Political Notebook: Honour Among Thieves (1979)

The Political Notebook Column from the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Honour Among Thieves

One of the main themes of Shakespeare’s telly spectacular Julius Caesar is that of “honourable men". Every schoolboy knows how Mark Antony (himself not averse to a little honest cheating) used that phrase over and over again to describe the conspirators who had recently murdered their former friend, Caesar. So successful was Antony in the use of these words that the mob eventually set off howling for the murderers’ blood. The parallels between this and some modern politicians and members of the capitalist class (all honourable men) are interesting.

Take for example, the Peachey Property Corporation. The former chairman of this group, Sir Eric Miller, shot himself. (It would have been more romantic had he run on his own sword as Brutus and Cassius did, but never mind). He did so when it was perfectly obvious that the huge financial fiddles that he had undertaken were coming to light. The Department of Trade report investigating Peachey Properties said, according to the Guardian (31.1.79) "Sir Eric covered his misdeeds by telling lies freely, fabricating false documents and causing others to fabricate and utter false documents.’’ (Which didn’t prevent him getting his knighthood).

Dead men are supposed to tell no tales, that Sir Eric’s ghost, like Caesar’s before him is causing other former friends some little problems. It appears that Sir Eric, according to the Department of Trade used the company’s money as his own instead of treating it as the money of others, which it was. As is well known, Sir Eric dispensed little favours to his friends. For example filing cabinets and £3304 worth of champagne to a party for Harold Wilson. (Perhaps Harold needed the filing cabinets to store the champagne.) Wilson of course was good to Erie; after all, Wilson knighted Eric before knighting himself. True brotherhood.

More Tales of the Dead

Then there was Reggie Maudling. Of course he is now dead. 1 say "of course” since there were those who maintained you could not tell the difference. He was another honourable man. No other politician was more often almost Prime Minister this century, and you cannot get more honourable than that. He too had his little friends—such as Sir Eric. Reggie did not get any champagne; but as is fairly well known he received more substantial benefits in the property market. The Observer (4.2.79) notes that the Department of Trade report explained the complicated deal whereby Reggie sold the freehold of his house to Peachey but received it back again on a long lease. Peachey then did £22,500 worth of improvements to Reggie’s house in return for £100 a year rent. Sounds like a bargain.

When Reggie became Home Secretary in 1970 and therefore honourably brought to an end his association with the honourable Erie, Eric sent Reggie’s wife a little present. It was only a chess set— pretty innocent. Usually only costs a couple of pounds in Woolworths. But this one was made of silver and was worth (1970 prices) a mere £2,750. Of course Reggie had plenty of other friends: such as Poulson (jailed for a long term for corruption).

We, unlike Shakespeare, are not sexist, so women get in on the act. Instead of "honourable men." Shakespeare could have had "honourable persons.” There is another member of the British peerage the Peachey Report did not even mention—former Secretary to Champagne Harold, Lady Falkender herself. This honourable lady also had little advantages from Peachey; like the loan of a Volvo car. Falkender explained it did not come from Peachey at all, but from Sir Eric personally. Well quite. That explains it.

Absent Friends

Then there is Lord Kagan of Gannex, recently on an extended holiday in Israel. He is finding it a little inconvenient to return home since there is a warrant for his arrest on currency offences involving £150,000. Still, small fry to this honourable man. His raincoat business must have been worth millions. According to the Guardian, when asked if he would come back to claim his ancestral heritage sometime, Lord K replied; “Oh yes . . . when the mood takes me". (31.1.79).

Just like any other worker really. When you go on holiday, I suppose you come back when the mood takes you too. The latest position is that Lord K is on his way to Spain (Guardian 2.3.79). Meantime his wife and son are on bail on corruption charges.

One interesting link in this is Champagne Harold himself. All these honourable persons (except Reggie—how was he forgotten?) have become knights, lords or ladies, thanks to Harold's little benefactions. He explained that “moving businessmen into the Lords puts an entirely different dimension on the honours system”. (Daily Mirror 2.3.79). You can say that again. Harold certainly had a revealing collection of friends.

