Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ukraine is being devastated… The threat of escalation to nuclear war intensifies. Perhaps worst of all, in terms of long-term consequences, the meager efforts to address global heating have been largely reversed. Some are doing fine. The US military and fossil fuel industries are drowning in profit, with great prospects for their missions of destruction many years ahead… Meanwhile, scarce resources that are desperately needed to salvage a livable world, and to create a much better one, are being wasted in destruction and slaughter, and planning for even greater catastrophes’.

[CounterPunch]

‘We really don’t have time for the Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Spartacists, Revolutionary Communists or whatever sect in Your Party to get their shit together in order to take on the challenges we face – they might never overcome their miniscule differences or the battle of the £1 newspapers,’ Mish Rahman, a former Labour politician-turned-Your-Party-insider who defected to the Greens last month, told Novara Media. Rahman said he doubts the differences between the two camps are as substantive as they’re made out: ‘[Sultana and Corbyn] are not far off each other [politically], it’s just a proxy war for control’. 

[NovaraMedia]

‘”They say they don’t have enough homes, but look at how many empty ones there are – [the council] just doesn’t want to fix and repair them,” says mother-of-one Vanessa. She lives on Central Hill estate in Lambeth but only in temporary accommodation and says she’s been left “in limbo”. Dozens of properties on the south London estate are unoccupied, one for eight years, and yet the borough has the third-highest housing waiting lists in the capital – something that Vanessa, who has been waiting for a social home for three years, describes as “outrageous”’. 

[BBC]

Los Angeles spent about $418 million on homelessness programs in 2025, yet only a small share went toward helping people leave the streets for good, according to the New York Post. A recent City Hall report suggests most of the money supports short-term services that manage homelessness rather than resolve it. 

[ZeroHedge]

In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. ‘The number of cases is rising rapidly’ Dr. Michaels wrote to me, ‘That’s the important point’. Here’s the more tearful description from Dr. Michaels..: The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer. The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. 

[Common Dreams]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Finance and Industry: How many millionaires (1962)

The Finance and Industry column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many millionaires

When the Inland Revenue Report for the year 1960-61 was published in January it showed that while in the previous year there had been 66 individuals with incomes above £100,000 a year, the number has now dropped to 60. The Evening News called it “Britain’s Vanishing Millionaires.”

It is not the Inland Revenue officials who are responsible for calling these people millionaires, but the newspapers nave long worked on the assumption that when a man’s income, before payment of tax, gets above the £100,000 mark (roughly £2,000 a week) his property of all kinds is probably above £1,000,000.

The number has varied a great deal. In 1938 it was 99. Then it dropped more or less steadily till it touched 38 in 1949 and 37 in 1952. Then it started rising again and reached 67 in 1958 before declining to 66 and now to 60.

In this century the peak seems to have been reached in 1921 when they numbered 208. As taxation is much higher and the purchasing power of each pound is much less than it was then, the very rich must find that things aren’t what they used to be. Even so, taking the official figures for 1958-9, the 2,700 people who had incomes over £20,000 had an average income of about £34,400 before paying tax and were left with an average of about £5,550 after paying tax —about £100 a week.

But Mr. Bernard Harris, city editor of the Sunday Express (5/11/62) gave it as his view that the number of people in the millionaire class as regards ownership of property far exceeds the number with incomes above £100,000 a year. His explanation is that in order avoid high death duties most of the very rich take steps in time to hand over the bulk of their property to their heirs.

“. . . for every one who died a millionaire there were probably 10 who divested themselves of part of their wealth in order to lose that distinction and qualify for smaller death duties. So it is a pretty safe conjecture that the number of millionaires and tax-conscious ex-millionaires ill Britain today is well over a thousand.”

As an example of this business of transferring property to escape heavy death duties the Daily Express (8/2/62) had the following:

“The Earl of St. Germans, 48, who has had a remarkable success with a London bookmaking firm called Nicholas Eliot, is to make over all his family estates, worth around £1,000,000, to his 21 year old son and heir Lord Eliot.”

The estates to be transferred include 6,000 acres in Cornwall, but not the turf accounting business.

A nice job

In the House of Commons on January 30 the Assistant Postmaster General, Miss Mervin Pike, was asked what is the weekly wage of Post Office men, Cleaners, Doorkeepers and Liftmen. She replied: “£8 16s. a week. The rates in outer and inner London are greater by 10s. to £1 respectively. This is the same as is paid to non-industrial male cleaners in the Civil Service generally.”

“. . . Asked if this wage is not ridiculously low” Miss Pike,, who clearly lacked the inclination to attempt lo justify it, took refuge in the argument that inquiry had shown Post Office cleaners to be getting more than is paid in industry generally.

These cleaners and others are among the Post Office workers whose claim for higher pay the Government rejected last year.

Accidents

This century has witnessed a great increase in the number of industrial accidents, that is to say, in the number of accidents that have to be reported and become recorded in official publications. But what of those that do not have to be reported?

The reportable accidents are those which are fatal or which disable the worker for more than three days from earning full wages for the work at which he is employed.

Within this definition the Ministry of Labour reported 217 deaths and 16,934 accidents in the building trades in the year 1960 (Labour Gazette, April, 1961).

But, according to a building trade employer, Mr. Peter Trench, the total number of accidents is enormously greater.

Writing in the Financial Times Building and Contracting Supplement recently, Mr. Trench, who is Director of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, estimates that for every reported accident there are 30 or 40 that do not have to be reported. And he puts the total number of accidents in the building trades at 500,000 a year or nearly 10,000 a week.

He records that accidents have been increasing in spite of propaganda designed to lessen the number. He gave his opinion as to the reason:

“Despite all the publicity and propaganda there are still far too many building firms in which little or no direct responsibility is accepted for seeing that accidents are prevented from happening; and there are still two many operatives adopting the metaphorically fatal attitude of ‘couldn’t care less’ which all too often becomes fatal in reality.”

He records the opinion of others that one of the causes is the greater size and complexity of modern buildings.

The New Men in Russian Industry

The emergence of a new social group is not necessarily dramatic or even at first obvious, but there are clear signs that new men are entering on to the political stage in Russia. In an article “New Pressures are growing up in Russia,” the Soviet Correspondent of the Financial Times recently noted that among the people who backed and to some extent forced Kruschev’s denunciation of Stalinist Terror at last year’s Party Congress in Moscow are “the younger professional managers.”

“These Party Professionals have as their principal job, the supervision of the running of the economy in their respective areas of the country. Like other young educated people in the Soviet Union, they enjoy a good standard of living, and are in a position to know that the country’s economic position can be improved much further still if sensible policies are assured. An obvious prerequisite of stable life for everyone is that there should be no repetition of the police rule, with arbitrary arrests and executions of Stalin’s time.”

David Floyd, in the Sunday Telegraph (26/11/61), expressing a similar view, quoted from a recent book on the history of the Russian Security Services, by Boris Lewytzkyj:

“The worker or technician responsible with the aid of the most up-to-date machinery for the whole industrial process, cannot carry out his duties properly unless he has considerable freedom of decision. No scientist can make progress with his terribly difficult intellectual work if he is constantly aware that the failure of an experiment may be labelled as an act of sabotage by some primitive policeman.

