SPGB Snippets: Whoever has will be given more (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

July 8, 2026

A report on wealth inequality graphically illustrates the class divide in 2026.

Apparently, the 56,000 wealthiest adults on the planet – who could fit inside a single football stadium – own three times as much wealth as the poorest 2.8 billion adults (add their families, that’s HALF of humanity).

Those 56,000 must have really worked their arses off…

Just kidding! That wealth has been sucked from the world’s working class and, as Marx predicted in Capital, the nature of capitalist economics has resulted in increasing concentration of real wealth.

The report’s suggestion? Higher taxes for the rich and spend more on education (!!). In other words, tinker around at the edges and leave the cause of the problem alone. Sad or what?

Lordly Perplexities (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Lordships, Beveridge and Beaverbrook, hereinafter called the two B's, appear to be concerned regarding the future. We shall take Lord Beveridge first

According to the Glasgow Herald (31/12/51) he broadcast “A Letter to posterity," the theme of which was the comments he would like to make on life in Britain in 1951 to the people of Britain in 2052, 100 years hence.

His broadcast commenced with the assertion that the abolition of poverty by levelling up incomes has been part of our social policy for many years. In addition, over the past ten years, there has been tremendous levelling down as well, to pay for wars, their consequences and preparation of fresh wars. He said, “ It is not possible for anyone now to enjoy great wealth or to pass it on to his children.”

We are somewhat perplexed, in view of the real facts, to discover how his Lordship arrived at this conclusion. It would appear that be is unaware of the millions of workers whose gross earnings are £6 per week or less. Also the steep rise in the cost of living since 1945. According to government figures the increase is approximately 29 per cent. Again industrial wage rates have not risen as much, production has been greatly increased, approximately 30 per cent. since 1947. This in conjunction with record profits being made in practically all industries can by no stretch of the imagination be called abolishing poverty. It is in fact the reverse, viz. the intensification of poverty. In this regard perhaps we should recommend that he scan the National Assistance Board figures published in the “Economist” 7th July, ’51. He will find that whereas in 1948 the total number of people in receipt of relief, excluding blind and T.B. cases, was about 785 thousand, by 1950 it had increased to 1272 thousand. Possibly this was only a little extra beer and baccy money for some more of the new “privileged class,” the workers. The same paper (24th Feb. ’51) indicates the absurdity of his claims re levelling down. Figures are given showing that 1 per cent. of the population own 50 per cent. of the wealth. The Economist's comments being—”This is an unimpressive result of forty years of death duties.” Figures given in The Tribune (26th Jan. ’51) show that 16 million people are at the bottom of the social scale with estates of less than £100.

A Lordly nostalgia: —We are informed that he had to leave Fuggal Hall and move into a “middle income group house” in order to make ends meet. He states— “The Baronial Hall with troops of servants laying coal fires in every room was giving place to rows and rows of council houses, each with a radiator and a television aerial.” Shed a tear ye privileged idle and pampered proletarians for the poor, poor rich.

His concern regarding future leadership appears to be considerable. In his opinion the men and women on the stage need leaders. "Just from where in our classless collection of men and women the leadership will come . . . I do not know.” Aristocratic tradition, in his opinion, is a factor of major importance in correct leadership and we are faced with carrying on an aristocratic tradition without the aristocrats. It is of course true your Lordship that people “inherit” traditions; they also dispose of useless traditions. Perhaps your wish is for your tradition to inherit the people. We shall deal with this question further in our conclusion.

His Lordship Beaverbrook is well known for his “modesty and wisdom" through the medium of his newspapers, especially the Daily Express. The opinion column of Scottish Daily Express (31.12.51) while moaning of the loss of Abadan and the rising cost of living states that there is also cause for joy—“The joy that Socialism has been discarded and Mr. Churchill again returned to power.” Further joy—We have escaped war and are still on talking terms with Russia; also, peace in Korea is within grasp and Churchill is on the stage directing and lending the wisdom of his council. In general, the war danger recedes as each hour adds to mounting Western strength. May we remind your Lordship of your very frequently published claims in the Daily Express during 1938 and '39 that there would be no war this year, or next year, or any other year. In fact your last statement, in bold headlines, to this effect was published merely days before the outbreak of war in 1939. How very wrong you were despite your, undoubtedly excellent, facilities for information. Every informed person saw the rapid approach of war from 1935 onwards. Again, since when did an arms race result in anything other than war? You are equally confused regarding Socialism. Capitalism administered by the Labour party or any other parties can never be Socialism. Your judgments in these matters do not at all seem to be reliable. In fact they appear to be parallel with the guesses of Old Moore’s Almanac and should be treated accordingly.

Regarding 1952 and the years beyond, you ask— “Is Britain to have peace without prosperity? Is she to remain for evermore a pinchpenny land in which people live meanly and eat miserably.” When during the existence of capitalism has it been otherwise for the great majority of the people? It will always remain so while capitalism remains, irrespective of the government being an Attlee-Morrison-Bevan, or Churchill-Eden combination. Prosperity, with or without peace, is an almost exclusive enjoyment of the capitalist class. Slums and lack of them, blood and tears, and toil and sweat, whether in times of depression, or prosperity with or without peace has been labour’s reward for honest hard work.

In conclusion a word to the two B’s. Capitalism, the present social system which suits you both eminently shall be abolished eventually. The interest of peace, security, culture and the general welfare of mankind demand it, the sooner the better. A new sane and humane system, Socialism, shall take its place. In this regard you need not worry about leadership, aristocratic or otherwise, as leadership shall also go overboard with other lumber. When one reviews the past and visualises the shabby pretentious collection of bombastic people who have been “our leaders;” whose self-seeking blunders have shamefully abused and squandered wealth and drenched the world in blood, then one realises that the end of leadership cannot be too soon. Intelligent working men and women who organise for the establishment of Socialism have no need for leaders. The end or object, Socialism, means the abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the end of idleness and luxury for your class, the ending of stately baronial mansions, likewise the finish of poverty, misery and slums. The Labour Government have been very good friends to your class. It shall be very very different when, for the first time in history. Socialists take control out of the hands of the capitalist class for the purpose of carrying out the revolutionary task, the establishing of Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain carries on its task of making socialists confident that the future belongs to us. Chums, you’ve almost  " ’ad it.”

John Higgins

Redistribution of Wealth (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the war ended the myth has arisen, carefully fostered and well-nourished by every hack of Fleet Street and apologist of capitalism, that the rich are no longer as rich as they once were, that heavy taxes are mulcting the poor blighters white and that there is in fact taking place a general redistribution of wealth resulting in greater economic equality. Never an opportunity has been lost to bring to our notice that this film star or that author or the other well-to-do man were being bled to death by taxes and what was left would in any case be drained away by death duties.

So persistently have these notions been nurtured that many workers have actually come to believe them, presumably on the Mein Kampf principle that if you tell a lie often enough it will eventually be accepted as the truth. To those who do so, and still more to those who believe vaguely that some sort of more equitable distribution of wealth is taking place, we draw attention to some remarks and observations recently made in a British Association lecture by J. R. S. Revell, Dept of Applied Economics, Cambridge University. Dealing with the extent to which wealth had become more equally distributed during the first 50 years, he said:

. . . that the figures conventionally quoted greatly overestimated the extent of the redistribution.

