is not one original idea to be found among the whole gang at Westminster. The whole rotten system cries out for social change, and what’s more — we can have it. The working class must get Socialist knowledge — they must resist apathy and challenge their existence of poverty and uncertainty. They must not allow capitalism to get on top of them, but seek Socialism as a priority.

We Socialists are optimistic about the future, and we are equally optimistic that the working class will achieve this social change. This is urgent and necessary.

Jim D'Arcy

NHS On The Rocks (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Labour government nationalized private medical service in Britain the state took over. From then on all hospitalization, treatment, dentures, spectacles and prescriptions could now be got “free” on the health scheme. We could even receive specialist and consultant advice without the question of private fee. After-care in convalescent homes by the seaside or in the country was available if specified. It stopped short at such things as recuperation on the Riviera or Swiss Alps.

Thirty years later we now take a look at the state of Hire-Purchase Medicare. Consultants threatening to work to rule. Dentists and General Practitioners threatening to withdraw from the NHS. Technicians, Radiographers, nurses, ambulance drivers, cleaners, kitchen staff, porters, launderers (all but the kind ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service), having withdrawn or threatening to withdraw their labour. Operations deferred because of the pressure of work or the lack of surgical beds. The government cannot buy enough kidney machines because they are too expensive. Kidney cases just have to suffer. It is reckoned that as many as half-a-million patients are queuing up for beds. Why does an ill person have to wait?

In 1946 Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Government’s Minister of Health, was so concerned about the health of the working class that he forgot momentarily about the health and welfare of those workers who would be running the show. Ever since the loyal servants of the state health institutions had to fight to keep their real wages from being whittled away by the increased cost of living. Now they have started kicking. In order to make it worth while for the consultants Bevan agreed that they should be able to carry on private business. It was arranged that a percentage of private patients be accommodated privately in special wards and wings of the NHS hospitals.

Now apart from the individual worker who insures himself, or the company or Trade Union who insures their employees or members with such bodies as the British United Provident Association or the Hospital Savings Group, who could possibly afford this treatment? When these patients go into hospital one special benefit might be a bed straight away. The general situation will be NHS standard, that is ordinary NHS bed and food. But there are two quite different standards of medical attention and what is the priority? Money of course— what can you afford?

So the great Nye and the Labour Government decreed that the best, or better, treatment during illness will be bought. And here to prove it are some facts. Salmon, steak, strawberries are a few of the tasty dishes you can actually order if you are resident in what’s comically known as the “Fulham Hilton” better known as the new Charing Cross hospital. In addition a bedside telephone and colour TV. That is if you are stingy enough and only wish to pay £174 per week. A better deal may be the London Clinic at £252 per week. This is exclusive of the consultant’s fees. You are expected to employ him if you wish his personal attention. The consultants wish to retain this, not surprisingly.

After thirty years so many people are suddenly piqued about it as if it only started happening yesterday. The present Labour Minister of Health thinks it is unjust and wants a year or so to phase it out. The CP's Morning Star refers to it as “a galling class question”. Yet they support privilege and inequality in Russia.

So no matter what they do they still finish up with two distinct standards of treatment. One of privilege and prerogative and privacy. The other utility, austerity and cheapness.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no illusions about this capitalist makeshift health plan for the working class. A patch-’em-up-and-get-’em-back-to-work-as-cheaply-as-possible service. And to think that this cheapskate make-and-mend of capitalism was delivered by the Labour Government in the name of “Socialism”!

Joe McGuinness

How many members have you got? (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is probably the one question asked most frequently of the Socialist Party. It is usually put with that air of pathetic finality indicating the questioner’s fond belief that this settles the matter and closes the discussion.

The answer is always truthful. Unlike the CP and other parties, the Socialist Party has never tried to cook the books or made any secret of it. Indeed, it has never made a secret of anything. All its proceedings and deliberations are in public; under the constant supervision of the members, and therefore — the working class. The answer, published at every Annual Conference, is less than 1,000. Yes! one thousand.

