Morrison's Child (1936)

From the April 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Socialists are out for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, by, and in the interest of, the whole people. This is to be brought about by the education of the workers in Socialist principles, to the end that the workers will organise with us to capture the political machinery, and so be in a position to control the armed forces, and thus be able to dictate terms to the capitalist class. When we tell people this we are by many called dreamers, or told that such a proposal is too far-fetched, or too far off.

We are told that a more “reasonable” way, and one getting “better” results, is to lay such an object aside and go in for “something now,” and so gradually "build up” Socialism. This is a favourite method of the Labour Party, the I.L.P. and many ex-Liberals. They say that industry is to be gradually taken over and the owners compensated or given a guaranteed dividend, and their previously competing concerns amalgamated and run as a public utility corporation, responsible to nobody but themselves. This, we are told, is achieving “Socialism in our time.” Let us see how this pans out from the people’s point of view.

Some little time ago the various transport undertakings within 25 miles of London were absorbed into what is now known as London Passenger Transport Board, and a certain Mr. Morrison, Chairman of the L.C.C., played quite a part in “welding up” this concern, so much so that it is often referred to as "Morrison’s Child.” The scheme was initiated by the last Labour Government. Since it has been in actual operation, time and again the workers! conditions have been tightened up. Frequent stoppages have taken place on Green Line, trams, ’buses and trolley-’buses, so it may be taken for granted that the labour conditions are not all they might be. But for the owners, “the Board,” what a difference: No competition, no fare cuts, no “redundant” services now. Let the public wait and travel when and how we like; all fares now come in to us, and our income is more secure than before. That is how two out of the three parties stand.

Now for how the ”customers,” the public, are served.

There is no need to labour this point to Londoners. They all well know the morning and evening scrambles, and queueing up, and the delays in the centre through volume of traffic, and delays in the suburbs through depletion of services. A writer in Reynolds's (February 6th, 1936) gives details as to where the services have been cut down and "re-organised” since the amalgamations. He went to Broadway House for some explanations. He got them. This is what “the Board’s spokesman” told him: —

  “Our first duty, imposed by Parliament, is to our shareholders.”
  “To achieve the necessary financial results, we want to make sure that every train, tram and ’bus is filled as nearly as possible. Our idea is that there should be no empty seats. We want paying loads only.”

So that accounts for the delays and scrambles. Wait till they get a “paying” (profitable) load. As for your “getting there,” well, when we are ready, and don’t forget “our first duty is to our shareholders,” the capitalists, the owners.

That is a bit of Herbert Morrison’s “Socialism in the making,” and ’twere best left alone. The position is much the same with the Electricity Board and the Grid.

It is quite futile to waste time on such reforms and the parties which sponsor them. Organising for straight revolutionary Socialism alone is worth while for the working class, and to this end we ask you to join us.

C. V. R.

Rising crime — who’s afraid of the PNC? (1979)

From the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

When most people think of crime it is not the Lord Kagans or Richard Nixons of this world that spring to mind, but the burglars, robbers, rapists and muggers passing through the courts daily. And there is certainly no doubt about the statistical trend in these offences. The year 1977 (the last for which official statistics are available) showed a staggering 16 per cent rise on the previous year. Outside the London area the number of offences reported increased by 1,927,462, although figures for the London area for 1978 have possibly levelled out a little.

David McNee, Metropolitan Chief Commissioner, wants the police to be given “a vast range of new powers with which to combat crime” (The Times 3.8.78.). He also wants to “clean up the force”, although that job was supposed to have been done by his predecessor Sir Robert Mark, hit back against the ruling class law that reinforces Mark put the blame on everybody but himself, singling out bent lawyers (sec Sunday Timex 13.3.78), and bemoaning a general “lack of discipline" in society. An equally stupid explanation by the Chief Constable of Merseyside, Kenneth Oxford, appeared in The Times. According to him “the cause of crime is fundamental— greed, selfishness and violence—and those three headings apply as much to society as a whole as to those with criminal propensities”. (26.4.78). What the fair cop did not explain is, why is there a society of greed, selfishness and violence? What is the fair cop doing to change it? All Oxford wants is to have more police (presumably themselves greedy selfish and violent) running after the people that the greedy, selfish and violent society produces.

Here To Stay

The Law Society’s Gazette (hardly a paper known for radicalism), pointing out that the country’s prison population is now over 42,000, commented that "we have to learn to live with crime. It seems almost as impossible to control it as it is to control our climate” (27.7.77). Sir Leon Radzinowicz, a well known criminologist, has commented ; “No national characteristics, no political regimes, no system of law, police, justice, punishment, treatment or even terror has rendered a country exempt from crime. In fact scarcely any can claim to have checked its accelerating momentum”. (The Growth of Crime)

So there you are, crime is here to stay. But these conveyors of conventional wisdom forget to add that crime is only here to stay while there is capitalism. Furthermore, no attempts by capitalist politicians or their strong arm men can do anything about it. Why? Because capitalism means a society where the majority do not own the means of wealth production ; where workers are in various degrees of deprivation, while a small minority grab most of the wealth that the wage earners produce. A life of luxury, privilege and case for the minority, a life of relative shortages for the majority. No wonder then that many people, from the dodger of the train fares to the large scale swindlers and bank robbers, try to hit back against the ruling class law that reinforces the system of exploitation of the majority.

PNC

One disturbing element in all this is that the police are trying to obtain further powers and further cuts in “civil liberties”. This is not just a question of bourgeois democracy being under threat; it is more a question of opportunity for open socialist discussion being gradually restricted.

For example, the right to silence is now being challenged by the police one step nearer to "guilty unless proved innocent’’.) More worrying is the “Police National Computer” (PNC). New Scientist (18.1.79) pointed out that police files are not only extremely comprehensive, but the type of persons listed has been extended. Even the change in driving licences was not quite the innocent administrative process it appears. “Production of a driving licence now automatically gives police all the information necessary (‘search factors’) to check on open computer records”. Furthermore, the range of “offences” which are likely to put you on a police file has increased. Included now are such activities as "wasting police time” (who decides that?) as well as a vast extension of those activities classified as subversive. Even the Anti-Blood Sports League are not forgotten. New Scientist comments:

  The figures given suggest an eventual aim to monitor about 10 per cent of the population, together with almost all vehicles and addresses. Since most police records will concern adult males, between one in three and one in four will likely eventually be on the system. Much of the information stored has little to do with crime per se. Twice as many "occurrences” (non-crimes) as crimes are to be recorded . . . Not unnaturally, what is recorded, and about whom, will reflect official views and prejudices; this includes a wide definition of subversives as well as criminals . . . the surveillance net of pre-emptive policing inevitably covers and affects many more than the impending criminals; mistakes are made; inaccurate and unsubstantiated information is recorded, information provided for one purpose is used for another; and so on.

Clearly, then, law enforcement agencies are not giving in to rising crimes. They seem to accept that they cannot win. but will continue the fight and extend the area of dirty work wherever they think they can get away with it.

Who's worried?

In the meantime, individual capitalists are not unduly concerned. Their property is insured and they generally do not live in mugging districts. But the state, as the representative of the capitalist class is worried. Many workers are worried too.