The ‘historical role’ of the terror in the Soviet Union is finished. At the present time the Soviet leaders could achieve nothing by terror, at the best they could destroy the foundations of their own power.”

The Manager’s Life

On the same subject, interesting details about the life of a factory manager were given some time ago in articles written by a Russian factory manager and his English-born wife who recently left Russia.

He and his wife had no complaint about their financial position in Russia, though the husband, Ignat Ovsyannikov, did remark that sometimes a skilled worker in the factory might take home more pay than he did as manager.

As a manager he had

“the very comfortable living of 6,000 roubles per month, six times a Soviet working man’s wage, and as much as the salary paid to a Minister of a Soviet Republic.”

One of the features of the life of the factory manager and other people “in authority” is the way they are cut off from contact with the ordinary workers outside the factory:

“Anyone who has any authority at all in the Soviet Union is cut off from the ordinary people. it is, for example, impossible for a factory manager or party secretary to use the ordinary restaurants in his town. He would be likely to meet his employees on equal terms and that would not do. The managerial class is isolated from the rest of society. If a man is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party he will ever have a personal bodyguard to accompany him everywhere.”

Arrangements are made for the manager’s family to buy food at special stores, and to eat in closed restaurants They also have special medical services “for the upper class of Soviet society. They have their own clinics and sanatoria where they get the best of treatment. Members of the Central Committee and the Government have luxurious rest homes on the Black Sea coast.” (Sunday Telegraph, 13/7/61).

It is all remarkably like life as it is lived by the favoured few here or anywhere else in the world.

Edgar Hardcastle

Death on principle (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Asbestos is the Greek word for unquenchable, which fairly describes its devouring effect on the human body. It is a fibre embedded in a rock found in many parts of the world — Canada (where there are the largest deposits). Zimbabwe. Russia and Cyprus. South Africa has a lot of the especially unquenchable blue asbestos and the USA is the world’s principal manufacturer of asbestos products. The rock is quarried from holes in the ground, then crushed to extract the fibre which can be processed into yarns and cloth or compounded into rubber and cement. Its great value is in a high resistance to heat and to electricity, which means that it is widely used in the building industry and for gasket and brake linings.

It is only in recent years that asbestos has been recognised as a deadly killer responsible for incurable, agonising illness. One of the victims featured in the TV film about asbestos sufferers — Alice, A Fight for Life — recalled when the mill workers would lark about with the stuff, wearing it in wigs and beards, unaware of the appalling risks they were running. Now, a local council sends its workers-to rip the stuff out of houses and flats dressed in space suits of protective clothing, as if they were handling the most perilous of radioactive materials.

Asbestos kills through the inhalation of a dust of its minute but durable fibres which stay in the lungs for life, causing asbestosis — a respiratory disease — lung cancer or mesothelioma, a cancer of the membrane of the lungs or the abdomen. One of the companies exposed in the TV film — Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) — described it as a process in which the asbestos particles "get right down into the lungs and file away the tissue”. This sounds ghastly enough but was in fact a clumsy attempt to play down the risks.

This same safety memorandum, which was given to all employees of TBA. asserted that: "Health problems are caused only if a lot of asbestos dust is breathed into the lungs over many years". In truth there are examples of people contracting asbestos-related diseases after as little as two weeks’ contact and the woman who once fooled around with an asbestos wig worked with it for only nine months. One study of the TBA factory in Rochdale found that 58 per cent of the employees were showing the first symptoms of asbestos-related diseases; another found one worker in four actually suffering from the diseases.

The recognition of asbestos as a twentieth century industrial killer has loosed a flood of demands for compensation for its victims, which threatens to gather force into a deluge. This might force TBA to pay out rather more than the no-obligation grant of about £10 a week they have made to some of the families of their dead employees. Sometimes they gave nothing at all, other than the wreath which they sent to the funeral. (The TV researchers traced a lot of the asbestos victims through pathetic thanks for the flowers in the Deaths column of the local paper.)

While their workers were suffering and dying. TBA were devoting themselves to concealing the extent of the problem. Their safety memorandum breezily assured everyone: “Working with asbestos is a bit like working with gas — you've no problems so long as you stick firmly to a few simple rules". They did not publish a report of their own company doctor which showed the incidence of asbestos-related diseases at TBA to be 75 times what the company admitted to. Weeks after the TV programme, in face of the mounting evidence of the dangers, TBA conceded that some of their estimates had been wrong but they adopted a new, equally spurious, defence — that 30 per cent of mesothelioma cases happen spontaneously. TBA did not concede that they make their profits through putting people to work with a peculiarly nasty and dangerous material; the work could be a lot safer — as safe as human ability allows—but this would cost a lot of money and file away some of those profits like workers’ lungs.

TBA is not the only asbestos company to be in trouble. In America there is the more spectacular and provocative Manville Corporation, which was once the world's largest processor of asbestos. We say "was" because Manville recently went bankrupt. There was no suicide among the corporation’s penitent executives over this because Manville is in fact financially healthy. According to the Guardian of September 7, at the time it had $15 million in cash, apart from its other assets, and continues its business as normal. Manville's bankruptcy was a ruse, calculated to protect it against the claims of the sick and crippled workers. There are some 16,500 of these claims at present and more are on the way.

Of course there was an indignant outcry at Manville's cynical but effective manoeuvre. One American Congressman accused the Corporation of leaving behind “. . . the wreckage of their workers’ and consumers' lives". But there was also some support for the company, from American bankers and lawyers, who are trained to applaud an effective preoccupation with taking in the profits, even if it costs the lives of the people who make them. The tragic fact is that those smug, desiccated business people who stood up for Manville had social reality on their side, unlike those who were in pain or dying because they had worked for the Corporation or the others who were angry about it all.

The first part of that reality is that asbestos can yield some very impressive profits for the people who own the quarries where it is extracted and the plants where it is processed. The second part is that those profits arise, not just from the fact that human beings apply their abilities to the mining and the processing, but that this takes place under certain social relationships. The owners, who receive the profits, are part of a social class who monopolise the means of production and distribution. The workers, who make the profits, have no ownership; their part in the relationship is to be exploited as they produce asbestos, or things made from it, with the object of being sold to realise the profits.

Within this relationship there are no rights or moral obligations; there is only an antagonism of interests. The employers don't owe their workers a living and when a worker is killed as a result of their employment the employers are being generous when they send a bunch of flowers to the cemetery. If the facts about asbestos make an embarrassing scandal that is only because the employer/worker relationship is so widely misunderstood and obscured.

Capitalism tags everything with a price — even a person’s life. There are people, called actuaries, who are trained to work out those prices and to express them in terms of insurance premiums and payouts. 'These calculations have no room for sentiment or emotion; it has been known for a small part of one particular person's body — a film star's legs, a footballer’s feet — to be insured for hundreds of times more than the entire body of the people who watch them perform. This cold-blooded process extends into other fields and will play its part in deciding, say. whether to develop an airport runway or build a motorway or some other assault on the lives of the people living around it.

Any investment in industrial safety must be subject to those same actuarial principles. Safety itself is a profit element; to kill workers too early in their life effectively reduces the supply of future exploitation-fodder. The skill — if that is the word — is in finding the balancing point, when safety measures cost too much or when adverse publicity from meddling media people begins to affect investment in the firm. In any case it is always worthwhile to fight a rearguard action, even if it is over the wrecked and wasted bodies of the victims of actuarial principles.

