So They Say: Labour's guidelines for Capitalism (1975)

The So They Say Column from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour's guidelines for Capitalism

Following his meeting with the Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry in January, the well- known non-Socialist, Mr. Denis Healey, has been increasingly forcing some of the facts about capitalism and how the Labour Party proposes to run it down the throats of the working class. Speaking at the Electrical Contractors’ Association in London on 11th February, he said:

If we price ourselves out of jobs by excessive wage increases, there will also be even greater cut-backs in new plant and machinery. That too means more men and women out of work, both now and in the future. None of this need happen. It will not happen if workers, not just in the union headquarters but on the shop floor too, stick strictly to the guidelines for wage negotiation laid down by their own leaders in the TUC last year.

We recall the uproar in the House of Commons not long ago when Labour MPs were clamouring for remedial action to be taken after British companies were found to be paying black South African workers below “officially recognized” levels. The Labour Party has consistently subscribed to the utopian view that wages can be fixed at some “fair” level which will be mutually beneficial to both capitalist and worker. Such a view has nothing to do with Socialism and we advise members of the working class to examine and reject the concept that a system of exploitation can be run “fairly.”

Closing his eyes and opening his mouth

Before Mr. Heath reluctantly vacated his position as leader of the Conservative Party in February, he put forward as neat a piece of mumbo-jumbo as one might expect. In a desperate attempt to appeal to all men everywhere, he undertook a dazzling rebuttal of the view that capitalist society is divided into two classes. Speaking on his ability to lead the Conservative Party he said:

It is not just a question of looking after the middle class, which of course has very great problems particularly under this Government, and we should do our utmost to help it. But it is not just a question of class at all. I loathe the word class. I do not believe in class. It is a question of ensuring the prosperity of the nation in which everyone can share.

(Financial Times, 31st Jan. 75)

Well, Mr. Heath may not believe in it, although after almost ten years as leader of the Conservative Party he has had as good an opportunity as most to realize that the interests of the workers and capitalists are opposed, but his beliefs are neither here nor there. The class position of the individual is not determined by the beliefs of anyone, but by the relationship between that individual and the means of production. Whatever aspirations some individuals may hold to the contrary, those members of society who do not own any of the means of production or distribution form the working class. This is the vast majority of the population and it is through their efforts alone that the “prosperity” Mr. Heath refers to is created, not for the benefit of “everyone” as he would have it, but for the benefit of those individuals who do own the means of production and distribution, the capitalist class.

A Goodly Wizard

One of the inevitable reactions to the continuing barrage of propaganda from the capitalists that Britain is going bankrupt, that this crisis must be surmounted, that we must all make sacrifices — ad nauseam, is that the heavenly thoughts of the Christian sorcerers get another outing. They are always at hand to tell us that “God moves in mysterious ways”, but the reality is that whichever way he moves, it always seems to serve the need of the capitalist class. This is no accident, there being a clear link between the scriptural injunction “Servants obey your masters” and its application to the working class.

The Very Rev. Horace Dammers, the Dean of Bristol, has recently launched a movement entitled “Life Style” which apparently already has several hundred members. The Dean underlined the Christian ethic of frugality (for the workers) so much beloved by the ruling class through the ages:

I think we have found a realistic way for ordinary people to make a positive contribution to the good of mankind.

Apart from monthly meetings where the members get together in order to “analyze each other’s incomes” or discuss ways of “using their money in ways which they consider to be less socially harmful”, some members are

planning to share cars and lawnmowers, and to cut down on food and insurance, and are thinking twice before buying new clothes, and even pets.

(Sunday Telegraph, 2nd Feb. 75)

If the Dean genuinely wishes to make a “positive contribution to the good of mankind” he should exorcise this bogus brotherhood, and start to study Socialism.

Honest Profit

It is usually advantageous for capitalists and the politicians representing their interests to refer as little as possible (in public) to the mainspring of capitalist production — Profit. Some appear to view its mention with a hurt concern, preferring to talk about the “creation of prosperity,” or “economic growth.” Others are more brazen:

No-one now believes that profit is a dirty word, if profit is honestly earned and put to proper use.

(Mr. Denis Healey speaking at the CBI’s annual dinner at the Hilton Hotel on 14th May 74.)

However, according to a report in the Financial Times on 11th February, ICI is one company which is afflicted with a certain "self-consciousness” in this regard. The fact that the company had produced a profit of £375m. over nine months caused the Public Relations Dept, of ICI to commission a survey from Documentary Research of Bristol, in order to gauge possible public hostility toward profit announcements. The survey team interviewed 1437 people and one of its findings was:

There appeared to be no understanding of the fact that a very high percentage of profit was paid out by companies in tax; only 6 per cent acknowledged that tax was paid at all.

As a result of these findings ICI laid new emphasis on tax in its financial advertising both internally in the company newspapers, and in the National Press.

All good stuff for the Public Relations men to play up at every opportunity. We can imagine the copy now — "Yes the profits may look big, but you want to see the size of our tax demand.” Nevertheless we place no importance on the amount of tax a company pays. The report went on to say:

There is no great antipathy towards profits. ‘We might not have put profits at the top of our advertisements before,’ said ICI. But the survey has shown up some other areas of misunderstanding and mistrust which will take more than simplified advertising campaigns to overcome. There are strong suspicions that results are not presented honestly.

The newspaper report concludes:

One wonders, would the results (of the survey) have been different if the respondents had been less ill- informed about the ultimate destination of profits?

Its ultimate destination is irrelevant to the working class who have created this surplus-value. By the time Profit is counted, the worker has been paid. What workers should usually do is not concern themselves where Profit goes, but to examine where it originated.

Specialist Purposes

An explanatory note on the Times report of 6th February regarding the Ingram 9mm. sub-machine guns recently purchased from the USA by the Ministry of Defence is required:

The Ingram is said to be well suited to undercover operations. But the ministry is emphatic that the guns, bought for “specialist purposes” have not been used in Northern Ireland. The silencer differs from the conventional kind. Instead of slowing the bullet as it leaves the muzzle it allows it to reach full supersonic speed. The enemy would hear a crack as the bullet passed him, but it would be impossible to tell where it came from.

We can reveal that the “specialist purposes” to which the Ministry vaguely refers are that the guns will be issued to those members of the working class within the British armed forces so that they may fire them at other members of the international working class when the interests of two groups of capitalists collide. The report is misleading in suggesting that “the enemy would hear a crack as the bullet passed him”. This defeats the purpose of the bullet — the truth is that the “enemy” would hear nothing as the bullet passed through him.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: Protests too much (1977)

The So They Say Column from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Protests too much

An article in The Spectator of 12th November entitled “The irrelevance of class” which attempts to justify its title by showing how various important men have risen from what are discreetly referred to as “humble births”, reminds us that the class war still prompts professional hacks (and quacks) to issue it, at regular intervals with a formal death certificate. The entire irrelevance of class structure within society led the writer of the article to over 50 column-inches to make his point and if The Spectator is prepared to pay for and publish this sort of thing, we have high hopes for our own submission entitled “The irrelevance of air—hot and cold.”

The inconvenient obstacle to the claim however is one of fact. Obstacles of this nature may or may not impress Spectator’s writers who are prepared to spend a good deal of time apparently in dealing with what they consider “irrelevances”, but it cannot seriously be denied that capitalist society is divided, on the one hand into those who own and control the means of life and on the other, into those who must work for a member of the owning class in order to live. If this class division were non-existent, or irrelevant, we could only express surprise at the great deal of verbiage mustered to assure us of the claim.

Not cricket

Although the owning class as a whole have class interests in common, namely the retention of private- property society and they will unite on issues which may threaten this, each member also has individual interests in the day-to-day business of increasing their particular share of the social wealth, and this process obliges them to enter into battles among themselves. Whereas the working class, the non-owners, represent a class enemy to be held off by a variety of means, other members of the capitalist class are rivals and as such require direct attention.

