Daylight robbery. (1911)

 From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are frequently told by our more outspoken enemies that the workers are not robbed, and, there are members of the working class who actually believe it. But the following extract from a recent issue of the “Daily Telegraph” not only completely refutes the former, but may also enlighten the latter.

Under the heading “Census of Production” was given a list of industries concerned mainly with food, drink, and tobacco, and it was stated that the Board of Trade preliminary tables summarising the returns received in respect of those trades give the following results for twelve months:

Gross output from 13 divisions £257,215,000

Net                               „ „ „          £84,325,000

Persons employed                             407,830

The “Daily Telegraph” commented thus, upon the figures:

“The first column represents the gross output, that is the selling value or value of work done. The second shows the net sums realised after deducting the cost of the materials used. The figures denoting the net output express completely, and without duplication, the total amount by which the value of the products of the industries exceeded the value of the materials purchased from the outside, that is they represent the value added to the raw materials in the course of manufacture. This sum constitutes for any industry the fund from which wages, salaries, rents, royalties, rates, taxes, depreciation, advertisement and sales expenses, and all other similar charges, as well as profits, have to be defrayed.”

Now rents, profits, etc., are not paid to the working class, who benefit only under the item wages. On the other hand, no value can be added to raw material except by labour. It follows therefore that while the workers produce the whole of the £84,325,000 worth of wealth which figures as the net output, they are robbed of all that is not included in the term wages.

Now let us do a little sum in simple division. 

The net output, £84,000,000, divided among the 407,830 persons employed, gives over £275 per annum to each. The difference between this sum and the average wage of the workers in those trades shows the extent of the robbery as far as those particular industries are concerned. And if the average rate of wages in these industries is that of the whole country, then these workers are rolled of over three-fourths of their produce.

Criticus

Facts for Propagandists (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks a number of questions on matters of general interest to propagandists. Questions and answers are given below.

(1) The Working Class.

Question: "What percentage of the total population are really members of the working class?”

Answer: The working class consists of all those people who, not owning sufficient property to be able to live without working are compelled to sell their labour power, their mental and physical energies, to an employer in order to live. These and their dependents form the working class. As the definition covers not only the industrial workers, but also technical, professional, supervisory and managerial workers it will readily be seen that in an advanced capitalist country like Great Britain the working class and their dependents constitute the great majority of the population.

How large is the proportion of working class to the rest of the population can be seen from the estimate made by Dr. Bowley and Sir Josiah Stamp in “The National Income, 1924" (Published by Clarendon Press, 1927).

On page 12 they estimate that in 1924, out of 20,300,000 “occupied persons," 76 per cent. were wage earners, and 14 per cent. salary earners, total 90 per cent.; leaving 10 per cent, for the rest of the occupied persons. This 10 per cent. was made up of 6 per cent. “Independent Workers" and 4 per cent. “Employers, Farmers, and Professional." ("Independent Worker" means one-man businesses, etc.)

Carr-Saunders and Caradog Jones, in the “Social Structure of England and Wales" (Oxford University Press, 1927) reproduce the above figures (p. 63) and add the illustration that, on an average, there are about 24 employees to every employer.

Some qualifications need to be made. The above estimates refer to “occupied persons" only, and do not include children, wives, and other dependents who are not “occupied." If we assume that the average number of dependents of a wage-earner or salary-earner is roughly the same as the average number of dependents of an employer or of an “independent worker," we can say that the total population of all ages is divided in the same proportion as the occupied persons.

In other words, taking every man, woman and child in the country, 90 per cent. can be described as “working class," 6 per cent. “Independent," and 4 per cent. “farmers, employers, or professional/’ (“Professional" means doctors, barristers, free-lance journalists, etc.)

It is not known how many property owners who need not work actually do so and are reckoned among the above 90 per cent.

(2) Who Owns the Means of Production and Distribution?

The position is that the great bulk of the accumulated property of all kinds (including money) is held by a very small part of the population, either direct, or through their ownership of the shares of companies. A small proportion of shares in companies is owned by workers. There are also independent persons (owners of one-man businesses) who own a small part of the total property.

Carr-Saunders and Caradog Jones, in their “Social Structure of England and Wales," reproduce and comment on various estimates of the ownership of accumulated wealth. They use Sir Josiah Stamp’s estimates to show that in 1919—

about two-thirds of the wealth is held by just under 400.000 people (or less than 1 per cent. of the total population) and one-third of the wealth by 36,000 people (or less than 1 in 1,000 of the total population). (P. 114.)

Taking “occupied persons" instead of the total population, Sir Josiah Stamp’s calculations show that—

about 2½ per cent. of occupied persons over 20 hold about two-thirds of the wealth, and about 2½ in 1,000 hold one-third of the wealth, (p. 114.)

They quote Professor Henry Clay that—

64 per cent., or rather less than two-thirds of the wealth is in the hands of 1.7 per cent. of persons holding property.

These people (“1.7 per cent. of the persons holding property") represent only 0.85 of the whole population (p. 116).

According to Clay, at the other end of the scale—

96.2 per cent. of persons have only 17.22 per cent, of the national capital, (p. 116.)

Sir Leo Chiozza Money showed before the War, in his “Riches and Poverty" (Third edition, p. 72), that—

about one-seventieth of the population owns far more than one-half of the entire accumulated wealth, public or private, of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Hargreaves Parkinson, of “The Economist," in his “The Small Investor" (Blackie aqd Son, Ltd., 1930), shows that the total accumulated resources of “small investors" amount to only about 10 per cent. to 14 per cent. of the total wealth of the country. Under “small investors" he includes the owners of all kinds of savings, including Post Office savings deposits, Trade Union Thrift Funds, Co-operative Society Funds, etc. These “small investors," he says, represent at least 75 per cent. of the total population (p. 110).

In other words, according to Mr. Parkinson, more than three-quarters of the population own only about one-eighth of the wealth. The other seven-eighths is owned by less than one quarter of the population.

(3) What Percentage of all Wealth is Owned by Banks and Insurance Companies ?

We have no means of ascertaining easily what is the total value of all the property owned by Banks and Insurance Companies.

It must, of course, be remembered that the property of the Banks and Insurance Companies is actually the property of the shareholders, depositors and insured persons, and is, therefore, already reckoned in the estimates given in reply to question (2).

(4) The Workers' Wages.

“ What is the average wage of the workers in Great Britain?"

Colin Clark, M.A., in “The National Income (1924-1931)," states that Bowley and Stamp estimated the average earnings of 12 million wage-earners in 1924 at £122, while Clark himself estimated £116 ("The National Income," published by McMillan, 1932, p. 61).

These amounts are equivalent to about 46s. and 45s. a week. They do not allow for deductions for sickness and holidays.

Since 1924 wages have fallen appreciably; according to Dr. Bowley by 3 per cent. up to 1931. This would make the average wage now about 44s.

(5) Unemployment and the Poor Law.

“ What percentage of the population is unemployed and in receipt of public assistance?"

On May 22nd, 1933, the total number of unemployed on the Registers of Employment Exchanges in Great Britain and Northern Ireland was 2,653,852. (See “Labour Gazette," June, p. 207.)

This represented 20.5 per cent. (one in five) of the insured workers.

It represented nearly 6 per cent. of the total population. (There are, of course, an unknown number of unemployed who are not insured and not registered. )

The number of persons in receipt of poor relief in England and Wales (both outdoor relief and relief in institutions) was 1,340,638 at the end of December, 1932.

This represented about 3.3 per cent. of the total population of England and Wales. (See “Labour Gazette," March, 1933, p. 84.)