Honourable Witness

Another honourable man on extended leave is George de Chabris. He is currently in Florida, also with no intention of returning in a rush. Among other little gems for which the police would like to "see" (presumably behind bars) this gentleman, are the following: a £10,000 transaction with a prominent liberal (unnamed as yet), donations to the Liberal Party, and Mr Chabris’s role as a "witness" to events at the National Liberal Club which interest the police. This one seems to have little to do with Champagne Harold. As the Guardian (23.2.79) put it; "Sir Harold Wilson said at Westminster last night that he did not know who George de Chabris was, ‘I have no recollection of this gentleman at all’”.

The Lesson

Meantime, while this honourable lot cheat and thieve and live it up at the worker’s expense, may I remind you that local authority workers, ambulance men and many others have been on strike— for a basic wage of £60 a week. And another honourable man, James Callaghan, said that figure is too much. At the time of writing £4.50 a week (about 11 per cent of these workers' current wage) is the absolute maximum offered. If Mark Antony had offered that to the mob they might at least have had the sense to lynch him.

Some useful advice for the Archbishop of Canterbury and his colleagues

"So I say unto you, go ahead and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness’ sake leave the working class alone. You belong in the enemy’s camp. You have nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs are round with the plentitude of eating . . . and your minds are filled with doctrines which are buttresses of the established order. You are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men of the Swiss Guard. Be true to your salt and your hire; guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers: but do not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to do without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better without you than with you.

(From The Iron Heel, by Jack London).

Surplus and Exports: An explanation (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is said that accidents will happen in the best-regulated homes; and it can occasionally happen that a writer and the Editorial Committee have both sat up too late and a mis-statement appears in the Socialist Standard.

In the October issue, in the article “The Crisis: Wilson’s Lame Explanation”, the following appeared (page 184, para. 3):

  It follows therefore that the working class as a whole are not paid enough to buy back the goods they have produced. The “export drives” typical of all industrialized countries are evidence of this need to sell abroad the surplus which workers in the country of origin cannot afford to purchase . . . But, like taking in each other’s washing, it is a futile endeavour when all countries are trying to do the same thing.

This, we are afraid, is thoroughly incorrect. It resembles a theory held at the beginning of this century, that capitalism would eventually collapse because all countries had unsaleable surpluses on their hands. (This is the economic argument of Jack London’s The Iron Heel, published in 1907.) The SPGB never subscribed to that theory, and we hasten now to put matters straight.

It is true that the workers cannot buy back all they produce, but this does not explain economic crises; if it did, there would be no such thing as a boom, and crisis would be continuous. The surplus is used largely by the capitalists themselves for reinvestment in industry, when conditions are favourable.
When (as now) the conditions are unfavourable, workers are laid off — not because the surplus is an embarrassment but because goods produced cannot be sold.

As the article said, British manufacturers have to compete in foreign markets. However, this reflects not the need to dispose of a surplus but the normal working of capitalism in which all production takes place for sale at a profit: indeed, under-cutting of prices is sometimes achieved by investment in new machinery. The reason why trade often has the anomalous appearance of “taking in each other’s washing” is that commodities are produced more cheaply in some countries than in others. In a period of trade depression this is observed and commented on — e.g. that foreign cars are widely sold in Britain — but it goes on all the time.

Cooking the Books: Jack London Was Wrong (2016)

Cover of the first edition

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The writer Jack London died a hundred years ago last month. He is more known for his adventure stories than for his economics but The Iron Heel published in 1907 has a chapter ‘The Mathematics of a Dream’ in which the hero, Ernest Everhard, sets out to ‘develop the inevitability of the breakdown of the capitalist system’ and ‘demonstrate mathematically why it must break down.’