Another woman in the TV film, who died at the age of 55. was at first judged to be ineligible under the rules for any compensation at all; although she was dying from asbestosis the doctors who "examined" her found no symptoms. Two months before she died, in great pain, hardly able to move and heavily drugged, she mistook the date when her disability began, which meant that under the rules she was entitled to only a limited payment. After her death, and a post mortem, the authorities agreed that she had been completely disabled and should have received a total of about £18,000.

No comment was made on the degradation of it all — the exploitation, being put to work with a lethal substance; then the sickness, the withering away onto the scrap heap observed by doctors and bureaucrats, all concerned that nobody should get more than the rules allowed. No comment was made, that all of this was done in accordance with those actuarial calculations so essential to a society in which the overriding priority is the production of wealth for profit.

At the end of the 18th century a child called Robert Blincoe was sent as an apprentice to various factories in Nottinghamshire. There he was beaten and tortured, his hair torn out and his teeth filed down in his head. His was not an isolated case and eventually there was a massive protest. His sufferings were in accordance with the actuarial principles of the first days of industrial capitalism, which laid it down that it paid to operate factories and mines with starving, battered children.

Has capitalism improved since then? Observe how those same principles operate now — the tortured bodies of the asbestos victims, the contemptuous evasions of the employers’ public relations staff, the insult of the company flowers on the grave. And be warned that here, behind the anger and grief, is this society’s enduring reality.

Ivan

Graveyards. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whether we look at the manifestations of the capitalist system of society from a historical standpoint, or view the effects of its workings at the present time, there is every reason why the system should be abolished. Apart from the fact, that it has given birth to and developed the means of production so that it is possible to produce wealth in abundance, capitalist society has since its inception a record worse than which it would be almost impossible for the human mind to conceive. For years now the workers, who alone produce the world’s wealth, have had a greater struggle to exist, in spite of the marvellous increase of wealth production due to improved machinery and methods. Not only is it true that the workers are in greater poverty relatively to the amount of wealth produced, but they are beaten, broken, and done to death in their struggle for a dull, monotonous existence. Factories, mills, mines, and the like are veritable death-traps, “accidents,” poisoning of one kind and another, and consumption finds victims by tens of thousands.

We know that of recent years the Press has published the heart-rending news of explosions in mines with their great loss of life, and that the customary enquiry has produced evidence proving beyond honest dispute that had the mine-owners taken reasonable precautions the terrible loss of life would have been avoided. We know that Lloyd George, at the behest of the ship-owners, raised the load-line of ships so that the owners might get greater profits at the expense of seamen’s lives. It is hardly necessary to refresh the memories of our readers with reference to railway disasters and the appalling waste of railwaymen’s and passengers’ lives.

After every railway disaster the usual enquiry of the Board of Trade official takes place ; the scapegoat is invariably an employee. The railway directors escape all blame. In the “Nineteenth Century Magazine” for June appeared an article on railway administration in Great Britain, from which is quoted the following scathing criticism.

“What is the Board of Trade record in this connexion ? It is shameful. Our percentage of killed and wounded on railways is nearly twice what it is in France. After every accident, there is the same heartless mockery, The same condemnation of a perfectly innocent engine-driver or signalman, found guilty of being human, of having failed to do the duty the human machine is not capable of doing : a duty which it is biologically impossible for him to carry out with the requisite degree of certainty. It is the duty of the Board of Trade official, as specified by Act of Parliament, to enquire into the cause of railway accidents, and advise and enforce the proper remedy. The Board of Trade official knows that the cause of 90 per cent. of railway accidents is one locomotive running into another, and he knows that the remedy is to instal apparatus which would render the recurrence of such accidents a physical impossibility. He knows that the engine-driver or signalman as the case may be, who has been guilty of the inevitable biological lapse, is as innocent as the policeman who stands at his elbow in the dock. He knows that the really guilty persons are the railway managers and he himself: the railway managers because they have neglected to make the inevitable accident an impossibility, and he himself, because he has neglected to employ the authority vested in him by Parliament to force the adoption of the necessary preventive measures. The procedure in these so-called Board of Trade inquiries is nauseating in the extreme. The real points of importance are purposely avoided. Why does not the Board of Trade official enforce the remedy he knows so well ? The explanation is obvious enough. He knows that the installation of preventive measures will mean a legitimate expenditure of railway money on a large scale, and that this will deplete some railway dividends, and absorb others altogether. He knows that this would cause an immediate outcry from the railway shareholders en masse, that real enquiry would follow, and that the miserable sham in which he is a partner would be at an end. He therefore orders a fresh copy of the conventional report he has made so many times before, to be made. It only differs in the matter of the date, and the figures of the killed and wounded, and the place at which the disaster took place. He sheds the same number of crocodile tears as he did on the previous occasion, and takes his directorship of one or more railway companies on his retirement from Government service (Italics mine.)

Think it over, fellow workers ; read it over yet again, and I have no doubt as to the result of your serious deliberations. During the processes of production and distribution thousands of men and women are hurled into premature graves in the greed for profits, while thousands of the wealth producers every year are maimed or become physical and mental wrecks as the result of the awful conditions under which they are compelled to labour for a bare existence. The capitalist class are only concerned with the acquisition of dividends, and are indifferent to the prodigious waste of human life that is ever resulting from their avarice. The writer hardly feels disposed to give the reader a further dose of the horrors of the ghastly struggle on the Continent ; but no more convincing evidence could be adduced to show the cold-blooded, murderous nature of the ruling class.

Not content with the systematic butchery of the workers in the “piping times of peace,” the master class, whenever their material interests are seriously threatened by their rival capitalists of another nation, do not hesitate to force the whole of the manhood of the toiling masses who are capable of shouldering a rifle and marching, into the armed forces to safeguard their interests and property. Many thousands will never return. As they die fighting King Capital’s battles they will be hurled unceremoniously into any hole as so much refuse, forgotten by their historic enemy—the ruling class.

Perhaps the reader would like to peruse the following, culled from the “Daily Chronicle,” 12.6.16.

“’Vorwaerts’ publishes an article headed ‘More than 700 Graveyards.’ The article refers to the battlefields of Galicia and to the efforts that are being made by the Austrian authorities to bring some order into the chaotic military burying places which lie scattered over almost the entire province. The writer reckons that between the town of Gorlice and the heights of Tarnovo no less than 419 graveyards have been cleared of their unsightly surroundings, and says that where possible natural beauties in the landscape have been utilised to lend dignity to the enormous cemeteries.

All along the Dunajec one proceeds from graveyard to graveyard thickly strewn over the entire countryside. Russians, Austrians, Germans, Hungarians, to the number of 40,000 are buried in the cared-for graveyards, a number which does not include, of course, those buried in masses in one grave. In West Galicia alone about 600 graveyards exist, and in other parts over 100. From the Dunajec eastwards the multitudinous graves of the Russians are seen stretching away into the eastern plains, an awful record of the death-grapple of last year.”

The reader will, of course, recognise that the same conditions apply with equal force to France, Belgium, and other areas where hostilities are in operation. The writer can almost hear the terrible shrieks of the Anti-Socialist in pre-war days: “Socialism will break up the home.” That agonised voice is strangely quiet while the homes of whole peoples are being laid in desolate ruin.