It includes, of course, a large number of persons registered at the Employment Exchanges as unemployed. With their dependents these number nearly 400,000.

(6) Who are the Buyers of Shares ?

“ Who are the institutions of people who buy or oversubscribe the usual large issues of shares ?"

Except by having inside knowledge of the subscriptions to particular issues of shares it is not possible to have direct information which would answer this question.

A general indication of the position, however, is given by Mr. Hargreaves Parkinson in “The Small Investor." He estimates' that small investors (who, with their dependents, represent over three-quarters of the population) own shares totalling between £500 millions and £750 millions, and that they buy shares in normal times at the rate of between £20 millions and £40 millions a year.

Divided over the whole number of persons these amounts are trifling.

How small they are can be seen by comparing them with the total holdings of shares, and with the total amount of new shares bought each year by the big investors.

"The Bankers' Magazine" keeps an index of the average price of 365 representative securities. These 365, which represent only part of the total number of securities quoted on the Stock Exchange, had a total market price in June of £6,249 millions, i.e., about ten times as much as the total shareholdings of the “small investors.”

The “Stock Exchange Official Intelligence (1931)" states that at the end of 1929 there were 108,698 companies having share capital totalling £5,200 millions (p. 2023).

Whereas the “small investors," according to Mr. Parkinson, buy shares worth only £20 to £40 millions a year, the total amount of capital of new companies registered in 1928 and 1929 was £237 millions and £240 millions (“Intelligence,” p. 2023).

The bulk of the shares are bought and held by Banks, Insurance Companies, trading and industrial concerns, investment trusts, etc., and by wealthy individuals.

(7) Wages and Wealth Production.

“ What percentage of the wealth produced by the workers is returned to them as wages?"

Colin Clark, M.A., in his "The National Income, 1924-1931," estimated that in 1929 the wage-earners received 39.9 per cent, of the total national income (excluding income from abroad, i.e., from foreign investments, etc.).

Salary earners received 22.5 per cent. Rent of land and buildings accounted for 7.8 per cent., and profit and interest accounted for 29.7 per cent. (p. 72).

In other words, the wage and salary earners, who represent nine-tenths of the population, received just over three-fifths of the total national income.

The wage-earners, who represent three-quarters of the population, received only two-fifths.

These figures relate to the whole number of wage earners, irrespective of whether they are engaged in wealth production or whether they are engaged in financial, trading, and other activities.

Taking Manufacturing and Mining Industries only, the Committee on Finance Industry (MacMillan Committee) in its Report (1931) published tables showing that earnings represent just over one-half of the wealth produced in those industries. (52 per cent. in 1906-7 and 55 per cent. in 1924.) (See p. 313.)

In 1924 the average net product per person employed was £220, while average earnings was £120. This means that each person employed was producing a surplus of £100 a year, over and above his own pay and after meeting all the raw material and other costs.

(8) Wealth and Waste.

“ What percentage of workers are engaged in luxury or useless or redundant occupations?"

An attempt to estimate this percentage is made in our pamphlet, “Socialism," to which our correspondent is referred.

(9) The Churches and Property.

“What percentage of all wealth is owned by religious organisations?"

We have no information on this subject.

(10) The Cost of the Armed Forces, etc.

“What percentage of the total income is devoted to the upkeep of army, navy and police?"

The cost of Police pay in 1931 was about £15,600,000. (See Report of Committee of National Expenditure, 1931, p. 42.)

The Army, Navy and Air Estimates for  1932-33 amounted to about £104 millions.

Taking the two figures together, we have a grand total of £120 millions.

Colin Clark estimated the total national income in 1931 at £3,322 millions. Therefore, the cost of the army, navy, air force and police represents about 4 per cent. of the total national income. 

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Mental Health and Poverty (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

[From the “Socialist Standard," October, 1906]

There were 121,979 persons in England and Wales certified as insane and under care on January 1st. 1906, being 2,150 in excess of the figures recorded on the corresponding day of 1905.

On January 1st, 1906, according to a Parliamentary paper issued by the Local Government Board, there were 926.741 paupers in England and Wales, equal to one in 37 of the population.

#    #    #    #

[The corresponding numbed of persons registered as of unsound mind on January 1, 1955, was 152,144, the increase since 1906 being rather less than proportionate to the increase of population.

In December, 1955, the number of persons receiving weekly allowances from the National Assistance Board was 1,612,000. Including wives, young children and other dependents these assistance allowances “made provision in whole or in part for a total approaching two and a quarter million persons.”—(Report of National Assistance Board for 1955, page 5).

These figures are not comparable with the 926,741 for 1906 because the 1906 figures relate to England and Wales only while the figure 1,612,000 relates also to Scotland and Northern Ireland. A more nearly comparable figure for 1906 is 1,124,421, given in the 16th Abstract of Labour Charities, 1913, page 334, but that figure included Southern Ireland. The population covered by the 1906 figure was about 43. million compared with the present population of 51 million.]

Unemployment in the 30s and the 80s (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every one of the political parties in this country (except the SPGB) claims that it has a policy which, if the government applied it. would reduce capitalism's unemployment to a very low level and keep it there. It was the late Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party, who wrote in 1959:

The great ideal of jobs for all first became a peacetime reality under the 1945 Labour government . . . The first objective of the Labour Government will be to restore full employment and preserve full employment. 

They had to wait five years, until October 1964, to see a Labour government in office again. At first it had some luck, in a small decline of unemployment in 1965. Emboldened by this. John (now Lord) Diamond, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, explained to the House of Commons on 1 March 1966 how this fall had been the result of government policy, and “that is how we propose to continue doing it". Then the government's luck ran out. Instead of unemployment remaining at 371,000, as instructed by Diamond, it jumped in 12 months to 631,000. and when the Labour government left office in June 1970 the Tories were able to show that unemployment was 200,000 higher when it took office.

But the Heath government which followed was equally unlucky. They, too, were pledged to “full employment" but saw the total rise from 582,000 in June 1970 to nearly a million in 1971 and 1972. Then came the Labour government of 1974-79, during which unemployment more than doubled, followed by the Thatcher government under which it has more than doubled again. All four governments from 1964 to the present time have been sailing on a rising tide of unemployment and there was nothing any of them could do about it except wait for it to subside in capitalism's own time.

However, though the governments cannot do anything about the amount of unemployment, the party politicians can indulge in an old game of challenging the official figures. This needs two teams, the opposition and the government, though anyone can join in. An accepted rule of the game is that the opposition, whether Tory or Labour, is on the attack, and the government, whether Tory or Labour, is on the defensive. Points are scored by the opposition when it can plausibly argue that the real number of unemployed is higher than the official figures; and by the government when it can counter the charge or claim that unemployment is really a blessing in disguise.

There was a splendid match in the winter of 1971. It was then that the official figure nearly reached a million and the Heath government had to meet the charge that the proper figure was higher. But how much higher? The Financial Times (11 December 1971) suggested that it was perhaps 1,250,000! The Observer (23 January 1972) quoted an estimate of 1,500,000. but in a later issue (23 February 1972) thought it might be 2,000,000. Not to be outdone Harold Wilson (Financial Times, 8 April 1972) put it at "nearly 3.000,000", and Peter Jay (The Times. 9 March) reckoned that it was "over 3 million”. An official estimate was that there might perhaps be 400,000 out of work who were not on the register, which would have given a total of 1,367,000.

Basically the official figures of unemployed on the register were, and are, disputed on the ground that a lot of unemployed workers do not trouble to register — including, in recent years, some redundant workers who do not seek work while they are spending their redundancy pay. The official figures are arrived at in the monthly count of the number of people available for, and genuinely seeking, work. The more extravagant estimates of a higher figure include guesses at the number of people, particularly married women, who are not seeking work but might perhaps do so if they could see that vacant jobs were available at sufficiently attractive rates of pay.