But crime is a result of an anti-social society and yet another reason why everyone should start to question the sanity of the existing social order. If crime is endemic to capitalism, so too are most other social evils. Instead of blaming people’s greed or selfishness, as the simpletons of the police force would have us do, it is time to question society as a whole. If crime is a result of capitalism, only a social revolution will eradicate it. Not because people will suddenly have become different in some mystical love-thy-neighbour sense, but because the reason for crime—property society itself—will have been abolished.

Ronnie Warrington

Old Fallacies Re-Furbished: Is Socialist Propaganda Futile? (1945)

Pamphlet Review from the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Low, the cartoonist, has two blank-faced creatures who constantly appear in his attacks on reaction, whom he calls "S'no use" and “T’aint necessary." If we may elaborate a little, they stand for all the disbelief in the practicability and desirability of trying to change the world for the better. It is obvious how these two frauds have served the purpose of the ruling class ever since there was a ruling class. What is more surprising is that they early made their entry into the ranks of large sections of the political Labour movement in the shape of arguments that it isn't possible for the workers to learn how to achieve their own emancipation; and not necessary anyway because inspired leaders would do it for them. Of course, they did not have it all their own way. Marx never doubted that the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves, and before him William Lovett and others in the London Working Men's Association (1836) firmly held that the workers could and must trust in themselves, not in leaders. Nevertheless, the other view has persisted, though with some changes of form.

The early Fabians and the late J. R. MacDonald hardly troubled to hide their contempt for the intelligence and capacity of the working class. Hence the Fabians' lack of concern with making Socialists and the later admiration for all the dictators and contempt for democracy proclaimed by G. B. Shaw.

J. R. MacDonald, in his long forgotten confession of faith, "A Rock Ahead," published in "To-day" (March, 1887) gave the doctrine a slightly different twist. He not only despised but also feared those whom he called the "rude and uncultivated masses." He held that "Labour as such is simply useless for freeing itself"; but he was afraid that the workers might try. The revolution, he wrote, would "be directed from the study" by the "comparatively well-to-do," and the thing to be feared was the "explosive" force of the workers. "We may have to use them or we may not," he wrote, "but should the worst befall, their destructive power will be skilfully directed; it will not cause ruin but will clear a way; it will be the instrument, but not the life; the tool, but not the designer." In MacDonald's eyes Socialism was a matter of "intellectual development," and the "ignorant labourer" cannot understand it, therefore the thing to do was to confine propaganda to the intellectual minority, the few who are "thoughtful and reasonable."

Lenin and the Communists also had this concept, though with the difference that they did not fear the uprising of the non-Socialist masses. They sought to encourage it and proposed to capture the leadership and thus gain power. But still there was the contempt for the workers' understanding. Lenin said: "If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years." ("Ten Days that Shook the World," John Reed, page 303.) It should, however, be noticed that Lenin attributed the workers' backwardness to lack of education under capitalism, not to an innate incapacity. It has remained for later writers to go that far.

Achille Loria, the Italian economist and self-styled Socialist, held that the final stages of revolution always had been and always would be effected through the cooperation of "disgruntled intellectuals," otherwise revolution was foredoomed to failure. (See "Karl Marx." by Loria. Foreword by E. and C. Paul, pages 22 and 28.)

Eden and Cedar Paul, who at one time were active and influential in the Communist movement, dissented from Loria's view, at least at first. They thought that in modern times "independent working-class education" had changed the situation. They wrote “The workers of the day after to-morrow need not put their trust in the frail reed of the support of the intellectuals. Once more we raise the Marxist slogan and cry. 'The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.' " (Page 30.)

Then they seem to have changed their opinion, for the "Plebs" "Outline of Psychology" (1923) quotes them as writing that the theory of democracy "is based upon the belief that reason is the main motive force of human action, and that men in the mass are, if properly educated, always prepared to accept programmes by reason of their justice, rationality and wisdom. It is a captivating theory . . . and the only serious objection to it is that it is not true. . . ." (Page 96.) They went on to explain that the average man is not guided by rational considerations but by "subconscious urges"; this despite their proclaimed belief in the efficacy of "independent working class education."

The writers of the "Plebs" Outline accepted and elaborated the argument. On the ground that the intelligence of human beings ranges through various levels from idiots and imbeciles up to "rare creative geniuses in science, art, and public administration," they affirmed: "There is little hope that the majority of the individuals in any nation, class or group will be capable, when a crisis arises, of intelligently deciding what is the best course of action—even when their instincts and unconscious impulses urge them towards action of some kind." They instanced as proof of this the alleged fact that in all crises "even where there is comparative unanimity as to aim (as in the late war) the dictatorship of a small minority is essential," and held that it is confirmed by "the experience of every proletarian propagandist when trying to influence his mates." (In passing, one may wonder why the individuals who hold such views about others always have no difficulty in excepting themselves from what they would appear to be claiming as a characteristic of all human beings.)

All those mentioned above, from Shaw and MacDonald to the "Plebs," have hastened to accept the necessity for "leaders" to shepherd the workers to their emancipation. "S'no use" for the workers to try to understand Socialism, it is beyond their capacity; but luckily for them "T'aint necessary," for here we are ready to provide what they lack of "mental capacity" and "knowledge bearing upon the question at issue." ("Plebs," page 137.)

Almost alone among the parties the S.P.G.B. has consistently combatted those views. Are we right in doing so? Can the majority of the workers understand our case when it is presented to them? Is our slow progress due to some innate incapacity or—as we have always contended—is it due to capitalist propaganda and to the fact that our means of spreading Socialist knowledge are restricted by our small resources and can only grow gradually? Are those people right who contend that the workers never will understand and that unless Socialism can be achieved without working class understanding, it will never be achieved at all?

The latest contribution to the "leadership " argument is a pamphlet, "Science, Politics and the Masses," by G. R. Tatham (Social Science Association, price 6d.). The first part discusses the recent tendency for scientists to interest themselves in politics; but only in order to lead up to the point that whether they do or not, it is useless for anyone to go on accepting the assumption that the mass of the people are capable of “scientific and political understanding."

Although a number of writers on psychology are quoted to support the view, the pamphlet adds little to the crudely stated opinions of MacDonald nearly 60 years ago, or to the opinions of the "Plebs" writers in 1923. What it does is to introduce us to "Walsby’s discovery of the Demos and to his analysis of its structure and development." (However, no proof is given in the pamphlet of Walsby's theory.) The theory is that the population are grouped in "ideological layers" each representing a definite level of culture and political outlook. The individuals in the lower layers (constituting the great majority) have little or no capacity for understanding a logical case, while the smaller numbers in the top layers have a more logical outlook. Tatham writes: ". . . the more logical the outlook, the fewer the people holding it " (page 12). As we may put it, "The higher you go, the fewer."

We are told that the members of the "Progressive" political bodies are drawn from the top layers and therefore it is a waste of time for them to go on appealing to the illogical masses "with the same arguments and upon the same subject-matter which was instrumental in their own conversion" (page 14).

"Progressive" is not defined in the pamphlet though it appears to include all layers above the Conservatives, nor is it stated that the aim of the writer is Socialism. We are, however, told that the "more progressive political organisations are largely agreed as to the direction that economic reorganisation must take " and reference is made to the “proposed economic change" but again it is not defined. This is important, for we cannot conceive what can be the economic change about which Socialists are in agreement with Liberals, Communists and other self-styled “progressives."