Need more be written ? We Socialists urge the workers to study their position in society, to understand the great and bloody struggle which exists between the capitalist class and the working class, and when they realise and understand these things, to join with us in the work of spreading the knowledge of the principles of Socialism, and organising our fellow-workers, consciously and politically, for the overthrow of the hideous capitalist system and its blood-soddened parasite class.

Only when capitalism is overthrown will society be able to free itself from the shackles that bind it, and men and women be able to lead a free, full, and joyous life.

C. F. Carter

Warning: capitalism can harm your health (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part of the socialist case against capitalism is that in a society based on ruthless competition the control of economic costs will always take priority over the needs of human beings. Therefore plans to cut government and business costs by weakening health and safety regulations are of little surprise to socialists.

The government gave notice of its intentions last November when in the Queen’s Speech it announced a Deregulation Bill which many feared was directly aimed at diluting some of the Health and Safety laws. This Deregulation Bill would give government departments and ministers the power to abolish laws by parliamentary order (Labour Research, January 1994).

At the beginning of this year it was announced that the Health and Safety Executive, the body responsible for enforcing health and safety standards, was to make 230 cuts in jobs over the next two years because the government has reduced its grant. Its budget has been cut by £5 million for the period 1994-95. In 1995-96 it will get only £192 million which is £10 million less than it asked for. In the coal-mining industry the pit deputies union NACODS failed in an attempt in the High Court to prevent the introduction of new mine safety regulations which will weaken safety standards in the pits. The Management and Administration of Safety and Health in Mines Regulations Act of 1993 takes away the role of pit supervisors to monitor safety at pits. This role will now be given to safety inspectors who will have no legal powers and can be overruled by management (Labour Research, February 1994).

Lower standards

Despite improvement in conditions for most workers since the early stages of capitalist industrial production, many workers still suffer illness, injury and even loss of life due to avoidable accidents at work or through diseases directly related to their working environment. Statistics for 1993 show that 430 workers were killed through their employment and there were 88,536 injuries reported to the enforcing authorities (Labour Research, January 1994).

An example of the type of dangers still facing workers in their employment concerns people working with or coming into contact with asbestos.

The effects of inhaling asbestos dust have been known for decades. Asbestos causes asbestosis, a disabling and ultimately fatal scarring of the lungs, lung cancer which is almost always fatal, and mesothelioma, a painful and fatal cancer of the lining of the lung or stomach. Amongst the workers most affected are miners, dockers, those involved in the manufacturing of asbestos products, building workers using products containing asbestos and those who work in or maintain buildings which contain decorating asbestos products. It has been estimated by the Department of Employment that some six million tonnes of the three main types of the product crocidolite blue asbestos, amosite brown asbestos and chrysotile white asbestos had been imported into the UK by 1986.

The widespread use of asbestos left a legacy of almost 3,000 people dying of asbestos-related cancer last year. Asbestos is responsible for more cancers than any other industrial substance. According to recent research by Professor Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Health and Safety Executive, death rates due to mesothelioma alone will increase from around 1,000 in 1991 to between 2,500 and 3,000 a year. As usual under a system designed to meet profit rather than human need, the victims of these avoidable diseases are very often not properly compensated particularly where they have been exposed to asbestos contained in the buildings they work in.

Obstacles to compensation

Various obstacles are put in the way of claiming so-called benefits. To be able to claim compensation workers have to have worked in certain prescribed industries. This generally means they would have to have had some direct contact with the substance via actual asbestos materials or the machinery or appliances used in the manufacture of asbestos products. Under these limitations for claiming compensation it is estimated that 43 percent of mesothelioma victims actually die before they receive their benefit (Labour Research, March 1994).

Despite all the evidence about the health hazards from working with asbestos there are few signs of a complete ban on all types of the substance. In fact William Bernard, president of the American asbestos workers’ union, at a recent conference on construction safety in the USA, gave the following warning:

"Asbestos manufacturers are once again on the assault. They are arguing that a particular type of asbestos chrysotile is not hazardous to health. They are asking the European Community and World Health Organisation to allow it to be used again, especially for use in third world countries" (Labour Research, March 1994).

The fact that workers still suffer illness, injury and death through their employment is yet another indictment of a system of production for profit. It is also an indictment of the failure of reformism. Not only have years of reformist political parties and trade unions campaigning on such issues failed to resolve the problems, at present we are seeing moves designed to weaken already inadequate health and safety legislation.

Profits first

As with other issues reformism cannot succeed as it fails to get to the root cause of the problem — a social system where human well-being must take secondary place to controlling economic cost for the sake of profit. The failure of reformism can also be seen by the fact that in arguing for, in this case, better health and safety provisions reformists accept a capitalist agenda. The TUC, for example argue for better health and safety on the basis that in the long run it will prove "cost effective". The TUC points out that an analysis of the costs and benefits of legislation such as those prepared by the Health and Safety Executive have shown the legislation involved to be "cost positive".

The economic cost benefit argument may or may not be correct but this is not the point. From the point of the majority of us who have to sell our ability to work to an employer in order to live, and so the potential victims of the profit system, our health and lives must come first and to hell with profit. In the short-term the best way to protect our health and ultimately our lives is to organise collectively and effectively at the point of production in order to assert our own interests as against those of our employer. This factor is more important than arguing for improved health and safety legislation.

Ultimately this issue proves once again that the real choice facing us is a society' based on profit which dominates our lives at present as against that of one based on human need for which we need to organise to bring about. As with so many other issues capitalism has proved that it cannot safeguard our health and life in the production process. If capitalism cannot afford the economic cost of health and safety our answer must be that we cannot afford capitalism.

Ray Carr

The slimy trail. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The flight of the wealthy exploiter into the Tariff Reform camp is causing consternation in Liberal circles. Not because the Liberals are thereby losing brilliant advocates for the forlorn hope, but because they are losing and will lose the funds wherewith to purchase professional agitators from the ranks of the intellectual proletariat which capitalism produces in such large numbers and who are compelled, in order to fill their bellies, to prostitute their talents in aid of any cause the votaries of which are able and willing to pay for their services.

The politically bankrupt Liberal Party, then, finding itself in this position, sets out through its Press, in a series of lachrymose articles, to arrest the stampede and to justify the departure from “Cobdenism” in the “economic sphere” and its unfaltering adherence to the free imports fetish. Says the official organ of the “great party” in a panic screed,

”Mr. Chamberlain used to taunt Liberal Free Traders with inconsistency for accepting Cobden’s fiscal policy but rejecting his policy of laissez faire in matters of factory legislation. Mr. Asquith long ago disposed of this point by showing that the two things are essentially consistent. The object of government in the economic sphere is, he said, to secure the best application and distribution of the productive powers of the country. Fiscal ‘protection’ is opposed by free traders because it interferes with that object. Factory legislation is supported by liberals because it conduces to it, since sweated labour is, in the long run, labour uneconomically employed.” (Italics mine.)