Faced with these embarrassing estimates of much higher unemployment the government at the time thought up some counter arguments to show that real unemployment was actually less that the official figures. They said that the large number of people they described as "unemployable” ought to be taken out, as should those registered unemployed who were only in the process of changing jobs, with a gap of a few weeks in between. And what about the people improperly included in the register who were secretly doing jobs on the side?

The most ingenious government defence came from John Eden, Minister for Industry, who said that the large number of unemployed on the register "reflect in part the redeployment that is under way"; meaning that it arose out of the government's policy of moving workers from contracting industries into expanding ones. "We can now look forward to what could be our greatest period of sustained growth in decades" (Financial Times 11 December 1971). The Thatcher government has had to fall back on the argument that the unemployed largely owe their condition to having pressed for too-high wages, and that it will take a long time for Tory policy to get things right.

In the politician's game about the unemployment figures points are scored by the opposition if they can claim that unemployment has reached a record level. For months on end. during the Labour government of 1974-79. the Tory opposition was able to do this, as unemployment climbed by over a million, from 629,000 to 1,636,000 in 1977. The form of the attack was that the figures were “a post-war record". Latterly, Labour Party politicians have been saying that the present figure of 3 million is “the highest ever recorded". The intention is to convey that unemployment now is greater than it was in the 1930s which it certainly is not.

The point is that the severity of unemployment has to take into account not only the number of unemployed but also the total number of workers to which it is related. For example, 2 million unemployed out of 10 million workers would be twice as severe as 2 million unemployed out of 20 million workers. Firstly, in 1932, the total number of wage and salary earners was perhaps about 19 million compared with the present 24 million. Secondly, fewer than 13 million of the 19 million were covered by the Unemployment Insurance Scheme and the official figure of unemployment in 1932 (over 2,900,000) took into account only those of the unemployed who were insured. If unemployment was as severe among the other 6 million workers as among the 13 million who were insured, the number of unemployed would have been shown as well over 4 million. Among the workers who were not insured were agricultural workers and non-manual workers generally.

Writing about unemployment in 1936, when it had fallen far below its peak of 1931-2, G.D.H.Cole dealt with the point:

There are, as we write, roughly 1.600.000 of them in Great Britain in the insured trades alone, there are really a good many more altogether; for there are also 110,000 uninsured workers on the register of the Employment Exchanges and an unknown number more who are neither insured nor registered. (The Condition of Britain, p. 219.)

Cole mentioned that at that time there were nearly 250,000 unemployed coal miners.

In 1932, when there were over 2.900,000 unemployed insured workers, on the register, it is the fact that 23 percent of the insured workers were out of work which gives a more accurate picture of the severity of unemployment generally, among both insured and uninsured workers. Unemployment was therefore very more severe in 1931-32 than it is in 1982. when it is 12.8 percent. The same is true of the United States where unemployment in 1933 was over 25 percent, compared with about 10 percent at present. Needless to say the “numbers” game was in full swing in the 1930s and with even more scope for guessing, since nobody knew how many of the millions of uninsured workers were out of a job.

As unemployment under the Labour government had risen from 1,164,000 (9.6 per cent) in June 1929 to 2.813.000 (21.9 percent) in August 1931 when they went out of office, they got a little satisfaction from seeing it go on rising under the National government which followed. Among the points made in the Labour Year Book 1932 was that a seeming 60,000 drop of unemployed among women late in 1931 was due to “changes in the conditions for the receipt of unemployment benefit, by which the claims of a large number of married women were disallowed”.

Of course the Thatcher government’s much-heralded recovery has not yet produced results, and unemployment might yet rise to the levels of the 1930s.

Edgar Hardcastle

Fifty Years of “Progress”. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Examination of a Capitalist Statement.

Flights of Fancy.

The Daily Chronicle could scarcely find words to give expression to its admiration of the Blue Book recently published by the Local Government Board, wherein, we are told, the great prosperity of the worker since the introduction of Free Trade, is clearly shown. Wages have risen, prices have fallen, and that great social sore, pauperism, has decreased. In fact, after a perusal of the figures we are almost led to believe that within the next few years all the social evils that now afflict us will have been entirely eliminated, almost, that is, unless we happen to be in possession of further facts and figures.

We are informed by the Daily Chronicle that since 1849 the percentage of paupers to the population has decreased.

Now the total number of persons in receipt of poor relief during the year 1906-7 was 2,076,316. Every day during the year, taking the average, 25.1 per thousand of the population were in receipt of relief. While there has been a decrease since 1850 in the number of outdoor paupers, the number of indoor paupers has almost doubled. When referring to this question the Press were very careful to avoid giving an explanation of the decrease of outdoor pauperism. The cause was fully explained by “F. C. W.” in the issue of March ’06 Socialist Standard, wherein he says

“The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844, but it was not (says the “Encyclopedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administration bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882, made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means. Ashcroft and Preston Thomas say in their work ‘The English Poor Law System’ p. 285, ‘The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied of course by a still more marked decrease of outdoor paupers until recently) is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle. It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.’ ”

The Return to Naked Fact.

There are now many other ways by which the workhouses are being relieved, such as, for instance, the Church Army and Salvation Army Homes, and Dr. Barnado’s Homes (which boast of having 8,000 children always under its care) and the rest of the 1,800 charitable institutions dispensing funds to the amount of ten million pounds per annum.

When the Pauper Inmate Act and the Casual Poor Act had been in operation some time, there was another large increase in pauperism. The “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” issued by the Board of Trade states that

“on every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of poor relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but very slight fluctuation to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number but also relatively to the increase of population.”

If the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission is adopted and the suggested alterations in the Poor Law are enacted, then we shall again be told that pauperism is decreasing, while as a matter of fact the relief of the poor will have been transferred from public institutions to private charity, which we are told can be so developed and organised that out-door relief will become unnecessary.

Turning from the question of pauperism our attention is diverted to “the record of rising wages under Free Trade,” as the Daily Chronicle has it.

Two sides to the story.

Now it is true that there has been an increase in the rate of money wages, but that is no criterion of an actual rise in wages or of an increase in the purchasing power of the wages received. Turning again to the “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” we find that since 1895 (the first year for which comparative tables are given) the increase in the retail prices of the necessaries of life, apart from the increase of house rent, which is by far the most important factor in the expenditure of the workers, has kept pace with the increase in the rate of wages, which is in many cases based upon the price paid per hour. But the same publication informs us that the number of hours worked per week have been greatly reduced, to say nothing of the increase of unemployment. So when we take all the facts into consideration we find instead of an increase in wages we have an absolute decrease.

The Daily News makes a very poor attempt to minimise the extent of the unemployed problem by attributing the great increase during 1908 to the engineering and ship-building disputes, and this in spite of the fact that the Board of Trade and Labour Gazette tells us in every issue, that persons on strike or locked out, sick or superannuated, are excluded from the figures.

The health of the workers is the next subject that confronts us. We are reminded that the number of cases arising from such diseases as enteric fever, diptheria, small-pox, etc., have been greatly reduced, in fact some of them have actually been stamped out. If, then, there has been such a large decrease in this class of disease, we must ask the reason for the alarm of the friendly societies at the “enormous increase in the number of applicants for sick pay.”