Fresh diplomatic protests have been tendered by the Government over breaches in agreements by Japanese (Motor) manufacturers to hold down sales in Britain.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

The British motor manufacturers claim that the Japanese are carrying out an “invasion” of the British markets contrary to an undertaking given by the Japanese to restrain sales to the UK. It all sounds very reasonable—an arrangement between friends. The Japanese motor men have argued before that it had all been a misunderstanding and they may well do so again. The fact that the British government now argues the case on behalf of its own national manufacturers shows that they are not deceived. Both parties are aware that “undertakings” are weak restraints on the pressures of capitalist expansion.

Making the point, in the same newspaper, was the Chairman of the Welsh council of the CBI who advises his members that British manufacturers can satisfactorily meet Japanese competition by putting in “the same intensity of effort as the Japanese”, by which he means a greater degree of exploitation of the British working class. This gentleman was speaking from experience. He is the chairman of a machine-tool company.

Last year I put one Japanese firm out of business and two other Japanese firms have given up their markets to me.

(Daily Telegraph, 10th November 77)

It seems probable that the aforementioned Japanese firms may be petitioning him soon to give an “undertaking” for restraint.

Plenty of problems

The Japanese Prime Minister has become increasingly concerned at the economic problems he faces as the yen rises against other currencies and the exporters are finding it more difficult to compete successfully in overseas markets. He now refers to exports as a “negligible factor in expanding economic growth in future.” The new strategy he revealed is to be the stimulation of home demand by increasing public spending, which we seem to have heard somewhere before.

Mr. Fukuda neatly put his finger on one of the major difficulties facing the Japanese, who are by no means alone in the matter, and shows that capitalism, despite the efforts of so-called planning, simply continues to produce problems and contradictions. The profit motive governs production.

The important thing is to create demand in the midst of the problems of overcapacity and unemployment.

(The Times, 11th November 77)

Capitalist ideologies

The Chinese are said to have approached the British government with a view to ordering Harrier jump-jets. Apparently the so-called socialists are faced with a build up of forces on their border with the other so-called socialists, the Russians. The fact that the British government also refers to itself as “socialist” no doubt lends justification to the approach and completes the picture of this happy socialist band who act so differently from the capitalist governments. To an un-trained eye it would appear to be a straightforward business arrangement.

However Britain is a member of a NATO organization called Cocom whose function is to prevent the sale of weapons and plant for producing them, to “communist” countries. America is also a member and it might be thought that they would, as they are entitled, veto consideration of the order. Surely the Americans would not permit any hole-in-the-wall arrangement between all these “socialists". It appears however that the Americans have an un-trained eye in the matter. They have their reasons too.

The fact that there is a company to company agreement between Hawker Siddeley and Macdonald Douglas to manufacture the Harrier under licence in no way interferes with the sale of the Harrier by Britain to other states, I was authoritatively informed yesterday. A non-British member of Cocom’s coordinating committee told me a few days ago that the United States rarely raised any objection to the export of strategic materials to a Communist country if it was produced or manufactured in America.

(Daily Telegraph, 9th November 77)

So They Say: New Book — Old Story (1976)

The So They Say Column from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Book — Old Story

In an interview published by the Times on 2nd August, Sir Harold Wilson let it be known that he has completed the first draft of a book called The Government of Britain. Apparently the work has much to commend it. “Every sentence was an intellectual challenge to try to remember things which will be useful as a kind of text-book, which in the past have been mainly written by academics from outside.” Such a description suggests a semi-autobiographical account of the attempts to administer capitalism over recent decades, and as such it can only be a commentary on the various acts of expediency employed in order to paper over the basic contradictions. Acts of expediency in our description, governments choose to call them “policies.”

Even Wilson appears to acknowledge that the “Governance” in his title is only alleged when he remarks “In the compulsions of taking decisions, of course, you cannot forecast whether this decision will come off.” Of course. Capitalism is a system of society in which there is no social control over the means of wealth production and distribution. The owners, a non-working minority, allow production to take place only when there is a likelihood of a profit. Wilson and the Labour Party have preferred to tinker with the effects of such a system and shy clear of the revolutionary solution — hence the never-ending “compulsions” they have been faced with. The frequency of the calls upon Wilson’s juggling ability meant that among other things his reading suffered.

I have never even read Marx, couldn’t get past the second page because of that whacking great footnote which bores me every time I ever try to read it. Although I think I have a vague idea of what he was after in his concept, it is not what I understand by British socialism.

Were Marx alive, we feel sure he would concur with the conclusion.

The Devil You Know

George Bernard Shaw wrote somewhat sarcastically that “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world.” Recently those most reasonable of men, the Labour Party Tribune Group, have been giving an excellent display of their adaptability. The Conservatives tabled a motion in Parliament for the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s salary (£15,000) to be halved. This amounted, in the words of the Times report of 2nd August, to “a criticism of the public expenditure cuts announced on July 22nd, and a condemnation of the Government’s economic and financial policies in general.” Amid the hot air and other gaseous emissions in that Palace, Tribune group members have been loud in their criticism of the cuts. Consequently the possibility of their abstention from the vote with a resultant government defeat was raised. The time for these men of principle had come.

However, adaptability prevailed. First they issued what we have come to expect from Tribune Group MPs — “a token protest.” The “left” pulls no punches, their amendment called for a reduction in Healey’s salary of £5.00 per annum. Next Mr. Norman Atkinson, one of their leading if somewhat dim lights, explained why his group should not risk a government defeat.

The Government have made it clear that they support the central banks about the use of international credits . . . It seems logical therefore, that all those who seek to sustain the Government in office must accept the bankers' cuts in principle, not in their entirety, but in principle. The only alternative was to force the Government to go to the country for a general election. But such action would make little sense . . . because if Labour won it would be taken as an endorsement of the bankers’ policies and it would mute the left for a long time to come.

This, we understand, is known as keeping all the options open. The Tribune Group wish to preserve the Labour Government because they prefer to mouth disagreement from the government benches. In this way their posturing attracts more attention than it otherwise would. Mr. Atkinson was simply overflowing with sweet reason and “left-wing” principle:

Only the 2 per cent levy on employers through national insurance contributions will attract combined opposition from the Tories, the nationalists and the Liberals, he said. Because the measure must mean at least 50,000 sackings in addition to those already announced, the left must face the sacrifice of jobs to keep the Government in office. We have no alternative, and neither has the Trades Union Congress in four week’s time, that is the brutal reality.

Facing reality must necessarily strike the Tribune Group as brutal, they are more used to dealing in hypocrisy.

Con on Class

While giving a public pep-talk to fellow conservatives in the columns of the Daily Telegraph, Sir Geoffrey Howe MP indicated that times are a-changing. He argued that changes had to be made to the Conservative Party image if the electorate was to be persuaded that the party did not stand “only for bosses, rich people, upper classes.” Unless the common man discarded such misapprehensions, Howe ominously concludes, “This could bode ill for the future.” Apparently he has been inspired to speak out following numerous reports that the typical response to Conservative canvassers has been “We re all Labour voters in this house. We’ve got to be haven’t we? We’re a working class family you see.” We do not deal with this ill-founded statement here, but note the politician’s attitude to it.

It makes it difficult to argue that class is not a significant factor in British politics.

Daily Telegraph, 2nd August ’76

Which is extremely tiresome for politicians no doubt. A class-divided society necessarily produces such handicaps for them. However, Mr. Howe, who thinks that there are several classes rather than two, is ready to throw one of them overboard in his search for conservative voters.

