Letter: World Wide (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Wide

After having received two issues of the Socialist Standard I must say what an excellent magazine it is, exploring the fundamental principles of both capitalism and Socialism. Although I largely agree with the aims of your organization there are a few points in your declaration of principles that I disagree with. (1) The Working class is not confined to those who "produce but do not possess”, as over half of its number work in the so called service industries, and a good many others are on the dole. (2) The population of this country benefit from the exploitation of the less developed countries, just as the capitalist class benefit from the exploitation of the working class, and therefore requiring a majority of the population of this country to be in favour of Socialism before its establishment is, on an international scale, like demanding that a majority of the capitalist class must be in favour beforehand on a national scale. Being a socialist, and therefore an internationalist, I consider this prerequisite of Socialism to be both undemocratic and politically naive. (3) I do not consider that the SPGB is the only party ‘seeking working class emancipation’, and consider that if you accepted this you could play a very constructive part in the victory of revolutionary Socialism in this country. After 73 years I would have thought that you would have realized that there was something wrong with your methods. (4) Socialism, at least in the short term, will not make material poverty 'give place to comfort’ for the majority of this country’s population, as first the discrepancy between our wealth and that of the less developed world has to be rectified. Despite these disagreements I do strongly sympathize with your party and its aims, and would like to find out more about its views.

K. Knight, 

Exeter

Reply:

On point (1): You are correct. The working class is not confined to those employed in manufacturing industries but consists of those who do all of the necessary work of capitalist society. The definition is based not on the kind of work but the need to work. The vast majority own no part of the means of production and distribution and must therefore sell their mental and physical energies. their labour-power, to the capitalist class. Those “on the dole” share the same class relationship to the means of living as their employed fellow-workers.

(2) The capitalist class exploits the working class by paying workers less in wages than the value of the wealth which they as a class produce. Workers in this country (as in the rest of the world) are paid for the value of their labour-power. They do not get a bonus because of conditions in, say, South America. Following the dictates of the system capitalists everywhere seek to invest and trade in the most profitable manner and will take advantage of conditions in the poorer areas of the world. The propertlyless majority in the less developed countries are exploited by their "local" capitalist class.

We do not understand how the requirement that a vast majority of the working class must be in favour of Socialism in order to get it can be undemocratic.

(3) We do not know of any other party, in this country, which has Socialism as its sole aim and there is no other way to working-class emancipation. There are other parties which share some of the same terminology but they are only interested in our support on their terms, i.e. for some short term or reformist aim. We cannot have Socialism until the vast majority of the working class is ready to organize to that end. If it were possible to get Socialism on our own and make the world a present of it we surely would. For 73 years only the SPGB has kept the issue of Socialism clear and alive. During that time the same arguments have rotated in opposition—and workers have followed leaders up the same blind alleys. There is no short cut to the spread of Socialist knowledge. However if you have some fresh ideas or can tell us of some different method we are ready to listen.

(4) We agree with you that the first priority for Socialist society will be to ensure that every human being has enough to eat. Socialism will very quickly solve such problems as hunger by removing the fetters from production.

Editors.

Socialist Party Summer School: Whatever happened to the working class? (2003)

Party News from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party Summer School: Whatever happened to the working class?

Fircroft College, Birmingham 11th-13th July 2003

A weekend of talks, discussion and more on the theme of class politics, class identity and changes in the working class here and abroad.

Friday evening: "The working class in the West"

We begin the weekend by looking at the changes in the way we work.

Saturday morning: "The new working class"

Matt Vaughan-Wilson examines the growth of the 'new' working class.

Saturday afternoon: "Is socialism really a class position."

Considers whether we should increase the strength of the movement by putting forward a humanitarian case for socialism.

Saturday evening: "  . . . because you're worth it"

Mike Foster discusses the ingredients and effects of capitalist myth making, and considers what we can do to counter it.

Sunday morning: "Whatever happened to class politics?"

Until recently it was generally accepted that there was such a thing as the working class, Now, though class is rarely mentioned Vince Otter asks, has class politics gone for good?

£105 for the whole weekend, including meals and accommodation

(Concessionary rates available)

Try thinking (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life’s a bag of shite and then you die. I wonder how many times you’ve heard that.

One of my mates even goes a bit further. He says you’re dead lucky to get the bag with it.

Well anyway. I was walking past a church close to where I live a few months back and I saw they’d put up a banner that reads Try Praying. Turned out that the slogan had been thought up by some folk near me. So I thought I might give it a go. After all, times are pretty rough for loads of people round here, not just myself.

It was a well-produced banner too, and hanging outside quite a nice building that gets a modest amount of footfall of a Sunday. Not as much as the boozer down the road but that’s another matter

So for a while I gave it my best shot. I dredged up a few phrases that I remember from my schooldays and even threw in a few of my own making. I didn’t ask for anything for myself, mind, I wasn’t after a 49-inch telly or a big house. Just general things like world peace and an end to hunger and poverty, the type of thing that all the religion bigwigs like the Pope and the Dalai Lama bang on about.

If you’ve seen the news recently, you’ll know how effective my praying was… because bugger all happened.

My mates said I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Things are as they are because that’s how they are, that’s life so stop your whingeing.

I can understand how easy it is to go along with that attitude – there’s so much stuff in the world that looks so complicated that you don’t even want to try to get your head around it.

But I’m not giving up that easily. I reckon things can be changed. I’m even tempted to put up my own banner outside my house, one that reads Try Thinking.

Now, I reckon there’s a good chance that like the vast majority of people on this planet, me included, you chose to be born in the wrong bed. Now I don’t necessarily mean that your family was really skint, although that could be true as well, I mean a family that has to work to earn a living. If you did, that was a crucial mistake. It probably means that you’re going to be a human resource, lumbered with boring work/unemployment/zero-hours contracts/insecure tenancies or stranglehold mortgages – I could go on but you know what I’m talking about – that bag of shite I mentioned just now.

Consider this for a moment, will you? All around the world, most real wealth is in the hands of an increasingly small minority. And what do they do with that wealth? First answer, they make damn sure that they keep their mitts firmly on it, and out of your reach. And who can blame them?

But that’s not the issue – the important thing is the effect of their ownership or control on production. It means that, by and large things are only ever made if there is a potential for profit. Seems crazy, but the latest fashion wasn’t produced to make you look fabulous, it was made by a human resource working in some crap-hole, maybe Leicester, maybe Vietnam, so that an employer can make some brass by flogging it on to you. Now producing for profit has all sorts of insane results. One of its minor faults is that it buggers up the planet – you know all that – if you don’t, go on Google. And every so often…. the markets come grinding to a halt and loads of people end up out of a job.

And you must have heard the joke about there being too much month at the end of the money. Producing for profit relies on keeping us not quite so skint that we can’t manage to go back into work next week, and skint enough to ensure that we bloody well do go back.

And then the sort of stuff that we can afford out of our wages is designed down to a price so it usually turns out to be a load of tat anyway, soon to be binned or fobbed off on a charity shop. Well, that’s what real life is like for us human resources.

There’s nothing natural about a situation where a minority can live it up while the rest of us just scrape by. This may have been going on for many years but there is no physical law that says that society has to be this way. The fact is that there is no longer any need for the capitalist system that has now taken over almost the entire world. My mates are wrong, change can happen, but it needs you and your mates to make it happen.

Budgie

Are We “Proud” of our Class? (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

A controversy is raging in the columns of the “New Leader” on the burning question of Keir Hardie’s famous Cloth Cap. Two rival theories clash, one, that the hat (variety doubtful) originally intended to grace his temples was inadvertently left at home; the other theory, stoutly maintained by a relative, is that the rock of offence to a scandalised House was in the nature of a grand gesture, a proletarian signal of defiance of the “Here stands a Post” pattern.