Those figures showed that the wealthiest 1 per cent. of the adult population of England and Wales owned nearly 70 per cent. of the total personal wealth in 1911, and that by 1954 the wealthiest 1 per cent. owned around 43 per cent. The figures were based on estimates of personal capital, which used statistics of estates paying death duties as a random sample of the wealth of the living population. They were deficient in several respects and the deficiencies had tended to increase in recent years. That meant that their use would overstate the redistribution of wealth.

Apparently one of the important of these statistical deficiencies, of ”growing importance," as Mr. Revell tells us:

. . . consisted of creating settled property in a particular form known as a discretionary trust. Under that form of properly the trustees had the discretion to pay income to any of a specified class of persons and to distribute the capital when they thought fit. When the person who had been receiving the income died, the trustees merely nominated another person from the specified class, and there was no passing of capital which could attract death duties.

Certainly these capitalists are not going to allow themselves to be impoverished without a fight!

The effect of this and other tax-evading subterfuges is:

. . . that a large slice of the capital from which individual persons—particularly wealthy persons—drew income did not figure at all in an estimate of personal capital derived from death duty figures. It was almost impossible to obtain any statistical evidence on the amount of property which thus avoided death duties. “but it is likely to be large enough to upset any estimates of personal capital."

Earlier in his lecture Mr. Rcvcll pointed out that, conversely, small incomes were grossly overvalued:

. . . because insurance policies represented such a large proportion of the value of small estates; they were valued for death duty purposes at the sum paid out on death, whereas the greatest value which could be put on them in the hands of a live person would be the surrender value. Thus poorer persons, in short, are worth more dead than alive.

Mr. Revell concludes:

Small estates were thus overvalued and large estates were undervalued in the death duty statistics. Since life assurance and tax avoidance had both grown greatly in recent years, the conventional figures for the distribution of personal capital gave an impression that the redistribution of wealth had gone much farther than it really had. There was no means with present statistical knowledge of estimating what the correct figures should be.

Whatever the truth of Mr. Revell’s last remark, there is one incontrovertible fact arising from all this. It is that in 1954 1 per cent. only of the population owned more, probably much more, than 43 per cent. of the total personal wealth in England and Wales.

Ponder a while on this simple fact and it will give quite a close idea of the nature of wealth distribution in our present-day capitalist society.

Max Judd

Shall We Work Harder? (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. W. H. Lever, M.P., writing in the Anti-Socialist says,

“The more consideration I give to the aims and objects of the Socialists the more I am confirmed in my opinion that Socialism cannot possibly achieve social betterment and increased social happiness.

“Whatever poverty we have to-day is entirely due to the fact that the world is not producing sufficient commodities to satisfy the world’s requirements. Not until we have a greater production of all that goes to make for social well-being shall we have a more even distribution of social well-being and comforts and less poverty.”

Now to see if poverty is due to an insufficiency of wealth to meet the world’s requirements.

Mr. Chiozza Money informs us in his “Riches and Poverty” that the annual aggregate income of the United Kingdom amounts to, roughly, £1,700,000,000 or £40 per head of the population, or, assuming that each family on the average consists of five persons, £200 per family.

But is the annual income so distributed that each family receives £200 per annum, or a proportionate sum according to its number ? The answer is obvious to any member of the working class. About half the wealth produced (and corresponding income), or £830,000,000, is taken by about 1 million persons, each with an income of over £160 or, again assuming that each of these persons is the head of a family of live we get 5 million people, while the other half, or £880,000,000, is taken by 38 million persons, all of whom are in receipt of less than £160 per family yearly. But if we extend our investigation a little further we shall find that 1,250,000 persons enjoy an aggregate annual income of £585,000,000. At one end of the social ladder we have ”one third of our population living on the verge of hunger,” while at the other end we have 250,000 persons, or with their dependents, 1,250,000 persons, enjoying an aggregate income of about £450 per head or £2,250 per family.

Yet Mr. “Millionaire” Lever informs us that he is of the opinion that we must first increase the amount of material wealth before we can “achieve increased social betterment.” 

Increase the means of wealth production to any extent you like and it can be shown that the workers would be where they are to-day—in poverty. (An instance is recorded in our issue of March last under the heading “A Cutting Cutting” where a surplus of textile products provided a splendid opportunity for a lock-out of the operatives and a little more starvation.) The introduction of new and cheaper methods of production, and therefore, means of producing wealth in greater abundance, to-day only results in the throwing out of employment many of the workers engaged in the particular industry in which the new methods are introduced, an increase in the army of the unemployed, greater poverty and misery for the workers. True, a reduction in the time necessary for the production of the necessaries of life means the cheapening of the cost of living ; but a fall in the cost of living results in the cheapening of the production and maintenance of the worker. The continued and enhanced competition of the workers for jobs soon reduces wages to the new cost of subsistence, while a decrease in wages results in the increased exploitation of the worker, a greater amount of surplus-value or profit for the employers, and an even greater disparity between the two classes. So then, while the means of production and distribution remain in the hands of a small section of the community, any new inventions that may arise to lessen the time necessary for the production of wealth only results in increased affluence and luxury for the few while the great bulk of the people remain in a perpetual state of poverty.

Not until the whole of the means and implements of production and distribution are owned and controlled by, and in the interest of, the entire community, will the great mass of the people enjoy the advantages that accrue from an improvement in the means of wealth production. Then, and not until then, will every new invention be hailed as an advantage to all, either to reduce the collective labour of the community or to increase the comforts and opportunities of its members.

If then, it is possible to produce sufficient wealth to satisfy the requirements of the whole community under the present wasteful competitive system, how much more within the bounds of possibility will it be under a system where competition for existence will be entirely eliminated and where industry will be so organised that only that labour which is absolutely necessary for the production of wealth will be expended, where the large army of people now engaged in the advertising trade, as travellers, policemen, soldiers, man-‘o-warsmen, workhouse officials, flunkeys, judges, lawyers, clerks, priests, and a host of others would be employed in useful, productive labour. These trades and professions arise out of and are necessary under a system based upon the private monopoly of the means of life, and will disappear with their transformation from private to social property.

Mr. Lever continues “The natural order of social progress must inevitably be first to produce material comfort, followed by intellectual, moral and social advancement.” It is something for a member of the capitalist class to recognise the necessity for satisfying the material wants and requirements of the community before any improvement in the intellectual and moral status of the people can be effected. When the means of decent living are assured to all, then and only then will the great mass of the people be elevated from the physical, intellectual and moral enslavement in which they are enveloped to-day. The means of life can only be assured to the whole of society by the demolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. This can be achieved when the workers get to understand their true class position, see the necessity for the change and determine to emancipate themselves from the slavery in which they exist to-day, brush aside the idea that “Socialism will not come in our time,” and realise the fact that as soon as the workers, who outnumber the other class by about eight to one, understand and determine to have Socialism, they will get it. As the late Lord Salisbury once said, “Nothing can go against the voice of the people.”