Here the reformer himself points to his cloven hoofs, for, shorn of its euphemisms, the foregoing excerpt exposes the sordid motive that first, last, and always actuates the Liberal wing of the capitalist House of Commons. Laissez faire, in the economic sphere does not pay, so overboard it goes. Cheap bread means cheap wage slaves, so the capitalist will spend the last drop of his apoplectic blood to keep the people’s food untaxed. Sweated labour is labour uneconomically employed, so the Liberals will assist their Tory collaborators in preventing titled owners of chemical factories from importing big, raw-boned sons of Anak, standing six feet three inches in their socks, from Erin, and murdering them inside of twelve months. They must take three years to “do them in.” Hence the agonised tears of the humanitarian over phossy jaw, potter’s rot, wrist drop, baker’s foot, and other loathsome diseases which make up the “majesty of labour.” The less astute capitalist is aghast at seeing his liberty to slay for profit restricted in this manner. He is slow to learn the lesson mastered by successful soap-boilers and cocoa fakers that there is money in applied humanitarianism and cheap and telling advertisement in model villages and garden cities, and so the capitalist hack must perforce point out the real motive for all great reforms and “workmen’s charters.” In effect, he says to his paymaster, “Play the game, old man, play the game. Let the cry of the oppressed go up. Let your Carlyles write their flapdoodle on the ‘condition of England question,’ your Ruskins their ‘Fors Clavigera’ and such-like ‘tripe.’ Weep over the ‘cry of the children’ and the ‘submerged tenth.’ Subsidise all and sundry. But keep the people away from the Socialist. He alone endangers the citadel of King Capital. Keep the minds of the working class diverted from Socialism and all is well for Capitalism.”

It is said that in the Chicago stockyards nothing is wasted except the squeal of the dying hog. The British capitalist politician beats even that. Indeed, he finds a trump card in the groan of the famished, half-naked, shivering child ; in the wail of the widow ; in the suppressed complaint of the scrapped wage slave who is a driveiling old dotard at forty-five, babbling, not of green fields a la Falstaff, but of his exploits when stripped to the waist before retort or furnace. All can be turned to account for the further advancement and consolidation of Capitalism ; all can be used to side-track the working class from the main line to emancipation.

It is suddenly realised that it is unprofitable to wear out the workers so quickly. Immediately the capitalists’ henchman of press, platform and pulpit bellow forth the dawn of a brighter era for the factory slave by adding still another “Workmen’s Charter” to the Statute Book in the shape of elastic Factory Acts. It is found, owing to the starving of the infant proletarian, that a sufficiency of cannon fodder cannot be obtained—the wage slave is degenerate and inefficient, and so the children must be fed. Did not the great white Christ command “Feed my lambs” ? The young idea is so trained that it can draw up false balance sheets and lying prospectuses, tot up accounts and label merchandise with more or less false descriptions. It is taught that the despicable vices of thrift, prudence, and resignation are cardinal virtues, that the more servile he is the better citizen he is, and that the religion of cowardly slaves—Christianity—is the very acme of morality, and if he will only subscribe to it he will one day have a halo round his feet. This is called education. And to achieve its purpose Capitalism astutely enlists in its service all the sentimentalists, freaks, and cranks with which mankind is cursed. All the churches, friendly societies, philanthropists, co-operative societies, trade unions, and pseudo Socialist organisations. The slimy trail of the capitalist serpent is over them all. Tariff Reformer and Free Trader, Home Ruler and Labour Leader, Sacerdotalist and Passive Resister, Malthusian and Mormon, Suffragette and Social-Democrat, Temperance man and Anti-gambler, Secularist-ethicist and morality mongers generally—all are playing the capitalist game, consciously or unconsciously. All are attempting to mould the plastic working-class mind on the potter’s wheel. The one party that stands out in bold relief against them all is The Socialist Party. That alone points the road to emancipation and exposes all reforms for the tinkering ineptitudes they are. Hail the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

Labour in Lancashire. (1911)

From the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many facts of interest to workers may be gleaned from the report of the International Federation of Textile Workers’ Associations, presented to their conference held at Amsterdam in June. Mr. Wm. Marsland, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Cotton Spinners of England, is also Secretary of the Federation, and he tells us that out of the total membership of 430,027, England accounts for 200,000. During the three years the Report covers the membership in this country has remained stationary. This stagnant condition has obtained in most other lands, and is ascribed to “the severe depression in trade which has been more or less prevalent in all countries for the greater part of the three years.”

In the reports from the British Spinners’ Unions, Mr. Mullin, secretary of the Card and Blowing Room Operatives, states that the funds have suffered greatly during the last three years. In 1908 £1,730, 1909 £27,000, and in 1910 £45,000 was paid out for “Bad Trade” benefit. “The drain on our funds for accidents and injuries to members has been very great,” he points out, notwithstanding the century of “factory legislation” we have had.

On behalf of the Operative Spinners’ Association Mr. Marsland states that, since 1908 £277,000 has been paid in “Bad Trade” benefit and £173,000 for strikes and lock-outs.

Mr. W. C. Robinson, of the “Beamers, Twisters and Drawers,” says: “The mechanical drawing and tying machines grow but slowly ; however, they are increasing, and we expect they will do, consequently we have to make some additional provision for monetary payments to our members who are thrown out of work in consequence of their introduction.”

Under the “Weaving Section” reports, Mr. J. Cross, of the Northern Counties Weavers’ Amalgamation, points out that “the majority of the mills worked short time, and some of them were closed altogether for months at a stretch, and £276,000 was spent in the three years on strikes and stoppage.” After drawing attention to the pilfering “system in the weaving department of inflicting fines for alleged bad work,” mostly caused by the cheapest materials being used, Mr. Cross goes on to say : “In about one-half the weaving mills it is the practice to use artificial humidity in order to make what may be called a ‘weaving atmosphere.’ The practice is to send into the sheds hot steam ejected from the pipes, or to spray the air with fine particles of water. The workpeople have taken strong objection to artificial humidity of any kind on the ground that it is detrimental to their health, and that the practice is mostly required ia order to facilitate the weaving of inferior material. The objections of the workpeople can be well understood even by an outside observer, when it is explained that hot steam is sent through the sheds even during the summer months, causing the greatest personal discomfort and much physical prostration, and in the winter in months the sheds are heated to such an extent that many people are apt to contract bronchitis and rheumatism.”

It is news pregnant with dire meaning for the immediate future to learn that :

 “The Northrop loom is making progress, and if the adoption of the loom should assume a mire rapid character THE COTTON WEAVERS OF LANCASHIRE WILL BE FACE TO FACE WITH THE GREATEST PROBLEM OF THEIR LIVES. When it is considered that the operatives are working 12, 16, and 20 NORTHROP LOOMS EACH, AND THE NUMBER OF LOOMS OF THE LANCASHIRE TYPE WORKED BY EACH WEAVER (THE AVERAGE IS ABOUT FOUR LOOMS FOR EACH WEAVER) THE PROSPECT OF STEADY EMPLOYMENT IN THE FUTURE IS NOT VERY BRIGHT.”

“It is admitted on every hand that the introduction of the new loom means the displacement of a large number of workpeople, and it cannot be expected that the cotton trade will ever, under the most favourable conditions, be able to expand sufficiently to absorb the unemployed.”