Unemployment brings Sickness–

The Evening News of June 3rd asks “Are modern conditions of life undermining the general health of the working people of this country ? Mere warnings of medical men,” it continues, “unsupported by statistics, do not count as evidence, but the testimony of the great friendly societies which are in close and constant touch with the workers is a more weighty matter.”

On this question Mr. J. Luther Green, president of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, says,

“The matter is most serious and is causing the greatest concern to all friendly societies. . . . The causes of the alarming increase in sickness liabilities are probably to be found in the changed industrial conditions, the constancy of the evil of unemployment, the operation of the Compensation Act, and the increased pace and pressure of life. . . Distress arising from unemployment has been especially noticeable during the past year. Cases have come under the notice of the committee where the sickness has been solely the result of unemployment. Distress is followed by privation and health must of necessity be impaired.”

It appears that while the membership of the above society has increased, since 1903, 12½ per cent., the number of claims for sick pay has increased 24 per cent., and the amount paid in sick benefit by over 33 per cent., in spite of the adoption of more stringent methods to eliminate the fraudulent “invalids.”

But the Hearts of Oak is only one of the many benefit societies, so we must take a broader view of the subject. Reviewing the returns of the 14 leading benefit societies we find an almost corresponding increase in sickness, and we agree with the president of the H.O.O. that the great increase is due to insufficient nourishment and the increased pace and pressure on the life of the worker. Every worker knows that the pace and pressure in the factories, workshops and offices is far greater to-day than it was even a few years ago, while the age at which he is thrown upon the industrial scrap-heap, when his vitality and energy have degenerated, is earlier; and so witnesses the record, in the Blue Book, of the great decrease in the number of persons employed over the age of 65.

Employment Wounds and Death.

With the speeding up of machinery and increasing pressure upon the worker grows the the increase of sickness, insanity and the “accidents” upon the industrial field, the number of the latter in 1907 reaching the enormous total of 160,731, being almost double the figure for 1898. The number of fatal “accidents” rose from 3,810 in 1898 to 4,453 in 1907, and the number of non-fatal accidents increased from 79,633 in the former year to 156,278 in the latter ! a total far in excess of the combined British and Boer casualties in the late South African war.

The increasing development of capitalism renders it far more difficult for the worker to raise himself from the ranks of the wage-slaves until now it has become almost an impossibility even in individual cases.

The increase in unemployment and the longer period the worker is in the labour market, makes life ever more insecure. While in employment he is compelled, where possible, to deprive himself and family of many of the necessaries of life in order to accumulate a little to tide over the ever-expected period of “out-o’-work,” an attempt that more often than not ends in failure. 

In conclusion, then, and taking into consideration all the facts attending the position of the workers, we can safely say that instead of enjoying greater prosperity, their position in society continues on the downward grade, Liberal and Tory reformers notwithstanding. And so their only hope is in the complete change, the Revolution, i.e., Socialism.

H. A. Young

Editorial: “Our Wonderful Prosperity” (1907)

Editorial from the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Board of Trade return issued in support of Free Trade and giving figures showing the phenomenal amount of wealth that is created by those who do not enjoy it, was recently seized upon by the Dally Chronicle in an endeavour to convince the working man that he is prosperous. The figures, however, to the seeing eye show how fundamental is the great class antagonism ; and although the “national wealth” is spoken of and the amount per head calculated, it is seen that there are not one but two nations—those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour—and that the hirelings who live by labour stand without the pale of this wonderful prosperity.

In reviewing the figures the Daily Chronicle did not refer to the significant increase in pauperism, lunacy, degeneration and unemployment that has been apparent during the past decade. It referred, it is true, to the fact that the cost of pauperism had nearly doubled since 1861, but tried to minimise this by stating that the proportion of paupers had decreased from 364 per 1,000 in 1861 to 249 per 1,000 in 1906. These figures, however, by no means show that the conditions of the working class have improved even compared with such an unfavourable period as 1861, for it is evident to all who have any knowledge of the history of the Poor Laws that the decline in pauperism has been due (as Ashcroft and Preston Thomas point out in “The English Poor Law System”), to the progressive imposition of more onerous conditions of relief and more rigorous tests, to the compulsory stay of vagrants and to the rigorous restriction of outdoor relief.

These facts however, are carefully hidden by the capitalist statistician, and he will complacently point to the decline in pauperism until recently as proof of a decline in poverty, while in reality it shows no such thing, for it is the result of the golden rule of capitalist poor “relief,” to make conditions of “relief” so onerous that the workers will—as indeed they do—rather starve than accept of it. It is most eloquent, of the workers’ condition, that in spite of this the past few years have seen an actual increase in pauperism.

Work and Wages

All who have studied working-class conditions know that the poverty and unemployment of that class is terrible indeed, and that figures drawn from returns made from a few “aristocrats of labour” are utterly inadequate to convey the depth of the poverty or the extent of unemployment among the toilers as a whole, many of whom sink yearly into the hopeless and increasing mass of slumdom through the pressure of economic circumstances. Rates of wages are also used by many to give a totally inaccurate impression, for no allowance is usually made for unemployment, “short time” or sickness, it being so arranged that if a workman gets for six months a wage of 30/- weekly and is compelled to be idle for the rest of the year, his wages are nevertheless represented not as 15/- but as 30/- per week.

One or two items of working-class consumption are given that show a decline in price, but no allowance whatever is made for the adulteration and reduction in quality which are daily more apparent in all things consumed by the workers ; while the fact that house room and many household necessities and provisions have increased in price is rarely mentioned.

The figures given by the Liberal M.P. for Paddington are, indeed, significant enough in themselves, for they show that one million people possess nearly one half of the income of the country. Yet Liberal organs parade the growing “wealth of the country” before the impoverished and worn-out toiler as proof to him that he is prosperous.

The “prosperity of the country” means the prosperity of those who own the country, not of the working class, and those who deny the class antagonism should endeavour to explain how it is that while the so-called national wealth increases by leaps and bounds the condition of those who produce this wealth shows no improvement, but that their employment grows less secure and their toil more intense.

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

While the world has been devouring reality television shows, many Argentines have been opting this Christmas for reality board games, such as Eternal Debt, involving the International Monetary Fund.

[Paywalled Link.]

For seven years, Jennipher was forced to breastfeed the puppies of her husband’s hunting dogs. After drinking and smoking heavily, Nathan Alowoi would appear at the marital bed, bind his young wife’s legs and hands together and force the mewling animals to her nipple. He had handed over two cows to his father-in-law as part of the “bride price” for his new wife. So, he reasoned, if the cows were no longer around to provide milk then his new purchase would have to provide for the pups. “I had to feed them all through the night; then in the morning he would untie me,” his wife, now 26, explains matter-of-factly.

[Link.]

Israel will begin distributing its entire population with gas masks in two months, though no reason has officially been given by the Israeli government.

[Dead Link.]

Most Britons have little confidence in official statistics and believe that they are distorted by politicians, according to a survey for the Financial Times. Only about 10 per cent of adults believe that official figures are accurate, while a similar proportion think that figures are produced without political interference, according to the survey conducted by Harris.

[Paywalled Link.]

That isn’t stopping some restaurants from putting together the usual intricate New Year’s dinner — and in some cases, charging astronomical prices. At New York’s Aureole, for example, diners will be getting a five-course meal including big-eye tuna sashimi, chestnut ravioli, Canadian lobster, and N.Y. strip loin. The price: a mind-boggling $650.

[Link.]