The son of a successful entrepreneur — even the grand daughter of a Prime Minister — is bound to acquire knowledge and experience that will confer advantage in the next generation. But let us certainly reject the suggestion that we favour the concept of a ruling class or anything like it.

But wait, he would only reject the suggestion that they favour the concept. The ruling class, no doubt rattled, can breathe again.

Will He, Wont He?

A glittering exchange took place between Mrs. Thatcher and the Prime Minister shortly before the parliamentary recess. The Conservative leader asked what the Prime Minister expected to be the maximum number of people unemployed in 1976. Mr. Callaghan replied:

The Chancellor has said he expects unemployment to begin to go down by the end of the year. I cannot improve on that forecast. I have come without the figures in any case.

Times, 6th August ’76

After other remarks, Mrs. Thatcher rose again.

The Chancellor did not give any figures. He refused to give figures when cross-examined by both sides of the House. I would have thought that the Prime Minister would automatically have informed himself about one of the main figures, which is the maximum unemployment expected during the next year. Is he saying he has not?

With considerable politeness, Mr. Callaghan informed the enquirer “Yes, I am saying that because I find these forecasts often cancel out . . .” He also had some advice for her.

I would beg her not to take too much notice of forecasts. So many of them often proved wrong over the last six months . . .

The performance and the show (the longest-running in the west and) will continue after the interval.

From Bad to Bad

However there is a time and place for everything, and Mr. Callaghan is not adverse to making forecasts when it suits him. In October 1975 he informed us that over the (then) oncoming year “British families will suffer a sharp drop in their living standards.” His description was “a temporary sacrifice.” We ventured to suggest then that the “temporary” label might be forgotten and apparently it has.

I think industry can say the conditions are present to enable us to have a reasonable bet on the prospects of viable expansion that will continue. I don’t want to boom and bust. The real traumatic period for this country is between now and 1980 and this is the period we’ve got to concentrate on.

Daily Telegraph, 9th August ’76

Members of the working class take note, the traumas will be yours. Unless you are prepared to study Socialist ideas and work for the abolition of the private property system, the only “reasonable bet” to be had here is that shortly before the end of 1980, Mr. Callaghan or his equivalent (we include conservatives) will be telling us that the forecasts had been wrong; the real traumatic period was to be extended until the mid-1980s. In the meantime working-class poverty will continue.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: Fair Play in War (1976)

The So They Say Column from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fair Play in War

A certain mental agility, not to say an outright contortion of sanity, is part of the stock-in-trade which our “superiors” find necessary to employ in order to explain (away) the irritatingly persistent difficulties which arise from the private-property system and what they intend to do about them. We say agility, because that is what it takes to face several directions at one time. The progress of Mr. Jimmy Carter in the US primary elections for example, is surely evidence enough that the days of the two-faced politician are over: now it is essential for them to display at least three or four.

However, fleet footwork is not the sole preserve of the professional shadow boxers; the affliction spreads further afield. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute produced a recent report — Medical Protection Against Chemical Warfare Agents — dealing with nerve gases. We put aside for the moment the fundamental flaw in its viewing “protection against” as of greater importance than the reasons for the existence and development of killer gas. The Institute has been investigating “a non-woven synthetic textile, coated on the outside with a repellant, and has a layer of activated charcoal on the inside” which may offer protection. Such treated material could be used in “gas masks and combat jackets.” They acknowledge some drawbacks.

Even if some of the new drugs could be incorporated into military auto-injectors [protective clothing], all that can realistically be said of the new methods of treatment is that they will provide more time than is available with the existing treatment to move poisoned individuals to medical facilities. While this is a valuable step forward, in times of war, it is unlikely that medical facilities would be able to cope with the vast number of casualties.

Daily Telegraph 5th June 76

Capitalism turning the knife in the wound; insufficient medical facilities on one side struggling to cope with the over-efficient work of other “medical facilities” who have been developing the gas. However the monster has its scientific counter-balance, the problem being

Clothing capable of giving full bodily protection to the skin and to the respiratory system, is so cumbersome that soldiers wearing it would be brought to the point of military uselessness.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute seem to be waiting for the day when “our boys” in the improved carbon jackets can withstand nerve gas for long enough to become militarily useful. This is what they appear to project but these “peace artists” paint a gloomy picture. The answer to the techniques of killing does not lie in double, or triple-think, but in the abolition of the social system which produces war. That is a solution within the realms of possibility.

Divide & Rule

Five members of the Felixstowe Conservative Association face expulsion from their local Conservative club because they campaigned for an Independent Labour candidate at the local elections in May. Their story is that they wanted to divide the Labour vote, allowing a Conservative candidate to top the poll in a previous Labour stronghold. Although the plan succeeded, their local treasurer was not impressed, “as far as we’re concerned they’ve worked for the opposition”. However the five are unrepentant:

We’ve succeeded in getting a Conservative elected in Labour’s safest ward in the only way that it could be done . . . and believe there was the strongest justification for what we did.

Daily Telegraph, 1st June 76

No doubt they all threw up their hands in horror and shouted “Cheat!” with the rest of their cronies some days later when Labour MPs broke “pairs” and entered the lobby to avoid a government defeat in the Commons.

Virtue of Necessity

Disquiet is growing among both teachers and students over the contradictions which face them when trying to apply a “text-book” analysis to capitalism in the expectation of a logical answer. On the one hand there are student teachers who are occupying their colleges, or marching, in protest against the likely failure of an estimated 15,000 of them to find teaching jobs. Against this there is the President of the Association of Head Teachers (Scotland) referring to “overlarge classes” and concluding: “We need these extra (not “surplus”) teachers.”

On the other hand there will be, according to figures given at the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers, the likelihood of 250,000 school leavers without jobs this summer, while the Lord Privy Seal, among other notable onlookers, is calling for “more sheer hard work before we are anywhere near out of the wood” in the Times of 10th June. The contradictions have encouraged the self- styled experts to exhibit some of their “departmental” reasoning in the letter columns. The President of the National Union of Students writing to the Daily Telegraph on 5th June argued that the government had “a golden opportunity to improve the pupil-teacher ratio.”

The Government has already spent £50 million training this year’s jobless student teachers for the dole queue. How can our economy benefit from miscalculation and wastage of human resources on such a massive scale?

“Our economy” and “wastage of human resources” gives away the extent of the NUS’s ‘“revolutionary leanings.” These refrains are music to the ears of the ruling class — it is only the tempo upon which they disagree. However the difficulty may be overcome according to the Headmaster at University College School, London. Unemployed teachers and unemployed school leavers? Apply a little thought and you come up with the following:

Here, surely, is a great opportunity for unemployed teachers to set an example giving themselves experience of the kind of work which many of their future pupils will have to do. Industries, businesses, hospitals, hotels, schools and institutions of one kind or another ail have vacancies for what is mis-termed “menial employment” . . . If unemployed teachers give a lead showing that a job well done, however “menial” can be rewarding and satisfying then the unemployed school leaver might be inspired to follow.

Times 10th June 76

We had a fancy that the man of learning may have been glancing through “The Charge of the Light Brigade” shortly before penning his letter, but there is a difference. He sees the officers turning home before long in order to continue the good work. Having gained an experience of “menial” jobs, he argues, “in the long run they would be much better teachers.” And what of the others? The school leavers who were “inspired to follow.” Ah yes, with luck wage slaves also — but that is what capitalist education is about.

Dear Sir

Reinforcing this last point was the response to the new GCE examination in the “business use of English.” The Managing Director of Adpower Ltd., a “specialist staff consultancy,” had some pertinent observations to make.

Many (school leavers) are unable to get a job in the professions or in industry because they are incapable of filling in a job application form (even ours which are deliberately kept simple) . . . College leavers have simply not been prepared for the next stage in their lives — getting a job. If this new GCE examination lives up to its expectation of training young hopefuls how to speak and write commercial English, then the Associated Examining Board must surely have the backing of everyone in commerce.