There is an alternative explanation. The ostentatious adoption of a badge of social inferiority savours at best of theatricality and at worst of inverted vanity. The man who could publicly announce “My experience of the Labour movement in all its phases is second to that of no other man alive in England” (5/5/1910, at Browning Settlement) was hardly a model of modesty. His insistence on the importance of the text, “Come unto me all ye that labour,” was subconsciously an exaltation of his one-story Cap into the Triple Tiara of Labour’s Pope. Hardie’s mental outlook was typical of the Labour leader; the last war revealed the Hodges and the Barnes for what they were worth to the working class movement. Will the present war undeceive the worker ? The ruling clique has hired abler men from the workers’ ranks than in 1914, and a decisive Allied victory will probably effectually blur recollection of their slaps in the face to factory, field and mine worker. There is a faint hope that some of the latter will remember the solid backing their Trade Union bosses have accorded the “Go To It”-ers. The Chairman of the T.U.C. Conference kicks off with a hymn of praise to Churchill.

Much sentimental nonsense goes around in Labour circles about “pride” in belonging to the working class. The informed Socialist finds no reason for “pride” in his quite involuntary membership of that class. A consoling satisfaction, perhaps, is the reflection that his class is the sole instrument which can eventually deliver the world from the horrors of capitalism. An aspect of this “pride” business is the blether summed up in the word “Proletcult.” Broadly speaking, the ruling class in any given society and age dictate “culture,” and until comparatively recent times has alone been able to command the means for expression of that culture, whether in song or verse, in marble or paint on rostrurn, pulpit or stage. In “democratic” Athens an Aeschylus owed his just fame to a rich citizen. Virgil’s genius was hired by the astutest politician of his age to act as his propaganda minister and literary high priest. The black specks of sycophancy which tarnish the glory of a Shakespeare in later ages were the product of a fundamentally similar social basis and resultant outlook; (“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed”).

Attempts have been made by the Cloth Hat Brigade of critics to exhibit ballads and “folk-songs” as emanating from the “great heart of the people” ; the simplicity of diction deceives. The “artiness” of the best ballads is hard to beat. As to “folk-songs,” the genuine articles to-day are the products of the music hall, and these can hardly be ranked as high art.

Hobbes dismissed the life of the savage as “poor, nasty, brutish and short”—an accurate description of the life of a huge mass of the working class, and under conditions which amply justify the description, what kind of “culture” can arise? The lewd dance, jazz, dreary tom-tom “spirituals”—these are some of the contributions to modern “culture” by which ages of negro slavery revenges itself on society. Augustus banished his daughter for a way of life contracted in a Rome saturated by the worst vices of gladiator and slave.

True, modern capitalism has evolved a section of relatively better placed “black-coated” workers, and the more far-seeing of the governing class have made it possible by scholarships to utilise the abilities of this section. But pay piper, call tune. How they dance to the tune !

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never boasted of its proletarian origin and membership; it is so “proud” of its class that it is out for its abolition. “Spite of the gloomy days made for our searching,” there are glimmers of sunshine. In the party itself, there is a growing spirit of sober hope. We shall continue to pursue our immediate task—political education, never swerving from our adherence to the principle of delegation of executive work and abhorence of leadership; in short, to the principles of Socialism and all that Socialism implies.

Augustus Snellgrove

The Capitalist Class To-day (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social contact between the proletarian and the capitalist is extremely rare. When it does happen and the proletarian is a Socialist into the bargain, the meeting can be highly illuminating. Such an incident in which the writer was involved produced certain impressions which are recorded here together with some conclusions.

Roughly the capitalists can be divided into two sections. There is the group which takes an active part in directing the political, financial and economic affairs of the nation. This group is continually decreasing in numbers, ability and prestige.

At the present moment we have proof of an extraordinary nature in support of this contention. Men like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, all of them proletarian in origin and up-bringing, have proven themselves more than a match as politicians and diplomats against rivals, who, inheriting generations of economic security and experience in governing a world-empire, possess all the obvious advantages in this game of diplomacy and international relations in which the stakes are nothing less than the right to exploit the natural resources of the earth and human labour power living on it.

In this country the governing class, faced with the greatest emergency in its lifetime, has to call on men who are ordinarily outside its social circle.

The leaders of British Labour are the products of the working class, such as for instance, men like Bevin, Alexander and Herbert Morrison.

All of which, while it will not help the cause of Socialism does show that the proletariat is in fact, not inferior in ability and intellect to its de facto master-class.

In the Socialist movement itself, we have men and women, who, despite the shattering effect of continued and harrassing poverty, are yet able to develop as writers and speakers and match their wits, most certainly their case, with the best that Anti-Socialism can produce.

As in the domain of politics, so in the sphere of production and distribution of wealth the capitalists are rapidly disappearing from the co-ordinating and supervisory activities, which in the past were their exclusive function.

Workers who are trained specifically for organisational duties have taken over this role to a large extent, particularly in those undertakings which having assumed proportions of a national and even international magnitude, are taken wholly or partly under the wing of the state machine.

As the development in productive technique increases the function of co-ordinating and supervising becomes merely the work of clerks and statisticians, book-keeping and the collating of figures, i.e., work that has no direct bearing on the organisation of production itself, which is thus reduced to a mechanistic process, entailing no human directive agency whatever excepting of course, the men who work the machines.

In “Finance,” which is another name for the gamble with the products of labour (as seen on the various stock exchanges) the same factors apply.

It is this disappearance of the capitalist from the economic activity of his system which is so largely responsible for the mental deterioration of that class. It is obvious that the lack of purposeful work is bound to result in the stagnation of the mind.

Where the capitalist is still active, politically or economically, he is invariably found to be openly reactionary, ready to fight tooth and nail even the slightest advance made by the working-class, be it over the question of wages and hours, or the actual threat to his political power.

So much for the active section. The other section, inactive in every social sense, is far more numerous and its ranks are ever swelling.

From the economic point of view, this second group is as one man content not to interfere with the productive process so long as the dividends, which accrue to them as a result of their propertied status, are forthcoming.

Only when disaster threatens, such as an economic crisis or a major war, are they ever heard or seen. Then they swarm out of their comfortable retreats in town and country and raise an outcry against the forces or persons they consider to be responsible for their impending plight.

Not that they are concerned with their own privileged position, so they protest; their woes are the woes of humanity as a whole, their cause is really the cause of all citizens, therefore everyone whether hunting the fox in Berkshire or hunting a job in Lancashire, must rally to the common cause.

Until this war began, how many of us knew that thousands of bourgois hearts were bleeding for a vanquished democracy in Germany, Italy or Spain.

True, the movements of protest against the brutality of the Nazi concentration camp attracted a certain number of the propertied class.

It is still to be questioned however, to what extent these people were moved by genuine love of democracy and humanity or whether fear of Germany’s growing military might was not the actual motive.

It certainly does seem that the policy of the present British Government is to frown on the purely anti-fascist exuberance of some of its most ardent well-wishers.

So Mr. Duff Cooper carefully explains that “it would not he wise to say we are fighting for a new social system.”

This is no more than can be expected; but when we recall that it was Mr. Duff Cooper also who at the beginning of the war prophesied the collapse of the Nazi regime and its replacement by a Monarchy (presumably he referred to a Hohenzollern restoration) we may well ask what Mr. Duff Cooper means by “a chahge in the Social System !”

Then again, there is the internment of Anti-Nazi refugees; Jews, Social-Democrats, Liberals, Communists, most of them people who must surely hate their persecutors with a passion unequalled even by the lofty flame burning inside the righteous hearts of our government.

Yet Prince von Startemberg, late leader of the fascist Austrian Heimwehr, erstwhile puppet of Mussolini, is enrolled in the De Gaulle Section of the Air Force.

It certainly seems as if the British capitalist does not welcome an over-emphasis on the anti-fascist (and pro-democratic) character of the war against Hitler Germany. They prefer the distinction between the two countries to maintain a national character and not to assume too much of an ideological flavour.