Time after time during the last 70 years hours have been reduced in the cotton factories and strike after strike has been declared. Yet the fact stands out that the operative of to-day is faced with greater difficulties than ever before. He produces more in fewer hours, and works “short time” and is unemployed to a degree previously unknown. Through sheer depletion of their funds the operatives go back to work on the masters’ terms after being locked out for weeks. Combination among the masters and amalgamation of companies proceed fast and far. In view of the conditions under which the men work and the poverty they suffer, it is not surprising that ill health dogs their footsteps all their lives. At a protest meeting against the Insurance Bill held by the Lancashire Branch of the British Medical Association we were told, anent the £160 limit: 

“That, as they knew in Lancashire, was going to take away from them the cream of their practice. Wage earners from 30s. per week upwards were the backbone of their practice, and they received from these wage earners more than from all the others combined.” 

Hence we see that it is the workers who provide the doctors with work—and fees—through illness resulting from the conditions of their toil.

What have the Lancashire toilers done to end their slavery ? History answers “Little.” Lancashire is a stronghold of Liberalism and Free Trade, and despite the fact that the great majority of the employers in her staple industries (textiles) are Liberals, they are voted info place and power every time. Mr. C. W. Macara, the secretary of the employers’ federation, who has again and again organised the lock out of the operatives and reduced them to servile submission, is also Vice-President of the Free Trade Union and a noted Liberal. The officials of the trade unions are Liberals also practically to a man and the Labour M.P.s for local divisions may be seen advocating Free Trade upon the Free Trade League platforms throughout Lancashire. Is it not time that the workers of Lancashire took a lesson from their employers and organised politically to protect their interests ? It cannot be done by Labour Parties who support half-time for children in the mills, and who seek to murder the toddling little ones by backing Bills to lower the age at which they leave school and enter the factory hells of Lancashire.

No ! The road to liberty, the road from slavery, is the Socialist road. March on, toilers of Cottonopolis !

Adolph Kohn

Fifty Years of “Progress”. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Examination of a Capitalist Statement.

Flights of Fancy.

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

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

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

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

The Return to Naked Fact.

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

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

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

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

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

Two sides to the story.

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

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

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

Unemployment brings Sickness–

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

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

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

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

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

Employment Wounds and Death.

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

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

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

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

H. A. Young

Points from the Factory Inspector’s Report. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The report for 1908 of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops contains some interesting facts illustrating and sufficiently condemning capitalist industry and pretended reform.

Here are a few (we quote from Lloyds News, 30.5.09).

“The passing is noted of the White Phosphorus Matches Prohibition Act of 1908, the provisions of which will come into force next January, after which date no white phosphorus matches may be made or imported. All the match factories in the United Kingdom, with one notable exception, remained free from any case of necrosis as in the three previous years; ‘but in that one factory a further case occurred in 1908 and two other attacks have been reported in the first quarter of 1909.'”

The above mentioned Act is rather typical of capitalist “palliative” legislation and is characterised by the usual hypocrisy. ‘Tis clear that the evil complained of has, in this country at least, been reduced to a minimum by the progress of the match industry itself. For have not the superiority and cheapness of the non-white-phosphorus matches almost driven the more noxious kind out of the market ? The Liberal party and its Labour supporters are thus able to point to a further important advance in social reform at mighty little cost to themselves—cost in votes and contributions to the party funds. For practically no capitalist interests are touched, since the evil against which the Act is directed (according to the Report) scarcely exists.

* * *

“Lead poisoning shows, on the other hand, a lamentable increase, the number of cases of all kinds being 646 against 578, the greatest increase being in connection with the smelting of metals—from twenty-eight to seventy. The new inspector for the Potteries district expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which the special rules are being observed.”

There is, however, no mention of a law against the use of lead in the pottery industry, although its use, according to the Report, is attended by much greater injury. Why ? Because its use is still profitable, and to propose a law against its use would be to attack real, live, capitalist interests.

It is worth while noting, too, that there are great numbers of workers, for example plumbers and painters, whose cases are never reported.

* * *

Lady Inspector Miss Vines describes amongst others, the following pitiful case: it shows “what capitalism has done for the worker” (pace ‘”Anti-Socialist”) and is doing for the mother and the mistress of the “Englishman’s castle.”

“Mrs. B., a celeste paintress, aged thirty-eight, was a colour duster eight years ago, when she had a severe attack of lead poisoning, never properly well since, but has been employed as celeste paintress at the same factory for several years. Was very ill with colic, sickness, wrist and finger drop of both hands. Could not dress herself, could not grip. Had been married fifteen years, had nine dead and one living child, which was ill all its life and never walked dying under three years of age. Her husband was injured in the South African war, and had been an invalid ever since. Both lived with the husband’s old widowed mother, and latterly the wife had partially kept both mother and husband with her earnings. Mrs. B.’s employers refused compensation, and it was not till the case was taken into court that compensation was obtained.”

Incidentally the reward of “Tommy,” one of “Our Empire’s brave defenders,” should not be overlooked.

* * *

But the Report contains other pretty items.

“In certain parts of the Swansea and Cardiff districts houses suitable for the working classes are so scarce that men sleep in three relays of eight hours each in the same bed, and kitchens are being used as sleeping apartments.”

We wonder if there are some Territorial “home” defenders among the said men.

* * *

While this one tersely delineates the condition of the olten anaemic, forewoman cursed, bun and tea starved stitchers who clothe in rich raiment the female parasites of the capitalist class :

“‘Gentility’ and high rents are the curse of the West End dressmaking establishments. The workers must be hidden away in basement workrooms, or at the back and top of high houses, in order that they may not disturb or worry the sensibilities of the client, who cares not under what conditions clothes are made.”

And yet withal, these, the other potential happy home-makers, when they (not all by any means) reach the desired haven or “home,” find in how many cases, that they have but exchanged the frying-pan for the fire. Such is the age.

* * *

Our next and last shows how hopelessly ineffectual the inspection often is and how employers are able to brow-beat and intimidate those whom the capitalist Press pretend are free citizens. The case cited is a test of truth as between the “free citizen” delusion and the enlightening Socialist axiom that capitalist employment is wage-slavery.

“Another lady inspector, Miss Martindale, gives some startling details as to how the Truck Act is evaded. In one case in Ireland declarations were obtained by her from men who swore that their wages were kept back in payment for their father’s long-standing debts. Proceedings were taken, but the lady inspector’s witnesses went back on their declarations, and swore that they received their wages in coin. The case, of course, was dismissed. Yet Miss Martindale was told immediately afterwards that the employer had paid wages in goods from ‘time immemorial,’ and that everyone in court knew it.”

Did the employee witnesses go “back on their declarations” because they enjoyed bearing false witness, or was it not rather that they feared the “sack” and inability to give their children bread ? Answer, ye anti-Socialist working men and women. Are ye truly “free citizens” or are ye not verily wage-slaves ? If the latter, come where ye belong, in the ranks of the wage-slaves’ party—the S.P.G.B., and battle with us for your emancipation.

John H. Halls

Chapter Three: Unemployment or Employment— Reject Both (1984)

From Samuel Leight's book, The Futility of Reformism

We oppose the existence of private property relationships which force those without ownership rights in the means of production and distribution to “seek employment.” This, to be sure, is a revolutionary concept for it is an approach that leads to the very core of an understanding of the case for common ownership. In essence, the problem arises from the poverty of the working class which is inseparable from the wages system. If we were living in a society which conveyed to all its members common ownership rights of all the means for producing and distributing wealth then, as and when we made our individual contributions to the process of wealth production, we would, from an economic and social standpoint, be working for ourselves and not for an employer.