Doubts and Difficulties. The Poverty of the Capitalist. (1905)

The Doubts and Difficulties column from the September 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent forwards me an extract from a recent book of Sir Robert Giffen’s for explanation. The distinguished capitalist statistician contends that the advantages derived from science and invention during the last 50 years have in the main gone to the working-class.

o o o

“Now,” says my correspondent, “I wish you to show how this statement made by the highest living statistical authority in England squares with the position of the Socialist. You contend, as I understand, that the economic position of the worker is with every advance in science and invention becoming relatively if not absolutely worse. Who am I to believe—the highest of our statistical anthorties, Sir Robert Giffen, or the unknown, tin-pot, little Socialist “Economicus?”

o o o

Before proceeding to deal with the main economic question raised in the preceding paragraph I wish to protest against the last sentence with its appeal to authority. Far be it from me to place myself against Sir Robert Giffen as a statistical authority. At the same time it may well happen that he is entirely wrong on this question and the Socialist entirely right. The whole history of both the inductive and deductive sciences is the relation of the mistakes of authorities. In no field of human knowledge has the authority always been infallible.

o o o

Not only is it the case that in physics and in metaphysics, in medicine and in art, the authority has been fallible but it is he who has been the most bitter opponent of new ideas and of new truths. Foremost among the revilers of those who put forward the Copernican theory as against the Ptolemaic in astronomy, the undulatory theory as opposed to the atomic theory in optics were the so-called leaders of opinion in those sciences.

o o o

It may well be then that in economics the statistician of recognised repute may be as little justified in his contentions as his fellows in other directions. The appeal in all discussions must be less to authority than to fact. Is Giffen justified by existing conditions in saying that the greatest share of the advantages of the science and invention of the last fifty years has gone to the working-class ?

o o o

In modern society the greatest advantage that one can secure is the ownership of material wealth. It is around this ownership that the whole of our present-day life revolves. Wealth is the motor which sets in motion the industries, the pleasures, the pastimes, of the nation. Invention pertains more largely to industry than to any other feature of our lives. If Giffen’s contention is correct we should find the worker owning a larger proportion of the national wealth than heretofore. The industries modified or revolutionised by invention—by improvements in machinery or in the application of electricity as a motor—should yield for the worker an ever increasing share.

o o o

On what grounds does Sir Robert Giffen contend that the worker receives such an increasing proportion of the wealth he creates ? On the grounds of improving Income Tax returns and of improving figures from the Savings Banks ! He contends that the higher savings in Savings Banks and Friendly Societies and the larger revenue derived from Income Tax show a continued improvement in the prosperity of the people of whom the working-class form the majority.

o o o

This contention would be unanswerable if (a) the accumulations in Savings Banks and Friendly Societies were the savings of the working-class ; (b) any material proportion of the income tax was paid by the worker; or (c) the prosperity of the country meant the same thing as the prosperity of the working-class.

o o o

As to (a) I pointed out in the June number of the Socialist Standard that the Savings Banks contained in the main the savings of the petty shopkeeper and of the children of the middle class. When we find, for instance, as many as 50,000 depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank putting in £50 in one lump sum in one year we know that not one of them is a member of the wage earning class.

o o o

Similarly with (b). The worker does not as a rule receive a wage enabling him to pay income tax. Incomes of less than £160 per annum are exempt from the payment of income tax, and we know that wage-workers getting so high a remuneration are difficult to find. We have the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen himself, given before the Labour Commission a few years ago, that the average wage of the working-class was 24s. 7d. a week or (say) £64 a year. Our experience tells us and this opinion is somewhat strengthened by the investigations, among others, of Messrs. Booth and Rowntree, that even this sum is exaggerated.

o o o

The statistician studying rates of wages in his library is too apt to mistake nominal for actual wages and forgets to make due allowance for periods of sickness, short time, or out of work. When these modifications have been made, and every day they become of greater importance, it, is found that the actual money wage differs very considerably from the nominal money wage.

o o o

With (c) I cannot now deal but on a further occasion I may he permitted to show that periods of trade prosperity and periods of national prosperity are not necessarily synonymous with periods of well-being for the working-class.

o o o

We see then that the grounds upon which our statistician bases his contentions are not relevant. The income tax returns will increase the more rapidly as the workers’ wage goes down and the savings in the Savings Banks are not appreciably affected when the working-class is at its lowest level of unemployment,

o o o

The reverse of the contention we are criticising is that the least benefit from our increasing powers of production go to the property owning class. The poor capitalist we are often told is not doing nearly so well as is the man who works for him, but we never see any haste on the part of the capitalist to exchange.

o o o

We are told by Sir Robert Giffen and other “authorities” that the capitalised value of the wealth of this country has increased in the last 40 years from £6,000,000,000 to £14,000,000,000. According to this statement the capital of the country has increased during the last 40 years at an average rate of £200,000,000 a year.

o o o

Here we have a spectacle of capitalist poverty ! The capitalist draws his revenues from industry—in essence, from the unpaid labour of the working-class. With it he satisfies his every whim, luxury, vice, necessity, and comfort. And even then he has an immense sum amounting to two hundred millions of pounds sterling to apply in further investment.

o o o

The worker, on the other hand, is enjoying with the progress of science and invention a speeding up of the machinery he minds, an intensification of his labour, a dwelling in the slums, polluted air in the streets, vitiated air in the factories. Clad in shoddy clothing manufactured for his sole use, fed on the poorest of food, he is told that the income tax returns show his growing prosperity.

o o o

The worker has a grim sense of humour but this must be too much even for him. Not always will he be content to produce the whole of the wealth and get for himself a beggarly pittance. He will one day awake to the fact that a parasitic class of rich idlers is fattening upon the results of his labours and he will then show the stuff that’s in him.

o o o

When that time comes woe betide the capitalist class who have robbed him and woe betide the apologists of that capitalist class—the economists and the statisticians unable to rise above their own class interests. The day is rapidly nearing when those who produce the wealth will control its production and its distribution and may one of those who lives to see that day be—

Economicus.

Notes by the Way: The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry (1952)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry

In the “ Times Review of Industry ” (April, 1952) Dr. L. Rostas examines the preliminary results of the 1948 Census of Production. One piece of information brought out by the Census of Production figures is the total value of the net output of workers in manufacturing, mining, building, etc., and the amount of wages and salaries paid.

The figures show that in 1948 the average net output per employee was £543. Wages represented 48.1 per cent, of that figure and salaries 11.8 per cent., so that wages and salaries together represented 59.9 per cent, of net output.

Dr. Rostas quotes for comparison the corresponding figures shown by the 1935 Census of Production, which was 60 per cent. While therefore the position in 1948 was almost identical with that in 1935 earlier figures showed that the workers' share had risen between 1906-7 and 1924. These figures were published in the Report of the Committee on Finance and Industry (1931, Page 312), and were 52 per cent. in 1906-7 and 55 per cent. in 1924.

The above figures relate to manufacturing industries, mining, building, etc., but do not include transport, finance, civil service, etc. The figures covering all workers are published each year in the Government booklet “ National Income and Expenditure.” For 1948 the division of the total national income (before deducting taxes on income) were: wages 45 per cent., salaries (largely clerks, shop assistants, etc.) 23 per cent., making a total of 68 per cent. In that year the pay of the armed forces represented 3 per cent., and Rent, Dividends and Interest 29 per cent.

The wages and salaries figure for 1951 is also 68 per cent, but in 1938 it was rather smaller, 61 per cent. The main reason why the later figures for wages and salaries have been higher than before the war is that owing to the fall of unemployment more workers have been receiving wages.

* * *

Increase of Output per Employee

Dr. Rostas also shows the increase of physical output per employee in the 13 years 1935 to 1948. Total output of manufacturing industry increased in the 13 years by about 32 per cent., but as the number of workers had increased by 25 per cent., the physical output per worker had increased by about 6 per cent. This is less than half of one per cent a year and is below the normal annual increase over long periods. Undoubtedly the rate of increase will have been somewhat larger in the years since 1948.