In fairness to the title of the article, we must mention the presence of a capitalist fraction which has as yet not been dealt with.

This fraction, small at present, but making itself heard, really belongs to that large inactive group just described.

But just as the preponderant majority of this inarticulate mass turns as one man to the support of its active spokesmen, so this last tiny group attempts to wrench itself free from its economic and political foundations, seeking a line-up with more advanced ideas and even with the proletariat itself.

To this group a number of organisations such as Federal Union and the Peace Pledge Union owe their existence, and individuals of this type have also drifted into the I.L.P. and the Communist Party.

Although many of these people are well-intentioned, they do not belong to that type of capitalist, which as Marx once prophesied, would during the revolutionary epoch rise objectively above their class and join forces with the proletariat.

Objectivity is impossible for that type; their actions are determined either by a sincere humanism or else to provide the frills of a dillettante to an otherwise empty and parasitic life.

Socialism they are constitutionally incapable of understanding and the life of the working class remains, even after inspection, a closed book.

Their most numerous representatives are in the various peace movements.

This is no accident. The capitalist has far more to lose by war than the worker. The life of a capitalist is a far more pleasant one, therefore more precious than that of a worker, his pocket also suffers badly as the cost of modern war reaches fantastic proportions.

These intellectual diversions, often prompted by none to altruistic motives, represent so far the apex of bourgois efforts to get to grips with the bewildering problems of the present age. They support the view consistently held and propagated by the S.P.G.B. that only the working class can be materially interested in the removal of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

The mental and physical decay of the Capitalists and their henchmen everywhere is bound to strengthen our cause.

Sid Rubin

The working-class (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

A gentleman more renowned for his wit than the science of his economic writings once said : “The working-class are a large body of people who are a nuisance, and they ought to be abolished” ; a statement with which we are in agreement. To the uninitiated such a proposition may seem in the nature of a demand for the annihilation of that variously conceived mass of humanity, but their abolition properly understood no more implies such than the abolition of slavery meant the destruction of the slave. One of the methods generally employed by Capitalist apologists in endeavouring to confound potential thinkers among the workers is to refer to “various classes,” “the public,” “the nation,” manual and brain workers, etc., meaningless terms and imaginary divisions used to hide the ugly and awkward fact that by scientific generalisation we can separate modern society into two distinct and antagonistic sections, a large majority, and a small minority. Further examination and enquiry will furnish us with the facts from which we can establish the identity of these two sections as, Working-Class and Capitalist Class respectively. This step in the mental equipment of the worker forms the basis upon which all correct economic thought on modern society is erected. Let his conception of classes be unsound, and his reasoning becomes confused as a consequence : Who then are the Working-Class? appearances are deceptive. A labourer goes to work early clad in cap and corduroy, an architect follows later indistinguishable from one of the directors. The architect is termed skilled, but would cut a sorry shine and probably break his neck if he tried dock work; while the docker is wrongly assumed unskilled. One receives a day’s pay, or a weekly wage; while the other draws his “salary.” Imagine the signwriter trying to wipe a joint alongside a plumber, or reverse the situation; contemplate a piano-tuner attempting to drive a taxi-cab the shortest route from Tottenham to Clapham Junction, and we see what an absurdity it is to attribute a monopoly of skill to any set or group of workers. What applies to these few instances is equally true of the millions from the lift boy to the manager, all are units with varying proportions of mental and physical energy, engaged in the social production and distribution of wealth. Of such then is the kingdom of the workers composed, different in many ways from an appearance point of view. We cannot classify them by dress, nor by mode of occupation, or by manner of remuneration, for there are daily, weekly, monthly, and other methods of payments of workers. In what respect is it then that we can put this apparently different mass of people into one class? When we have abstracted all their personal and minor peculiarities, what is it we have left common to them all, and yet is not common to the Capitalists as a class? All must work to live—but !—and here’s the point, they cannot work until they have found a master who will purchase their particular mode of expending their mental and physical abilities. Why you ask must this multitude of men and women from the professional to the casual labourer spend their lives year out and year in in the pursuit of these tasks. They do not do it because they love work, the only colour they, ever get usually begins where work ends; neither do they do it because it gives them an easy and pleasant life. Statistics of our industrial wreckage proves that. They do it because they are without property in the things that it is necessary to operate upon to produce wealth —the land, machinery, factories, warehouses, railways, etc.—all these things are the property of the small minority mentioned (the Capitalist Class), and the complex system of wealth production to-day requires all these various kinds of workers. All are equally important as cogs in the colossal machinery of modern production, they are the great majority (the Working-Class). As a class the masters do not work, the organising, supervising, etc., have become the specialised services of certain salaried workers, who when no longer wanted, or becoming unsuitable, “resign” instead of getting the “bullet.” Why then are the workers poor and the idlers wealthy?

Because the wealth produced belongs to those who own the means of producing it. The producers only being returned sufficient on the average to prolong their lives as useful instruments for producing profit. The lesson of the last half century has been that an ever-increasing quantity of wealth can be produced with a relatively smaller number of workers. This applies to the distributive trades as well, shop assistants, travellers, etc., everywhere the gloomy prospect for the workers is the same, more jobbers than jobs, the haunting insecurity of the future. And yet need it be? Yes and No. Yes, if you are going to continue as contented menials, your conditions must get relatively worse; and no, if you will study your own class interests in their scientific aspect—Socialism. Then you will see clearly the underlying meaning of our jest, for to abolish the Working-Class is to end the slavish conditions of your present existence and establish the classless society, The Co-operative Commonwealth.

W. E. MacHaffie

A Question of Classification. (1921)

From the June 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some Contradiction.
A writer in the "Daily Chronicle" calling himself Collum has an article entitled "Strikes and the Middle Classes," in which he attempts to show that the people he calls the "Middle Classes" are long-suffering and enduring under the tyranny of rulers on the one hand, and extortionate Trade Unionists on the other, but in reality are the most powerful section of the community. "It will be a bad day," he says, "for the working class when its extremist delegates succeed in driving the middle class to reprisals, because in a struggle for survival the middle class is bound to win."

From this extract we see on which side of the hedge his "middle class" takes its stand. Its interests are evidently opposed to the interests of the workers. What the threat of reprisals is worth we need not trouble to consider; our chief interest is to discover who are the people that make up this class, which is at the same time the most powerful and yet the most downtrodden, and why they permit any other section of society to dominate them, Collum's description of this mythical class is quoted in full:

Some Mixture.

   It is a queer mixture, this heterogeneous mass of citizens calling itself the Middle Class. The younger sons of the old landowning aristocracy slip down into it, and find there before them a solid phalanx of descendants of many generations of younger sons, and of the landed gentry that has long since lost or been taxed off its land, and has been earning its daily bread in one or other of the liberal professions or in business.
   Ambitious young men and maidens of the yeoman class who have benefited by technical education, and have "got on in the world," climb up into it, only to discover that the children of countless generations of peasant pioneers have done the same thing before them, and having become managers or even owners of little businesses, or shareholders in big ones, are now thoroughly identified in their interests with this great central stratum of the population that has come to include all who do not live by sub-letting part of their land to farmers on the one hand, and all who are ineligible for the working men's trade unions on the other.

Some Failure.
Now this is a genuine attempt to mark off the kind of people who make up the so-called middle class. Most writers are content to use the term loosely, leaving their readers to imagine a section of society that cannot be described as capitalists or as workers, or that partakes equally of the characteristics of both and, therefore, cannot be said to belong to either, but falls into a separate class by itself.

Although a genuine attempt, however, it is a complete failure for two reasons. First because the standard by which we are to judge who belong to this class is absurd, and secondly because, no sound reasons being given for separating those named into a class by themselves, he fails to establish the existence of a third class as a scientific fact. The absurdity of the standard he sets up is at once apparent when we remember that it is possible for a capitalist to possess enormous wealth and yet never to have been a landowner at all. Moreover, many shareholders in commercial concerns own land, and many landowners are also shareholders in industrial concerns.