Everhard summarises his argument:

‘We found that labour could buy back with its wages only so much of the product, and that capital did not consume all of the remainder of the product. We found that when labour had consumed to the full extent of its wages, and when capital had consumed all it wanted, there was still left an unconsumed surplus. We agreed that this surplus could only be disposed of abroad. We agreed, also, that the effect of unloading this surplus on another country would be to develop the resources of that country, and that in a short time that country would have an unconsumed surplus. We extended this process to all the countries on the planet, till every country was producing every year, and every day, an unconsumed surplus, which it could dispose of to no other country.’

When this point was reached, he argued, capitalism would break down. This was a popular view amongst members of the old Socialist Party of America (of which London was a member). They expected that in this event capitalism would be replaced by socialism. London’s fantasy was that it would be replaced for at least three hundred years, by ‘Oligarchy’ where all industry would be controlled by a single trust and its directors, who would use up the ‘unconsumed surplus’ by building magnificent cities for themselves and a labour aristocracy and by maintaining a large standing army, while suppressing all dissent and brutally oppressing the rest of the population under an ‘iron heel’.

It was a fantasy, though some people have seen it as an accurate prediction of fascism (in fact Russia under Stalin would be a better example). But what about the mathematical demonstration that capitalism will inevitably break down at some point?

It’s flawed. Everhard assumes that, under capitalism, all production is for personal consumption whereas in fact some is used to replace and expand productive capacity. Obviously the workers can’t buy back what they produce, otherwise there’d be no profits. He assumes that capitalists can only consume so much, which is true, but ignores the fact that they can use the ‘surplus’ that is left over after this to invest (buy raw materials, energy, new factories, etc). This in fact is the aim of production under capitalism – to accumulate profits as more capital. It is not to satisfy the consumption needs of the capitalists any more than of the workers.

Once this is taken into account, there is no built-in, permanent unsaleable surplus under capitalism. In theory, all that is produced can be bought, by the combined purchases of workers for their consumption, of capitalists for theirs and of capitalists for investment. In practice, however, this doesn’t happen all the time. If the profit prospects are not good enough, then capitalists will not collectively invest all the surplus and there will be a slump, as regularly happens under capitalism when overproduction in one key sector of the economy results in falling prices and so falling profits. This is why from time to time an unsaleable surplus does appear, but this is never permanent.

London was right on one point, though. If capitalism were to break down automatically then the outcome would not necessarily be socialism. That can only happen when a majority want socialism, understand its implications, and organise themselves democratically to bring it into being.

Jack London’s The Iron Heel (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

London's widely read book of this title was published a hundred years ago. But how realistic was it and how much of a socialist was Jack London?

By the time he had published The Call of the Wild in 1903 and White Fang in 1905, Jack London had established a reputation as the author of highly profitable popular fiction and adventure stories. He had risen to become the highest-paid American author of his era and with his income secure he set about writing a novel expressing his individualistic brand of militant politics. Aroused by the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, the inability of the Socialist Party of America to build on earlier electoral successes and the popularity of the serialisation of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's novel about working conditions in the meat-packing industry, London quickly completed a new novel, The Iron Heel, which was published one hundred years ago in 1908. After his death the work became an influential classic of anti-capitalist literature with prophecies and warnings that, according to the introduction to the most recent Penguin edition, 'Aryan nationalists and communists alike have championed' ever since.

The novel combines two narrative themes: an inner autobiographical narrative set mainly in the period 1912-1918 and a secondary narrative providing an historical commentary on the fictional 'Everhard Manuscripts' from centuries in the future. The work is essentially the autobiography of Avis Everhard, a woman steeped in social prejudice who falls in love with and later marries a 'socialist leader' and then discovers the realities of capitalism. Under the guidance of her husband Ernest she becomes a revolutionist seeking to overthrow the 'Oligarchy' – the combination of the large monopoly trusts that had bankrupted smaller capitalists and reduced farmers to serfdom and the majority of workers to slaves.

This elite has created a military caste – the 'Mercenaries' – as a private army and undermines working class solidarity by establishing a privileged 'labour caste' from skilled workers in essential industries. The 'Oligarchy' has absolute authority over civil law and political institutions, exercising power through force and intimidation, bolstered by the prejudices propagated through the press, church and education system. The novel ends after the unsuccessful 'First Revolt' against this elite.