Elsewhere (page 15) Tatham tells us that “there will always be, so long as civilisation endures, conservative, liberal, socialist, communist, etc., levels of social and political understanding," and (pages 13-14) that “those people sometimes termed 'the politically unconscious'—i.e., whose interest in social and political matters is largely emotional —must at all times be in a considerable majority." If therefore the economic change that Tatham looks to is Socialism, we are asked to believe that Socialism will be achieved and will function with a majority of the population still “politically unconscious" and not interested in it. Moreover, whatever the change he envisages, he sees that his argument implies dictatorship, for he asks, “How then are we to have the proposed change and still retain the political democracy we now have?" (Page 16.)

Tatham answers the question but in a very vague way. He tells us that a few (not all) of the individuals in the top layers will make a specialised study of the nature of the political and ideological field (page 15), and that we can then look forward “to the application of scientific method . . . to the social mind, for the scientific control (i.e., self-control) of human nature" (page 16). Now what exactly does this mean? If the masses cannot understand a logical case and only a few of the few in the top layers are able to make the special study referred to, in what way can the promised application of scientific method to the social mind be described as “self control"? Does it not mean what MacDonald meant in 1887, that the cultured few should either do without the "rude and uncultivated masses" or act as the “designer" using them as “the tool"?

Against all of the advocates of clever leaders using stupid masses stands the S.P.G.B. At the formation of the Party it was frankly recognised that knowledge is necessary and that the workers as a whole lacked knowledge—but not the capacity to understand and learn. Therefore the S.P.G.B. accepted that progress must lie slow, there could be no short cuts. In the Socialist Standard for February 1905 appeared the following typical declaration: —

The ignorance of the workers in the past has enabled the capitalists to possess themselves of the political machine. The workers all unwittingly have made the rod that is now applied to their backs. But what working class ignorance has done, working class enlightenment can undo. . . . It is absolutely necessary that the workers shall see every step of the way clearly before they take it. Which may mean a slow advance, but it will certainly mean a sure advance."

When Freud and others are quoted to try to prove that only a tiny minority can ever understand logical case on social and political problems we are not impressed. Are these authorities themselves among the logical minority? If so, they ought, according to Tatham, to have slipped straight into the “progressive" political party appropriate to their layer, and ought not to have remained anti-Socialist, as many of them have. Again, if the irrationality of the majority resides in the nature of human beings as such, why does it not hold good for the select few? Are they not human beings too? And if it does not reside in the nature of human beings as such, why cannot the majority, through education, attain the degree of logical understanding already attained by the minority? In spite of the Plebs-—Tatham view of the poor results of propaganda, we of the S.P.G.B. know of no reason why other workers should not come to understand what we have come to understand. Some may develop more slowly than others, but logical understanding and action are not beyond the capacity of the majority. What we are up against is not an innate incapacity to understand, but the massive and tireless machinery of capitalist propaganda, including the red herrings of the Tatham kind, but our efforts—small at present—are aided by the constant pressure of capitalism on the working class. No capitalist propaganda can for ever prevent the workers from becoming passionately interested in the failure of the capitalist system and the need to find a way out by their own efforts.

If evidence is needed to show that the workers do possess capacity to understand and act—even if at present it is in a limited sphere—their achievement in building up the trade union movement provides that evidence. What has been done on the industrial field and much more will not in the long run be beyond working class capacity on the political field. It is bound to be a slow process, but does anyone know a quicker one? What has happened to all the short cuts promised by the Fabians, MacDonald, Lenin, the “Plebs," etc.?

Tatham and Walsby’s rehash of old theory leaves us unmoved. The slight refinements they introduce leave the theory just as unconvincing and suspect as it always was. The one difference between Lenin and this latest variation (i.e., that the workers will never understand) is not a step forward but a step back. As for the “layers" (very much like the theory propounded in 1923 by the “Plebs" group), one flaw in the argument is that the problem before us is not why does Socialist propaganda make no progress, for it obviously does make progress, though slowly. Yet surely, according to the “layer" theory. Socialist propaganda ought at its inception to have made a fairly rapid appeal to all the individuals in the appropriate layer and should then have ceased to make headway, except to the extent that the field was enlarged by individuals of a new generation in that layer. If it were true that Socialist propaganda cannot spread outside a small circle, one wonders why the capitalist class have devoted such enormous efforts to preventing it from spreading.

Again, how does the theory square with the class interests behind political parties? Is the almost universal opposition which the capitalists show towards Socialism proof that they are all in the lower layers and unable to understand a logical case? Or is not the capitalist who supports the Tory Party (“the stupid party," as its opponents often mistakenly call it) taking a logical step to defend his class and personal economic interests?

This pamphlet does no more than MacDonald and the others to convince us either that there is a majority who will never understand Socialism, or that Socialism can be brought about by an “intelligent minority," behind the backs of the working class.
Edgar Hardcastle

The Outlook for China (1955)

From the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is becoming more typical of the stultified mental attitude of “schools higher learning” that they refuse to allow the most innocuous controversial subjects to be discussed and debated. In the growing atmosphere of fear and thought control which is prevalent today, the prohibition of academic debates between Annapolis, West Point and other collegians on the subject of the recognition of China caused even a most conservative President of the United States to state in his weekly press conference that he himself would have allowed such debates. Though the subject of the debate is of prime importance to the ruling classes and is considered quite a knotty problem by them, what are some of the fundamental issues involved in the whole China question, and who has the answers?

What will it be—Recognition of China or War, hot or cold? Will it be “peaceful coexistence ” or the culmination of modern science, mass slaughter by fusion. The problem of relationships of the United States with China as part of the world wide competition of nationalist states, is one aspect of the never ending struggles of capitalist powers. Drastic and swift as the changes in tactics may be, the current policy of U.S. Capitalism is that there will be no major war for a while, and that the economic competition will determine supremacy.

In line with the emphasis on economic development the Foreign Operations Administration is presenting estimates to the Bureau of the Budget. Military programmes will be cut down in Europe and economic programmes in Asia will be expanded. Economic aid to the countries surrounding China will be greater in 1955 than the $1,200,000,000 expended in 1954. Note well that it is the Government which is planning all this. State planners all, on either side!

Rapid Growth
China, it is feared, is developing faster economically than the “free countries” of Asia. Although there are no exact statistics on Chinese capital investment, ex-Premier Shigeru Yoshida of Japan estimated that the rate of capital investment in China was twice that of other Asian countries. The United States which poured billions of dollars into Nationalist China only to have it washed down the drain, still is trying to create, develop and control the market in Asia. With its tremendous economic strength the United States is attempting to contain the embryonic development of state capitalism in China. As a measure of the strength of the rivals, the gross national product, the total value of all production, in 1954 is expected to be between $350,000,000,000 and $360,000,000,000 for the United States, $200,000,000,000 for Western Europe, $160,000,000,000 for Russia and all her allies, and about $73,000,000,000 for the other Asian countries. China’s industrial development is, of course, now just beginning to accelerate.

What is transpiring in China is not Socialism, no more Socialism than there is in the U.S.S.R. Ruthless as were and are the methods of Russian State Capitalism, the child bids fair to outdo the parent. In the purges carried out since 1949 the total number executed is estimated at well over 10,000,000. Communist bureaucrats have replaced the larger land owners and the urban merchants who were mercilessly executed. Peiping, even after the purges, still officially claims a population of 582,000,000 in all of China. About 80 per cent. are peasants cultivating two acres of land or less. Josue de Castro in his “Geography of Hunger” well documents the chronic famines which periodically starved to death millions of Chinese, and the constant hunger which over two thirds of the population suffer. Land reform was eagerly received by millions of peasants even though they only received an acre or two at the expense of the wealthier landlords, who themselves might have had only five to 20 acres at the most. However, when Peiping undertakes to collectivize 100,000,000 peasant families within the next decade force indeed will be the midwife of collectivization, and the costs will be even higher than in Russia where millions died in the collectivization attempt.