Times 10th June 76

Dear Capital, Assuring you of our best attention at all times the “young hopefuls” remain therefore your most obedient servants, etc. etc.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: They Pretend Malnutrition, too (1974)

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

They Pretend Malnutrition, too

A new addition to saloon-bar political mythology has arrived. It joins the Man Who Gets Twice as Much on Social Security as he does Working, the Black Man Who Buys Kit-E-Kat for his Sandwiches (yes, my grocer told me), the Eight Workmen Who Came and Lolled About Smoking When All I Wanted was a Screw Tightened on my Cooker, and so on.

This happy arrival is the Family Only Pretending to be Homeless. Its career was launched in the London Evening News on 18th January:

A housing chief has announced a clampdown on the “phoney homeless”. Some families are suspected of faking evictions to gain council homes. Only couples with children, facing complete family breakdown, are now likely to get official help in Hertfordshire.

Presumably you must spend a minimum of three nights on the pavement and get down to six stones per adult member of family; otherwise you’re only pretending. A family with a room to itself that wants a whole council house are sheer Epicureans, and we don’t stand for them in Hertfordshire. Take it from me, councillor, my nephew’s milkman knows this lot

No, it's Different Now

One trouble with the working class is its memory. How can you expect to get on and please the government if you forget the right things, like standing up for the Queen, and remember the wrong ones, like unemployment and politicians’ promises?

Thus, the masses have watching TV films about the war in which the Germans are shown as the hateful enemy. In the last week of January Die Welt published an article by its London correspondent Christian Ferber protesting about this. Sure enough, he was supported. A Reverend, among others, wrote to The Guardian suggesting “restoring the balance” with some programmes about good Germans in the war, specially POWS who “were permitted to visit churches and other organizations”,

People must really arrange their memories better. Saying they had to hate the Germans for six years is no excuse. If villains are shown today they should be Russians. But in the war weren’t they glorious allies or something? There you go again.

Please Spare a Copper . . .

Readers of the financial pages cannot fail to notice that profits and dividends show little sign of wilting because of the crisis. Some companies are doing well out of it. A typical example was shown in The Guardian's business section on 6th February. Under the heading blessing in disguise the buoyant position of Central Wagon, the steel stockholding and hydraulic equipment group, was described:

The company’s sales in January this year are 50 per cent up on the monthly average for the previous year . . . When the 1973 results are announced, the profit is more likely to be around the £900,000 mark—well beyond the company forecast of about £670,000 . . . Central Wagon is confident that it will produce still higher profit in 1974 —even after allowing for the miners’ strike.

But when times are bad, are they not bad for the owning class too? Were there not tales in the nineteen-thirties’ depression of ruined rich men queueing to throw themselves from high buildings? Untrue. Britain in the Nineteen Thirties by N. Branson and M. Heinemann (1972) says:

True, profits fell in the slump years (by 30 per cent at the lowest point, in 1932), but since a higher proportion of profits was paid out in dividends, shareholders’ incomes fell much less than this, while income from rent and fixed interest stocks remained more stable in spite of the fall in prices.

. . . Figures in the British Association’s Britain in Recovery, based on Colin Clark’s estimates, suggest a fall of 9-11 per cent in consumption expenditure of those with incomes over £250, from 1929 to 1933—which was almost certainly less than the fall in prices.

. . . for the Clerical Hat

Reach for your handkerchiefs. The Guardian of 8th February told the harrowing story of Britain’s underpaid vicars.

The [Church] commissioners, in a report to the General Synod, the parliament of the Church of England, say the average pay of the 9,000 vicars last November was about £35 a week. In addition, they are provided with a house free of rent and rates, but many have to meet the expenses of doing their job, which can be as high as £4 to £5 a week.

How sad for the clergy to have to put up with the austerity they urge on others. The world is too materialistic.

So They Say: Light the Blue Paper and Retire (1973)

The So They Say Column from the December 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Light the Blue Paper and Retire

When war broke out in the Middle East, the leaders of the Great Powers all spoke of “deep regret”. Newspapermen enlarged on the horror and futility of it. In the Sunday Mirror on 15th October Jon Akass wrote:

A pity, really, that technology is not yet up to bringing the smell of war to our living-rooms, because that would finally remove whatever romance is left in human combat . . . The best that Israel can hope for is that the Syrian army will be eliminated and the Egyptian army in Sinai routed. And perhaps another year or two of peace. It will not be enough for the price that will have been paid in blood.

It was as if sons of a good home had been caught housebreaking, to their parents’ grief. But on 16th October The Guardian gave an account of the military background.

The Israeli air force was then [in 1967] predominantly French until De Gaulle placed his embargo on the Mirages. President Johnson supplied the first Skyhawks and Phantoms to Israel in 1968 but the bulk of the $1,000 millions of arms sales to Israel since the June, 1967 war was made by the Nixon Administration.

. . . [The Soviets] arms shipments were designed to enable Egypt and Syria to do exactly what they have done in the last nine days, which is to defend themselves against Israeli air power while making limited incursions into occupied territory.

So the sorrowful parents are shown as a Fagin family — teaching the art, supplying the tools, and then lamenting the consequences. Capitalism calls this hypocrisy “diplomacy”.

Lord God of Property

Talking of hypocrisy, the Church of England springs to mind. Its finances were reviewed in the Business section of The Observer on 4th October, with two writers advising how the Church Commissioners’ “£600 million-plus assets” might produce a higher income. Their chief criticism was of the Commissioners’ unadventurousness in holding on to house-property with a relatively low return:

Margaretta Terrace, SW3, provides a good example. This street contains about 40 houses, with an average rent of around £1,000 a year: as the houses are worth a minimum of £40,000—and probably much more—the ‘true’ yield is thus only 2.5 per cent.

Their suggestion was to sell, and to require a down payment of £5,000:

The balance of the consideration would take the form of a 25 or 30-year mortgage: and, at the current mortgage rate of 11 per cent, the Commissioners would receive £154,000 a year.

Eye of a Good-Sized Needle

The Church Commissioners have had this sort of advice before and — no doubt for equally sound business reasons — chosen not to follow it. But an interesting question is raised here. “The current mortgage rate of 11 per cent” has taken on the status of a social problem in recent months. Its rise to that figure was a financial vicious circle: to get more money to lend, the building societies had to offer higher rates to investors, which meant charging a higher rate to borrowers.

But the Church Commissioners do not have that problem. Selling the houses in question, they would not be advancing money but simply taking deferred payments. Using the Observer calculations, if they charged a mortgage rate of only 6 per cent, they would receive £84,000 a year from those houses — which is still more than twice as much as they are said to be getting now in rents. The Commissioners would not only do what the writers want them to do, i.e. make more money; they would be Giving a Christian lead to the Nation, etc.

Is it likely that they will? No. It will not enter the Commissioners’ heads, any more than it did the Observer writers’. As the Good Book says: “Where a man’s treasure is, there shall his heart also be.”

Beggars Cannot be Choosers

And talking of borrowing money. Newspapers have given a good deal of publicity to the Consumer Credit Bill published on 2nd November. It is designed to check “abuses” in hire-purchase, moneylending, second mortgages, and so on. The provision which was asked for most persistently is the one requiring that borrowers shall be told clearly what they are letting themselves in for:

Borrowers required to put up their homes as security for loans and those who obtain loans by mail order will have to be informed of their right to back out before finally signing the loan agreement; and all borrowers will have to be given a copy of every agreement they sign.

(Observer, 4th November)

The Observer writer on "Family Finance”, Paul Wilson, thinks this is inadequate:

Why not lay down a formula by which loan interest rates are calculated, so that all advertised rates are comparable? Why not define what constitutes an extortionate rate of interest, so consumers will know when they have cause for complaint?