Some Sense.
There is no purpose in classes at all unless such classes divide society into upper and lower, rulers and ruled. And there is no purpose in ruling unless it is to obtain, without toil, the largest possible share of the wealth produced by the class that is ruled. The "queer mixture" which Collum calls the middle class, according to him does not rule, because governments ignore their interests and generally treat them with contempt. He says "Governments in all lands have usually taken its patriotism for granted and unhesitatingly sacrificed its interests when threatened by aristocracies in the past or by privileged corporations of industrialist workmen in our day."

Some Strength.
So much for their boasted power—a class that can be sacrificed by one class to satisfy the demands of another is obviously of little account in the struggle of classes, and should find its proper place with the class that is ruled. Moreover, if we examine the "queer mixture" sketched out by Collum, we shall find that they really belong to that class.

The "younger sons of the old land-owning aristocracy who have slipped down" are obviously on the same plane as the "ambitious young men and maidens of the yeoman class." Both are faced with the necessity of earning a living. They compete with each other for jobs. This is the common ground on which they meet; but the first named, before they slipped down, were not under this necessity. They lived without being compelled to sell their energy, consequently they have changed their class. This is not the case with the second named. These have merely changed their jobs. They have to work still, but the work is more agreeable and possibly better paid. They have not stepped from one class to another. They have risen to the upper layers of their class, but not out of it. They still must bring to the labour market a form of energy that is saleable.

The name they give to the remuneration they are able to exact does not classify them out of their class. They may draw salaries, fees, or even have dividend-bearing shares allotted to them as part payment—all these are merely the price of their labour-power. Nor does the nature of the work performed remove a man from one class to another. If he works because he must in order to live, he belongs to the working class. Brains and muscles are both necessary to the worker before his labour-power—which is in all cases a combination of these two, can be sold as a commodity on the labour market.

Some Matter.
The one thing that matters to every man and woman in capitalist society is whether or not they have to sell their labour-power in order to live. The difference is that between freedom and slavery. To live on rent, interest, or profit without toil, or to sell the only thing they possess—their energy—and work at the bidding of another. A division which means so much to every member of human society must obviously be the most important to society as a whole. But the fact of such a division does not become general knowledge until many years after its discovery, because the spread of such knowledge conflicts with the interests of the ruling-class, who recognise in the general acceptance of scientific classifications of their system, the first step towards its disintegration.

Some Definition.
In the main capitalist society is made up of those who work for wages and those who, sharing in the ownership of the means of life, can live without work on rent, interests, or profits. All the people mentioned by Collum come under one of these two heads. It is the only important division of a general character. The first is the working class and the second the capitalist or master class. Every politician and dabbler in social subjects refers to the one and the other in those terms. Those who work under capitalism —with very few exceptions—are those who are compelled to do so in order to live and, broadly speaking, make up the working class. Those who are not compelled to work for wages, but, by virtue of the fact that they own some portion of the land or other means of wealth production, belong to the capitalist class. This is as much a scientific generalisation as the statement that the organic world is divided into the two great classes, animal and vegetable. In both cases, however, there is an insignificant fringe, or borderland, between the two broad divisions, made up of species in the one case, and individuals in the other, which it is somewhat difficult to classify; but generally speaking, men and women fail into one class or the other when we discover whether their income is derived mainly from exploitation or from the sale of their labour-power in one form or another.

Some Competition.
Everybody knows that there are a number of well-paid and at the same time easy jobs scattered about among the great bulk of arduous and ill-paid ones, but they are few compared with the latter, even in the occupations and professions in which they exist. The majority of those engaged in any profession are constantly struggling to maintain themselves and secure recognition. The competition between them continually grows keener in direct proportion as the ordinary conditions of the vast majority become more strenuous and ill paid. The "younger sons of the land-owning aristocracy" and the ''ambitious young men and maidens of the yeoman class" a class which, by the way, disappeared with the feudal system—all meet in this competitive arena, competing for a living by the sale of their energy or services. They belong to the class that lives by the sale of its labour-power.

Some Conclusion.
It is for those who talk glibly about the middle class to show on what grounds that class can be separated from the two main divisions mentioned above. In capitalist society the broad distinction is between capitalists and workers—between the class that owns the means of wealth-production and lives by exploitation, without labour, and the class that lives on wages, which is the price of labour-power, in one form or another. This latter class is correctly termed the working class, even by capitalists, to distinguish it from the class that does not work—a distinction which is a necessary result of our classification and proves its essential character. It divides human society into workers and drones. It is thus elementary, fundamental, and of the utmost importance, because without work human needs cannot be satisfied and human society cannot exist.

F. Foan

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the July 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

In previous articles under the above heading we have obtained a glimpse of the Materialist Conception of History. Bound up with this theory is the next one which we propose investigating, namely, the theory of the Class Struggle.

According to this theory history is made up of the struggles of different classes in society for social supremacy ; and the origin of the different clasees is to be sought in the prevailing method of wealth production and distribution at the different periods.

The scientific method of enquiry is in the first place to separate phenomena into different categories, grouping together things that have the same characteristics. For instance, in the animal world all warm-blooded, feathered animals with two limbs in the form of wings are classified as birds ; all cold-blooded, vertebrate, gill-breathing animals living in water and with limbs in the form of fins, are classified as fishes. These are two biological classes. Clearness in distinguishing is a pre-requisite of clear thinking. If things are correctly classified a good deal of the essential work of investigation is already accomplished.

When we apply the method of classification to human society we must separate the members of society into social classes according to their general characteristics.

Now the essential business of society is the material needs of the human beings that compose it—the provision of food, clothing, shelter, and so on. In order to satisfy these human needs the production of wealth must be carried on. Therefore in classifying the members of society they must be put into groups according to the position they occupy in relation to the production of wealth.

Different periods in social evolution are clearly marked off from each other by the different methods of producing the social wealth. Thus ancient Rome was characterised by its chattel slavery, as it was by means of the chattel slave that the bulk of the Roman wealth of that time was produced. The Middle Ages was characterised by its bond slavery, as the bulk of the wealth of the Middle Ages was produced by the bond slave.

Within the society of Roman times and of the Middle Ages there were other classes alongside the chattel slaves and the bond slaves. The relations and interests, created by wealth production based upon the two methods mentioned, split society up into various parts corresponding to the parts played in the production of the wealth of those times.

This is the key to the situation. Once obtain a knowledge of the way the members of a given society at a given period obtain their livelihoods and a clear understanding is gained of that society, its social classes, its development, and its eventual break-up.

Let us now examine present-day society in the manner set forth.

To begin with, we must classify—find out what are the classes that compose society, and in order to do this we must see how the various members of society obtain their livelihood.

If we examine the method of living of all the people we see around us and with whom we come into contact at different times during the course of our lives, we find that they all fall under one or the other of two headings (leaving beggars out of the question)—those who have to work for their living, and those who have their living provided for them by those who work.

Clothes are made, houses are built, railways and ships are constructed, by obtaining from nature the material, then changing its place, its form, its character, and so giving it these qualities and properties necessary to satisfy our requirements. Nature provides the material, but its place and form are changed by the application of human energy—in other words, by the people working. There is no other way of producing wealth than by working. This is too obvious to need labouring further.

Who, then, does the working that produces the wealth of to-day ? Obviously those whom everyone is agreed in calling the working class—the class of people that works. If we go into a factory, mill, mine, or office we see people performing various functions in the work of turning out wealth. Some are tending machines, some hauling ropes, some pushing pens ; some are foremen, some overseers—but all of them are workers. All have to be at their various functions at given times and all have to perform their allotted tasks. None dare cease work without risk of losing his occupation and consequently his means of livelihood, whether he wears a collar or a “kercher” about his neck, sports corduroys or “morning” clothes, smokes woodbines or cigars. In short, they are all employees of that mysterious entity, “the firm.”