Anti-Working Class
Communist apologists seem to glory in the death of millions as some sort of historical necessity. They, like the Nationalists who preceded them in power, take pride in their toughness and ruthlessness. A Socialist may ask whether this is the means by which will be made “the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.” Socialists think not. Socialists think that promoting the understanding of the meaning of Socialism in the majority of working class heads is of more importance in achieving Socialism than the bludgeoning of working class beads to achieve economic progress in backward countries.

The rapid industrialization of China will require large amounts of capital. Some of this capital will come from Russia. Certain countries of the West would also like to find a market in China for their capital goods. Whether under the direction of the entrepreneur, corporation or state, "capital is value that breeds surplus value.” Of all the commodities involved the commodity labour-power is the only one which "creates during its consumption a greater value than it itself possesses.” The Chinese State unhindered by any organized opposition of the workers will attempt to secure this labour-power at a price lower than its value, low as its value is by Western standards. Even then, as elsewhere, the efficiency of the worker must be increased and he requires more of the means of life to replace the energy expended. The value of the labour power of the Chinese worker is determined like that of an American worker. It is determined by the labour-time socially necessary for its production and its reproduction. However, as Marx wrote, “in contrast to other commodities a historical and moral element enters into the determination of the value of labour power.” Therefore, if there will be increases eventually in the standard of living under State Capitalism, they will be increases which are consonant both with the development and needs of capitalism, and also the results of the struggle to sell labour-power as a commodity to the state at its increased value.

The realization that its mode of production is far inferior to that of the West impels the Chinese State to tremendous effort in the economic sphere. It is part of the dialectic of world development that some day will bring Socialism. Socialism is far from being established in China. Though the pessimist may echo the same sentiment about the advanced capitalist countries of the West, they are at least one step nearer. China is merely following the industrialization pattern of countries like Japan and Russia.

While someday the Chinese will produce automobiles instead of rickshaws, will produce all the various consumer 1 and capital goods that the industrialized West produces, and the commissars of the “People’s Democracy” will delude them with the propaganda that they have advanced into Socialism, the status of the Chinese workers will still be that of workers of the world over—wage slaves for a master class. Until this relationship is done away with there will be no Socialism.

W.

(From Western Socialist, Jan.-Feb. 1955).

Aspect: Marx and Keynes on Unemployment (1971)

The Aspect column from the June 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first volume of Capital, in which Karl Marx analysed the workings of the capitalist system, was published in 1867. Although Marx’s economic theories were under ceaseless attack by economists who defended capitalism the theories made headway in working class circles, particularly in the prolonged depression of the 1930’s. One of the reasons for the universal interest in Marx in those years was his treatment of unemployment, for he showed how unemployment arises and why it is necessary to capitalism. Then in 1936 John Maynard Keynes’ work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money brought about a twofold shift in the attitude of many economists and politicians. On the one hand they now accepted that unemployment—sometimes of acute and politically dangerous proportions—can arise out of the normal functioning of the capitalist system, but on the other hand they hailed Keynes as the man who they thought had shown them how full employment could be achieved if the right measures were taken by governments. Keynes’ theories were welcomed most of all by the trade unions and the Labour Party because they seemed to offer the prospect that a future Labour government need not be overwhelmed by an “economic blizzard”, as had happened to the Labour government which entered office in 1929 and collapsed under the weight of two million unemployed in 1931.

One of the consequences of the rise of Keynes was of course that working class interest in Marxian theories suffered a sharp decline.

Keynes was given the credit of having demolished the theories of 19th century economists who had taught that, if left to its own devices, capitalism would always and of its own accord tend towards full employment. What was little noticed was that most of the ground covered by him had been treated in detail by Marx three-quarters of a century earlier. Keynes was quite contemptuous of Marx, describing Capital as “an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world” (A Short View of Russia, 1925) and he never seems to have appreciated that his own criticisms of earlier economists were much like those of Marx.

Among those economists were the Frenchman J.B. Say and the English economists James and John Stuart Mill and David Ricardo. The first of the four is remembered by what is called “Say’s Law”, which was that as people acquire money only to spend it, production and sale will always keep in balance. Keynes in his General Theory wrote:

 Thus Say’s Law, that the aggregate demand price of output as a whole is equal to its aggregate supply price for all volumes of output, is equivalent to the proposition that there is no obstacle to full employment. If, however, this   is not the true law relating the aggregate demand and supply functions, there is a vitally important chapter of economic theory which remains to be written and without which all discussions concerning the volume of aggregate employment are futile.

Keynes also quoted J. S. Mill who, in his Principles of Political Economy, set out to show that no matter how much production is increased the output will always be sold:

  All sellers are inevitably, and by the meaning of the word buyers. Could we suddenly double the productive powers of the country, we should double the supply of commodities in every market; but we should by the same stroke double the purchasing power. Everybody would bring a double demand as well as supply; everybody would be able to buy twice as much, because everyone would have twice as much to offer in exchange.

Marx had seen this mistake long before. In his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859, he pointed out that Say had in act borrowed his law from James Mill. Marx quoted a passage from James Mill putting exactly the same idea as that borrowed by his son and quoted by Keynes. In Capital Marx wrote:

  Nothing can be more childish than the dogma, that because every sale is a purchase and every purchase a sale, therefore the circulation of commodities necessarily implies an equilibrium of sales and purchases (Kerr edition, p.127).

He showed that “no one is forthwith bound to purchase, because he has just sold”; there can be an interval and if this “split between the sale and the purchase becomes too pronounced” the result is a crisis.

Keynes, like Marx, saw that although capitalists could, in times of depression, invest to expand production they will not do so unless there is prospect of selling the products at an adequate profit. Marx dealt with this reluctance to spend to expand production, under the heading of “hoarding”; Keynes coined the term “liquidity preference”, meaning that the capitalist prefers in that situation to keep his money in cash or its equivalent.

Although Marx and Keynes both saw the fallacy of the early economic theories they reached different conclusions. Marx showed that, under the inducement of competition for the market, capitalist industry is always seeking to reduce costs of production by utilising labour-displacing machinery or other means of securing the same output with less labour, thus creating unemployment; and that capitalism needs “an industrial reserve army” both in order to be able to take advantage of periodical opportunities to expand old industries and develop new ones, and to keep wages down to a level which makes production profitable. For Marx periodical crises are inevitable and equally inevitable is eventual recovery to go through another phase of expansion, boom, crisis and depression.

Keynes challenged this. He maintained that government action can be taken to encourage investment (or to undertake its own investment) and to expand consumption so that recovery from depression can be speeded up and activity maintained at a continuous level of more or less full employment.

The years of relatively low unemployment in this and some other countries since the second world war were held to have proved the validity of Keynes’ argument. This interpretation has, however, been disputed and not only by Marxists. Professor R.C.O. Matthews, for example, argued in the September 1968 issue of the Economic Journal that the major factors have been demand arising out of war-time destruction and an unusually prolonged investment boom, and that positive Keynesian measures have had at most a very minor effect. And the Keynsians have been dismayed by the repeated crises and the gradual long-term increase of unemployment that began in the sixties.