This talk is as fatuous as the Bill itself. People go to moneylenders and second-mortgage companies when they have no alternative, and therefore no choice but to accept the terms whatever they are. Can you imagine a loan company’s client, with creditors breathing down his neck, exercising his “right to back out”? Every rate of interest is extortionate. The only way to end problems like this is to get ride of capitalism and, with it, money.

What Makes Great Men ?

People, particularly those who think themselves mentally superior, are often reluctant to accept our contention that intelligence is a social concept. The acclaimed genius of one set of circumstances can be the blithering idiot of another: it depends what society is looking for.

There is an example in the balance at present. Harold Bate is a retired engineer who runs a car on methane gas made from pig and chicken manure. He has done it for seventeen years, and has occasionally appeared in newspapers and on TV as a comical curiosity. Now, suddenly, it is being taken seriously and he has had to take production to a Walsall firm. The Sunday Express on 4th November reported his growth:

“At the moment I am receiving around 150 orders a day from the US and Canada. They are coming in shoals from all sorts of sources—even oil companies. Two major American oil companies—I agreed at their request not to name them—have already used my conversion kit to convert a fleet of oil delivery tankers to run on gas."

Is Harold Bate a genius or a crank? We have yet to learn. What will decide is the world fuel situation. If there is a world shortage of oil, he may well go down with Edison and Stephenson and his story be told to every schoolchild. If it doesn’t happen, he will have been nobody of note.

Gaiété Mancunienne

The magazine calls her Marie-Helena. a model born in Lyons and now living in Paris. But Paula, on a commerce course at school, lives with her parents in a council house at Wythenshawe, Manchester.

(News of the World, 14th October)

The magazine is Men Only. The cream-bun fantasies it sells cannot be set in Manchester or anywhere else the readers may actually live. How sad.

Robert Barltrop

So They Say: The Reason Why (1977)

The So They Say Column from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Reason Why

A bewildered assistant is no assistant at all; the Conservatives have got one of theirs, Margot Lawrence, “flummoxed”. Judging by her contribution to the columns of the Daily Telegraph on the 30th August, this is probably no difficult achievement in any event. She became concerned to clarify the “highly emotive phrase” “production for use, not profit”, which some dastardly Socialists argue from time to time. Writing under the title “Isn’t production for profit?” she is puzzled why the Conservatives are “failing to use the strongest argument in their own book”:

That production for use is production for profit, the two are intertwined and inseparable.

Notwithstanding Margot Lawrence’s view that “almost all people do have enough money for what they really need”, we suggest that one of the reasons the rest of the Conservative Party does not argue along the lines she proposes is that such a contention could not be sustained.

Production in capitalist society is carried on because the owners of the means of production realize a profit from selling their commodities. All of these commodities are considered useful by the purchaser, whether they be the lawn-mowers used as an illustration in the article or weapons of mass destruction used in war. When production in certain fields would be unprofitable however, no owner will advance capital for such production. Vast numbers of the world’s population do not starve because food would not be “useful”, they starve because it is unprofitable to feed them.

When the Socialist says “production for use”, he is saying: abandon the form of society in which society’s needs are assessed in terms of the minority’s requirement for profit.

Problems and . . . More Problems

We give below two excerpts from newspapers which illustrate this particular point. Capitalism has an apparently uncanny ability to produce social problems. A study of the foundations on which it is based show in fact that it cannot fail to do otherwise. Although it would be naive to suggest that Socialist society will not face problems, we will be able to devote our fullest efforts towards solving them and preventing new problems from arising.

In capitalism we have surely reached a pinnacle of absurdity when the means are available to solve, for instance, the problem of starvation, but the possible avenues for tackling the first problem, through only partial application, create a “problem” of precisely the opposite nature. We are sometimes asked what Socialism will be like: we can predict now that the newspapers of Socialism will not need to carry items like these.

The Community [EECJ is being chased by an ever-increasing milk surplus. It is about to operate what is described in the jargon of Brussels as a “corresponsibility levy”, in other words a penalty against farmers for producing too much milk . . . Milk is a tiresome commodity for the EEC to handle since it is expensive to store and difficult to sell to anybody else . . . the official intervention stores are often the only outlet for it.

The Times, 5th September 77

Asia’s major hope for future development, the “green revolution”, is now failing to keep pace with the rapid growth ir. population, and this will condemn a quarter of mankind to continued poverty,, hunger, malnutrition and unemployment.

The Times, 6th September 77

First Things First

The well known Conservative bull-frog, Reginald Maudling, has been croaking on the difficulties faced by industrialists because of the governing consideration of profitability. The aforementioned Margot Lawrence would do well to note his passionate comments. Mr. Maudling, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, had this to say in a published letter:

With the possible exception of the strike-ridden motor car industry, it seems to me clear that potential supply is far greater than existing demand. Maybe potential supply has been reduced by discouraging investment, but there is no doubt whatsoever from every bit of evidence that emerges from industry, that what is holding back supply at the moment is not capacity, but inadequate demand.

The Times, 2nd September 77

He was writing a week before Ford Motor Company’s decision to build an £180m engine plant in South Wales, but even so his comments do not seem so wide of the mark, as Ford is making it clear “that the new plant did not point to plans for a huge increase in total car production”.

The problem of “inadequate demand" seems an odd one at first glance. Can this be anything other than a campaign of stubbornness by members of the working class? Why, at the present moment the majority are forced to live in circumstances where the watchword is Cheapness; one-and-a-half million of the blighters are out of work entirely. You would think they were able to make plenty of “adequate” demands for the sake of the frustrated industrialists. “Ah, but wait a minute,” will say the latter. "They may have plenty of demands —but have they got the money to go with them?”

Miracle Man

It may not be the second coming, but it is a present-day equivalent. When the Associated Television Corporation began making their fiction-film Jesus of Nazareth, we recall Lew Grade, the group chairman and chief executive, muttering about it being made because it would be meaningful, important and so on. Some may have mistakenly imagined these comments related to the content of the film.

Zeffirelli’s majestic production of ‘Jesus of Nazareth" was first shown in this country on Palm Sunday, 3rd April 1977. It achieved immediate success both at home and abroad. In Britain, the audiences amounted to 21 million viewers; in the USA to over 91 million and in Italy 84 per cent saw the film. I have no hesitation in saying that this film, representing ATV's largest single film-production investment, will prove an asset of inestimable wealth to the company and provide a valuable annuity over the years to come.

The Times 8th September 1977

Lord Grade (as he is now called) had taken a full page advertisement to publicise ATV’s results. Although he refers to the “inestimable wealth” resulting from the film, share-holders like to have their information in more precise terms.

The results speak from themselves. The pre-tax profit figure is £11,161,000, the highest in the 22 years history of the company, and shows an increase of 81 per cent over 1976.

Thus we learn, in the words of the good book, exactly what it shall profit a man.

Tony D'Arcy

So They Say: Faint Headed (1975)

The So They Say Column from the September 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faint Headed

The hot weather of the past few weeks has been having “subtle psychological and physical effects” on us all claimed the Sunday Times of 10th August. Most particularly they note that heat relaxes the nervous system and warms the blood — causing drowsiness. Perhaps this factor should be taken into account when considering the jaded statements put forward recently by Mrs. Thatcher and masquerading as ‘policy’ for the Conservative Party.

Conservatives detested unemployment as much as anyone else . . . We believe in the creation of wealth, in flourishing business and commerce because that means prosperity for all and good prospects in the years ahead.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

It may have escaped her attention that to become unemployed, a worker loses a job — or, as in the case of school-leavers, fails to find a job at all. It is currently estimated that the latter already number over 55,000 and that this figure will increase considerably after the holiday period.