In the five years 1924 to 1929 it increased by 11.6 per cent., representing over 2 per cent. a year. (Report of Committee on Finance and Industry, 1931. Page 310.)

An elaborate inquiry by the economist Colin Clark covering the 80 years 1870 to 1950 shows that the product per worker increased by 76 per cent., or rather less than 1 per cent, a year. (Published in Review of Economic Progress, July-August, 1951, Brisbane. Australia.)

During the same period, 1870-1950. the amount produced per head of the population increased by a larger percentage than did the increase of output per worker. This was because a larger proportion of the population were employed in 1950 than in 1870. The amount produced per head of the population was a little over twice as much in 1950 as in 1870.

* * *

Innocents in Russia

Mr. Emrys Hughes, Labour M.P. for South Ayrshire, is best known for his near-pacifism and his constant efforts to get the world's governments to get together to avoid war. He recently visited Russia and published his observations in “ Forward." He has one advantage over many visitors to Russia that he speaks Russian and he claimed that nothing was done to prevent him from entering into conversation with people he met.

Nevertheless he does on one issue betray a certain amount of simplicity. Writing in “Forward” (3rd May, 1952) he claims that “the Communist Dictatorship not only survives but is generally accepted," and that “there is a stable government to which there is no discernible or organised opposition.”

Now Mr. Hughes knows that it is illegal in Russia to attempt to form any political party other than the Communist Party and that all journals and news reports are censored. If he were in Russia and tried to form a party like the one of which he is a member, or tried to make his customary pacifist speeches, or tried to publish a journal like “Forward," of which he was formerly editor, or tried to run as a Labour Party candidate, he would be breaking the law and would incur speedy and drastic penalties. Knowing all this he nevertheless can say that there is in Russia no discernible or organised opposition!

It may be correct that there is little opposition and that what underground opposition does exist is not organised, but when Mr. Hughes says that the opposition is not discernible he is being a little naive. Does he really expect anti-Communists in Russia to disclose themselves? If he had visited Germany under Hitler he would have found the same absence of individuals anxious to become “discerned” and consequently jailed.

Or to come nearer home, if Mr. Hughes had six months ago visited the anti-trade union establishments of Mr. Thomson of Dundee he would have failed to discern on that dictatorial individual's premises even the smallest sign of “ discernible and organised opposition.”

It is, of course, very difficult to tell what opposition exists under any dictatorship and perhaps later events may show that Mr. Hughes was as much misled about Russia in 1952 as was the British Ambassador in Russia in 1917 who was quite unaware until it broke out into open revolt that there was widespread opposition to the Czarist regime.

* * *

How to Muzzle the Press

In Russia the Government openly exercises a censorship on what news comes into the country and on the reports sent out by foreign journalists, and, of course, on what is printed in the Russian Press. Also there is the widespread Russian jamming of foreign broadcasts.

When challenged on the subject Mr. Stalin used the defence that whenever the censorship had been lifted the statements made about the members of the Russian Government by foreign reporters were such that the Russian people became "very indignant," and the censorship had to be re-introduced (Soviet Weekly, 15th May, 1947.) It is a very curious excuse in face of the way in which much of the Russian Government's own internal propaganda is designed to stir up popular indignation against foreigners.

However, a crude censorship is not the only way of preventing publication. It will be recalled how for months the events leading up to the abdication of Edward Vm (the Duke of Windsor) were kept out of the British Press though widely discussed in other countries. More recently we have seen how a request to the British Press not to publish an indiscreet statement made by Lord Alexander at a dinner at the Canada Club was generally observed. Here the reason given was that “security” was involved though in fact a very similar statement had been made by him shortly before and had been published. The Evening Standard (4/7/52) published a letter by Mr. Beverley Baxter saying that as the request not to publish was made by Lord Alexander on grounds of “security" the editors of the morning newspapers were right to accede to the request. The editor of the Evening Standard took the opposite line. He wrote:

"No question of security was involved. The editors were therefore wrong to accept a request for suppression on security grounds.”

A Denunciation of Nationalism

The  Indian, M. N. Roy, who was at one time prominent in the Communist International, but later broke away and took a line of his own, recently wrote for the Manchester Guardian (21/6/52) an article “Asian Nationalism. Its Roots in Race Hatred."

In it he puts the case that the Asiatic nationalist movements are not just movements to secure independence from the foreign governments that kept them in colonial subjection, for even after achieving independence they continue to preach the same anti-foreign doctrines as before. He quotes Mr. Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and advocate of Indian nationalism, as having admitted that he does not know what nationalism is:

“What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive."

Yet though Mr. Nehru could not define nationalism he went on to declare that it “warms the heart of every Asian" and that “any other force that may seek to function must define itself in terms of this nationalism.” Mr. Roy says this is nonsense and that what Mr. Nehru's explanation really means is that nationalism is “race hatred kept alive artificially.”

“ Asia nationalism is an unmixed evil. It has not got the saving grace of a cultural and idealist origin as in the case of earlier European nationalism."

Although Mr. Roy notices that between the wars European nationalism developed into fascism, and quotes the statement of the late Lord Acton that nationality sacrifices everything “to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould and measure of the State,” he does not appreciate the simple fact that nationalism has been and is everywhere the form in which each capitalist group tries to carve out a place for itself in the world of warring capitalist states. If he did he would not be at all surprised that the politicians who have used nationalism to gain independence from a colonial power need it just as much afterwards in order to persuade the workers to go on fighting capitalism’s battles.

If it is an illusion to think that nations can be friendly in a capitalist world provided that they are all “independent,” it is equally an illusion on the part of Mr. Roy to think that the Powers, great and small, could dispense with nationalism.

At least one thing Mr. Roy has correctly summed up. Discussing the disappointing results of national independence from the worker’s point of view, he says that when India and other countries achieved independence, “absolutely nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery.”

On one thing we can put Mr. Roy right He says of the “reforming Liberals and the revolutionary Left in the Western countries” that disregarding the bitter experience and irony of history which had shown them nationalist movements starting with men like Mazzini and ending with regimes like Mussolini’s, they “vied with each other in patronising colonial nationalism.” Whatever the Liberals and Labourites did, the S.P.G.B. certainly did not fell into this error but always condemned nationalist propaganda whether at home or abroad, in Europe or in Asia.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

The piece on M. N. Roy and the perniciousness of nationalism was previously posted on the blog as a standalone article in September 2011. I'm not sure what happened there. Maybe I copied it from the SPGB website, not knowing that it was part of a larger Notes by the Way column. No worries.

Editorial: Tinkering with the Cost of Living Index (1957)

Editorial from the August 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

So you can't live on your pay, and want the Cost of Living Index altered? Forget it and start thinking about something that ready matters. Over forty years ago the British Government, encouraged by trade unions and the Labour Party, started an index to measure average changes in retail prices and rents, and with many modifications it is published now month by month, and many other governments do the same. It has well served the Governments and employers, but for the workers it has been a red-herring on which they have wasted and still waste an enormous amount of misdirected thought and agitation.

Is the doctor’s thermometer accurate ?