Labour Party supporters who associated their schemes of nationalisation with Keynesian proposals for government action to maintain employment have been particularly disappointed. In the Labour Party Election Programme of 1950 they explained what a Labour government would do:

  Publicly owned industry will be ready to expand its investment when employment policy demands it. The public sector will, by speeding up necessary capital development, help to maintain employment.

But the Labour government’s Nationalisation Acts required the nationalised industries to be run at a profit, like any capitalist industry, and this involved closing down unprofitable coal mines and railways lines.

The Keynsians did not at the outset admit the force of Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s need to keep wages down in order to safeguard profits, but finding in practice that the need exists, Labour governments achieved what they thought was a substitute in the form of wage restraint through an incomes policy.

In face of the realities of capitalism Keynes’ reputation is now greatly diminished, while Marx still provides an unanswerable case for not wasting time – trying to save capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Aspect: Labour Time Vouchers (1971)

The Aspect column from the May 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader has asked us why the Socialist Party of Great Britain speaks of free access to consumer goods in Socialism rather than of the distribution of consumer goods by the labour-time vouchers mentioned by Marx.

The first to suggest the use of labour-time vouchers instead of money was Robert Owen in 1820. The Owenites stood for a society of co-operative communities. Each community would own its own means and instruments of production and each member of a community would work to produce what had been agreed was needed and in return would be issued with a note certifying for how many hours he had worked; he could then use this note to obtain from the community’s stock of consumer goods any product or products which had taken the same number of hours to produce. Owen believed that this co-operative commonwealth could begin to be introduced under capitalism and in the first half of the 1830s some of his followers established “labour bazaars” on a similar principle: workers brought the products of their labour to the bazaar and received in exchange a labour-note which entitled them to take away from the bazaar any item or items which had taken the same time to produce, after taking into account the costs of the raw materials. These bazaars were failures but the idea of labour-time vouchers (or “labour-money”) appeared in substantially similar forms in France with Proudhon and in Germany with Rodbertus and is one source of currency crank theories.

Those who advocate labour-time vouchers can have two different circumstances for their use in mind. Like Robert Owen, they can advocate their use within the context of co-operative ownership and production for use or, like Proudhon, within the context of private ownership and production for sale. Marx exposed as currency cranks those who wanted labour-time vouchers and buying and selling. Where goods are produced for sale, he pointed out, sooner or later one commodity will emerge as the one which can be exchanged for all the others. This special commodity is of course money and its appearance signifies the end of barter. To perform this role of the medium of exchange the commodity must itself have an exchange value. Money is basically a special commodity, a fact which is obscured by the later evolution of money where almost worthless coins and notes have come to circulate as tokens for the money-commodity. Those who advocate the abolition of money and its replacement by labour-time vouchers while retaining production for sale are thus, said Marx, quite confused; wherever there is production for sale one commodity must become money (see his comments in his Critique of Political Economy on the theories of John Gray).

Within the context of common ownership and production for use, however, labour-time vouchers are quite feasible. Then they are not money at all, but merely a method of sharing out consumer goods. As Marx said of the Owenites’ plan for a co-operative commonwealth:

  Owen’s ‘labour-money’, for instance, is no more ‘money’ than a ticket for the theatre. Owen presupposes directly associated labour, a form of production that is entirely inconsistent with the production of commodities. The certificate of labour is merely evidence of the part taken by the individual in the common labour, and of his right to a certain portion of the common produce destined for consumption (Capital, Vol &, Moscow, 1961, pp. 94-5).

Engels says much the same in his comments in Anti-Dühring on Owen’s labour-notes.

The German Social Democrats of the 1860s and 1870s inherited the idea of distribution according to labour-time from Rodbertus. They envisaged a system where, with the means of production vested in the community, workers would be given a labour-time voucher entitling them to a share of the social product; thus they would, as Lassalle put it, get “the full product of their labour”. This phrase is confused because, if everything produced in a given period is distributed in full for consumption, then nothing would be left over to renew and expand the means of production or to store in the case of emergency. This point was made by Marx in one of his criticisms of the Gotha Programme which was adopted by the German Social Democrats in 1875 when the followers of Lassalle united with the group with which Marx and Engels had been working. In the course of this criticism Marx made his well-known statement about labour-time vouchers in Socialism (“not as it has developed on its own foundations, but . . . just as it emerges from capitalist society”):

  The individual producer . . . receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as costs the same amount of labour. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another (Selected Works, Vol II, Moscow, 1958, p. 23).

Supporters of state capitalist Russia have used this passage to try to show that Marx thought that  money — and of course gold does function as the money-commodity in Russia — could exist in Socialism. This is so much nonsense since elsewhere Marx specifically stated that labour-time vouchers were not money (see his comments on Owen quoted earlier):

  The producers may . . . receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate (Capital, Vol II, Moscow, 1957, p. 358).

Marx nowhere states that labour-time vouchers were the only method of distributing wealth in Socialism; they were only one possible method. [1]  The actual method adopted would depend on the circumstances (Capital, Vol I, pp. 78-9). Alternatives were suggested, as for instance by Edward Bellamy in his Looking Backward written in 1887. He wanted everybody in Socialism to be issued with a credit card entitling them to obtain an equal amount of consumer goods. In any event, later in his criticism of the Gotha Programme Marx made it quite clear that if labour-time vouchers were used in Socialism this would be a temporary measure imposed by the comparatively low level of technology. In time, he saw, when the “springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly” Socialist society could abandon labour-time vouchers (or whatever) and go over to “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” that is, to free access to consumer goods.

In 1875 the then existing level of technology might well have meant that many consumer goods would unavoidably be available only in limited quantities for some years after the establishment of Socialism. But in the hundred years since, technical progress has made it possible for the springs of co-operative wealth to flow more abundantly than Marx could have foreseen so that free distribution—to each according to his needs—can be implemented almost immediately after Socialism has been established.

Potential abundance has made the idea of labour-time vouchers quite outdated.

Notes:

[1] Baran and Sweezy are quite wrong when they write in their Monopoly Capital (Penguin, p. 325) that “Marx emphasised in his Critique of the Gotha Programme that the principle of equivalent exchange must survive in a socialist society for a considerable period as a guide to the efficient allocation and utilization of human and material sources”. For Marx there was no “must” about labour-time vouchers (and so more or less “equivalent exchange”); they were just one way of allocating consumer goods before free access could be introduced.

The Sunny Side of the Street (1995)

Coronation Street, 1995

TV Review from the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the visual litter of second-rate soap operas, sitcoms and gameshows one programme has stood out like a beacon for over thirty years now. If the unthinkable ever happened and it was removed from our TV screens, a storm of protest would be guaranteed. It is well written, superbly acted and tremendously likeable. It is, of course, Coronation Street.