So then, join the S.P.G.B. immediately you understand and agree with its principles, and make one more pillar in the foundation of the Socialist Republic.

H. A. Young

The Workers’ Share. (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Morning Advertiser, commenting upon the unemployed problem, said : —

“It is an old fallacy that shortening the hours of labour of those who have work will enable those who have no work to find it. If, indeed, it were the case that the shortening of his hours increased the efficiency, and therefore the productiveness, of the worker, such an effect might be produced. But there are probably very few cases in which this would be so; and of those the Socialists were certainly not thinking. They mean by shortening the man’s hours to reduce the product of his day’s work. The result would be diminished wealth, and consequently diminished opportunities for employment.”

Socialists do, indeed, realise that in the reduction of unemployment the reduction of hours is only of use in so far as it necessitates the employment of more wage workers. The wily Advertiser scents the danger of a knowledge of this antagonism of interests, and hastens to assure its readers that the reduction of hours could only alleviate unemployment if it increased the efficiency and output of labour, and so, as it certainly would, enabled more work to be done by fewer men ! True, the Advertiser did not say which unemployed. One can quite understand an improvement in the lot of the wealthy unemployed following upon a decrease in in their wages bill and an increase in their wealth.

The interests of that class demand greater efficiency and productivity on the part of the workers, together with a reduction in that portion of the total wealth spent in wages. And the organ of Bung so puts the matter as to convey the idea (which is greedily swallowed by the Labourites who do not realise, or do not want to realise, the fact of the class antagonism) that capital and labour are brothers sharing proportionately out of the bowl into which the total produce of labour is poured. The labourer, however, is a hireling and not a partner. Out of the total wealth his labour produces he gets but his keep while lucky enough to be employed. The more he produces and the quicker the demand of the market is met, the less of his fellows are employed, the sooner is he thrown out of work, and the smaller in proportion is the aggregate share the workers obtain out of the total wealth produced.

It is not, then, as the Advertiser would have it, a question of the increase or decrease in the total wealth, but rather a question of the increase in the number of workers that the master class needs to employ and pay in the production of that wealth. It is a question, in other words, of the share of the total product which the workers obtain, not of its total amount.

The Socialist realises that out of the total product of labour the more the workers get the less remains for the idlers. The worker’s interests under capitalism are rather in the direction of promoting the waste of wealth than in promoting its increase. Not overflowing warehouses, stores and shops and glutted markets, but the destruction of accumulated stocks of commodities and of all kinds of property that must be replaced is the worker’s desire under capitalism, so that he and his fellows may have plenty of work, and of wages sufficient to live upon. It is, therefore, idle for the Advertiser to pretend that the workers’ share cannot increase unless the total produce is increased. Such, however, is the normal capitalist view of things. But, to paraphrase Marx, it is forgotten that the bowl from which the workmen eat is filled with the whole produce of labour, and what prevents them fetching more out is neither the narrowness of the bowl nor the scantiness of its contents, but only the smallness of their spoons.

While capitalism endures the share of the “national” wealth that is obtained by the workers is determined not by the amount of the total wealth but by the condition of the labour market and the strength of the workers in their struggle against the possessing class. Not in the increase of the “national” wealth, but in the increase of their share in it, is the wage-slave class primarily concerned. It is, indeed, the very impotence of the workers in their attempts to increase their share of the total produce of their labour, so long as capitalism is, that must compel them to realise at last, the only way ; and that is through the overthrow of capitalist rule and in social production for themselves.

F. C. Watts

The Rich get Richer (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite John Major's claim that it is his aim to create a classless society there is hardly a day goes by without new revelations coming to light concerning the fact that capitalism in Britain is as class-divided as ever between the rich and the poor.

Two recent publications confirm the inequality in the ownership of capital that is the basis of capitalism. The first is the 1995 edition of Social Trends, an official government publication. The second is the report on Income and Wealth published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Rowntree Report is mainly about the distribution of income but it contains a chapter on the distribution of wealth based on recent research as well as on government statistics.

The part on inequality in the distribution of income demolishes the misleading view put forward by the Tories (but not just by them) that because real incomes rose by 36 percent between 1979 and 1992 this meant that everybody became better off by that amount over the period. When the figure is broken down into income groups it becomes clear that only the top 30 percent had an increase of 36 percent or more; the great bulk of people didn't get this; 50 percent got less than this, 10 percent got no increase at all. while the bottom 10 percent ended up worse off in real terms, i.e. their standard of living actually fell; they had less to consume. Given these figures even the capitalist press was obliged to talk of the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”.

When it comes to the distribution of wealth the first problem is the definition of “wealth”. There are at least four different definitions used by the government: (1) "marketable wealth”, or assets owned by persons that can be sold or cashed in; (2) "marketable wealth less value of dwellings”, which takes the value of privately-owned houses and flats out of the first figure; (3) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of people’s accrued occupational pension rights, and (4) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of both occupational and state pension rights.

The last two of these—sometimes called “personal wealth”—are quite useless as it is invalid to regard future pension rights as a capital sum belonging to the pensioner. These rights are not marketable and so this sum is entirely notional as far as the individual is concerned; they can't sell it or bequeath it. As far as they are concerned it isn’t part of their wealth, so it doesn’t make sense to say that they own it. All they have is the right to be paid a pension, which is what a pension right is and nothing more.

The absurdity of converting the legal right to an income into a notional lump sum which the person concerned is then said to own can be seen by looking at “income support" The law lays down that everybody has the right to have their income made up to a certain minimum level; if they have no other income then they have the right to be paid an income from the state equal to this level. Yet nobody has suggested that a person’s income support should be converted into a notional capital sum and attributed to them as their wealth. The absurdity of doing this is so obvious; these people are destitute, they have no wealth; that’s why the state has to pay them something. But there’s no difference in principle between a pension right and the right to income support. What is absurd in the one case is just as absurd in the other.

Adding notional sums for pension rights to the real assets that "marketable wealth” represents distorts the figures completely and makes people appear much richer than they actually are. For instance, a table in the Rowntree Report (Figure 50) shows that in 1992 total marketable wealth amounted to £1,689 billion. When a notional capital sum for pension rights and another for secure tenancies at below market rents are added the figure for “total wealth" increases to £3,325 billion, i.e. nearly doubles.

What this means is that nearly half of total so-called personal wealth is fictional as far as the persons who are supposed to own it are concerned. It has no real existence for them.

In fact most of it has no real existence at all since there are no real assets in the economy that correspond to it. It is true that this doesn’t apply to funded pension schemes but their value is only about a third of the value of the capitalised pension rights attributed to individuals in these government statistics and, in any event, it makes more sense to see the really-existing assets these funds represent as belonging to the employer who set up the scheme rather than to the future pensioners.