Now what is “the firm”? It is not composed of the factory workers as they are employees; nor is it composed of the office staff as they are employees ; likewise the foremen and managers are employees.

The mysterious thing called “the firm” represents people outside the sphere of work altogether, i.e., the people who regularly draw their dividends out of the company, but who are seldom or never seen anywhere near the field of productive operations. The dividend-drawers are scattered all over the earth—here to-day and hundreds of miles away to-morrow.

The mass of the population are those who live by working—who are dependent for their livelihood upon finding employment for their mental or physical energies. In other words they belong to the employed or working class.

A very small proportion of the population (becoming relatively smaller every day) belong to the dividend-drawing, employing, or capitalist class. In spite of the fact that they idle their lives away, wealth pours regularly into their coffers in ever-increasing quantities.

The question now arises: How is one section of the community enabled to occupy the position of employing class whilst the other section has to occupy the position of employed ?

The answer is not far to seek. The members of the employed class are bound to find employment because they do not own either the means of production or the wealth produced. The only possession they have is the capability to perform mental or physical work (the two are, of course, not distinct, although it, is customary to distinguish them in this way).

Consequently, in order to obtain the means to sustain life, they must work for the owners of the means of production, in spite of the fact that they themselves have produced those tame means of production, with the exception of what nature provides.

The employing or capitalist class own the means of producing and distributing the wealth of our times (the extent of the mighty amalgamations that have been portrayed in the papers recently should drive this point home to the most apathetic worker). They can at will (and do during lockouts) deny the workers access to the instruments of production, so that production may be at times suspended (as during so-called over-production) even though myriads of people may be perishing from lack of food clothing, and shelter.

In order that the machinery of present-day production can be set in motion it is necessary that capital shall be invested in certain ways. The employing class supply the capital with which to commence a process of producing wealth. This fact leads many astray, and has given birth to the idea that “we cannot do without the capitalist.” This method of setting the productive machinery in motion, however, is peculiar to the capitalist method of production. In pre-capitalist days other methods operated, and in post-capitalist days different methods will also obtain. In the last analysis, however, the workers produce the very capital that oils the machinery of production. We shall return to this point later.

The capitalists, then, have possession of the wealth of capitalist society (we leave aside for the moment the question of how they obtained or retain possession), and the workers are therefore compelled to sell their power to work under the conditions laid down by the class that own the means whereby the workers live. In return for the duties the workers discharge they are paid at certain rates of wages. The workers do not work because they are fond of work; they work to obtain wages (or salaries) because wages represent to them the means of obtaining to some extent the necessaries to sustain life.

It will therefore be seen that the modern worker is a slave, a wage-slave, and his slavery is every bit as acute as the slavery of the chattel slave or the bondsman of the past, though the leather thong is replaced by the lash of starvation. The sight of dependent loved ones starving has proved a more potent lash than any instrument invented by man.

From the foregoing it will be seen that modern society is composed of two distinct social classes—the capitalist class and the working class. A very cursory examination will show that the interests of the two classes, i.e., their class interests, are, and must be, quite distinct and in direct opposition. A line of action that harmonises with the interests of the one class is directly antagonistic to the interests of the other.

To the capitalist the employment of workers signifies the giving up, in the form of wages, of a certain portion of the wealth he possesses. His aim, therefore, is to reduce this portion to the absolute minimum—to pay as little wages as possible. This object he endeavours to accomplish by the introduction of improved machinery—labour-saving devices—improved methods, and speeding up the employed. The ideal he aims at is the time foreshadowed by Aristotle, when the tool could by itself execute its function—the capitalist could then enjoy all the wealth produced and would have no need to relinquish a part of it to pay troublesome wage-earners !

The worker, on the other hand, who is compelled to sell his energies in one way or another in order to buy the necessaries of life, aims at getting as high a wage as possible and resisting the introduction of new methods, etc., as the latter tends to take away from him his means of obtaining a livelihood. He aims at the ideal of the ceaseless multiplication of jobs.

Herein, then, is apparent the antagonism of interests within present society. This antagonism of interests has bred the modern class struggle—the struggle of the working class against the master class—that has been fought out for years in a vague and half unconscious manner by combinations of workers during the industrial conflicts that yearly attain greater proportions. Ultimately this struggle, like all preceding class struggles, must be fought out on the political field as it is at the bottom a struggle for supremacy; the only solution to the conflict and to the contradictions that exist to-day is the overthrow of the present ruling class, the capitalists.

Gilmac.

(To be Continued.)

Purblind Samson. (1920)

From the June 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is one fact that impresses an observer of social life in the 20th century very forcibly, amidst all the gigantic progress of Science evinced in the harnessing and utilisation of the forces of Nature. This paramount fact is the active power and potentialities of the proletariat. The working class, in fact, is not only all-important, but, with education and organisation on class conscious lines, will ultimately be all-powerful.

The workers, as a class, know not yet their own colossal might. Alone producing all the wealth of the world, the very fabric of society is maintained by their active energies of mind and hands.

A section of them strike, and the withholding of their labour frequently disorganises industry. Many sections strike concurrently, the wheels of production cease to revolve, and a serious crisis is precipitated. Labour, the mighty Samson, has not yet learnt his strength.

For the truth is that though the scales are slowly falling from his eyes, he still suffers with dimness of vision—is, in fact, a purblind Sampson !

The working class, indeed, is made up of those whose political and economic vision varies very considerably. Very many are as yet blind to the realities of the capitalist system; they do not understand that they are wage-slaves to those who own the mean’s of life of society; they do not see that they are robbed by means of the wages system of most of the wealth they have produced and continue to produce. Not understanding the essentials of capitalist production, they fail to understand Socialism, or even the need for it. In fact, with docility and diligence they “mark time” for their masters like automata.

As time goes on the class struggle itself, in which the workers are involved, is performing a wondrous operation upon them, for they are suffering through the inevitable evils of capitalism—unemployment, pitiable wages, and chronic poverty. At the mercy of their exploiter sand profiteers they frantically turn this way and that to cope with the evils of capitalism, and out of unwisdom try futilely to set things straight. But the SYSTEM that produces their sufferings they do not dream of attacking ! They see neither a definite goal, nor the way to it.

Yet a small minority there is who, by experience, thought, and study, are clear-sighted enough to see the way before them. These are the class-conscious and revolutionary proletarians. They know that no palliatives or tinkering reforms of any kind will, or can remove the blighting effects of the present system or emancipate their class from wage slavery.

Only the destruction of capitalism itself, and the establishment by the workers of the Socialist Commonwealth in its place ever can—and it inevitably will. And this they know can be proved by a series of irrefutable facts—a perfect arsenal of scientific proofs, historic, material, economic, and political.

We have seen, during the last few years particularly, an accentuated and ever-increasing class-struggle, growing out of the essential antagonism between the wealth-producing workers and their exploiters. And that conflict of interests produces an increased class-consciousness in some, whilst it illuminates and reveals for others the essential clash of the classes that is the outcome of the capitalist system, and of which they probably had not been otherwise aware.

Also the development of a predatory and ruthless system of capitalism automatically not only produces its antagonists, but drives them to combat it. And the result is that weapon after weapon will be tried and discarded—because they are no good.

Syndicalism, Direct Action, Industrial Unionism, etc.—what are these but names of various forms of pathetic futility ?

Co-partnership is a childish scheme in that it does not even aim at the abolition of the exploitation of the worker, and only increases his servile relationship to his “altruistic” employer. The Trade Unions are used by the capitalist class as instruments by which, through treacherous and lying Labour “leaders,” the clamour of their members for better wages and conditions of labour can most effectively be suppressed.

At the best the function of the Trade Unions is simply that of collectively bargaining for a better price for their members’ labour-power, and better conditions, not to abolish the system under which they are daily robbed.

It all finally reduces down to the matter of class-consciousness—an exact knowledge of their position, importance, and potentialities, on the part of the workers AS A CLASS in relation to society as a whole, and especially to to the capitalist class, to whom they stand as propertyless, wealth-producing slaves.