This answer usually convulses the average Labour Party supporters (including the “lefties”). Holding his shaking sides, he rolls about in uncontrollable mirth and gasps, between hoots of hysterical laughter: “What! One thousand! (or 800 — or 925.5) — in seventy years? !” This is followed by “It doesn’t work,” or “There you are then,” or some similar earth-shattering observation.

Funnily enough, when the inescapable logic of this superficial approach is put to him, he usually quickly renounces his previously-expressed view. It must be realized, by any thinking worker, that if the main criterion of the validity of a policy is the number of supporters it attracts, then the Tories over the past twenty years are the most “right”, with the largest vote.

Now our Labour man is in a cleft stick, for not only can he not concede that the Tories (or Hitler) were “right” because they had a majority; but the number of supporters ebb and flow. New parties arise, which win votes away from old ones. In fact, if this were the only idea that motivated any left-winger, it would be almost impossible to vote at all — so difficult is it today to know which Party will gain the most votes. (This also shows that electors do not automatically vote for majorities.)

It is therefore evident that the strictures on the Socialist Party for being numerically small are really a back-handed way of attacking its Socialist principles. Apart from that, the “criticism” betrays a woeful ignorance of social evolution.

Why do political parties change? If the party with the largest membership is always right, there can never be any change — but there always is. The answer is to be found in the Socialist conception, or view, of history.

New parties arise from new ideas. New ideas arise from new economic, and therefore new social conditions. The rise of trade unions is an example. As soon as the methods of production crammed workers together in thousands, their organization was inevitable; as was the organization of Labour parties to press their case in Parliament. Another example is the changed attitude to black people when they become wage-slaves instead of chattel-slaves.

The founding of an independent Socialist Party is itself the result of advancing capitalism. As Geo. Plekhanov says in In Defence of Materialism: “The psychology of society adapts itself to its economy”. There can be little doubt that Plekhanov was absolutely definite that Socialism required first a change in working-class “psychology”, or outlook:

In essence, this is the very psychological process which the proletariat of Europe is now going through; its psychology is already adapting itself to the new future relations of production.

(Ibid.)

The new idea, arising out of the new conditions, rarely if ever seizes a majority (or even a large number) immediately. By its very nature, it only reaches a small handful at the outset. This applies not only to politics but to all thought. The deeper, more fundamental the proposition — the longer it takes to spread.

The left-wing reformist, measuring the growth of the Socialist Party’s membership with a Labour Party yardstick, is bewildered. Not realizing that the whole method of the Labour Party is to get quick votes — at any price — he compares, say, the Labour Party campaigning for old-age pensions (which gets immediate mass support) with the Socialist Party which doesn’t even mention pensions.

Not appreciating the difference between Socialism and social reform, he cannot understand that the very fact that some temporary reform demand shoots into the sky with the flash of a rocket (merely to drop sadly back to earth in a feeble puff of smoke, like the erstwhile CND campaign) betrays its ephemeral, superficial nature. Socialism is not “around the corner”, but at the end of a long straight road. The process of educating workers to adjust correctly to changing capitalism attracts and trains the pioneers of the new society — the Socialists.

Though the actual number on roll is small, the ideas this handful represents are so immensely powerful as to be ultimately invincible. They are in line with social evolution — the future. Every member of the Party is proud to be among those in the very forefront of the organized struggle for Socialism. They know that one Socialist counts for more than thousands of Left confusionists.

Millions waste time and energy on futile reforms, hundreds concentrate on what matters — Socialism. One practical step YOU can take is to join the Socialist Party and work actively for it. But do realize that admission to membership depends on your knowledge of the Party’s case. This keeps the Party temporarily small, but also keeps it right.

You too can become part of that mighty atom the Socialist Party: the tiny forerunner of that countless army which will eventually decide the destiny of humanity.

Horatio.

Education For What? (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

When it became clear that Industrial Capitalism was to be the road along which Britain was to travel in the future it became equally necessary that it should lay down plans for the education of its citizens. So we had the Education Act of 1870 where for the first time education for the working class was to be provided free and was to be compulsory. And so whilst the ruling class continued to be educated for leadership in industry, government, the Church and the armed forces, a basic education was visualized for those whose future lay as machine operators in the factories. This was the first stage in the evolution of our modern educational system under capitalism.