The way these false figures distort the facts can easily be demonstrated. The bottom half of adults own between them only 8 percent of marketable wealth, or an average of about £600 each. When all the fictional, non-marketable “wealth” is added their percentage share rises to 17 percent of a figure nearly twice as big. This increases their average “wealth”-holding to around £2,500. Suddenly, by the stroke of the statistician’s pen, they can be portrayed as more than four times wealthier than they actually are. It's all a nonsense but it is easy to see the political motivation behind it.

Wealth and capital

The only meaningful figures for the distribution of wealth are the first two: those showing the concentration of personal marketable assets and those showing this minus the value of houses and flats. The difference between these two can be seen from table 5.23 in the 1995 edition of Social Trends which gives the provisional figures for 1992:

For some purposes, the first column is valid—to show how much personal property individuals actually possess whether they invest it or whether they are consuming it. But, for demonstrating the inequality that is at the basis of capitalism, the second column is the more valid since socialists contend that capitalism is based on the inequality of ownership of wealth that provides an unearned income (i.e. on wealth that is invested as capital) rather than of all wealth, some of which is used for consumption (as are most houses).

What the second column shows is that the top 1 percent (less than half-a-million individuals) own nearly five times as much income-providing assets as the bottom 50 percent (some 22 million people). And that the top 5 percent own more (53%) than the bottom 95 percent (47%). Or, put differently, that out of every 20 people one of them owns more than the other 19 added together.

These figures haven’t changed much since 1976. If anything the rich have got richer, relatively as well as absolutely. In 1976 the top 5 percent owned 47%; they now own 53%; while the share of the bottom 50 percent has fallen from 12% to 6%.

Actually, even this second column doesn’t give the true picture of the inequality of capital ownership since it is only concerned with capital that is personally owned, i.e. that is attributable to individuals. An appreciable amount of capital, however, cannot be attributed to identifiable individuals as individuals; it is owned collectively as by the government, by trusts and by pension funds; it also includes any part of the assets of companies that is not attributable to shareholders.

This non-personal capital is equally part of total capital and when taken into account reduces the share of capital owned by the bottom 95 percent of the population. Capitalism really is based on their exclusion from the ownership and control of all but negligible amounts of capital.

How poor are you?

Just how negligible can be seen from a revealing 1994 study, quoted by the Rowntree Report, by three researchers based on data obtained by the 1991-2 Financial Research Survey carried out by National Opinion Polls (The Distribution of Wealth in the UK, James Barker, Andrew Dinot and Hamish Low, Institute of Fiscal Studies Commentary No 45, 1994). This shows (Figure 54) just how few financial assets most people own:

This means, as the Rowntree Report put it, that “half of all families had financial assets of less than £500 in a 1991-2 survey, and 90 percent less than £8,000”. This certainly puts things into perspective. Most people only receive trivial amounts of unearned income since their holdings of financial assets are so small.

Owning or buying your house and having an extra £10,000 - £15,000 invested somewhere is probably the height of most people’s ambition (though only a few of them are going to attain it, and then only within ten years of their deaths). But it is still not enough to get you into the top 5 percent and, if you are below pension age, it is certainly not enough to allow you to live on your unearned income and so free you from the necessity to seek an employer.

The income from an investment of £15,000 (which is the upper limit for the bottom 95 percent of the population) might top up your income if you’re retired but it’s only peanuts as far as those on the top 1 percent are concerned. There the lower limit is £36,801 and the upper limit is the sky, as the latest Sunday Times's (14 May) list of "Britain’s Richest 500" shows. Number One on the list are the Rausing brothers owning £4,000 millions-worth of wealth, followed by the Sainsbury family with £2,520 million. Fourth is the Duke of Westminster with £1,500 million. Mrs Windsor is seventeenth with a mere £450 million.

Adam Buick

Limitarianism (2024)

Book Review from the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enough. Why It’s Time to Abolish the Super-Rich. By Luke Hildyard. Pluto Press. 2024

Luke Hildyard, director of the think-tank the High Pay Centre, shows that the super-rich (the top 1 percent) don’t need most of their income and refutes all the arguments that they deserve it all. He also shows that, if they were reduced to being merely rich (a maximum income of £187,000 a year), then there would be enough money available for other uses, in particular improving the standard of living of others. This, he says, could be done both by redistribution (taxation) and by what he calls ‘pre-distribution’ (preventing too much income going to them in the first place). An average figure of around £2,500 a year per adult for everyone else is floated at one point. The money is definitely there but could it be diverted in the way he wants?

He favours the money going mostly to those currently with the lowest incomes. In fact, he sees the amount available being enough to ‘eliminate poverty pay at a stroke’. This would be done by raising the minimum wage, which, by reducing profits, would prevent so much income flowing to the super-rich.

But that’s not how the capitalist system works. It runs on profits and any reduction in profits would reduce the incentive and the amount to invest and risk proving an economic slowdown if not a recession. On the other hand, the aim of capitalist production is not the consumption of the rich owners of productive resources. It is the accumulation of profits as more and more capital invested for profit. In this sense, a disproportionate amount of profits going to the super-rich to spend on a personal super-luxurious lifestyle (yachts, private jets, bunkers, 40-bedroom mansions, lavish parties, etc) is a drag on capital accumulation. This in fact is what Hildyard argues in chapter 3 on ‘The Economic Case for Equality’, though a better title would have been ‘The Capitalist Case for Less Income Inequality’ since that’s what in effect he is arguing for.

Two other ‘pre-distributive’ measures that he advocates are worker-directors and profit-sharing. He thinks that workers on the board is likely to mean less exorbitant executive salaries. Maybe, but that wouldn’t mean that the money saved would go to increase wages. Profit-sharing is a snare which, besides tying workers to their employers, also means that they have an unpredictable income from year to year rather than a secure contracted amount.

As to the money raised by taxing the consumption income of the super-rich, this could in theory be used to provide improved public services and amenities but, capitalism not being geared to meeting people’s needs, is more likely to be used to reduce taxes on businesses or spent on capitalist priorities such as the armed forces.

Capitalism is based on the exclusion of the vast majority of the population from the ownership of productive resources, thereby obliging them to get a living by working for the tiny minority which does own them. Inequality in the ownership of productive resources is thus built into the system. This results in inequality in incomes too since profits are shared by a small number, giving each a high income. As capital accumulates, through the reinvestment under the pressure of competition of most profits, so does the wealth and income of the owners. The tendency, then, is for the rich as a whole to get richer. Reformist measures to redistribute wealth and income are up against this tendency which wins out in the long run.

Despite its naive reformism, the book is very readable and, as you would expect from the director of a think-tank devoted full-time to the issue, is well researched and referenced and so a useful source of information on the inequality of income and wealth ownership built into capitalism.

Adam Buick

The Festival of Capitalism (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may have been part of the general optimism of the good times ahead that pervaded His Majesty’s third Labour Government in its early days, that induced “Old Moore” Morrison to announce in December, 1947, the Government’s plan for a national display to mark the centenary of the 1851 Exhibition. Possibly it was thought then that festivals were to be part of the usual scheme of things that was to be “ours” in the “Brave New World.” Alas! it was not to be. In fact the attitude generally expressed is for Christ’s sake let’s go to the Festival and forget Korea and raw materials just for one day.