The “flourishing business and commerce” organisations Mrs. Thatcher speaks of, simply do not have room to entertain what she may or may not say she “detests.”

London Brick has sold much of the huge stock it was left with when building ground to a halt last year, and because it fears the boom will be short-lived, it is reluctant to replace the workers it laid off last year and re-open the works it shut.

(Sunday Times, 10th August ’75)

The Conservative leader appears oblivious to a basic law of the social system which her party wishes to continue — Under Conservatives or Labour; No production without profit.

Ghastly Problem

She continued her weary way by extolling the virtues of the “entrepreneur” who “in creating wealth for himself, creates incomparably more wealth for other people” although we are not clear if “other people” refers to other members of the board — they could hardly be unemployed workers. Concluding she remarked with ambiguity

The greatest conservative Prime Minister of this century, Winston Churchill once had as his slogan ‘Set the people free,’ it is time we revived it.

(Guardian, 31st July ’75)

One who fits into this category of “entrepreneur” is Sir Jules Thorn, and he is just about to set his people free, although not in the way that Mrs. Thatcher would approve. His company, Thorn Colour Tubes is considering the imminent closure of their Skelmersdale plant. 1,500 workers will become unemployed as a result. The reason behind this is that the bottom has dropped out of the colour television market, coupled with the fact that cheaper Japanese products are mopping up a good deal of what remains. The voice of the virile and generous capitalist who seems to haunt Mrs. Thatcher’s dreams was clearly put by Mr. Harold Mourgue, the Finance Director at Thorns:

Closure was inevitable unless firm action was taken with Government help to end a brutal price cutting war in the British colour tube market . . . with the Japanese there is a ghastly problem.

(Guardian, 13th August 1975)

But isn’t competition for markets and “brutal price- cutting wars” what it’s all about? Well, yes it is — Thorn do not want the government to take the obvious step of introducing tariff restrictions against their Japanese competitors. Their concern on this point is heartfelt: “Thorn is against a tariff war, however.

This might eventually harm its own export markets.” 

They estimate that if their plant remains open it would run at well under half its capacity next year on the demands of the British market, so it would be reasonable to assume that when they enter the export market, no doubt with the gentlemanly policy of fair shares for all, they may be surprised to find that their own conception of what is fair, will inevitably be viewed by others as “brutal” competition.

Doubletalk

An accomplished variation of the three-card trick was performed by Mr. Paul Foot — the International Socialist — in The Times of 14th August. After quoting the words of a dispirited shop steward at Norton Villiers Triumph where the Labour government has failed to provide further financial backing, Foot draws the following conclusion

These are dreadful times for socialists who put their trust in Labour Governments.

This is coy stuff of course, one of the very last places a Socialist would put his trust is in the Labour Party. But there is method in the madness. He attacks the government in its attempts to run capitalism at a time, as he puts it, of “unprecedented capitalist collapse” for the following reasons:

Labours elected representatives become isolated from their power base, impotent to resist the demands of the system which they try to manage. They mouth the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.

All unsparing language of course, but we fail to recollect when this “power base” i.e. the Labour Party supporters, expected or desired other than the continuance of capitalism. In this discrediting the leaders specifically, the illusion could be created that they alone are deliberately perverting the desires of their supporters. He accuses the “helpless puppet” (the Labour Government) of recently being forced by economic conditions to “tear up two manifestos” but fails to note that each one of those manifestos was filled from cover to cover with “the mumbo jumbo of capitalism.”

Having pointed out that such an unlikely vehicle as the Labour Party has failed to introduce Socialism, he uses some loose logic to reject the whole parliamentary method

The parliamentary road to socialism has turned into another blind alley. The revolutionary road is beginning to open up.

The “revolutionary” road to Worker’s Control is what he refers to. However we recall that Foot’s paper, the Socialist Worker had little doubt on 16th February 1974 when advising before the oncoming election that “The working class has to respond with a massive anti-Tory vote. And that means a Labour vote . . .” exactly which “helpless puppet” they favoured.

High Life and Times

The chairman of the Labour Party’s Scottish Council had some savage truths to bring home to Glasgow’s working class recently. Times appeared to be exceptionally high for action.

It is high time we did something to woo the working class mothers away from the bingo halls, clubs and casinos . . . It is high time we were doing something about getting the men away from betting shops . . . I think it is high time the educational processes were directed towards encouraging them into better ways of using their leisure time and to carry on their wider education.

We will not dwell on the degree of reserve which these proposals might reasonably expect to encounter from an average man within a Glasgow betting shop, but draw attention to the useful life which Mrs. Roberta Jacqueline Trieze Kimberly leads. No bingo halls for her!

She makes three parachute jumps a day, five days a week: Takes daily tennis and shooting lessons, and also flying lessons seven days a week. It runs into money of course — somewhere in the region of £17,000 a year, but she still has time and money for others, her dog for instance, which costs about £500 a year to keep in food and toys. The figures have emerged because Mrs. Kimberly is to divorce, and has been obliged to file a claim for expenses ‘in order to continue living in her present style’. She is claiming £96,000 a year for this purpose.

The costs include . . . £20,000 a year for entertainment; £850 a month for clothing: and £290 a month for flowers . . . A claim of medical and dental fees covers over £1,000 a month.

(Daily Mail, 25th July ’75)

Her husband, Mr. James Kimberly, is heir to the Kleenex empire, and should any reader feel overcome by the sad news of their break-up, reach for the tissues — both of them will be delighted.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: Ungrateful Lot (1976)

The So They Say Column from the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ungrateful Lot

Much play has been made recently by both Labour and Conservative! groups on their various schemes to allow Council tenants to purchase the properties they occupy. The Southwark Community Development Project and the Joint Docklands Action Group of Newington decided to conduct a survey to discover the appeal of such schemes to those concerned, and came up with the conclusion that “few are interested in buying a typical council flat.” The report in The Times of 29th June seemed to have regarded the findings as something of a foregone conclusion. It argued:

While new houses with gardens on suburban estates or in new towns, for example, would attract ready buyers flats in inner city tower blocks would have little or no appeal.

While surveys like this never cease to amaze us, it shows just, how unreasonable workers can be. Who else but the members of the working class would express disapproval at the prospect of spending their lives, and paying for the privilege at that, packed together well above ground level in noisy and uncomfortable cells of concrete (often, as in the case of Ronan Point, with no visible means of support, or lifts—even if installed), albeit with magnificent views over the previously erected low-rise slums? Come to that, who else but the workers would be offered such a glorious opportunity to join "the property owning democracy”?

O Brother!

"We should not destroy or split or seek to destroy in any way the Labour Government” said Mr. Benn on the 4th July, and no doubt the Labour government gave three cheers for Benn and said "Amen”. He was speaking at the Institute for Workers’ Control in Keele University, in his capacity as Labour’s Energy Secretary, when he also revealed to his audience the information that capitalism was in "irreversible decline.” We do not know if he was standing on his head at the time.

Now we who advocate the abolition of the capitalist system were naturally agog with excitement at a “leak” of this magnitude. Was there to be a surprise announcement from the government? We scanned the newspapers. Yes, there was an announcement from Healey. No, it was not a surprise—except perhaps for his fellow minister Benn.

Britain would be one of the few countries which could look forward to a rapid recovery over the next 18

months . . .

The Times, 7th July 1976

Followed presumably by three more cheers and back-slapping. Considering that both these men are “united” in a political party which expresses the view that a system of exploitation is the only one to which workers are entitled, and capable apparently of both declining and recovering at the same time, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that were they to pool their respective talents and issue a joint statement, it would prove twice as ignorant as either of their individual efforts.

Sir Willie?