Coronation Street is what the pundits like to call a ‘national institution' and watching it it is easy to see how they came to that conclusion. At an emotional level, not only does it hold a special place in the heart of many viewers (unusual itself for a TV programme these days) it reflects a wider set of social values which viewers can easily identify with. It is a cosy, homely type of programme that you can curl up in front of on a winter's night. As has been tirelessly pointed out. the only real problem with it is that it does not reflect a cosy, homely world. Indeed, Coronation Street, its detractors claim, does not reflect reality at all. It portrays a world that does not exist anywhere any more. It is a terraced Victorian street with cobbles, a corner shop and an old-fashioned English pub. the sort of self-contained community that is dying out everywhere. Furthermore, Coronation Street largely neglects the type of problems associated with this decline.

At the time of writing, there is not a single unemployed person on Coronation Street. There is nobody with a drug problem. Nobody, apparently, even on anti-depressants or tranquilisers. Only one person. Emily Bishop, with a past history of mental illness. No one is active in a pressure group or political party of any sort, and there do not appear to be any trade unionists. Most bizarrely, for an inner-city Manchester street, there is not one Asian family and interestingly — as has been spotted by many a comedian with an axe to grind — the corner shop is run by a white couple called Reg and Maureen. Throughout its entire history, in fact, Coronation Street's corner shop has carried the flag for white Middle England. And of course, there is no one in Coronation Street who is — you know — in any way ‘funny’, sexually. Raquel's recent dalliance with Curly Watts is as close as it gets.

This all sounds like a terrible indictment, and in some ways it is. Coronation Street is a hopelessly unrepresentative television programme. Even if we momentarily disregard the sociological breakdowns and the discrepancies they reveal, comparatively few characters in the Street are in any way likely. Most are quite bizarre, though often entertainingly so. Has anyone ever met anybody in real life remotely like Reg Hallsworth? Or Mavis and Derek? Or Raquel? The question is superfluous — of course nobody has. and certainly not in the one little street. They are extreme characterisations of the comic variety, exaggerated almost — though not quite — out of recognition altogether. In truth, they have far more in common with comedian Harry Enfield than with anything or anyone to be found in miserable old Albert Square. Enfield’s “Mr ‘You don’t want to do it like that"’ seems to draw heavily on Percy Sugden.

Paradoxically for the greatest British soap opera, its characters are often more in the tradition of the British sitcom — more Captain Mainwairing or Gordon Brittas than Arthur Fowler, more Hattie Jacques and Joan Sims than Mandy Jordache. They are not, to hazard a guess, meant to be real people at all. It is hard to think of other characters in any other British soap opera who fall into this category.

Not them again.

Extreme characterisations often provide for good comedy, and this is one of the secrets of the Street's success. Compare it to BBC I‘s EastEnders and this becomes apparent very quickly indeed. While EastEnders goes in for a highly distorted version of ‘social realism’, the Street doesn't bother its head — its philosophy is that it is drama and laughs that people want more than murder, mayhem and misery. And that is precisely why it is held in such affection by millions of workers. Without too great a leap of the imagination, it gives them a sense of what life might be like if it wasn’t so bloody boring most of the time. lts appeal may be less obviously based on escapism than racy Dallas or glitzy Dynasty, but escapism it is nevertheless.

Despite their occasional traumas, the characters in Coronation Street are genuinely interesting specimens who are, encouragingly, rather nice with it. They are, as they say up North, decent folk. Has Alma a malicious bone in her body? Have Sally and Kevin, or Rita? It would not appear so. Best of all, they seem to inhabit a real community in every sense of the term. Not a sprawling housing estate plagued by packs of dogs and discarded syringes, nor the amorphous sprawl of suburbia but a place where people genuinely care about one another and then nip in to the local boozer to finish off the day with a pint and a gossip. It is a bit of a fantasy, true, but a lovely one.

It would be easy enough to sneer at all this, but Coronation Street deserves better. It cannot even be dismissed as a mere capitalist utopia, for although there are clearly elements of this, it is a strange utopia where the inhabitants live in poky, claustrophobic little terraced houses without any greenery in sight. Instead Coronation Street is best seen as an antidote to the myriad other TV programmes that portray the working class as vicious morons without an ounce of feeling or compassion in their entire bodies. If the producers of EastEnders got their grimy little hands on it, Nicky Platt would soon be selling crack cocaine on the corner of Rosumund Street and giving heroin to little Sarah-Louise while Betty Turpin would be running a brothel above the Rover's Return. Would that be more realistic? Hardly. It would simply be to swop one excess for another.

Though it has its faults, Coronation Street has more going for it than most soap operas. Crucially, it has never really endorsed the ethics of the market driven economy, and its least likeable characters. Mike Baldwin and Steve MacDonald are both petty capitalists, interestingly enough. And when realism — in a genuine rather than the over dramatised form of otvher soaps — rears its head, it is often for Vera Duckworth or Curly Watts to bemoan their existence as a 'wage slave' after a long day in the supermarket. Most of the characters, though idiosyncratic enough, appear reasonably intelligent — only screaming, bawling Tracy Barlow seems to have caught the EastEnders disease so far, and this too is encouraging.

Coronation Street will surely continue to do what it does best: provide an engaging pastiche of working class life with humour and vigour. It can generally leave the issues campaigning and 'social realism' to Brookside, the petty arguments and grind to EastEnders and the gratuitous violence and bad sets to Prisoner Cell Block H. It has little to learn from any of them while it continues to depict a working class with humour, a certain degree of confidence and more than one brain cell to collectively rub together. For this alone, its deficiencies can be forgiven. That is its greatest achievement over thirty years and more, and in a world dominated by a cynical, bitter and twisted media, it is not to be sniffed at.

Dave Perrin

Mr Belloc and the Servile State. (1929)

From the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Hilaire Belloc lectured recently on a favourite topic – the Servile State – at the Co-operative Summer School, held at the L.C.C. Training College. His address (delivered on Tuesday, August 27th) was reported in the Co-operative News on 7th September. After some very sound remarks on the dominance which belongs to the capitalist class through their ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, Mr. Belloc went on to air his views on Socialism. He said: –

  Under Socialism all men were to be in the servile state. There were to be no free men ordering other men about, but the politicians were to do that instead.

When Mr. Belloc uses the word ‘Socialism’, he possibly has in mind the administration of capitalism by Government experts, a theory beloved by the Fabians, who do the thinking for the Labour Party; but that is to give the word a meaning which robs it of sense and usefulness.

The existing subjection of the workers is due – as Mr. Belloc agrees – to the private ownership of the means of life.

How, then, can Socialism, i.e., social ownership, lead to the servile state? And how else than by social ownership can the evils of private or non-social ownership be eradicated? We are told that Mr. Belloc offers to enter into written controversy on the subject. We shall be pleased to offer him space in the Socialist Standard to defend his extraordinary statements about Socialism.


Blogger's Note:
See 'Mr. Belloc and the Servile State' from the November 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard.

"Red" Vienna and "Red" London (1929)

From the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years we have heard much talk of the wonders of Vienna under its Labour Council. It has been held up as a model of “Socialist” administration, although there is nothing in its record of municipal houses and baths, etc., which has anything whatever to do with Socialism. Vienna, to many members of the I.L.P. and the Labour Party, has been the equivalent of Moscow to the Communists: a sort of Mecca. Now Mr. Herbert Morrison, M.P., Minister of Transport and former Secretary of the London Labour Party, has been to Vienna, and comes back to tell us that capitalism in Vienna is just like our own brand. He says (Daily Herald, 10th September) “it would be misleading to say that Vienna is, in general ahead of English towns.” There is one other little thing we learn from his visit to Vienna. That is that the Viennese Labourites are just as credulous and willing to believe tall stories as their British counterpart. To the I.L.P. Capitalist Vienna is “Red Vienna,” and to the Viennese, London, it appears, is “Red London.” In the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna, 4th September), an article on the electoral successes of the London Labour Parties describes Mr. Morrison as “The man who has made London red.”