Class-consciousness must be the basis of all revolutionary political action, and it is a tremendous driving force, wherever it is developed. It germinates from a mixture of experience and the study of Marxian economics.

Without class-consciousness as arriving force all the varied activities of the proletariat to better their conditions must necessarily be weakened in power.

Our exploiters, the capitalist class, hold, and will continue to keep as long as they can, the whole edifice of society as a means to conserve and further their own class interests. It is only because they have the POLITICAL POWER that they wield such force as they do.

Shorn of that, their parasite-hold on society at once relaxes—they are hurled from their position of dominance.

But whilst they are in possession of the political means of “Law and Order” they not only make the laws in their own class interest, but will have them enforced if necessary by the Army, Navy, and Police.

It is obvious, then, that no action whatever on the part of the long oppressed proletariat will emancipate the workers from wage-slavery other than the capture of political power for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism and establishing Socialism. All else is blind battling with temporary evils, and a mere beating of the air.

Labour, the purblind Samson, uses but a tiny bit of his strength. At present he lacks vision. Education in Socialist principles, political and economic experience will act as goads. Then, organised on the economic field, and on the political field for the capture and control of the machinery of government, he will use his Titanic power for the overthrow of capitalism and the upbuilding in its place of the Socialist Commonwealth. He will have been the slavery of his class and all that he is robbed of; he will see that SOCIALISM is the only hope of the workers, and he will not be satisfied till it is established.

Graham May

We are the Working Class (2019)

From the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am, you are, we are. In fact the masses of the great majority of the global population are of the working class. Together we deliver everything that we need to survive, to live, to dream about even. We depend on each other often without realising it. Who likes a beer at the end of a day’s work? How often do we pause to consider from where and how did it come to be in front of us? The preparation of the soil, the sowing, planting, reaping and picking of the hops and the barley, the choice of water and the skill of how to combine these ingredients to satisfy us with a decent pint – and consider the making of the barrels, the storage and transport to the bars where the beer pipes and taps all need taking care of before we, as end users, can satisfy our thirst.

Consider your own work, or that of any other individual: however you arrive at your workplace, how many other workers were involved to enable you to get there? By car? It may seem that if the car is yours then you don’t need anyone else until it’s time for a service or routine fill up, but what about the design, the mining of the raw materials and all the individuals required for making the car? It’s possible that dozens, if not hundreds, of individual workers from different parts of the world had a role in producing the car that you call your own. The same holds for public transport with the addition of all the staff required for driving, ticketing, servicing, cleaning, refuelling and timetabling. So many fundamental functions performed throughout our daily lives without a thought for the integral part played by so many others, most of whom we’ve never met.

I well remember the sixties in industrial South Yorkshire working for 2s 6d an hour in a toy shop during the Christmas break from University. It seemed grossly unfair to me that a ‘regular’ girl eighteen months younger than me earned less for doing the same job. Then there was the factory work during the longer summer break. Sorting peanuts from a fast-moving belt for two hour stretches followed by weighing two ounces of said peanuts onto a fast moving vertical machine, assembling cardboard boxes, filling boxes and so on, all for two-hour stretches. Hand up to visit the lav and don’t stay too long or you’d be in trouble. Here the women were also working for peanuts, but it was this or something similar they had to look forward to. I considered myself lucky as I planned ‘a better job’ later. Then I recall the brass foundry where muscles were greatly strengthened hurling the huge water valves we assembled onto the ground. On the opposite side of the aisle were the skilled men, toolmakers and the like and walking up and down all day were the men, usually immigrants on the lowest pay scale, pushing and loading trolleys non-stop day after day.

These were my introductions to working life after growing up hearing the stories of my father and grandfather as blast furnacemen, my five uncles, brothers who all started as coal miners, and our neighbours who were all engaged one way or another in the industrial sector, whether as labourers, skilled workers, office staff or management. If the women worked outside the drudgery of their own homes at that time the work was mostly shop work, hairdressing or cleaning. They worked at what they could find to improve standards at home or to help pay for a summer holiday as a family in a caravan by the seaside for a week or two.

Fifty years later

Fast forward fifty years or so and things have changed a great deal in some ways from those times but definitely not necessarily for the better. South Yorkshire now seems bereft of industry and manufacturing. There are plenty of call centres and warehousing it seems and all the towns have some kind of shopping mall, but production seems very limited – similar to what has and is happening in many parts of the developed world. Now bigger profit is much easier to achieve a long way from home. Developed countries long ago began looting and plundering the ‘undeveloped’ parts of the world for their own advantage and it seems that they are now reaching the top of their curve as they cause more and more misery to the millions of working-class people of the wider world. Companies open mega factories of clothing, electronics, computer, mobile phone or other assembly or manufacturing plants, and huge corporations make deals with foreign governments which involve emptying great swathes of land of people, working class people who, up till that time worked the land for themselves and their local communities. What we are witnessing here is on a scale our predecessors could only dream about. My point here is that we, the working class of developed countries, in large numbers, do not seem to be aware of what is being done by our own countries’ controllers to bring untold harm, deprivation, starvation and death to the working class population of a large part of the world, supposedly to provide us with our needs and wants.

Socialism is a universal concept. You, me, we – we’re dependent on one another, all of us. We absolutely cannot do without each other and this message has to be driven home until it is understood by more and more of our fellow workers. It doesn’t matter what your take home pay is, whether you get it weekly or monthly, it’s nothing to do with the size of your house, the make of your car, whether you receive some form of benefit, whether you can afford a holiday or not. Skilled or unskilled, male or female, indoors or out, working from home or travelling abroad, fulfilling work or crap job – if you can’t continue paying your debts or feed yourself and your family without that wage coming in then you are undoubtedly of the working class – welcome! Academic, blast furnaceman, chemist, doctor or dry cleaner, librarian, miner, nurse, window cleaner, youth worker, zoo keeper… Fill in the gaps, there’s unlimited scope.

Another question we could ask each other and ourselves is about how many individuals we know who are not working class. I mean know personally. The likelihood of bumping into one of the capitalist class on the way to work or at the pub or restaurant we choose, at the gym or football match, at the hairdressers or the supermarket. Yes, we know of them by name or reputation but do we ever get a chance to put our views and questions to them? The people we see every day are, whether they know it or not, working class. We have more in common with them than not and we have to get used to it. Globally and locally we need each other and if we are going to reach the goal of socialism we need to engage at every opportunity.

As for the better job idea I had five decades ago, and this is relevant, well, of course, it didn’t turn out as expected. I involved myself with various occupations to put off the day when I would ultimately begin work as a teacher – but fast forward again to the decision to retire early when my long-term partner was medically discharged from work. This decision was first and foremost related to income and mortgage. As Socialist Party members domiciled overseas we are economic migrants. We can’t afford to live in the country of our birth – yes, this is thought to only be happening the other way round, with much noise and opposition to ‘these foreigners’ taking our jobs in the UK and other European countries.

And so much of this misplaced noise comes from large sectors of the working class themselves who fail to understand that the cause of the problem is not the ‘foreign’ working class at all but the real cause, the real enemy is the capitalist system with its focus purely on profit and absolutely no regard for negative effects on workers wherever in the world they live.

Now, living in a ‘foreign’ land for more than twenty years life seems to revolve around tea. Our neighbours recognise us for who we are and we them. A rural area with mostly small farm plots where life is generally hard. Called into the tea house as we pass by, conversation soon turns to the economy. Stories are legion – the high price of tractor fuel, the rock bottom price for lemons this year, the cost of buying in straw and extra silage for the cows, the increasing price of general, necessary foodstuffs not grown by themselves, another hike in the cost of electricity. As we finish our second or third glass of tea and prepare to leave there’s always someone at the table ready to tell us, ‘that’s capitalism you know!’