The fanaticism with which William Hamilton attacks the Royal Family appeared to have abated somewhat when he voiced “concern” over a motion from other Labour MPs—themselves expressing “surprise” over the Queen’s purchase of Gatcombe Park for her well- breeched offspring Princess Anne. The price was reported in the Daily Telegraph of 12th June as £500,000. No, No, said the microscopically-minded Hamilton, the Monarch should spend her money as she saw fit. What was wrong was that “the Royal wealth which makes such expenditure possible has been due to the failure of successive governments to tax that wealth in the same way as that of all other citizens.”

Can it be that he is angling for something? Considering his immense publicity services to the Crown, he must surely be deserving of some appropriate medal or title. This would be no more than he deserves. We note incidentally that in the Register of MPs’ Interests, he gives one source of income under the appropriate heading of “royalties”—a reference to the money from his literary masterpiece on the Royal Family. While he, and others, spend so much of their time and effort in expressing a petty outrage at the size of the molehills, they have missed the mountains—capitalism rumbles on. But then Labour MPs could hardly be expected to think about anything as fundamental as that.

What could be fairer ?

It is usually the practice, after being led up the garden path by one man, to find at the end of it another who then exhibits a bag from which he releases a cat. Although capable of fulfilling both rôles, Eric Varley, Secretary of State for Industry, has been releasing the cat.

The dictionary definition of a scientist is given as: “A person learned in one or more of the natural sciences” and science as: “Systematic and formulated knowledge.” Now Mr. Varley has not so much altered the definition, but put it into perspective! within the context of capitalism—where, like all other members of the working class, scientists must live by selling their mental and physical energy to the ruling class. He was bemoaning the fact that “to be a technologist or a manager in industry is considered to be a pretty lousy job” and from this erudite premise, drew the conclusion that potential but reluctant scientists just did not know what they were missing:

Qualified scientists and engineers, although numerically a small category, have a particularly significant role. They have the innovative capacity to generate and translate the technology into competitive and saleable products and the responsibility for managing the production processes.

Daily Telegraph, 7th July 76

A significant role therefore, not in an abstract sense of the pursuit of Knowledge, but in the real economic field where the owning class is in pursuit of something else, the accumulation of capital.

Class Distinction

“More than 1000 London dockers, who are being paid £57 a week for doing nothing, at a cost to the Port of London of between £6 million and £7 million a year, are ‘moonlighting’ to double their earnings”, reported the Daily Telegraph of 30th June. “A scandal” is their description. They do however concede that the men, on average 1,250, do no work for the reason that there is often no work for them to do. The men are protected, however, under the National Dock Labour Scheme from sacking on this ground alone, and even the inducement of a £5,250 “golden handshake” to accept redundancy has failed to shift them. Considering the apparently universal exhortations from the press for workers to pull out their respective fingers and earn themselves a living, we would have thought that the taking of a second job would have merited praise. Apparently not, so “a scandal” it remains.

Surprising then to note that the moral indignation of the Telegraph respectfully faded to nothing when it reported on the twelve, no doubt “just”, women whom Paul Getty “richly remembered in his Will” (10th June 76). Among others they noted that Lady Ursula D’abo, sister of the Duke of Rutland, was to receive 1000 of his shares, worth £93,361, and how she was duly “surprised by the gift. The shares will remain in Getty Oil until I die, as he would have wished.”

All highly commendable; no mention here of a “scandal.” No mention, incidentally, of what happen to the share dividends either—we refer to the large cheque which drops through the letter box from time to time. Work for a living? My dear, who do you think opens the envelope!

Idle-ized

Who was Eric Singer? If you never heard of him— Snap! But on 30th June The Times published an obituary of him. What were his achievements? Take note.

According to the article, he was “an early, though later disenchanted” member of the German Communist Party. In Britain he became “a planning consultant”. To illuminate that, he was able to do his day’s work “before most people had roused themselves from their beds”, which clearly means it was a very small day’s work. What did he do after the rest got up? “He left behind an uncompleted book on inflation and an unpublished work on architecture.” He spent the war “at the roulette tables in Lisbon”, and became “a purveyor of gallantries to ladies, snuff and gossip to men”. “He greeted each day with his freshly-plucked button-hole, his stick and his joie de vivre”.

This reminds us strongly of Fred Bloggs. In his teens Fred joined the Balls Pond Road Libertarian Society, resigning when he discovered he had mistaken its name for “Libertine”. He was widely known in all four corners of the betting shop, while his élan and the je ne sais quoi with which he rolled a Nosegay cigarette made him a favourite of barmaids everywhere. He always alluded to his lifelong redundancy with the characteristic epigram: “Never done a stroke and don’t intend to, mate.”

What a curious world where a man is praised for having had political delusions and spending his life as a fashionable idler.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: Non-starters (1977)

The So They Say Column from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Non-starters

The Labour Party is always assuring us that they stand for a “fairer and more just society” (Mr. Ron Hayward, General Secretary of the Labour Party, 15th March) but we think it reasonable to add that all of the parties who try to run capitalism would claim the same. Circumstances however always seem to intervene before they, or the others, can actually put their words into action. As unemployment and prices rise, as they have done under the Labour Government, and wages and public services fall, there are the men like Mr. Hayward talking about the unfortunate circumstances which newly confront us and so prevent “the fairer and more just” from taking immediate effect.

Were a bookmaker to assure his clients that he stood for “fairer and more just” racing results so that all of them would win, they would know that something was up. When the Labour Party does it, and explains the inevitable losses in terms of circumstances—the going as usual got rougher than we thought and you’ve all lost again—it should signal the time to stop betting on these three-legged creatures.

Winning

To be fair to Mr. Hayward and other members of the Labour Party, they do not give pride of place to this notion of a “fairer and more just society.” This is usually thrown in as an after-thought, and Labour supporters should not put too much weight on it. They would be best advised to put none at all, which would at least make honest men and women of them. Mr. Hayward has identified the fundamental objective of Labour.

Membership of the Party involves joining an organisation whose objective is to win and retain power in order to reform our society in the direction of our democratic socialist beliefs and ideals. Let me emphasise that objective—to win and retain power.

News Release:  Party Information Dept. 15th March 77

And having won and retained it, to let the workers face the circumstances.

The Self-Interest Thing

The director of the US Office of Population is concerned about “over-population”—a term used in capitalist society to justify the starvation, or near starvation, of millions, while alongside them exist the privately owned means to meet their requirements of food, clothing and shelter. Overpopulation to the capitalist and his well-fed entourage refers to those who cannot be used in the process of accumulating wealth. Dr. R. T. Ravenholt, the aforementioned Director, describes as his office’s aim the creation of medical technology to render infertile 100 million women in developing countries. This they call “advanced fertility management” and the programme they have launched will operate over the next nine years.

Although different people will draw different moral conclusions on the correctness of the programme, this should be seen for what it is, a capitalist “solution” to a “problem” which has arisen because the capitalist mode of production denies access to the means of life, unless it makes a profit for someone. That the means of life are in existence, or could be readily brought into existence, is irrelevant in this society.

The US Office of Population does not plan to limit future generations in an attempt to curtail misery from any moral standpoint however, their Director was most explicit on the intentions: Population control was needed to maintain

the normal operation of US commercial interests around the world. Without our trying to help these countries with their economic and social development, the world would rebel against the strong US commercial presence. The self-interest thing is a compelling element. If the population explosion proceeds unchecked, said Dr. Ravenholt, it will cause such terrible economic conditions abroad that revolution will ensue.

London Evening Standard, 11th May 77

Confessions

There is a strange figure who occasionally appears in detective stories and radio plays, best described as "the innocent man who proclaims his guilt.” Inevitably towards the end, this gallant red-herring is discovered, and receives a minor ticking-off because he had acted from the best intentions. How then are we to take India’s Prime Minister, Mr. Maraji Desai, who gave a press-conference on his way to the Commonwealth Conference.