The general idea behind the agitation for a "better index" is that it is like the thermometer the doctor uses to tell him something about what ails you and to guide him in curing you. But this assumes that the doctor wants to cure you, and for what ails the workers the government and the employers are not seeking a cure, but only a dope to keep the patient quiet. What ails the workers is their poverty, caused by exploitation, the fact that they are producing wealth for others to own and getting back only a part, in the form of wages. The team of employing and governmental economic doctors are not looking for ways to end exploitation, but to perpetuate it. The class that has an interest in ending its own exploitation and introducing Socialism, the working class, must tackle the job itself; tinkering with the cost of living index has no bearing whatever on that task. It hasn't even any helpful bearing on the problem of getting the best out of capitalism. Just as the patient knows very well that he feels ill without having a thermometer stuck under his tongue, so the poor know very well that they are poor without having to go to the index to find out. The employers and the government likewise do not have to consult that oracle before they could give higher wages or higher old age pensions, if they wanted to: but there's the rub, they don't want to. They will use the index when it suits them, to help prove that they should not give more than they are giving; and with equal facility they will, on occasion, find abundant reasons why they are "compelled" to give less.

Is the Index faked?

One supposition is that the index is faked. The idea that the poorly-paid civil servants who collect the figures and make the calculations fake them downwards is absurd. Their bias, if any, would, of course, be in the opposite direction, and all the more so between the wars when their own pay was related to the index. (And far from finding this satisfactory, they carried on year-long agitation to get away from it.)

There is another kind of faking, practised by the wartime Coalition Government and the succeeding Labour Government, but this was a sort of "open conspiracy" carried out in accordance with the policy of subsidies to keep prices down—a policy that had the enthusiastic approval of bone-headed Labourites and Communists. These governments subsidised or controlled the price of food and other items that went into the make-up of the index, but not the other essential items outside the index: they kept down the index but not the cost of living.

It is true that an index covering a large number of items could show different results from an index covering a smaller number, but this works both ways. An index largely dominated by food prices would understate the general rise of prices if food prices were relatively low, but would equally overstate them when food prices were relatively high in comparison with other prices.

Frequently the demand for a different index is in the form of wanting a universally accurate index. There is not, and could not be, any such thing: a measure of average price rises could not apply equally accurately to different groups of workers on different wage levels, and to pensioners on lower incomes still.

And, of course, those who think they have an interest in the index are talking with their tongue in their cheek when they say they want "accuracy"; what they want is an index that comes out high, the more it overstates the real position the better. Their wish is more like that of the man who hots up the thermometer to prove he is ill when the doctor doesn’t believe it. 

Another kind of Index

The worker who blames the index for not being able to make ends meet on his wages does not understand what the index is and is for. It merely records the average movement of prices, up or down. It tells him, for example, that if he was slowly starving to death on £5 a week a year ago, it would require £5 5s. this year to maintain his same level of approaching starvation. It is his employer who pays him his starvation wage.

Some governments and private organisations maintain another kind of index in the form of a periodical assessment of how much is required to maintain a single worker or worker with a family. In this country the late Seebohm Rowntree produced a “minimum standard ” of this kind. And that is what it always is, a “minimum standard,” not how much but how little can a man live on. Coming back to our analogy of the doctor and the thermometer, it is designed to guide the government and the employer in their continuous endeavour to keep the worker’s standard as low as possible, to the point at which his physical capacity to keep up the good work of producing profits will not be endangered by under-nourishment The people who produce such assessments of how little wealth the wealth producers can live on are adding insult to injury.

What to do

The workers should give up the fruitless search to cure their poverty disease by demanding a different thermometer; recognise that their present interest is to take every opportunity that conditions allow to get higher pay. no matter what the index says. But above and beyond this should be the incomparably more important task of ending capitalism and its wages system for ever. Only by doing this and establishing Socialism will the latent and restricted production powers of society be unleashed so that a vastly increased productive of useful articles and the cessation of armaments and other forms of waste will enable all to enjoy the dazzling possibilities of a new social system.

The Cost of Living Index. (1927)

From the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writes to point out that the cost of living index figure issued by the Ministry of Labour is inaccurate, “yet,” he says, “it is around that figure that Trade Union officials weave their settlements.” As he does not give details of his criticism of the accuracy of the figures, it is a little difficult to go into the question. It must, however, be conceded that the cost of living index figures can only be described as inaccurate if it can be shown that they fail to tell us what they claim to tell. No evidence has ever been brought to show that they are “faked,” and it is not the least bit likely that they are. The claim made for them is that they “are designed to measure the average increase in the cost of maintaining unchanged the pre-war standard of living of the working classes …. The effect is to obtain approximately the average percentage increase in the cost of maintaining the pre-war standard of living in working-class families” (Ministry of Labour Gazette, February, 1921). Now it is exceedingly difficult to discover how closely the figures approximate to the real position. The Labour Party some years ago set up a commission of enquiry which satisfied itself that the index understates the real average increase in the cost of living of a working-class family.

While many statisticians take the view that the error is in the direction of overstatement. One difficulty is that many items of the present working-class budget were absent from the pre-war budget, and vice-versa. Again, the relative position of different sections of the working-class has changed; so-called “unskilled” workers are somewhat better off, and many “skilled” workers considerably worse off than in 1914. Also, it must be remembered that the figure is an average figure. The figure is not invalidated by showing that in certain areas or for certain groups it is too high or too low. Since it is based upon the assumption that workers live in “controlled” houses, it will fail to give a true picture of those workers who have to pay higher “decontrolled” rents.

The real point in the criticism centres round the use that is made of the Index Figure in wage agreements, and here, we think, our correspondent in ascribing to the Index Figure something which is, in fact, due to the political backwardness of the workers, and to the hard facts of the capitalist system. It is not the cost of living; figures which compel the engineer, or the miner, to accept wages which leave them poorer than in 1914. It is the ability of the employers to get all the labour they require without paying more for it than they do. If they needed considerably more miners or engineers, they would doubtless have to pay higher wages to get them, Index Figures notwithstanding. On the other hand, some groups of workers are getting a higher real wage than in 1914, due to changes in the demand for their particular kind of skill. In the long run these discrepancies tend to disappear, but, in the meantime, Index Figures are not the dominant factor in securing or preventing wage increases or decreases. It is true that most workers and their leaders, are saturated with capitalist economic theories, which teach them that they should be content to accept the existing or the prewar distribution of wealth without demur, and they accordingly come to look upon the cost of living Index as a kind of divine indication of what wages ought to be, but this is the fault not of the figures, but of the workers who use them so. If they accepted the Socialist view that receivers of unearned incomes are parasites, they would not allow innocent figures or ignorant Trade Union officials to stand between them and the overthrow of the capitalist system.

Editorial Committee

How many die of famine? (1985)

From the March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are two short answers to this question. One is that we don't know and the other that it depends what you mean by "die of starvation".

Obviously in those parts of the world affected by hunger the last thing doctors and government officials do is fill in death certificates setting out the cause of death, and even if they did there would be no guarantee that they would be using the same criteria from country to country. So we are dealing here not with accurate information but with informed guesses based on what statistical evidence there is.

The word "starve" in English has two meanings: it can either mean to die from lack of food or it can mean to suffer from lack of food. An ambiguity can easily arise here: when we say someone dies from lack of food, do we mean that they literally die from not eating (as Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers did) or that they died as a result of some disease from which they might not have died had they not been suffering from lack of food? Clearly the figures for the former are going to be much lower than those for the latter.