As always, only this time more so, the main problem confronting trade unions is the standard of living. As is to be expected, resolutions calling for wage increases are the order of the day.

In line with their political thought trade unionists have in the past few years made many sacrifices; the outstanding instance being the wage freeze. But the harsh realities of the capitalist economics expressed in the continual increase in commodity prices make a mockery of present day wages—the wage increases of last year, last month, or even last week, have already been gobbled up—and force unions to go forward with new demands in the attempt to catch up with the rising cost of living.

One of the slogans that carried the Labour Party into power was “Fair Shares For All.” This, like many of the catch-phrases bandied around the political arena, is an ambiguous statement; just as meaningless as “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.” Supporters of the Labour Party would claim, however, that “Fair shares for all ” and “Redistribution of wealth ” mean simply: that the rich get poorer, and the poor get richer. But the evidence of six years of Labour Government bear out once again the correctness of “Tin Pan Alley ” who said in “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” You would think then—if we accept for a moment the seeming logic of the Labourites—that if the workers are up against it, then the capitalist class should be really on the floor. The position, however, is to the contrary; published figures for the five months up to the end of May show that the aggregate profits of some 1,300 companies hit the all-time high of £700,000,000. This indeed is festival year for British Capitalism.

The ever increasing announcements of record profits have even astounded some of the most devout supporters of Capitalism. The City Editor of the Sunday Express is promoted to the front page, leading article, on June 17, 1951, where he asks, “Are Prices Too High Because Profits Are Too High? ” He wrote thus:—

“These [profits] in the aggregate total more than £700 million, compared with £587 million in the previous year.

“Profits reported last month were on the average 5/6 in the £ higher than in May, 1950.

“City experts I have consulted believe that by the end of the year the total profits to be announced may be nearly half as much again as in 1950, which itself was one of the lushest years for money making.

“On all the evidence never before has British industry experienced such a profit boom as it is enjoying now."

Here are four examples showing the fantastic increase in profits: —

Usually the last ten or so pages of the Economist each week, are given to reports of company meetings, together with a summary of the accounts. To read some of the comments of the chairmen, when trying to explain away the high profits in terms of high taxation, and the high cost of replacing plant, you would think they were one step away from the workhouse. Workers also have to contend with higher costs—the high cost of existing. Only they start off with a measly six or seven pounds a week.

They can, though, if they will, comfort themselves from the following nonsense:—

“ . . . that the higher the increase the greater has been the rise in the average price of goods and services bought. The wage-earner has therefore improved his comparative lot to an even greater extent than is indicated by the income differences already calculated.”

(Economist, 16.6.51)

Therefore take the example of two men, say, ten years ago. One could afford a car, the other couldn't. To-day, neither of them can afford a car. This, then. makes the person who couldn't afford a car in the first instance, relatively better off than the other. Or so this cockeyed writer in the Economist would have us believe.

We see in another direction how the facts belie the claims of the Labour Government. Those in the past who styled themselves socialist, often stated in round figures that 10 per cent. of the population owned 90 per cent. of the wealth. For comparison we give these recent figures of Mr. Hugh Dalton: —

“One per cent, of the people still own 50 per cent. of the wealth, and five per cent. of the people still own 75 per cent. of the wealth. Official figures show that we still have several hundred millionaires among us. and it is notorious that, apart from the large incomes assessed for tax. many people have been living on capital gains and many have been tax-dodging.”

(Sunday Times, 17.6.51.)

Although Mr. Dalton does not go into the top flight and give comparative figures of to-day and pre-war, so that we may adjudge his party's claim of “redistribution of wealth,” we would say that there is very little difference. Before we leave this point let us give an illustration, using Dalton's figures of five and seventy-five. Let us say that both population and wealth equal a hundred. This means then, that five persons have £15 each, and the remaining 95 have approximately 5/3 each. This is the sum total of the “redistribution of wealth.”

Members of the Labour Party in debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain have claimed the respective aims to be identical. Where the Labour Party have it over us, so they say, is that they will arrive first by reason of their practical approach. Before leaving the reader to decide which party is on the road to Socialism—that is a classless, wageless society—may we remind you again of the words of Mr. Dalton that “ five per cent. of people own 75 per cent. of the wealth.”

Ray Guy

Doubts and Difficulties: The Wealth of the Wealthless Workers. (1905)

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

The Wealth of the Wealthless Workers.

A correspondent writes: “I am very pleased to welcome your new venture in opening a Doubts and Difficulties section in the Socialist Standard. I think that the ventilation of all difficulties in the way of a full acception of Socialism and Socialist principles is of the greatest educational utility, and that this section of the Socialist Standard deserves the support of all Socialists. With the experience gained in this way the answers will tend to become less crudely expressed and will prove doubtless a valuable contribution to the education of our propagandists.”

* * *

I thank my correspondent for his appreciation and may assure him that I am keenly alive to the imperfection of my methods of expression. The Board School education which most of us workers have received does not lend itself to the building up of a graceful literary style. At the same time a knowledge of working-class life and an understanding of its inner meaning is forced upon us as we live and work amongst our fellows. And if experience of the bitterness and misery engendered by the grinding poverty of the every-day life of the working-class is of any advantage in understanding the condition of the wage worker I think I am so far equipped for my present task.

* * *

Another correspondent has set me the following conundrum: “In your ‘Doubts and Difficulties’ in the May Standard you say that the spinner enters the labour market possessed of only his labour-power which he is compelled to sell so as to secure his means of livelihood. Is this so ? Does not the spinner—the working-class—own a considerable amount of wealth in Savings Banks, Friendly Societies, and Trade Unions, and does not this fact vitiate your entire argument? ”

* * *

I think we shall find that the contention in the above argument is not a sound one and that it is in fact one of the stock arguments of the apologist of the capitalist regime in favour of the present system. When the Socialist points out that thrift is impossible for the worker because his wages are determined by the average cost of his subsistence we are told that he has been thrifty as is shown by the Savings Bank deposits and that as he has been thrifty and has been able to save some of his wages they must have been more than the cost of his subsistence and that the Socialist position was therefore futile and absurd.

* * *

The first fallacy which is made in reckoning up those “savings of the working classes” is to count in several huge sums twice over. We are told grandiloquently of the £198,000,000 in the Post Office and Trustee Savings Banks and of the £45,000,000 deposited with Friendly Societies, forgetting that special provision is made by the Post Office Savings Bank for the receiving of the funds of Friendly Societies and Trades Unions. But we do not desire to press this point. We can afford—such is the strength of our case—to take the highest possible estimate and assume that these deposits aggregate £300,000,000.

* * *

The question which now arises is : Who has deposited this £300,000,000? The capitalist apologists of the press, the platform, and the pulpit assume that it is wholly the savings of members of the working-class. We contend that such an assumption is a grotesque fallacy.

* * *

Let us ask ourselves another question. Where do the small shopkeeper, the small trader, the less successful professional and business men deposit their money, and where do the children of these classes and even of the richer middle-class keep their savings ?