The Iron Heel was not an entirely original work, heavily influenced by the work of other authors. London took inspiration from H.G. Wells' apocalyptic fantasy When the Sleeper Walks (1899) and from the idea of a 'double-view' achieved by opening a second narrative in the future, in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). To this he adds images of summary executions and unrestrained violence from the 1871 Paris Commune, using this as a historical model for his 'Chicago Commune' that stirred memories of the infamous Chicago Haymarket Massacre of 1886.

The novel was also closely modelled on Ignatious Donnelly's Caesar's Column (1890), a melodrama set in the New York of the future which, like London's later work, revolved around political intrigue, secret agents, disguises and spies. Both novels are interwoven with love stories and end in cataclysm. London relocates the scene of this cataclysm from the New York to Chicago. His central theme was drawn from W. J. Ghent, the author of Our Benevolent Feudalism, a work 'which foresaw the "complete integration of capital" into an iron fisted dictatorship'(Richard O'Connor, Jack London – A Biography). Even London's title, The Iron Heel, which is the condemnatory phase dramatically used by London's hero Ernest to describe the 'Oligarchy,' turns up in many other contemporary political and literary works as a symbol of oppression.

Much of what is related in the narrative of Avis Everhard London gleaned from newspaper articles and the printed views of 'muckrakers' such as Lincoln Steffens and regular contributors to the Oakland newspaper Socialist Voice, including William McDevitt and Austin Lewis. London's opportunistic reliance on this newspaper was demonstrated in 1906 when at a time when it was publishing articles denouncing organised religion, London – for the only time in his literary career – denounced the church, and he devotes several chapters in his novel to the theme.

'Borrowing' ideas and phrases was second nature to London and he was repeatedly accused of plagiarism. Moreover his habit of appropriating the work of others was not just confined to newspaper articles. Chapter seven of his novel, The Bishop's Vision, is almost identical to Frank Harris's essay 'The Bishop of London and Public Morality', published years earlier. London tried to explain his tendency to plagiarise to Elwyn Hoffman, by saying: 'expression with me is far easier than invention. It is with the latter I have the greatest trouble, and work the hardest' (Andrew Sinclair, A Biography of Jack London).

London was not widely read in the works of socialist literature and he never really understood socialism. His politics were a blend of conflicting theories: a mixture of emotional demands for 'social justice' acquired during his early life, interwoven with ideas of racial superiority and social Darwinism. He had joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) in 1896, a period in which the SLP supported a programme of 'immediate demands'. When these were dropped in 1900, London was one of those who left the Party and after standing as the Social Democratic Party's candidate for the mayor of Oakland in 1901 he joined the reformist Socialist Party of America (SPA). London's 'socialism' was always overshadowed by the conviction that the strongest must inevitably triumph over the weak and by a resolve to drag himself out of the 'social pit' by becoming a prosperous writer even when this meant being criticised for compromising his principles and political convictions.

After completing People of the Abyss, an account of working class life in the East End of London and arguably the only truly 'sincere work' that he ever wrote, London became increasingly disillusioned with the 'underfed parodies of humanity' who refused to 'fight' for a new society. By 1903 his frustration with the working class and his views on social Darwinism were widely acknowledged and drew criticism from the membership of his own political party. He responded with accusations that the SPA leadership was weak and doomed to fail and though he stood as its candidate for the mayor of Oakland in 1905, it was clear, even before he began his novel, that his sporadic flirtation with 'socialism' was over.