Karl Mannheim’s view of traditional education is “Education is rightly understood if we consider it as one of the techniques of influencing human behaviour and as a means of social control.” This is true in general of education throughout the history of class societies, but mass education comes about in co-relation with mass production of commodities and the act of 1870 brought in the era of “mass education”. In his work Diagnosis of our Time Mannheim, again, says:

I think it was the great merit of the Marxist approach as compared with the Idealistic one, that it realized once and for all that the life of culture and the sphere of valuations within it depend on the existence of certain social conditions among which . . . the class structure is of primary importance.

Despite advances in teaching techniques, the introduction of new subjects and the growing attention towards aestheticism (freedom of expression in art etc.) one agrees that Mannheim’s statement, i.e. social control, is still the underlying motive. Unwittingly he foreshadowed the advent and intention of the latest innovation—the Comprehensive School—when he advocated the introduction of an educational system which would mean “. . . the improvement of opportunities for the people to train themselves for leadership . . . and the selection of the best in the various fields of social life”. This, we may look upon as the second stage; one that has been forced upon the capitalist class by means of the rapid growth of technological science.

The capitalist world in general and perhaps the USA in particular has hardly yet got over the shock of the USSR being the first in the race to send a man up into space. Such was the blow to America’s educationists that when a book What Ivan Knows that Janie Doesn't was printed and distributed to American schools, a complete revision of American educational techniques was implemented. Russia’s success was of course the result of her implementing the Khrushchev Thesis of 1955 wherein he advocated the emergence of “the new man” who was to be educated to the fundamentals of technology and production. This new-type education (the Polytechnic school) is being hastily copied in Britain and elsewhere outside the Soviet Union. Russia’s educational system then like all others is geared among other things to provide a new meritocracy of scientists, technologists, artists and athletes etc. who will compete and if possible surpass those of the West.

Capitalism cannot allow talent to slip through the net. It is a far cry from 1871 when, at the passing of Forster’s Education Act, a sum of money was allocated which was roughly the amount spent on the annual upkeep of the Royal stables, to the present-day figure which comprises the biggest public expenditure next to that of the armed forces. As Michael Young says, we are witnessing a meritocracy of talent (which is nothing more than saying that clever working-class children are looked upon more than ever as being vital for the furtherance of capitalist technology and the maintenance of its ideology.)

Lord Butler, former politician and an academic, is clear on the role of education. He stated (in relation to students) “. . . the type of capital investment that will accrue with every year . . . and which has enormous value.” The American educationist Gardener states clearly the advantage accruing from education based on “contest mobility” when he says: - “A society like ours has no choice but to seek the development of human potentialities at all levels. It takes more than an educated élite to run a complex technological system”.

Education and élitism in general has hitherto looked to the “genius” as the summit of our culture. Modem capitalism has been forced to abandon this view. Future Socialist society will come about and will be sustained —as present-day capitalism is sustained—by “ordinary” men and women. The only difference will be that their education will be fitting for a free people in a free world.

Education is looked upon as a means of integrating the young into the logic of the prevailing system and the means of bringing about conformity to it. Socialist society will see to it that all will discover how to participate in the transformation of the world for the benefit of all.

John Berger, art critic, stated at a recent lecture sponsored by the Schools Council:

As soon as the young are encouraged to look and to analyse what they see, the inhumanity in our society is clear. The visual evidence of what is wrong is overwhelming . . . and I’m not here thinking of badly designed teapots or vulgar linoleum.

Berger was obviously concerned with the deplorable standards of aestheticism and the shoddy artifacts produced by capitalism, and he is right of course. Socialists are concerned with these, naturally, but are more concerned with the shoddy lives that the vast majority of the world’s people are forced to lead.