Our world is a very big place. Our world is also a very small place. Understanding ‘the other’ is a vital cog in the wheel of bringing us all closer together, to recognise the absolute need of the workers of our world to achieve our common aims together. Different languages, different colour skin, different cultures, an amazing tapestry of humanity of which we are all a part.

JS.

Letter: ‘Stressed Out’ (2015)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Paul Bennett does an excellent job in his article ‘Stressed Out’ explaining just how much pressure workers are under today (Socialist Standard, June 2015).

It’s no surprise that education and health are suffering higher levels of stress, too. Business values have steadily been imported in to areas that in theory are under state-control. It’s now difficult in any work place to escape certain values! Education and health are increasingly business-orientated in many ways.

Researchers like Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, who wrote ‘The Spirit Level’ book, have also explained how very unequal societies make our physical and mental health worse generally. A divided society creates real problems, including stress and illness.

The best stress-relief is changing ‘the system’!

 Graeme Kemp, 

Wellington, Shropshire

Global class (2016)

Book Review from the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class’, by Immanuel Ness (Pluto Press, 2016)

The author teaches political science at the City University of New York. He has also been a union organizer and an activist in various projects in defense of workers’ rights. He has shown particular concern with the plight of migrant workers.

Theories of the ‘post-industrial society’ are based on the perception that industry is declining and the industrial working class shrinking or even disappearing. Ness points out that this is an illusion. Manufacturing and mining remain of vital importance to the global economy and employ more workers than ever before. However, they are no longer concentrated in the ‘Global North’ – North America, Europe and Japan – as they were in the twentieth century. They have moved to developing regions in the ‘Global South’ such as industrial zones in the three countries chosen by the author for his case studies – India, China and South Africa.

The statistics that Ness marshals in support of this thesis are indeed striking. The share of the Global South in gross fixed capital formation increased from 14 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2010, while its share of industrial employment in formal sectors of the economy rose from 50 percent to 80 percent over the same period. The corresponding shift in the geographical distribution of wealth is less dramatic because much of the industry in the South is owned by capitalists in the North who repatriate the profits.

Repeated use of the term ‘Global South’ in this connection may be misleading, inasmuch as the new industry is not spread throughout what used to be called the ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ countries. It is heavily concentrated in just a few countries and in just a few areas within those countries. Most of Africa, for example, is still pre-industrial. Clearly we need a terminology more differentiated than binary divisions like developed/developing or North/South.

The main interest of the book lies in its descriptions and analyses of workers’ struggles in three regions – the Gurgaon industrial belt near New Delhi, the Pearl River Delta in southern China, and the mining belt in the northwestern part of South Africa. The three cases differ considerably in terms of political context, union organization (or its absence) and market conditions, although there are some significant common features – notably, the sharp divide between relatively secure and well paid ‘permanent’ workers and insecure and poorly paid ‘temporary’ or contract workers (often migrants).

Of the three groups studied it is Chinese workers who have made the greatest gains in recent years. This is despite the fact that – in contrast to India and South Africa – they are prevented from forming independent trade unions and can organize themselves only within the workplace. The crucial factor seems to be an emerging labor shortage – an inadvertent result of the one-child policy. Employers in India, where labour is in abundant supply, have responded to labour unrest by firing and replacing entire workforces. In China this is not a feasible option.

The account of the miserable pay and harsh working conditions of platinum miners in South Africa, whose protests led to the massacre of striking workers at Marikana in 2012, reveals how little ‘black’ working people have gained from the abolition of apartheid. ‘Black’ politicians, union bureaucrats and police are no less ruthless than their ‘white’ predecessors in manipulating and repressing ‘black’ workers in the service of (still mostly ‘white’) capital.

Ness appears not to have a definite political affiliation, but his theoretical framework (in particular, his concept of ‘imperialism’) shows signs of Leninist influence.

He has illusions regarding the position of workers in China under Mao, claiming that the working class enjoyed social benefits and job security. In fact, the division between permanent workers, who did possess such benefits, and temporary workers, who did not, was already well established at that time.

The author’s writing style could do with improvement and the tables contain some errors. Nevertheless, the book has a lot to offer and is well worth reading, for it does at least attempt to grasp the evolution of capitalist society and the working class as global phenomena.

Stefan

Post-modern guru (2009)

Book Review from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Goodbye Mr Socialism. Radical Politics in the 21st Century. Antonio Negri with Raf Scelsi. Serpents Tail Press, London, 2008

The Italian intellectual, Toni Negri, who was once sentenced to jail in Italy for giving a theoretical defence of urban terrorism, is highly regarded in some circles. The blurb on the back of this book describes him as “one of the world’s leading experts on Marxism” and as “a guru of the post-modern Left”. He may well be the latter but is certainly not the former.

The opening chapter is a surprisingly indulgent justification of some of the things that happened in Stalin’s Russia, even if this is part of the “Mr Socialism” to which he is saying good bye in this transcript of a question and answer session with another Italian intellectual. The other part is the whole idea of the factory proletariat, organised in trade unions and left wing political parties, as the agent of social change:

“the epoch of wages is finished and that the struggle has moved from the level of a fight between capital and labour regarding the wage, to a fight between the multitude and the State around the income of citizenship.”

The “income of citizenship” is a clumsy translation of what is more usually called a “Basic Income” or, by the Green Party, a “Citizen’s Income”, defined in a lexicon at the end of the book as:

“a monetary payment distributed at regular intervals to all those who enjoy citizenship and residency for a certain period of time, which allows a minumum dignity of life . . . It is paid to those of working age, for the period that goes from the end of obligatory schooling to pension age or death.”

Negri supports this as he sees the demand for it as “a refusal of work and of the wage relationship”. If introduced other than as some tinkering with the tax and benefits system it would indeed undermine the economic compulsion to go out and work for an employer; which of course (apart from its cost) is why it is never going to happen under capitalism. In any event, as a goal, it is a poor substitute for “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

Negri does, however, have a point when he criticises those who look only to the factory proletariat as the agent of social change. This is only a section of the working class properly so-called and, in the developed capitalist parts of the world, is now less than 50 percent of the workforce. But, in placing his hopes in those with knowledge skills involved in non-material work (the “cognitariat” as he calls them) he would seem to be making the same mistake of wanting to rely on a section only of the working class.

Surely the point is that social change has to be up to the class of wage and salary workers as a whole, not just one section. Or perhaps this is what Negri means by the “multitude”, which, if it is, comes across in English as a rather derogatory term to describe all those forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary.

Adam Buick

90 per cent (1977)

Quote from the August 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Dad was a miner—my Mum and Dad had nothing—like 90 per cent of the people in this country.

— Kevin Keegan, footballer.

Are you a Wage Slave? (1973)

From the June 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classes can be distinguished by their relationship to the means of production and distribution. In capitalist or state capitalist society, workers have access to farms, factories, mines, railways etc. only as wage-labourers (or salaried employees, if you prefer euphemisms).

The worker owns nothing save his labour-power (manual skills, qualifications, experience, brains) but he has got to live. He doesn’t have free access to food, housing or anything; they all have a price tag. He cannot get a living without money. So he sells his labour-power. At the end of the week or month he is paid according roughly to how much it costs a worker to keep a roof over his head and reproduce, complicated by the need to pay skilled workers at a higher rate and also by varying levels of unemployment. Wages generally are geared to “cost of living” figures. They are not geared to the value of what the workers produce.

The employers make a profit from the value of the work done, over and above what is paid out as wages, cost of raw materials, machinery and other overheads. Everything the workers buy is produced and distributed by the working class themselves. Yet their access to the wealth they produce so abundantly is severely rationed and limited by the money in the paypacket. An obvious example is housing. In the South East unless you earn over £3,500 a year you will not easily find a home you can buy. The result is that most building workers — bricklayers, plumbers, joiners etc. — cannot buy the houses they themselves build.