Would India sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? Certainly, he replied, when those asking me decide to give up nuclear weapons. Those who commit thefts have no business to tell me not to be a thief.

The Times, 8th June 77

Mr. Desai, it will be remembered, is not a character in a radio play.

Of his own colour too

One of the more colourful scientific debates centres around the probability of 100 chimpanzees, who are confined in a roomful of typewriters together with an endless supply of paper, being able to bang out by accident the entire works of Shakespeare within a given period. Although highly improbable, it is generally conceded that the task is not impossible. The odds of success for the chimps are in fact infinitely higher than those of the eight international economists who have been confined for some time deep within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s centre in an attempt to find “a path out of the economic quagmire which threatened to end more than two decades of growth and high employment.” They have been working on the premise that it is possible to remove capitalism’s problems, without removing capitalism 

The chief primate in the group, Mr. Paul McCracken, has offered their version of “the complete works” after only two years confinement, which, as far as probability goes, is stretching belief. We do not know how many typewriters they had at their disposal, but this is the result.

Fitting budgetary targets into regularly revised medium term projections would provide the required flexibility to adjust the longer-run budget posture to unexpected events and changing public preferences with regard to longer-term economic and social priorities.

The Times, 10th June 77

Roughly translated this means that their solution, in Shakespeare’s words “is shaped sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is and moves with its own organs; it lives by that which nourishes it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.” These economists are learned men indeed.

Alan D'Arcy

So They Say: Imaginary Differences (1976)

The So They Say Column from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imaginary Differences

Cartoons have been appearing in the press suggesting that the policies of the Conservative Party have become a mystery—that they offer no alternative to the Labour Party. In an attempt to dispel this view, cartoon characters in the shape of Conservative MPs and their attendants have been hurriedly pounding tables proclaiming that there is a clear distinction between “Conservative philosophy with Socialist [Labour Party] dogma” (letter to the Daily Telegraph, 12th May 1976).

What the Conservatives had to do was point out to the country that the Labour Party was under the control of the left wing and the Michael Foots of the world and then point out that the Tories were a party who took a different view and line for the future.

Daily Telegraph, 28th April 76

If that was not a tall enough order to begin with, the Labour Party is not making things any easier for them. Maurice MacMillan (Conservative MP), attempting to “make clear our own constructive alternatives”, pointed to the basic problem as he saw it:

Conservatives must be bold enough to say that businesses and investors must be given a real incentive by allowing them additional profits from their investments.

Times, 10th May 76

While MacMillan and his fellow drones have been plucking up their courage to say such a thing, they appear to have missed Callaghan who found his nerve some days earlier:

The first thing to concentrate on is to ensure that there is sufficient incentive to provide a proper level of investment in these firms so that productive jobs can be created. That is what I would like to focus on. But I don’t believe you can force a large private sector to invest. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, and you have to apply the incentives necessary which compel it to drink.

Guardian, 5th May 76

Conservative philosophy or Labour Party dogma— after the froth, they bow to the profit motive.

An Acceptable Face

We have heard of the blind leading the blind. Now we have William Whitelaw, deputy leader of the Conservative Party, lecturing his cohorts on public relations. At a meeting held in a pub on 27th April he informed members of the Reform Group that at the next election Conservatives would “break from the party political tradition of making manifesto promises.” Other things were to change too—“we have to be scrupulously honest.” Good grief! What are they going to put in it? Whitelaw had an answer for that as well; they would announce “decreased public spending.” But before his audience could choke on their beer and sandwiches, he quickly pointed out that appearances could be deceptive: The Tories must not

turn into a hard-faced party. We must not be seen as the party looking all the time on the money side and not being interested in the various social problems that are certain to come up, and certain to be increased as our country is short of money. We must act with an economic head but also be seen to have a heart at the same time.

Daily Telegraph, 28th April 76

There goes the “scrupulously honest” facade. If this body politic of fair face, economic head, bulging pockets and kindly heart requires soft brain-matter, Whitelaw will no doubt become a donor.

You'll Never Walk Alone

It was hard to imagine that the announcements had not been made to the accompaniment of tambourines, the Joystrings and the Hallelujah Chorus: “We’re next for the economic miracle, says Healey” read the headline in the Daily Telegraph of 11th May.

Providing we can make this incomes policy stick to the end of the next wage round, I believe we have got the inflation problem under control. Now we must concentrate on the problem of unemployment. We want to get back to full employment within three years from now.

But "full employment” has become a loosely interpreted phrase, and before the “believers” acclaim the “miracle worker” too hastily, we draw attention to the specific statements made by Healey in the previous week.

The best we can hope for is to reduce unemployment to 3 per cent. or about 700,000 in 1979 . . . The TUC have expressed the hope that unemployment can be reduced to 600,000 in 1978. But I have already explained to them that this is too ambitious.

Guardian, 5th May 76

So the “miracle” becomes a mirage, and not a particularly distinguished one at that. The working class can take cold comfort from what Healey described as:

The tributes [which] are pouring in to the patriotism, the far-sightedness, common sense and maturity of our trade union movement as the full magnitude of this achievement sinks in.

The “achievement” of course, being the incomes policy agreement, not the aforementioned “miracle" which is only “hoped for.” Surely the TUC, who could by no stretch of the imagination be described either as far-sighted, or of mature judgement, must have noted the incongruity when Healey gushed forth:

Even the central bankers of the United States and Germany have added their tribute to the British trade union movement in the last few days — and believe me that is something.

Praise indeed, when the capitalists give tribute to the workers. Such praise is normally reserved for those occasions when members of the working class are encouraged to kill and maim one another on the battlefields.

What a Lovely Miracle

The chancellor expanded elsewhere on what he described as “the full magnitude of this achievement” —there were to be many sides to the miracle. Not only would there be the (hoped-for) 700,000 unemployed, but “The deal guaranteed that from August, wage rises in Britain would be the lowest in the world.” But how low an increase does he mean? Again we find some rather loose interpretation. An increase can usually be taken to mean an addition, but not apparently to Healey:

In fact wages will be coming down while our competitors will be going up . . . That is the best possible news for exports and employment.

Times, 11th May 76

In the light of the foregoing, and as the Chancellor is calling for “an 8.5 per cent annual increase in manufacturing output” and claims that “If we could get as much output out of our existing equipment as most of our competitors, we could increase our national income even without new investment by anything up to 50 per cent”, members of the working class would do well to consider their rôle in the “miracle.” It will be what it has always been—that of the wealth-producing class which owns nothing but the chance to work (literally) for the benefit of the owners. When workers see this division, they will have recognized exactly those whom the Labour Party represents.

Buy Me and Stop One

The ruthless examination of all aspects of social requirement from the point of view Can money be made from meeting such requirements? is one of the hallmarks of capitalist society. Marx put the view that when Socialism is established man will look back on his previous forms of society, including present-day society, and will describe them as pre-historic. We take a clipping from the London Evening Standard of 13th May which serves to underline the extent of our “civilisation.”

A price war is raging among private abortion clinics, it was claimed today. Mrs. Helene Grahame, of the Pregnancy Advisory Service, a London based charity, said the days of the get-rich quick abortionist look to be fading fast . . . Advertised prices of £50 and £60 are now quite common, against £70 to £80 a year or so ago . . . Clinics are advertising much more widely and extravagantly, and a free pregnancy-testing is being used as a come-on. All the indications are that they arc getting pretty desperate for patients — which is why they are getting into this kind of price war.

The Daily Express of 14th May reported the phenomenon in an even more matter-of-fact manner. The first line of their piece told us: “Women can now shop around for an abortion at the right price.” Hats off to capitalism: If the thing runs true to form we can next expect the equivalent of supermarkets giving special offers and Green Shield stamps.

Alan D'Arcy