We who, unfortunately, live in London and carry on the uphill work of trying to make Socialists did not know that Mr. Morrison had already done this for us. We did not even know that Mr. Morrison and his party were trying to. So also our Socialist friends in Vienna were completely unaware that Vienna is "Socialist Vienna," and although Mr. Morrison now informs them of this fact they still refuse to be persuaded. It requires distance to lend enchantment to the view of capitalism when seen from the angle of the factory bench, the office desk, the working class home, or the Labour Exchange.

Edgar Hardcastle

The S.L.P. and the S.P.G.B. (1929)

From the July 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Weekly People”—the official organ of the Socialist Labour Party of America, in its issue for April 13th— attempts to reply to our recent references to their policy and their continual decline. (See January "Socialist Standard.")

We accused them of making Marx responsible for the statement "that only the Unions can set on foot the true political party of Labour."

They now repeat the old story that their source of information is a reformist periodical run by the German section of the New York Socialist Party. This organ, the "Volkszeitung," which the S.L.P. never tired of denouncing, is again admitted to be the only source of their knowledge of Marx’s alleged statement. When and where Marx made such an utterance they have never discovered.

"The Weekly People" attempt to find support for their position in "Value, Price and Profit,” but, unfortunately, they are unable to quote any extracts which tells us that only the Trade Unions can set on foot the true political party.

On the other hand, Marx’s reference to the limitations of Union activity is striking:—

   "As to the limitation of the working day in England, as in all other countries, it has never been settled, except by legislative interference. Without the working men’s continuous pressure from without, that interference would never have taken place. But, at all events, the result was not to be attained by private settlement between the working men and the capitalists. This very necessity of general political action affords the proof that in its merely economic action, capital is the stronger side.” — (“Value, Price and Profit.”)

We accused the S.L.P. of claiming that "Religion is a private matter.”

They deny it is a public matter, and leave that as their answer. The function of religion as an instrument of capitalism in clouding the worker’s mind is completely ignored by the S.L.P. So also is the fact that Socialism is based on Science.

The S.L.P. does not seem to know that the Socialist view of history is a material one, and has nothing in common with the religious concept of the universe. No wonder the S.L.P. fades. 

Adolph Kohn

On the Eve of the Referendum in Northern Ireland – Workers Have a Choice! (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers,

This Referendum is a sham. You are being offered a false choice. The constitutional position of Northern Ireland is not an issue of any concern to you.

Whether Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom or becomes part of the Republic of Ireland will make no difference whatsoever to the basic structure of society where a privileged class monopolises the means of production while the rest have to work for wages and where wealth is produced not to satisfy human needs but for sale with a view to profit. It won’t even make much difference to your present standard of living in terms of wage levels, housing, unemployment and the other problems you face.

Yet it is this class structure of society — which exists equally in Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic — that is the basic cause of the economic and social problems faced by the great majority of society, those who, whatever their religious background, depend for a living on earning a wage or salary. This is why a mere constitutional change will make no difference, not even a radical one achieved by violence.

Look at the Twenty-Six Counties which achieved “Independence” in 1921 after a bloody war against the British Army. What difference has this made to the position of wage and salary earners there? It has merely provided a different political framework within which they can suffer the problems of capitalism, governed by Irish, instead of British, politicians representing capitalist interests. It has meant little more than painting the pillar boxes green. And painting the pillar boxes in Northern Ireland green is about all voting to join the Republic would achieve. Not of course that staying part of the United Kingdom is going to make any difference to these problems either.

The only change that will is a world-wide social revolution that would make all that is in and on the Earth the common heritage of all mankind to be used to provide an abundance of wealth to which all could have free access according to need. This essentially peaceful revolution can only occur when the great majority of wage and salary earners in all countries are in favour of it and organise democratically to carry it out. It involves a rejection of all nationalism and all attempts to solve problems on a national scale. In the context of Northern Ireland it requires you to reject both Republicanism and Unionism, and their various offshoots.

For years you have allowed yourselves to be enmeshed in a political argument, even to the extent of killing and being killed, that was of no concern to you. The Republicans, on the one hand, sought your support for the establishment of an independent All-Ireland State. The Unionists, on the other hand, wanted you to back their demand that the North-East of Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom. Both sides have not hesitated to use violence, legal and illegal. Because, as far as the capitalist interests they represented were concerned, the issues at stake were vital: Should or should not the highly industrialised area round Belfast have been cut off from the rest of industrial Britain behind the tariff walls of an industrially-backward Irish State? Should or should not the Belfast capitalists have been denied free access to the markets of the British Empire just so that the smaller capitalists of the rest of Ireland should be protected from British competition?

These were the purely capitalist issues that lay behind the facade of religious and constitutional conflict. But for the past ten or so years, as first the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement of 1965 and now the Common Market show, this issue no longer divides the capitalists of Ireland. But, unfortunately, their battles of yesterday continue to be fought by some of you today.

Though a sham, this Referendum does at least provide a chance for you to protest against the kind of politics that has dominated this part of the world for nearly a hundred years and which has brought it to the brink of an utterly pointless civil war. If you want to register your rejection of both Irish Republicanism and British Unionism in favour of World Socialism, we suggest you don’t abstain but go to the polling booths and write the words “World Socialism” across your ballot papers.

50 Years Ago: This Age of Discontent (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The non-socialists see certain evils in the world, evils which grow more glaring as the years pass, and all they can do is to say in effect, “Let us destroy these abominable evils, and if in doing so, we at the same time, destroy associations of peoples, even if we thereby wipe out mankind itself; better chaos or annihilation, than the degradation and prostitution of life as it is today.”

The Socialist, however, has no desire for social chaos or atavism, or total annihilation; these visions of despair would drift into nothingness if people could only be brought to understand— to understand themselves and the social system under which they live and which makes them the unhappy beings that they are. We are endeavouring to give our non-Socialist fellow workers an exposition of life as it now is as it might soon be, and as, eventually it will be.

What we desire is a sane and healthy system of society, to be created on the dead ashes of the system which is passing, wherein no man shall be called upon to sacrifice his ability and no woman her body in order to obtain the wherewithal to live; wherein the workman, the artist, the scientist (possibly a trinity in one person) may unite with and dovetail into one another in the production of wealth, which would be the property of an appreciative and enlightened humanity; not, as now, the property of a few unworthy and unappreciative parasites.

(From an article “The Age of Discontent” by F. J. Webb in the Socialist Standard, March 1923.)

Aspect: Increasing Misery (1971)

The Aspect column from the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The theory of The Socialist Party of Great Britain is Marxist in the sense that certain of our key ideas about society, economics and politics are derived from Karl Marx.

Although our case rests entirely on its own merits and not on what Marx may or may not have said, we have always been ready to defend Marx’s views where we believe them to be correct against criticisms based on an ignorance of what he wrote.

Recently for instance, the Guardian claimed that “Marx has been proved wrong on fundamentals; the workers far from being denied a fair share of profits and so becoming poorer, are vastly better off”. Is this true? Was it fundamental to Marx’s economic theory that under capitalism the workers would come to own less and less material possessions?