This is what “cash wages” (or cheque salaries) means in practice: rationing, by a singularly inappropriate process. Our pay packets have no relevance to our level of needs: they only reflect the value of our labour-power — whether we are skilled and scarce, or unskilled and abundant. Old people, handicapped people, women, children, sick people: all these are especially needy, and they are the people who have least money.

This can only mean that our society has the wrong priorities. This problem of the distribution of what man produces can only be solved by Socialism, a common ownership society, democratically controlled by all people, with free access to all mankind’s wealth. Socialism will mean no poverty, no-one suffering hunger or homelessness through lack of money while food and houses are available in abundance.

Charmian Skelton

The Position of the Workers. (1932)

From the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

For many generations men’s minds have turned to the problem of human happiness. Human misery has been so obvious that it was bound to re-act on the more sensitive and sympathetic, and the result has been many fantastic and impracticable utopias, from Plato’s to Robert Owen’s.

That these visionary projections have been fantastic and impracticable has been due, not to wilful misleading or lack of intelligence, but to the absence of economic and historical knowledge of the social system.

It is only in quite recent times that social development and scientific research have given us the knowledge which was requisite to enable mankind to proceed with understanding to the establishment of a social system in which the, furtherance of human happiness and well-being will be the common object of all effort.

Armed with this knowledge, the founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain set themselves to form an organisation which would serve the revolutionary purpose. The works of scientists like Marx and Engels, and Lewis Morgan, have shown them

1. That society evolves;
2. That society evolves by revolution (at all events, in historical times);
3. That these revolutions are always the conscious work of a revoluntionary class.

History shows that every class which has acquired ruling power has been revolutionary in its time, but no class has been revolutionary twice. The rising revolutionary class strives to wrest control from the ruling class, succeeds, and, in the nature of things, consolidates its position and strains every nerve to maintain the new social base which has given it power. Immediately it becomes reactionary.

In the course of time the means of production outgrow the conditions imposed by the existing social structure, a new revolutionary class arises whose interest is to set up a new social order. There is a class struggle terminating in another social revolution.

Capitalism was enabled to displace Feudalism because the latter was based on the control of the land, which was only part of the means of production—the most important part at one time, it is true. But there was another form of wealth outside the control of the feudal nobility—merchants’ wealth, and later manufacturers’ wealth. Those who possessed this wealth, the capitalists, achieved their revolution, and are now a reactionary class.

Up to the present, each class that has conquered power has brought with it the seeds of its own destruction, because each has depended for its existence upon the exploitation of another group within itself, that only became a separate and distinct class after the successful outcome of the revolution. 

But under capitalism productive property is controlled by the capitalist class. There is no other class of property owners to kick against their rule. It is impossible for the rulers to become the conscious agents of their own overthrow—and only conscious agents can establish the revolution, because, though a system can be destroyed without its destruction being consciously aimed at, the setting up of a new one—the other half of the revolutionary process—presupposes conscious effort. Who then are to be the agents of the revolution that will achieve Socialism? The only class that is left to carry out the revolution is the working class.

But in order to fit themselves for this task the workers must acquire the consciousness which can alone enable them to do so. This consciousness must comprise, first of all, a knowledge of their class position. They must realise that, while they produce all wealth, their share of it can never, under the present system, be more than sufficient to enable them to reproduce their efficiency as wealth producers; in other words, it can never exceed their cost of subsistence. They must realise also that, under the system, they will remain subject to all the misery of unemployment, the anxiety of the threat of unemployment, and the cares of poverty. They must understand next, the implications of their position —that the only hope of any real betterment of their condition lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to being mere sellers of their labour-power, to be exploited by the capitalists.

They will see then that, since this involves dispossessing the master class of the means through which alone the exploitation of labour-power can be achieved, there must necessarily be a struggle between the two classes—the one to maintain the present system of private ownership of the means of living, and the other to wrest such ownership from them, and make these things the property of society as a whole. This is the struggle of a dominant class to maintain its position of exploitation on the one hand, and of an enslaved and exploited class to obtain its emancipation on the other. It is a class struggle.

A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and the methods by which to proceed,  in order to become the fit instrument of the revolution.

In every social system the people who produce the wealth by which society lives have a very definite position in that society. Thus the chattel slave was a commodity—a mere piece of property, bought and sold. It was himself, and not his labour-power, which was sold. His position was that of, say, a horse.

The modern worker, on the other hand, is not property. It is not himself, but his labour-power, which is the commodity. He is the machine which produces the labour-power. Like all machines, he is subject to wear and tear; and like all machines nothing can be got out of him that is not put in.

On the other hand, just as every mechanism must justify its existence by being more economical than the next lower grade of appliance, so the human machine has to produce the greatest return for what is put into it, because it also has its competitors.

These competitors are machinery and methods. The dearer labour-power is, the more rapidly machinery and improved methods advance; and the more rapidly these advance, the greater is the number of unemployed serving to depress wages. The result of the operation of these conflicting forces is that labour-power sells for the cost of its production, or, as it is sometimes put, wages gravitate around the level of subsistence.

We now come to the point which presents the difficulty. To say that wages equal subsistence level by no means explains what determines that subsistence level, and we are well aware that the standard of living varies considerably in different capitalist countries, to say nothing of those which are not completely capitalistic. Why is not the level of subsistence lower or higher? Why is it just where it is?

All other commodities sell, on the average, after variations have cancelled one another, at prices which depend upon their value. The value of a commodity is the labour time necessary to its production. Hence commodities exchange in a ratio according to the labour time necessary to produce them.

This result is assured by the fluidity of capital. Capital is invested in the most profitable directions. Where prices are below a certain point, other things being equal, profits are lower. Capital is then transferred to the production of those classes of commodities whose prices are higher and which therefore show a larger profit. On this account the increased production of the high priced goods brings such an extra quantity of them on the market that their prices tend to fall. This corrects the production of both the high-priced and the low-priced goods, and through that corrects the prices.

But the wage worker cannot convert his means of production (food, etc.) into the production of some other commodity than labour-power. True, he will endeavour to scramble into those trades which pay best, but this does not get him far.

The truth is that capitalism itself sets the standard of living of its workers to meet its own requirements. Capitalists have been compelled to educate the workers because they need an educated working class. Education, in its turn, gives the workers other needs, and though it does not give the means of satisfying those needs, the needs themselves form an additional inducement to struggle for the means to satisfy them. To create needs is to add them to the standard of living, and therefore to increase the wage which must be struggled for.

On the other side, if wages rise above the normal standard (as they do in times of “trade boom”) there is a tendency to resort more to machinery and improved methods, which mean greater intensity of exploitation and more unemployed. Actually, many employers are discovering that a higher standard of living is necessary to enable the workers to stand the greater exhaustion of more intense exploitation.

It may be affirmed that every level of subsistence of the working class has its own intensity of exploitation, its own ratio of unemployment, and that, therefore, whether the standard of living is a little higher or a little lower, in the long run the quality of labour-power required by capital is produced at its lowest cost, and is sold for that cost. Hence the position of the workers is the hopeless one that they must always struggle to maintain their wages at subsistence level, but that they cannot do more. All the vast and wonderful improvements in the productive processes which mean such stupendous wealth for the owners, mean only more intensive conditions for the workers. They can have no share in it. All the reforms and all the philanthropy cannot touch this position. Remove the unemployed to-day, to-morrow machinery will have produced them again. Give the workers free houses or free bread—they must struggle just as hard for the remainder of their necessities.

Attempts at reform, therefore, are useless. They are defeated by the very operation of the economic laws of our competitive system.

As a matter of fact, capitalism is always being reformed. Reforms are the red-herring by which the capitalists keep the workers on the wrong scent. Reforms and palliatives keep the wage-slaves running from Tweedledum to Tweedledee and from Tweedledee to Tweedledum. And when, after much fighting, each reform or palliative is gained, it is only such as is necessary to keep capitalism safe for capitalists.

A. E. Jacomb