* * *

I do not think that it can be in the ordinary bank—whether private or joint-stock—inasmuch as they refuse to carry on their business except for the profit of the banker and that profit cannot be derived from a banking account unless a minimum balance is guaranteed. In small credit banks an average of say £50 would be required, while larger banks require considerably higher balances to be maintained.

* * *

It is not possible for the working-class to have accounts with these banks and neither is it possible for the average small trader to do so. As far as possible he requires his money to be in circulation. He uses it to replenish his stock—to increase the quantity of his goods available for turnover. At the same time the whole of his money cannot be tied up in this way. He buys on credit and has to meet his bills when they fall due and he has to save his money for the purpose. The ordinary bank not being convenient for his purpose he avails himself of the facilities afforded by the Post Office Savings Bank.

* * *

So with his children. They use the Savings Bank to put away the pennies and shillings they save from the sweet-stuff shop and often have accounts which aggregate to more than the yearly earnings of the working man.

* * *

As to the proportion of the deposits which belong to working men, I may mention the result of an investigation made into this question in the United States of America by Lucien Saniel. His conclusion was that 10 per cent. would more than cover the share invested by the working-class of that country.

* * *

In America we are informed by the Reports of the Commissioner of Labour of the United States, the average wage is 30 per cent. higher than in the United Kingdom, and we should consequently expect that the savings of the working-class there were higher in proportion than of the working-class in this country. But even taking it that the working-class here own 10 per cent. of the high estimated savings given above, the result would be £20,000,000 as representing the savings of the working-class.

* * *

I am informed further that many of these deposits are very temporary in their nature. The wage deposited on Saturday afternoon is often withdrawn the following Thursday, and the working-class in the large towns deposit in the Savings Bank to meet the contingency of rent, holiday, or even more interesting domestic occurrences.

* * *

This, however, only refers to the better paid mechanic who has a wage somewhat higher than the working-class average and can sometimes afford a holiday. Taking all the facts, I think we must take it as fully borne out that the working-class as a class are never more than a few weeks from starvation and that as a class they own nothing beyond their labour-power—their power to perform work.

* * *

While the better class mechanic getting a relatively higher wage because he has somewhat reduced the number of similarly situated mechanics competing for employment can save against a rainy day that never fails to come, the ordinary worker is getting less than the average cost of his subsistence and can save nothing.

* * *

Take the case of the worker of Ridgmount as depicted by our Comrade R. H. Kent in a recent issue of the Socialist Standard. Any saving made by those workers can only be at the expense of the necessities of their wives and children. Individuals may of course save if they remain single, but marriage soon uses up the savings and reduces such individuals to the dead level of a starvation existence.

* * *

When we are informed that 43 per cent. of the working-class population of York are living in poverty we are interested to know how the standard of poverty is understood and Mr. Rowntree is kind enough to inform us.

* * *

He says : “It is thus seen that the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency. It will be remembered that the above estimate of necessary minimum expenditure is based upon the assumption that the diet is even less generous than that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency.”

* * *

“And let us clearly understand what ‘merely physical efficiency’ means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, neither can they join Sick Club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as of the family diet being governed by the regulation. Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description. Should a child fall ill it must be attended by the Parish doctor; should it die it must be buried by the Parish. Finally, the wage earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.”

* * *

“If any of these conditions are broken, the extra expenditure involved is met, and can only be met, by limiting the diet; or in other words by sacrificing physical efficiency.”

* * *

“That few York labourers receiving 20s. or 21s. per week submit to these iron conditions in order to maintain physical efficiency is obvious. And even were they to submit, physical efficiency would be unattainable for those who had three or more children dependent upon them. It cannot, therefore, be too clearly understood, nor too emphatically repeated, that whenever a worker having three children dependent on him, and receiving not more than 21s. 8d. per week, indulges in any expenditure beyond that required for the barest physical needs, he can do so only at the cost of his own physical efficiency, or that of some members of his family.”

* * *

In every case the italics are those of Mr. Rowntree. Under those conditions it would be criminal for any man to try to save, and he must remain possessed only of his power to work. He must sell his power to work, which is himself, in order to live. By thus selling himself he acknowledges himself a slave bound by the will of the master who buys him. The English wage worker is veritably a wage-slave and among them is—

Economicus.

The rich get richer (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

One further aspect needs to be dealt with in this the last in our series of articles on the concentration of wealth ownership in Britain, and that is the question of what happens over time. Do the richer get richer?

From the point of view of economic theory, this is what you would expect to happen. Capitalism is based on the concentration into the hands of a tiny minority of the population of the ownership of the means of production. These function as capital for them in the sense of providing them with an unearned income. The source of this unearned income that accrues to capital is the labour of those who operate the means of production and actually produce wealth.

Ownership of capital, in other words, confers the right to appropriate a part of the new wealth that is being produced every day. Most of this new wealth—around 80 percent in fact—is used as means of consumption, by workers from their wages and salaries, by capitalists from their rent, interest and dividends, and by the state from the taxes it levies. The rest, under the spur of competition between capitalist firms to maximise profits, is accumulated as means of production, as further capital to yield an unearned income for their owners. This accumulation of capital out of profits produced by those who operate the means of production is what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production are accumulated in the form of profit-yielding capital.

In concrete terms what this means is that the stock both of physical means of production (factories, machinery, plant, materials, etc) and of its monetary form, capital, grows over time. This is by no means a steady process—it is halted and even reversed from time to time, as in wars (when wealth is physically destroyed) and in slumps (when the same thing happens and when the value of the rest falls)—but the long term trend is upward. This must mean that in the long run those who own the means of production—the rich—get to own more means of production, more capital, i. e. get richer.

Changing estimates

So much for the theory, but is it confirmed by the facts? For all but the recent past the facts are not easy to come by. In Britain they nearly all come from the statistics about estates left in wills which the Inland Revenue has been collecting since death duties were introduced in 1894. Until 1960 it was left to individual academics to convert these into figures for the ownership of wealth by the living. They often used different methods, which meant that their estimates were not always comparable, but there was broad agreement that until the Second World War the top 1 percent owned about 60 percent and the top 10 percent about 90 percent of personal wealth, as a study quoted by the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth in its first report in 1975 showed (Table 1).

This slow long-term fall in the percentage shares of the top groups should not be equated with a fall in the amount of wealth they owned, but rather, as we shall see, with a slower rate of increase in their wealth than that of other groups.

From 1960 the Inland Revenue began producing its own yearly estimates. According to these, between 1960 and 1975 the share of the top 1 percent declined from 38 percent to 23 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 64 percent to 47 percent and that of the top 10 percent from 77 percent to 62 percent.

These figures were challenged by those who argued that they underestimated the concentration of wealth ownership. The critics correctly pointed out that the figures, being based on wealth declared to the Inland Revenue for death duty purposes, inevitably left out the wealth of the rich that was placed in discretionary trusts and other such devices or given to relatives before death precisely to avoid paying death duties. Defenders of capitalism, on the other hand, argued that the figures overestimated the degree of inequality as they did not take into account the wealth owned by the 60 percent or so of the population whose estates did not have to be declared to the Inland Revenue because they were too small. Individually the amounts were small but, in view of the millions of individuals involved, when added together made up a significant amount.