Some absurd figures

In the course of the 1981 presidential election campaign in France, Mitterrand went on record as saying that "50 million human beings die from hunger each year" (La Croix, 18 May 1981). It is not too clear how this figure got into circulation but it came to be widely quoted by charitable organisations in France. It was not until a year later that an expert in the field. Professor Joseph Klatzmann of the Institut National Agronomique in Paris, showed how absurd this figure was by pointing out that the total world deaths in 1981 were about 48 million (Le Monde, 24 March 1982)! This refutation of the claim of 50 million deaths from hunger was also incorporated in the second edition of his book Nourrir Dix Milliards d'Hommes? ("Can Ten Thousand Million People Be Fed?") published in 1983. in which he argued that using existing agricultural techniques world food production could be increased two or three times so as to be able adequately to feed every single man. woman and child on the planet and if necessary more, up to the 10.000 million mentioned in the title of his book. So Klatzmann is no defender of the existing capitalist status quo where millions suffer unnecessarily from hunger and malnutrition.

On 5 August 1981 the Guardian claimed in its Third World Review that:

  Every year 30 million people die of hunger, more than half of them children under five.

  Every year 780 million people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition.

  By the end of this decade these figures will have doubled.

At first sight this seems more reasonable since the number of deaths claimed to be due to hunger is at least less than the total number of deaths from all causes. But on closer examination it too turns out to be absurd.

If 30 million of the 50 million deaths in 1980 were due to hunger this would leave only 20 million for deaths from other causes. If this figure of 30 million deaths from hunger were true, it is logical to assume that all these deaths would have occurred among the 780 million suffering from hunger and malnutrition (the one figure quoted here by the Guardian not open to challenge, if anything it is probably on the low side). If we also assume that the death rate among the remaining 3,650 million of the then total world population of 4,430 million was the same as that in the developed countries — about 9 per 1,000 — this would mean that 33 million would have died in 1980 from causes other than hunger. But this is more than 20 million, so the figure of 30 million can't be right.

As to the claim that by 1990 the number of deaths from hunger will have doubled to 60 million, this is just as absurd as the 50 million figure mentioned earlier, since it too is higher than current estimates for all deaths in the world in 1990.

The basic figures

All estimates of the number of deaths in the world are derived from figures published regularly by the United Nations. These are prepared on the basis of national population statistics. The latest set of figures was published in 1982 under the title World Population Prospects as Assessed in 1980. The following Table has been prepared from the statistics given in this document :

This table shows:

1. That world population in 1980 was estimated at being 4,430 million.
2. That about a quarter of the world's population live in the developed countries, defined as being Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the USSR.
3. That the number of deaths in the world in 1980 was estimated as being 50.5 million, about 40 million of which occurred among the three-quarters of the world's population living in the underdeveloped countries.
4. That nearly 15 million children under ten years of age died in 1980, all but about 300,000 of them in the underdeveloped countries.

Interpreting the figures

The first point to notice is that the figures often quoted by UNICEF (UN Childrens Fund) of 40,000 young children dying a day in the world is correct (40,000 X 365 = 14.6 million). But it should be noted that the Executive Director of UNICEF. James P. Grant, when he first launched this figure in the early 1980s, did not attribute all these deaths to hunger alone. What he actually said was:

  every day of this last year more than 40,000 young children have died from malnutrition and infection (The State of the World's Children 1982-3. UNICEF, quoted in Hunger Project Handout "The "Other" UN", p.5).

So Grant was not saying that 40,000 children die a day from inanition, from not consuming enough food to keep them alive. Most of them died from parasitic or infectious diseases of one kind or another which is what you'd expect in fact, since children under ten don't die from natural causes — but he did strongly argue that the spread of these diseases and their effect were made easier and more devastating by the fact that nearly all the children were already suffering from malnutrition in one form or another.

Thus the claim is that 40,000 children a day die from the combined effects of malnutrition and disease. In this form, and only in this form, is the claim correct. If the "and disease" is omitted then it becomes misleading as this would suggest that 40,000 children die a day simply from lack of food — which, factually is just not the case. This clarification allows us to see how a claim such as the Guardian's "every year 30 million people die of hunger" could have got into circulation. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), most people in the underdeveloped countries die of diseases related to inadequate water and sanitation. Thus Susan George in her excellent How The Other Half Dies (first published in 1976) writes that

  in the Third World 70 per cent of the people die of parasitic or infectious disease for which hunger provides the favourable terrain (Penguin edition, p.32).

On the basis of estimated population and death trends in the mid-70s when George was writing her book, this would mean that there were then about 25 million deaths in the underdeveloped countries attributable to these diseases. It is easy to see how somebody eager to do something about world hunger, sincere but not too careful about statistics, could turn George's carefully-worded statement into a full-blown claim that 30 million people actually starve to death each year. George herself makes no such claim and is considerably more cautious. In her introduction (in a passage which is also quoted on the back cover of the book) she writes:

  If it takes you six hours to read this book, somewhere in the world 2.500 people will have died of starvation or of hunger-related illness by the time you finish.

This is equivalent to 10,000 deaths a day. or 3.65 million a year, from "starvation and hunger-related illness"; which is a much more defendable figure for the number of people who die because they literally do not have enough to eat, together with those who die from protein or vitamin deficiency diseases like kwashiorkor and beri-beri (as opposed to the parasitic and infectious diseases mentioned earlier).

People do die of starvation (inanition) in the world today (under capitalism there is always a famine somewhere in the world — last year it was North-East Brazil, this year it is Ethiopia) but nowhere near 30 million. To quote such a demonstrably exaggerated figure is to weaken the credibility of those who do so, and is quite unnecessary since the case against capitalism on this question is strong enough without exaggerating. The knowledge, resources and machines exist to provide enough food for every single human being on the planet yet capitalism, because of its property and profit basis, does not allow this to happen, so condemning millions to malnutrition and diseases and. as we shall now see, to preventable death.

Preventable deaths

The second point that emerges from the basic figures is that, if the same health standards (clean running water, vaccinations, regular medical care) applied in the underdeveloped countries as in the developed countries, then the number of world deaths would be considerably less than they are. Since, from a technological point of view, it is possible both to produce enough food to eliminate malnutrition in the world and to provide adequate water supplies and health care for every man. woman and child on the planet, these deaths can objectively be regarded as being "preventable". They are deaths that can be laid at the door of capitalism in the sense that if society were geared to catering for human needs (as it would be in socialism) they would not happen.

How many such "preventable" deaths can there be each year? A very simple calculation allows us to estimate a minimum figure. As the Table shows, the death rate in the developed countries is 9.4 per thousand while in the underdeveloped countries it is 12.1 per thousand. If the death rate were 9.4 per thousand throughout the world then only 41 million would have died in 1980 compared with the 50 million who are estimated to have died that year.

But this difference of nine million is, as we have said, only the minimum figure for preventable deaths. The death rate depends not only on health and sanitation standards but also on the age structure of the population. Since the population of the underdeveloped countries is on average younger than that of the developed countries the death rate, if the developed countries' health and sanitation standards prevailed throughout the world, would have been lower than 9.4 per thousand. Calculations based on the figures in the 1982 UN population report referred to above suggest that it would have been between six and seven per thousand. This would mean that world deaths in 1980 would have been as low as 32 million. In other words, that preventable deaths will be of the order of 17 or 18 million a year.

A closer examination of the figures show that most of these preventable deaths are those of young children. If the death rate for children under five and for children under ten had been the same in the underdeveloped countries as in the developed countries. then 10 million children under five and 13.5 million under ten (including the under fives) would not have died.

We can now estimate how many people died in 1980, not "from hunger", but from a combination of malnutrition and parasitic and infectious diseases caused by the conditions under which capitalism forces over half mankind to live: about 17 million, of which about 13 million were children under ten.

A final word of warning. This estimate refers to the year 1980 while the basic statistics on which it was based change as the years go by (for instance, the world population is going up and the world death rate going down). In time then these figures will need to be revised, upwards or downwards, in the light of new statistical evidence.

Adam Buick