Socialists have a great regard for education knowing that it is only an educated working class that can bring about Socialism. Despite the state education afforded to children and adults today, despite the mass of capitalist propaganda, Socialists strive to educate and propagate the knowledge that will finally oust that which in the past and up to the present has helped to subjugate and exploit the world’s workers.

W. Brain

Blogger's Note:

Correction from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The article "Education For What?" (Socialist Standard, September page 160) contains an inaccuracy. It states that expenditure on education "comprises the biggest public expenditure next to that of the armed forces." In fact education expenditure exceeded defence spending in 1969 and has continued to do so since then as the following table shows: -

Who Will Do The Dirty Work? (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

"But who will do the dirty work" demand critics of Socialism. Well, it all depends on what one means by dirty work. Socialists look upon as dirty work that carried out by the armed forces of states and nations the world over. Killing, maiming, mutilation and brutality of infinite variety are part and parcel of the effects of capitalism the world over, and along with armed forces, would disappear in a Socialist world.

But such capitalist atrocities are not what the opponents of Socialism mean by dirty work. They are referring to menial, monotonous, poorly paid and unpleasant work.

Menial jobs in the sense of servants waiting upon masters would disappear under Socialism. No one need be servile in a society in which all the good things of life are freely available to everyone.

"But who will sweep the streets?" some demand. This old chestnut us well on the way out as, even under capitalism, many roads are cleaned by specially designed vehicles operated by the drivers. Most other "dirty" jobs could now be taken care of by vehicles or automatons in a similar way. But in any case these jobs cannot be described as lowly occupations. Who is to say who, amongst the manual, clerical and professional workers are the most useful or valuable to society when all are essential?

Public lavatory attendants are often cited as those having to do dirty work. But this is a job which some can and do take pride in. I have heard such attendants boasting of the spotless condition of "their" toilets. Indeed, on at least one occasion, one of those workers, interviewed on the air, staggered hardened radio interviewers by the obvious pride he took in his work.

Many jobs are thought to be unpleasant because of the poor levels of subsistence associated with them. Under Socialism there would be no poorly- (or well-) paid jobs. Work would be done because it would be necessary and because people would enjoy their part in it.

The navvy is often thought of as having a "dirty job" and he certainly gets dirty doing it (but then, so do professional footballers and nobody thinks of them as having to do "dirty work") but then there can be pride in the skill and strength needed to wield a fourteen-pound hammer, which explains why some people like watching navvies at work on a building site. There is a parallel between watching a navvy wield the hammer and watching a golfer wield a club. The latter isn't manual labour merely because the golf doesn't usually have to wield the club in order to earn a living (and might well arrive for the game in a Bentley!)

The jobs of nurses and doctors are glamourized with the business of sterility and asepsis—the scrubbing of hands, the dramatic life-saving operation, the laying of cooling hands on fevered brows, the taking of temperatures and the giving of "miracle" injections. In fact doctors and nurses get their hands far more unpleasantly dirty than people realize. Nursing can be a heavy, dirty job, especially mental and geriatric nursing, entailing cleaning and changing the clothes of incontinent patients. Yet nurses do it out of choice and, as most people realize, could hardly be pursuing their vocation for monetary reward!

As a medical student I hated the subject of pathology and couldn't imagine anyone wanting to carry out post-mortems or squinting down microscopes for a living. But practically all the pathologists I ever met brimmed with enthusiasm for their job.

It takes all types to make a world—fortunately for the Socialist.

Most medical students like and are keen about their calling, but not all. At least one would have settled for a "lowlier" lot in life. He told me he was darn sure he wouldn't go through six years of rigorous study to be a doctor if he could earn as much driving a cart.

Another medic who qualified without being dedicated was a square peg in a round hole, due to being the son of a wealthy family who wanted him to "do medicine". He just wasn't cut out for it and disliked it. He liked to get his hands dirty tinkering with motor cars and things mechanical in general. But his mother had a social status to preserve and simply "had to have a doctor in the family".

Thus, under Socialism there would be no clean or dirty work—only useful work due to society having within itself a ready hand wherever there is a human need.

R. B. Gill