The Labour government that came into office in 1974 set up a Royal Commission, in the time honoured way, to bury its promises “to launch a fundamental attack on the principle of the hereditary transmission of great wealth, with its associated power and privilege” and “to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”. (Did the Labour Party once really talk like this?). This recommended that both types of non-included wealth should be taken into account, and the Inland Revenue now produces each year adjusted figures which do this. This new series of statistics began in 1976 and in fact shows that the distribution of wealth has changed very little since then (Table 2).

So the change between 1975, when the top 10 percent were said to own 62 percent, and 1976, when they were said to own 50 percent, resulted purely from a change in the way the statistics were calculated. Calculated on the old basis the figure for the top 10 percent in 1989 would still be between 60 and 70 percent.

Statistical illusion

But this is not the only purely statistical factor that is involved in the figures. What the figures show are the percentage shares, and not the actual amounts of wealth, of the various categories. These shares are shares in a cake (the stock of wealth) which, as we saw, expands in the long run. This means that, for one group to maintain its share, it must get the same share of the new wealth that is being accumulated. Thus if, as is generally assumed, before the First World War the top 10 percent owned 90 percent of accumulated wealth, then, for them to maintain their share, 90 percent of the newly accumulating wealth would also have to go to them. That they were in fact able to more or less maintain this share until the Second World War (see Table 1) is a testimony to the poverty of the rest of the population whose incomes were so low that they had to spend most of it on items of immediate consumption.

If during this period the other 90 percent had between them been able to accumulate more than 10 percent of the newly accumulated wealth, then the share of the top 10 percent would have fallen, despite the fact that they were continuing to accumulate wealth and even to accumulate more of it in real (as opposed to percentage) terms than the rest of the population.

It was precisely this situation that did occur from the 1950s on. Regular and more or less steadily-rising real wages and salaries meant that the non-rich began to acquire more wealth in the form of household goods, cars and houses. When included in the figures this had the effect of reducing the share of the rich, but this is the only effect it has had and it is purely statistical.

Independently of what has happened to the non-rich, the rich have gone on accumulating wealth and so getting richer. The November 1991 issue of the official government publication Economic Trends contained a table which showed how the total amount of “marketable wealth”, broken down by category, had changed each year from 1976 to 1988, all in 1988 money so as to be comparable. The general trend was upward, though there was a fall in 1981 corresponding to the last recession; the total increased from £752 billion in 1976 to £1317 billion in 1988. Of this extra £565 billion, 13 percent went to the top 1 percent, 39 percent to the top 5 percent and a massive 58 percent to the top 10 percent (which explains why their share increased over the period from 50 percent to 53 per cent), while a meagre 4 percent went to be shared amongst the 22 million in the bottom 50 percent.

What is even more interesting than how the total amount was divided amongst the categories is how the average amounts of wealth held by each person in the categories changed (Table 3). As can be seen, despite a smaller percentage increase than the rest of the top 50 percent, the average holding of those in the top 1 percent increased by some £132,000, more than that of those in any of the other groups. So the gap between the amount of wealth held by the individual members of top 1 percent and that held by the rest of the population increased. There is no reason to suppose that these years were exceptional in this respect, except perhaps that in some earlier years the gap between the average holding of the top 1 percent and that of the top 5 percent may have narrowed.

So the conclusion can only be that the so-called decline of the rich this century is a statistical illusion. Their share has only fallen, and then only after the Second World War, because the non-rich came to acquire more wealth. But this acquisition of wealth by the non-rich made no difference whatsoever to the position of the rich. They continued to get richer in the sense of coming to own more wealth in real terms (the only meaningful sense of the word “richer”). But not only this their average holding of wealth increased more in real terms than that of the non-rich. Defenders of capitalism who say that the rich have not got richer are conveying misinformation.

Adam Buick

Correction: the first column of Table 2 in last month’s article should have read, as was clear from the context. Top 1%, Top 2%, Top 5%, etc and not Top 1%, 1-2%, 3-5%, etc.

Business experts and their bubbles. (1927)

From the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Socialist Standard (July) we criticised some statements made in “Business Organisation” (April). We said that the coming of Socialism would dispense with the need for coercive State institutions, as there would be no subject class to govern and repress. To this and other criticisms “Business Organisation” (August) now takes exception. They offer no evidence to show our statement unsound. Their retort is to call it “a farrago of nonsense.”

As every student of social science knows, the State did not always exist; it is a product of society at a stage of evolution. Through different forms, its essential character has been a power of coercion apart from the mass of the people. To-day we know it as the Parliamentary State, in which the subject class, the workers, are enfranchised. The State is the executive of the present ruling class (the Capitalists), and it protects and maintains their ownership of property because the slave class politically permit it. Even a Capitalist authority could inform our critics. The Britannica Encyclopaedia (llth ed.) says :—

“The word state expresses the abstract idea of government in general, or the governing authority, as opposed to the governed.”

“Business Organisation” asks :— 

In whom would the ownership of the means of Production, Distribution and Exchange be vested under Socialism if not in the State ?

If they had troubled to read our object and Principles, they would have seen that Production and Distribution (no Exchange) could only be vested in Society, the whole people, as distinct from the Capitalist few, any other method (State Capitalism, for instance) would still retain private ownership, and therefore class society. Who, they ask, “would organise the maintenance of supplies in this classless society” ? These are the business experts who accuse us of talking nonsense ! Who organises supplies to-day? The Landlords, the Shareholders, and the Dummy Directors or the Working Class? What the workers now do for idlers, surely with growing intelligence they can do for themselves. It is in politics they are ignorant, not in production. When wealth is no longer produced for profit, i.e., when the workers cease to be exploited, Exchange as a means to realise that profit or unpaid labour will be as unnecessary as the State. Our opponents do not deny the continued growth of trusts, and amalgamations, but they claim that these ensure a wider distribution of wealth, which benefits the wage-earning class. To explain the growth of the large concern, we evidenced the fierce competitive pace of to-day, the recurring bankruptcies, and the elimination of the small independent Capitalist by the cheaper and more economical methods of large scale production. The way our opponents attempt to refute fundamental tendencies is to charge us with suppressing certain figures which, they say, prove the growth of these embryonic wage-earning “Capitalists.” We also confuse “proprietorship of wealth with its organisation.” The figures “Business Organisation” quoted in their April issue were those given by Walter Runciman in a speech made on March 18th, 1925, upon “The Distribution of Wealth.” Here are their own words and the figures :—

“The Socialists, chief among the propagandists of ill-will in our modern states may be invited to draw what comfort they can from Mr. Walter Runciman’s arresting figures of the growth of small investors. . . . There are to-day, he added, over 15 million small investors, chiefly members of wage-earning households, whose total holdings in the Post Office, in Trustee and Railway Savings Banks, National Saving Certificates, Life and Annuity Funds, Building Societies and other Approved Societies, amount to the colossal figures of £1,776,247,000.”