Although he remained a Party member, believing his 'socialist credentials' enhanced his reputation, it is certain that by 1906 that London had already 'parted ways with the idea of a mass working-class movement to overthrow capitalism and establish a new society' (Robert Barltrop, Jack London, the Man, the Writer, the Rebel). The Iron Heel's reputation as a 'socialist' classic, deriving from London's scathing attack on capitalism in the first half of the novel, does not conceal the fact that it was 'also his statement why socialism was not achievable in the foreseeable future' (Barltrop). The novel is London's pessimistic declaration that the working class is incapable of self-emancipating and in it he does not even credit the 'socialist' movement with the eventual downfall of the fictional 'Oligarchy,' which instead implodes under its own internal weaknesses and divisions.

London unquestionably believed that capitalism should be replaced, but never explains 'socialism' or how it can be achieved. His main indictment of the capitalist system in The Iron Heel is that it is managerially incompetent, 'blind and greedy', and wasteful. As well as this, London is convinced that an alternative society cannot be achieved without leaders. He creates the character Ernest as his alter ego, a 'socialist leader' (a contradiction in terms) who stands above the working class as an embodiment of London's image of 'socialist' man, a 'blond beast such as Nietzsche has described', the personification of self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

Ernest is the leader that London always wanted to be. But Ernest is betrayed – in the same way that London felt he had been - by comrades who refuse to listen to him and by an irresponsible working class, 'the refuse and scrum of life', incapable of helping itself and unworthy of his leadership. London's fictional 'socialists' view the working class with dread and refuse to build class solidarity with what they see as an abject and uncontrollable mass. The novel concludes on a note of disgust aimed less at the detested 'Oligarchy' than at the working class, whose mindless behaviour is said to have contributed to the defeat of the 'First Revolt.' The remnants of the 'socialist' movement are driven away to continue a terrorist war for centuries into the future until the weakened 'Oligarchy' finally yields.

The vision articulated in The Iron Heel is the social Darwinian struggle in which the strongest must always be supreme. It is developed within the framework of a quasi-religious fable. The setting is summed up by one critic in the following way: 'For the individual capable of it, a transforming moment of inspired vision; for those in society incapable of such a vision, a providential catastrophe and ultimately the regeneration of society through martyrdom' (Charles N. Watson, The Novels of Jack London). The work is peppered with biblical phraseology and religious symbolism as Avis experiences 'a new and awful revelation of life'. The story builds towards an apocalyptic conclusion reminiscent of religious deliverance when the 'evils' of capitalism will be purged from the world and, through sacrifice and martyrdom, society will be reborn as 'The Brotherhood of Man.'

The dramatic idealisation of the main protagonists, the heightened romanticism of the action, and the virtual absence of the working class for much of the novel all accentuate an infatuation with leadership. Some have justified the novel's lack of realism in various ways. Trotsky, for example, explained the work as a didactic tale where the author was interested 'not so much in the individual fate of its heroes as in the fate of mankind' (Joan London, Jack London and His Times). But is this an adequate defence for a tale whose core message is one that consigns the working class to an essentially passive and insignificant role in the social revolution?

So The Iron Heel is a decidedly anti-socialist work by an author who wrote more from his heart than his head. When it was first published the novel received unfavourable reviews even from so-called 'socialist' journals and the International Socialist Review described it as 'well calculated to repel many whose addition to our forces is sorely needed'. It is difficult to disagree with Robert Barltrop's judgement that London's 'socialism' was always a self-deception where 'the pleasures of intellectual company, of being lionised, of always having a platform waiting, caused him to set aside or rationalise the differences which were plainly there'. It is perhaps not surprising that London's egotism, overblown self-esteem and overriding preoccupation with his personal finances led Mark Twain's to remark: 'It would serve this man London right to have the working class to get control of things. He would have to call out the militia to collect his royalties.'

Jack London died in 1916 at the age of 40. In 1945, George Orwell said that had he lived 'in our day, instead of dying in 1916, it is hard to be sure where his political allegiance would have lain', and went on: 'One can imagine him in the Communist Party, one can imagine him falling victim to the Nazi racial theory, and one can imagine him the quixotic champion of some Trotskyist or Anarchist sect.' The Iron Heel, still open to all kinds of unsettling interpretations, will undoubtedly continue to be considered a classic of its time, although worryingly perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

Steve Trott