From this viewpoint, it can be discerned that the socialist regards employment under capitalism as an inescapable and degrading condition for the working class, one that reformism is incapable of curing. We refuse at all times to politically support a system of society that, because of the ownership rights belonging to a class, forces the majority to seek their survival and livelihood by employment from the owning minority. Those with proprietorship, whether it be an individual, corporation or state, possess the monopoly and legal right entitling them to employ. This compels the rest to be employed, or as circumstances dictate, to be unemployed. 

It is significant to observe that unemployment becomes a focal point whilst “employment” is accepted as a way of life, seemingly destined to remain with us forever. Unemployment appears as the persistent challenge awaiting an eventual solution, notwithstanding that the class struggle embraces both conditions. Statistics verify that the problem of unemployment is an insoluble one as long as capitalism remains. The “experts” and “the economists,” true to character, disagree as to exact causes and applicable remedies. However, they are all apparently in complete unison in their approach to the existing system. This sacred cow is never accused or pin-pointed as the cause of the quandary. Such an attitude, of course, would pre-suppose the possession and acceptance of socialist knowledge coupled with a disregard for the security of their jobs should they ever publicize the correct scientific approach.

Capitalism operates as a gigantic worldwide market place in which commodities are produced primarily for sale and profit. Should the market place fail to absorb the commodities produced, unemployment, either on a comparative large or small scale, occurs. In addition, the actual employment of members of the working class depends upon the wishes and economic requirements of the capitalist class. For example, increased productivity resulting through the utilization of labor-saving machinery, with the consequent displacement of workers, could create unemployment to a limited degree. These various factors give rise to a standing army of unemployed, whose numbers from time to time may vary dramatically, but its existence is assured as long as the system remains.

In August, 1982 unemployment in Great Britain reached 3,292,702 or 13.8 per cent of the work force, its highest level since comprehensive records began in 1948, topping the 2,979,000 registered unemployed at the height of the Great Depression in January, 1933. True, this figure represented 19 per cent of a smaller work force but when you transfer the numbers to actual human beings, pitifully trying to survive, what difference does it make?

Unemployment in the U.S.A. reached nearly 12 million in November, 1982. These figures only disclose part of the situation. They do not take into account large numbers of demoralized workers who have stopped looking for jobs and others who are working part-time. Far higher percentages of unemployment are to be found amongst various sections of workers such as teenagers, black and Hispanic minorities, and those in heavily industrialized areas that have been hardest hit, such as the automobile and steel factories. A CBS news broadcast on October 10, 1982, contained a report from the AFL-CIO which claimed that there were 14.5 million actually unemployed who were looking for full-time jobs. In April, 1982 black unemployment in the U.S.A. climbed to 18.4 per cent, teen-age unemployment rose to 23 per cent and the unemployed in Detroit was 15 per cent.

The prestigious Wall Street Journal in an editorial on May 11, 1982 suggests the following:

“The answer to the unemployed problem is simple and obvious, but it is being resisted by Congress because of political fears that are only a little short of craven. The answer is to shift the nation’s priorities back toward production, away from non-production . . . All it needs is better leadership in Congress, that is to say removing the people who got us into this trouble and who refuse to admit that their politically convenient ideas were all wrong.”

Unemployment is linked to a market place unable to purchase the commodities already being produced. Therefore, it is surely ridiculous to suggest shifting “the nation’s priorities back toward production,” or in other words producing more for a market already incapable of coping with existing inventories. Industry, of course, does not function altruistically to provide employment for needy workers. The purpose of capitalist production is not to produce goods and services per se but to produce commodities for sale and profit. Unless a market can be reasonably expected production will not be forthcoming. As to the hoary plea for “better leadership,” this is the time-worn favorite peddled by the reformers when they imply that the cause is always with the shortcomings of the individuals or parties running the system but never, the Lord forbid, does the fault lie in the way in which capitalism functions.

Prime Minister Thatcher, in England, has blamed the unemployment rate increases on the recession and the failure by previous governments to tackle Britain’s economic problems. She apparently has not been able to improve matters since her government assumed power—in fact the reverse has happened. President Reagan, in the U.S.A., blames high interest rates, but history will show that when interest rates were comparatively low, unemployment was still with us. And when Canada’s jobless rate rose to a postwar high of 9.6 per cent in April, 1982 the Finance Minister, Allan MacEachen, volunteers some choice trivia:

"The key to world recovery at the present time, for the U.S. and for other countries, is a change in the monetary policy that is being pursued in the U.S.”

President Warren G. Harding in 1921, after listening to conflicting opinions offered by his economic advisers, at least possessed somewhat of an insight and frankness when he confided to a secretary, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1977:

“John, I can’t make a damn thing out of this . . . I listen to one side and they seem right, and then—God! I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right.

“I know somewhere there is a book that will give me the truth, but hell, I couldn’t read the book.

“I know somewhere there is an economist who knows the truth, but I don’t know where to find him and haven’t the sense to know and trust him when I do find him. God! What a job!”

In October, 1982 unemployment in the Netherlands increased to a postwar peak of 13.4 per cent of the work force. West Germany’s jobless was reported in early March, 1983 as having surpassed the 2.5 million mark, climbing to 10.4 per cent of the labor force in February, 1983. Sweden’s unemployment rose to 3.6 per cent of the labor force in February, 1983. Belgian unemployment in March, 1982 stood at 12.2 per cent of the labor force. In December, 1982 unemployment in the 10 European Economic Community countries reached 12.035 million—a post World War II record. In December, 1982, 12.8 per cent of the Canadian work force were unemployed— the highest level since the 1930’s. Japan’s jobless rate for January, 1983 topped 2.7 per cent, a 30-year high. In November, 1982 unemployment in Australia was reported at 8.2 per cent.

It should surely be obvious by now that if a formula existed to cure unemployment, then it would have been discovered long ago. Further, even if there were an absolute solution, it would not serve the interests of the ruling class to implement it. The continued presence of an unemployed segment of the working class enables the employers to exert downward pressure on wage levels, assuring them of surplus workers as and when they are needed.

The U.S. federal job-training program financed by the Labor Department under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act has already been termed a fraud by avowed supporters of the system. The program assumes that unemployment is caused by persons needing job training and job skills, whereas in actuality there is a shortage of jobs available even for those possessing the necessary skills. In effect, people are being trained for non-existent jobs. 

Reformist approaches towards unemployment have included government subsidization, nationalization, and the Keynesian goal of full employment through appropriate government intervention. All have failed as evidenced by current worldwide unemployment.

Governmental attempts at industrial intervention by means of subsidies are really an artificial process that ignores the prevailing economic climate. They might temporarily keep some workers employed, but this would be at the expense of the capitalist class as a whole since the funds would be provided through taxation. Such schemes tinker with the problem at best, are always short-lived, and can only be used on a very limited scale.

Nationalization in no way guarantees a solution because the same market conditions that create the challenges in private industry, namely selling commodities at a profit, predominate whether the businesses are owned privately or by the state. A graphic example of the desperation of American workers in government or nationalized occupations took place in March, 1982 when it was reported that

100,000 swarmed the post offices in the Miami area during a period of one week, applying for 700 positions that may not be available until 1985.