The short answer is, No. Marx did not believe that the amount of goods and services the workers consumed would necessarily have to decline. What he did say was that the misery of the workers would increase, but he did not equate this misery with destitution. For him, as we shall see, misery referred to the general circumstances under which workers, however well-paid, had to live and work.

Poverty can be used in two senses: absolutely, to refer to a low standard of living in terms of a given small amount of goods and services, or relatively, to refer to a low standard of living compared with that of others. There can be no doubt as to where Marx stood on this issue. In one of his earliest economic writings Wage Labour and Capital (first given as a series of lectures in 1847, and revised and republished by Engels in 1891) Marx wrote:

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls. 

  A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. The rapid growth of productive capital brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx-Engels Selected Works, Vol. 1, pp.93-94, Moscow, 1958)

Marx understood subsistence, too, in a relative sense. According to his theory, wages fluctuate about the subsistence level of the worker. Certain critics (and even supporters) have taken this to mean that there was a fixed amount of goods and services above which real wages could never rise. This so-called Iron Law of Wages was repudiated by Marx. He regarded the subsistence level as something which varied not only amongst workers of different skills but also from place to place, in the same place at different times and even, to a small extent, under the influence of the workers’ own trade union activities.

To suggest that Marx expected wages to fall towards, and even below, some absolute poverty line is to misunderstand him completely.

Marx also writes in Wage Labour and Capital that, even though the most favourable situation for the working class under capitalism is the fastest possible growth of capital, “however much it may improve the material existence of the worker, does not remove the antagonism between his interests and … the interests of the capitalists” (p.98). Marx returned to this theme in Chapter XXV of Capital which considers “the ‘influence of the growth of capital on the lot of the labouring class”.

Marx’s comments on the occasions when the wages of some workers have risen as a result of a temporary labour shortage again make it quite clear that high wages do not end the economic exploitation of the working class.

  The more or less favourable circumstances in which the wage-working class supports and multiplies itself, in no way alters the fundamental character of capitalist production.” (p.613).

  A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. (p.618, Moscow, 1961). 

Later in the same chapter just before the passage about the “accumulation of misery”, Marx explicitly states that high wages do not affect the misery of workers either:

   In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. (p.645)

Clearly by misery Marx cannot have meant absolute poverty. For, as this passage shows, workers may be better off materially but still worse off in some other sense. This referred to the conditions under which they had to work. Marx mentions the boring drudgery workers had to perform under capitalism in place of the pleasure they could get in a Socialist society from creating useful things. He also mentions the fact that workers are employed by capitalists and deprived by them of the fruits of their labour. As he put it in 1875 in a criticism of the Iron Law of Wages:

  The wage-worker has permission to work for his own subsistence, that is, to live, only insofar as he workers for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter’s  co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day or by developing the productivity, that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. (“Critique of the Gotha Programme”, Selected Works, Vol. II, p.29)

In the next article we will examine this concept of “relative wages” which Marx did believe would tend to decline under capitalism.

In the meantime readers are referred to two useful articles: 

• Poverty or Misery? Socialist Standard, January 1957. 
• Marx’s “Increasing Misery” Doctrine by Thomas Sowell, American Economic Review, March 1960.

Aspect: Relative Wages (1971)

The Aspect column from the February 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we refuted the suggestion that Marx held that under capitalism the amount of goods received by the working class would gradually fall below the poverty line. We showed that by “misery” Marx could not have meant absolute poverty of destitution because he stated on a number of occasions that working class misery would grow, even if wages were high. Finally, we promised to examine in this issue the concept of “relative wages”.

Marx first introduces this concept of  in Wage Labour and Capital, one of his early lectures on economics dating from 1847.

In section IV Marx distinguishes three relations involving wages:

First, the actual sum of money the worker receives from his employer which he calls “nominal wages” and which we would now call “money wages”.

Second, the actual amount of goods and services which at any time this sum of money will buy, or “real wages”.

(In this age of inflation workers are all too familiar with this distinction.)

Third, says Marx, “wages are, above all, also determined by their relation to the gain, to the profit of the capitalist – comparative, relative wages”. Relative wages, he goes on, “express the share of direct labour in the new value it has created to the share which falls to accumulated labour, to capital”.

Marx himself had not invented this idea; it was originally put forward by David Ricardo. Indeed at this time before he had fully worked out his theories Marx could properly be described as a “Ricardian socialist”, as the followers of Ricardo who gave his theories an anti-capitalist aspect were called.

Relative wages (i.e., the workers share in the product of their labour) can fall even though real wages (i.e., the amount of goods they receive) have risen, as a simple example will show.

Because value is measured by the amount of labour expended over time, the total amount of new value produced in a given time will always be the same (provided the skills of the workers remain unchanged). Thus if productivity increases and more wealth is produced in the same period, then the prices of each individual commodity will fall but the total value of all of them together will remain the same. Assume that, as a result of an increase in productivity, prices fall by 5 per cent. If wages remained unchanged, then real wages would rise by nearly 5 per cent. Relative wages, however, would be unchanged. But say money wages were to fall but not by as much as prices. The workers would still be better off in terms of the goods they received but their relative wages would have fallen.

As Marx put it:

  The share of capital relative to the share of labour has risen. The division of social wealth between capital and labour has become still more unequal. With the same capital, the capitalist commands a greater quantity of labour. The power of the capitalist over the working class has grown, the social position of the worker has deteriorated, has been depressed one step further below that of the capitalist. (Wage Labour and Capital, section IV)

Nearly twenty years later in 1865 Marx returned to this theme in another popular lecture on economics. Here he assumes that wages fall by as much as prices, which would mean that the workers would be no better off materially, and comments:

   Although the labourer’s absolute standard of life would have remained the same, his relative wages, and therewith his relative social position, as compared with that of the capitalist, would have been lowered. If the working man should resist that reduction of  relative wages, he would only try to get some share in the increased productive powers of his own labour, and to maintain his former relative position in the social scale. (Value, Price and Profit, Chapter XIII)

We are now in a position to say in what sense Socialists think the working class tends to become worse off as capitalism develops. They tend to become worse off in terms of the value of the amount of goods they receive compared with the value of what they produce. Saying that under capitalism the share of the working class in the wealth they produce will tend to fall is quite a different proposition to saying that the amount of goods and services they receive will fall. Most of those who accuse Marx of having believed that capitalism would reduce the working class to starvation have failed to understand this key distinction, which he took over from Ricardo, between relative wages and real wages. Relative, rather than real, wages is what tends to decline.

Capitalism is not to be justified by comparing the standard of living of most workers today with the lower standard of their grandfathers’ yesterday. The valid comparison is between what people get today and what they would get if modern industry were commonly owned and geared to producing for use not profit.

In any event, the case for Socialism does not rest on capitalism producing a poverty-stricken and down-trodden working class. Indeed, if capitalism were to do this Socialism would be impossible because it could not be  established by what Marx called “one level mass of broken wretches past salvation” (Value, Price and Profit). Socialism, both for its establishment and for its functioning, demands people who have learned the technical and social skills needed to live in a modern technological society. It is by training the working class in this rather than by completely impoverishing them that capitalism undermines itself and produces its own grave-diggers.

The case for Socialism rests on the fact that a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production can provide a better life for people who are now members of the working class, in terms of quality as well as in terms of satisfying material needs, than can capitalism.