There isn’t any evidence given that, in the main, these are workers’ savings. An individual would appear as a separate “Capitalist” as many times as the number of concerns in which he could have investment. As evidence of working class prosperity, they are, to say the least, unreliable; even a Liberal Economist recognised this, for Professor Clay, of Manchester University, wrote to the “Times” (24/3/25) regarding them. We ourselves criticised them, and quoted Professor Clay’s letter in the Socialist Standard over two years ago (April 1925). Part of that quotation will be sufficient here. It says :—

“Whether the tendency is in the direction of greater equality of distribution or not, progress in that direction has not been great, and what Mr. Runciman calls the stupendous total of £777,834,000 is not more than 5 per cent. of the national capital—not a large proportion to be held by “15 million capitalists.” On the other hand, allowing a considerable margin for error, it is probably safe to say that over two-thirds of the national capital is held by less than 2 per cent, of the people. (“Times,” 24/3/25.)

In any case, income does not determine a man’s social position when we have to deal with class interests. One individual may be independent on an income of £500 a year derived from investment, another may draw a salary, equal in amount, for the sale of services which economic necessity compels him to sell in order to live : the latter is a member of the working class, whether he likes the classification or not. Again, a Capitalist may, and often does, retain part of his former wealth after the weeding out process has deprived him of his former independent Capitalist status, but his troubles are by no means ended. In large concerns a few generally own the bulk of the stock, and the existence of the small investor is an uncertain one, to say nothing of the organised methods of relieving him of his “all.” International competition, with quickly glutted markets, litters the industrial battlefield with casualties, otherwise the bankruptcy courts would cease to function.

True, Capitalism has brought into existence a small section of higher paid workers, managers, supervisors, specialists, etc., but they, too, find their struggle and existence as keen and precarious as the great body of their class. The march of time compels the recognition of facts once strenuously denied. Ramsay Muir, a prominent Liberal, speaking at the Liberal summer school on the “Distribution of the Ownership of Capital,” drew attention to the fact, “not commonly realised, namely, that in this country there is a larger true proletariat or propertyless mass than in any other country in the world” (“Daily News,” 2/8/27). Another defender of Capitalism, Harold Cox, in the “Daily Mail” (26/7/27), commenting on the fact that there are only 2,300,000 persons chargeable with income tax, says :—

“That minority is even smaller than the figures of 2,300,000 suggests, for a very large number of income tax payers are paying quite rightly a comparatively small tax. The main burden falls on persons with fairly large incomes who are numerically a minute fraction of the population. . . . More than half of the direct taxes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland is provided by 100,000 people, whereas there are over 21 million electors.”

This makes our 15 million Capitalists look “small,” about 13 million do not receive enough wealth on which to pay income tax. An analysis of the distribution of wealth, therefore, gives us enormous wealth in the hands of the few, while the great majority own between them only a fraction of the total wealth, and are consequently compelled to work in some capacity or other to live. The writer of the above (H. Cox) also gives us some evidence of the effects of the worsening of the workers’ position. He says :—

“In round figures pauperism in 1914 represented 21 per 1,000 of the population, and in 1927, as above stated, just under 40 per 1,000. It is, therefore, not far from the truth to state that the proportion of paupers to self-dependent citizens has doubled since 1914.” (“Sunday Times,” 31/7/27.)

Certainly a wider distribution — of pauperism. From Gladstone to Lloyd George, from Malthus to Chiozza Money, all have had to confess to the growing contrasts of wealth and poverty. Marx and Engels scientifically explained the cause. Marx did not expect the workers to win Emancipation as a result of poverty itself. He specifically refuted that view. What he emphasised was the relative worsening of the workers’ position as a class, and with the consequent growth of class consciousness, the struggle for Emancipation. Capitalism, in its development, is carrying out Marx’s predictions. It has swelled the ranks of the workers in proportion to the other section of society. Machinery and modern methods render more and more workers redundant. Wage slavery, high or low paid, cannot prevent these worsening conditions, because the workers’ opportunity to enjoy the results of their increasing productivity is denied them by the present outworn system of production for profit. Private property in the means of life allows an idle class to monopolise the benefits, the privileges, the comforts. Disciplined, united, and organised by the very system that enslaves them, the workers will acquire the knowledge that will set society free from the last phase of class exploitation.

W. E. MacHaffie

Cooking the Books: Levelling Up (2022)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Introducing the government’s Levelling Up White Paper in the House of Commons on 2 February, Michael Gove declared that it ‘sets out our detailed strategy to make opportunity more equal and to shift wealth and power decisively towards working people and their families’.

Steve Baker, the Tory MP for ‘Singapore-on-Thames’, denounced the White Paper as ‘socialist’ and as a policy ‘that would not be out of place in Labour’s manifesto’ (bit.ly/3Ls1r6f).

Actually, it had already appeared in a Labour Party manifesto, that for the October 1974 general election, which ended:

‘We are a democratic socialist party and our objective is to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families.’

So Baker had a sort of point, except it is wrong to describe either Gove’s White Paper or the Labour Party as ‘socialist’. The Labour Party may stand for political democracy (though it is not organised democratically internally) but it has never been a socialist party. It used to once stand for nationalisation but that was only state capitalism. It has always talked about standing for redistributing wealth to working people but that’s reformism as it assumes the continued existence of the rich, and has never worked for long as the operation of the capitalist economy reverses any moves towards this, geared as it is to continually bring about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few.

Labour won the October 1974 election but, capitalism being capitalism, they were unable to deliver on that declaration. That was a year after the post-war boom had come to an end and the Labour government’s attempt to spend its way out of it led only to stagflation. Far from redistributing wealth in favour of workers the government tried to impose an incomes policy to keep wages down.

What Gove proposes is all smoke and mirrors. Shifting power to working people turns out to be giving local politicians more say in how central government money should be spent in their area, while shifting wealth to working people is not putting any money in their pocket but spending more on infrastructure, education, health and housing in the chosen areas instead of in London and the South East (whose ‘working people’ are presumably considered to already have enough wealth and power). Anyway, it’s not supposed to happen until 2030, by which time it will be only be remembered as another broken promise.

It is hard to believe that Gove, who had been a well-informed political journalist before becoming an MP, did not deliberately choose to use the phrase ‘shift wealth and power to working people and their families’. This would be to rub in the Labour Party’s face that the present Tory government had stolen their clothes. Already in an article in the Daily Telegraph on 1 January last year Johnson himself had praised the discovery of the AstraZeneca vaccine as an example of a successful collaboration between ‘state activism’ and ‘free market capitalism’. State activism is what the likes of Baker oppose (and mistakenly regard as socialism) but it’s traditionally been Labour Party policy.

As, having abandoned state capitalism as their long-term goal, Labour now accepts that the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ should remain in the hands of private corporations, it too accepts the operation of capitalist market forces. So, it really is ‘Labour, Tory, Same Old Story’. No wonder the Labour Party has nothing much else to do than criticise the Prime Minister’s personal behaviour.