The U.S.S.R. has state capitalism operated on a national basis under the tyrannical dictatorship of the so-called Communist Party. Employment is controlled without any semblance of democracy, without legitimate trade union activity, and without permitted political opposition. The centralized control allows individual industries to be maintained financially, should the need arise, by support from the budget. However, as a consequence, efficiency in production is impaired and jobs are unnecessarily overstaffed. Denied the protection of unfettered trade unions (they exist in name only as they operate under direct Government control), and with no democracy, “employment” in Russia is wage-slavery at its very worst. Should you be designated a “dissident,” even your slave status could be jeopardized and you might find yourself among the 2 million people currently imprisoned in the Soviet penal system.

The Keynesian doctrines, formulated by J. M. Keynes, supports government action in order to maintain a demand for commodities through its own direct investments in the economy, which would hopefully result in more or less full employment. None of these devices, used and supported by past governments, in particular by both the Labour and Tory parties in England, have prevented recession, depression, inflation and massive unemployment.

It should be borne in mind that any growth in the total number of employed reported at any time is related to the fact that greater numbers of workers in the same family have had to seek employment in order to maintain the standard of living of the household. The numerical glorification that is sometimes touted as an example of more people being employed now than in the past is an attempt at making a virtue of the necessity of survival. Mothers, for example, are forced to leave their infant children in day-care homes in order to go to work and supplement their husband’s pay—this out of dire need and not as a means of “achieving economic freedom” or so-called “equality” with the menfolk. In a study, conducted by the Federal National Mortgage Association by the Louis Harris organization and reported in the Wall Street Journal on September 15, 1982, 91 per cent of those polled said they believe it takes a two income household to afford a mortgage today.

The working environment is geared to a profit motivated society which at all times places the successful production and realization of surplus values in a priority position as compared to human welfare. Physical conditions in a multitude of industries and instances, viewed from certain aspects, have of course improved substantially as capitalism has progressed from the 18th through to the 20th century. But this surface appraisal can be most misleading without further probing and evaluation. Although the socialist supports all trade union activity which results in the improvement of working conditions, our prime concern has never been, nor ever will be, the refinement of capitalism in order for profits to be accrued in more conducive surroundings. Granted, wage levels and working conditions are of paramount importance for the very survival of the vast majority as long as capitalism exists. We nevertheless limit our energies in this regard to trade union support and activity, but politically refuse to become involved in how best to run a system that we want abolished in the shortest possible time.

It should be recognized that plant, retail and office modernizations are not related to the activities of political reformists at all. Rather, they are the result of either trade union pressure to improve working conditions or the desire of the capitalist to remain competitive by providing up-to-date facilities. Within the bounds of certain economic considerations, to the degree that the workers are kept comparatively happy and healthy, so to that extent their exploitation is that much better accomplished. In a world which literally can be described as an armed camp, wherein the majority are economically imprisoned, you will not find us clamoring for more “humane prisons,” but for a society in which prisons are non-existent. Likewise, we will not be found in association with the reformists—they decry the inhumanities of capitalism but never urge for its abolition in order to effectively deal with fundamental causes. The main task therefore confronting the “imprisoned” should be the abolition of the prison and not in diversions which look for improvements in its operation.

In any event, the superficial, physical upgrading of working conditions that have been accomplished are more than offset by the pollution of the environment that capitalist industrialization has created. Its waste products, indiscriminate use of chemicals and materials, radiation and nuclear poisons have all resulted in an enormous detriment to health over the past several decades. Cancer, for example, has enveloped us like a plague. I, for one, do not need any further proof beyond my own common sense and personal experience to realize that there isa relationship of cause and effect between our modern-day pervasive pollution and cancer. Furthermore, the mental health of the population, as evidenced by the inundated clinics, hospitals and sanitariums, and directly caused by the stresses and insecurities of a competitive, anti-social environment, should be taken into consideration when comparisons are made between past and present conditions.

The analysis of the environment should be examined in its entirety. This would take us beyond the factory gates and offices, to be confronted with a world balancing on the precipice of nuclear war. Such an approach, together with a veritable multitude of deplorable working conditions and social circumstances that still prevail, and for that matter will always remain in some form or other under capitalism, should remove all reasons for complacency or satisfaction from the reformists.

In March, 1980 The International Labor Organization reported that more than 55 million children under the age of 15 are being exploited around the globe. They stated, as an example, that match factories in India employ more than 20,000 children, some as young as 5, for a 16-hour work day beginning in some instances at 3 a.m. On a visit to Toledo, Spain several years ago, after being charmingly offered a glass of port by one of the factory managers, we were escorted through the factory where I was horrified to see young children 8/10 years old, working at the benches with detailed and intricate filigree which of course could be ruinous to their eyes at such an early age.

On February 27, 1981 it was reported in the Arizona Daily Star that in the New York City garment industry sweatshops have grown from fewer that 200 to 3,000 in the last decade.

It was reported in the New York Times, February 5, 1982 that according to Dr. Loren Kerr, a leading authority on occupational disease, the deaths of 4,000 coal miners each year can be safely attributed to black lung disease. He is quoted as saying:

“Most coal operators are anxious to increase production, even when it raises dust levels above legally defined limits. Federal inspectors must insist on adequate ventilation and water spraying to control this dust today, or else years down the road, miners will suffer an avalanche of new breathing problems.”

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, June 18, 1981 it was stated that after a Supreme Court ruling on cotton dust it could be expected that the textile industry would be installing new, more efficient equipment that could help eliminate the incidence of brown lung disease. The article further states:

“Even as mills modernize and reduce dust levels, problems concerning brown lung disease remain unresolved. Questions regarding compensation for workers who contracted the disease long before mills began to clean up, how smoking affects susceptibility and what specifically causes the disease are still unanswered.”

In April, 1978 the U.S. Government, through its Health, Education and Welfare Secretary, said that as many as 5.6 million Americans may die of cancer or other diseases as a result of the exposure to asbestos in shipyards and other workplaces since the beginning of World War II. As a sequel to this the Manville Corporation, the nation’s largest producer of the mineral fiber asbestos, filed in August, 1982 for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The company had become inundated with thousands of law suits, together with the potential of many more in the future, most of them filed by workers claiming the inhaling of asbestos fibers, which damaged their health and often led to death. The cost of this pending litigation had been estimated at $2 billion or more—hence the reason for the company seeking the protection afforded by the bankruptcy laws.

It is glaringly obvious that through the years the working class have never had disclosed to them the true occupational hazards of their employment. Such disclosures might well have deterred some; it would certainly have given others leverage in wage and environmental negotiations; but, notwithstanding, most no doubt, out of economic necessity, would still have been forced to an exposure resulting in ill-health and untimely death.

Whether employed or otherwise the dark cloud of insecurity will always permeate the lives of those living in a class society. No reform can ever properly convey the precious attribute of security to those dependent on their masters, within a capricious, anarchical system impersonal to human values. When the working class finally awaken to their true position of servitude as employees, with socialism on the horizon, it is more than likely that the international atmosphere will be resounding with cries of “take this job and shove it!” And such crudity may well be forgiven in view of the historic and belated justification.